5 Cheap and Easy Chicken Dinners to Get You Out of Your Chicken Rut

Budget-friendly chicken = cheap cheep!

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Published on February 16, 2022

Chicken is a versatile ingredient that's relatively inexpensive compared to other meats, but sometimes you can feel like you're making the same couple of recipes on repeat. To help shake things up, Nicole McLaughlin, a.k.a. NicoleMcMom, is here to show you five cheap and easy chicken recipes you'll want to add to your rotation to keep things interesting. Keep reading to get recipes using chicken thighs and chicken breasts to create budget-friendly chicken dinners your family will ask for again and again.

1. Chicken Parm Meatballs

Instead of using ground chicken, which can cost $6 per pound, Nicole uses one pound of chicken thighs, which are about $4, to make her own ground chicken. After that, she uses this recipe for Chicken Meatballs as a guide for her Chicken Parm Meatballs. She browns her meatballs in an oven-proof skillet, tops them with marinara sauce, mozzarella cheese, and Parmesan, and bakes them until the cheese melts. Nicole serves hers as meatball sliders, but you can use them however you wish, like on top of spaghetti.

2. Italian Breaded Chicken

This recipe uses boneless, skinless chicken breasts, which can cost more per pound, but Nicole cuts them in half and flattens them into chicken cutlets. This lets you turn a package of three chicken breasts into six chicken cutlets that are big enough to feed a family. Now use those chicken cutlets to make Italian-style pan-fried chicken breast, like this Chicken Milanese, or other fried chicken, like this Chicken Katsu.

Italian Style Chicken Cutlets — Allrecipes

3. Air Fryer Chicken Thighs

Bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs are the cheapest way to enjoy chicken thighs, and also chicken in general. We've found the best trick for crispy and flavorful chicken thighs: Use the air fryer. This recipe for jerk chicken thighs from Allrecipes TikTok cooks in half the time that it would in the oven and gives you perfectly crispy skin with tender juicy chicken in every bite.

4. Hawaiian Chicken Kabobs

Nicole is firing up the grill for this Hawaiian Chicken Kabobs recipe. She starts with chicken tenders, which are cheaper than chicken breasts but are still made with white meat. The chicken is marinated with pineapple, soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil, and sriracha (which isn't in the recipe, but Nicole likes a kick). These kabobs grill up quickly, and you can serve them over a simple bagged salad.

5. Mediterranean Sheet Pan Chicken

Sheet pan dinners might just be one of the quickest and easiest meals you can make. Plus, when you use chicken thighs, it's cheap too. You can use this Mediterranean Chicken Sheet Pan Dinner recipe, or make a recipe up as you go by using any other vegetables that you have. Sheet pan meals are also the perfect way to use up other ingredients in your fridge, like olives and capers.