No Stupid Questions

Beans... on toast.

Honestly, I think most food can be found pretty cheap, except for proteins. The best bet I think is chicken drumsticks, but even those will add up. Beans are a cheap protein, but it's about just as carby as it is proteiny.

Lentils.

The one thing missing from the trinity is "effort". For instance, you could make any Dal, which would fit the trinity, but takes a lot of time. There are books with hundreds of Dal recipes that all taste different and work, too. And this is just one example. Less than a dollar a meal if made in bulk with rice.

I eat tofu like four days a week and it is the best thing ever.

Chana masala is pretty delicious and I'm pretty sure it's healthy. I think it's mostly chickpeas and vegetables which are both pretty good for you.

Kebab plate with vegetables.

A coleague of mine was eating it when he was on a diet to lose weight. It's basically kebab/gyros meat and a vegetable salad with a dresing (usually tzaziki). You have basically no sugar in it, it's just protein and vitamins.

Back in the day it cost like 4-5 € where I live which was pretty cheap for a lunch. Now it'd more like 6-7 € but that's still decent

Rice

I was looking at similar requirements for my daily lunch during the workday. I live in London so you're paying between £5 and £10 per day even for just a sandwich-based lunch. I needed a packed lunch that was cheap, tasty, healthy and additionally: filling, easy/quick to prepare and low carb. So that's a big ask.

I settled on a kind of custom Greek salad. One cucumber, some red onion, pickled beetroot all diced up, olive oil (or cold-pressed rapeseed oil) and some feta cheese. Sometimes I add chickpeas and coriander.

It's perfect, I've been eating it for years now.

the three sisters are very nutritious. corn, beans, squash. add any spices you like, and a good oil (my faves are la tourangelle olive oil and their toasted seasame oil, sold on amazon and not expensive). salt and spices make all the difference.

literally any bagel sandwich, unless the cost of eggs or ham is still rlly high in your area. low effort, immaculate.

Sweet potatoes. Very nutritious, very cheap, and taste sweet. Easy to prepare to, you can just boil or bake them for a little while without adding anything and they're great just like that.

humus

Homemade Popcorn!

Carrots. Same as potatoes. Boil em, mash em, stick em in a stew. Someone already mentioned onions, same idea.

I know your edit says you were thinking about dishes, and I think carrots can be their own dish with very little preparation. I like to bake mine on a sheet for half hour or so at 425f, and they are wonderful on their own. Also so low-calorie you can eat a practically infinite amount of them without spoiling a diet!

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I think a ripe avocado can be a good meal by itself, it has healthy fat, vitamins & fiber.
One avocado as a meal is cheaper than alot of other options.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/avocados/

Oh boy I've got one! Bonus, it ticks a 4th box - convenient!

Not sure where you're located and there are different brands, so you'll have to investigate for yourself. But the Tasty Bite brand microwaveable Indian pouches to me manage to hit each of these dimensions. They're cheap (-ish, I wanna say $4 per meal?), healthy (probably high in sodium, but if you look at the ingredients list it's all just food - not weird processed and/or synthetic crap), microwaveable and totally delicious. Granted, it's delicious for a microwaved meal...can't exactly compete with a properly prepared Indian dish. But it's easily the best microwaved food I've ever eaten.

And they're vegetarian and sometimes vegan so a small win on the critter ethics too! Can't recommend em enough unless you mean REAL cheap or you're used to eating home cooked Indian dishes on the regular.

Oatmeal with bananas, cinnamon, soy milk(unsweetened), flaxseed and sugar + extra fruits according to preference.

I eat it everyday for breakfast and I never get tired of the flavor. Sometimes I even get a bit greedy and eat it more than once. It's very filling, healthy, and cheap.

Thanks for this prompt. Reading this thread was the first time I felt like I was on reddit since I've joined this instance. I laughed and learned.

Yes - generally beans are both healthy (33% protein, 33% fiber, 33% carbs), cheap (dried or in cans), and can be pretty tasty, even out of cans, but if not with eggs, as part of a soup (tomatoes + grain + spices + veggies).

You should shop at a grocery outlet, that's how you get all three achieved. there's so much cheap overstocked healthy food, because originally was too expensive and people didn't want to pay that much, so I benefit. Best grocery store there's ever been, prove me wrong!

Tinned tuna. Inexpensive, high in protein and fish oils, low in fat and calories.

Probably not great in huge quantities because of iodine, but generally very healthy

This will be controversial. I'm going with Costco rotisserie chicken. $5. They taste good fresh but bad reheated. I don't eat the skin

Well, first we need to define what healthy means, because you could die of water intoxication, meaning there is a point where quantity matters.

Are cheese and butter healthy ? Not if it's your only diet, but there are tons of very healthy things in cheese and butter. And of course, the same goes for every thing. So we must have balance in mind when defining an healthy food.

The second is to define what is cheap. In most of European countries, fresh food is relatively cheap, but in other countries they can super expensive. And there's nothing more healthy than fresh food. So you definitely need fresh food as a base for an healthy balanced meal.

The third is highly subjective.

As for my healthy delicious cheap meal:

Breakfast

One scrambled egg by Gordon Ramsay with a melted slice of cheddar on toast and A fruit salad of one orange, one kiwi and one small apple

Lunch

Spaghettis with fresh garlic, olive oil, fresh basil and tomato wedges

Dinner

Pan-fried chicken fillet with frozen peas and carrot rings

Snack

Any fruit really

I heard that tacos are actually quite good for you, and I assume they could be if you get proper ones with lots of veg and natural ingredients rather than going to Taco Bell or some other fast food place and getting processed defrosted junk.

Source: Dr Karan on Youtube (yes, Youtube doctor, but he's British, so I trust him)

egg

Chickpeas

Vegetable soup. I know it sounds boring but you’d be surprised at just how nice vegetables in water with salt can taste.

https://youtu.be/21ofoREnXbM