Carne asada—grilled steak spritzed with fresh lime juice—is one of those Mexican classics that many diners order at restaurants but would never consider making at home. Strange since it only takes two minutes on the grill, is delicious and makes an affordable choice when planning three or four meals around one main ingredient.

Did you know that carne asada is used in tacos, burritos, fajitas, tostadas and nachos as well as with breakfast eggs and in salads? Pair it with tortillas, lots of fresh produce and homemade salsas (bottled if you must), and you will have nutritious, satisfying meals in minutes.

This week I grilled lots of carne asada for a meal with rice and vegetables, tacos de bistek with salsa de aguacate and a wonderful “garden grill” salad with steak. No one in my family felt they were eating leftovers because each meal was different and delicious.

Homemade Mexican food opens up the wonderful world of ethnic markets from small mom and pop’s to supermarkets that serve the everyday culinary needs of their community. Unlike our mainstream supermarkets that offer limited Mexican ingredients as pricey specialty items, these stores have a high turnover that allows for lower prices. Plus, they are great fun to explore. I often ask for guidance and look forward to treats like steaming hot tamales made from chicken and pork.

Earlier this week I headed to the Azteca Market for bistek (long thin, flavorful steak cut from the cow’s belly), tortillas, creamy Hass avocados, tomatillos, limes and chiles. While I depend on traditional bistek, you could easily substitute skirt steak. Be sure to tell your butcher that you are making carne asada and need it cut in half lengthwise. Otherwise it will be too thick and not work in the dish.

I couldn’t help doing a quick price comparison because the difference was so apparent. Bistek sold for $5.75 a pound compared to $9 for skirt steak. Ripe avocados for my salsa were 99 cents each compared to $1.69 at my usual market; tomatillos were $1.69 a pound compared to $2.99. A two-pound bag of Mexican limes was an affordable $2.49, while Persian limes ran 39-cents each or $4.48 for two pounds. A package of 30 tortillas cost $2.99 while a dozen at my market ran $2.50 to $3 depending on the brand. These are significant savings for a family on a budget.

Hungry?—let’s get started.

Day 1: Grilled Carne Asada with rice and a simple salad.
How easy is easy? You decide. Take your bistek or prepared skirt steak and sprinkle salt on both sides. Set aside. Heat a grill or dry, heavy-bottomed skillet over a medium-high flame and lightly brown the steak for 40–50 seconds (skirt steak may require more time as it’s often thicker). Adjust the heat as needed to prevent burning. Flip the steak and cook for approximately 30–60 seconds on the second side. Squeeze lime juice on both sides of the meat and serve promptly with rice and a simple salad

Day 2: Tacos de Bistek (steak tacos) with Salsa de Aguacate (avocado and tomatillo sauce)
A standard at taco stands across Mexico, this flavor-packed meal is super quick and nutritious. Place your carne asada on a clean working surface and cut into ¼-inch strips. Turn the strips and cut again to create ¼-inch dice. Sprinkle the meat with fresh lime juice and set aside. Warm the tortillas on a grill to soften. If the grill is “dirty” with meat juice from freshly grilled steak, even better. Fill the warm tortillas with the diced carne asada, chopped onions, salsa de aguacate and cilantro.

Salsa de aguacate is a quick blender sauce made with ripe Hass avocados, tomatillos, chiles, onion, garlic and cilantro. Chop, toss, blitz and you’re done. And the good news is that the acidic tomatillos prevent the avocados from discoloring for a day or two. A nice change from guacamole, salsa de aguacate is a great party dish served with tortilla chips.

Day 3: “Garden Grill” salad with steak
This is one of my all-time favorite salads because every bite is an adventure for the taste buds and beautiful to the eye. It’s filled with mixed greens and herbs like basil, Italian parsley, Marjoram and mint (torn not chopped!), multi-colored strips of grilled bell peppers and squash and a riot of red, yellow and orange tomatoes—all shapes and sizes when in season. Add some cubed feta cheese and steak strips and toss with a simple balsamic dressing. Dig in!

Try these three dishes and you’ll know why carne asada is a great main ingredient when planning meals on a budget. You are only limited by your imagination. As I finished the salad on the third day, I had to ask, how can I be on a budget when it tastes so good?

Print these recipes for easy reference:

Carne Asada

Tacos de Bistek

Salsa de Aguacate

“Garden Grill” Salad with Steak

Print these illustrated, step-by-step How To’s for easy reference:

How To Make Carne Asada

How To Make Tacos de Bistek

How To Grill Vegetables

Can you feed a family of four for $10 or less a day? Cooks across the county are doing it with careful planning, thinking outside of their daily comfort zones and budgeting—many for the first time. One of my tricks for consistently producing delicious, healthy meals is selecting one affordable main ingredient (today it’s rotisserie chicken), then building three to four meals around it.

Now, are you ready for the best cook’s tip of all? Costco’s three-pound, five-buck birds! Hands down, there is nothing on the market that can beat them for flavor and value. These tasty time savers are moister than any I’ve tried and don’t have added hormones, steroids, preservatives, MSG, glutens, flavors, colors or things that make you glow in the dark. In many instances this ready-to-eat product is close in price to its uncooked counterpart.

A recent trip to the superstore yielded three birds— or nine pounds of roasted chicken – for $15. Compare this to two, two-pound rotisserie chickens that I bought several weeks ago at a local market for $10.99 each—or $21.98. By my calculations, at regular market prices, my Costco birds would have cost $50, which means I saved $35 by shopping smart. What would you do with the bonus bucks? Personally, I vote for a nice bottle of wine or some sinfully dark chocolate cake to finish one of my meals.

With chickens in hand your meal options are unlimited. I try to offer my family a variety of choices based on the season and the weather. If it’s cold and raining outside, a hearty stew or soup offers lots of comfort. Warm sunshine, on the other hand, turns one’s thoughts to crisp salads, tacos and other easy meals that showcase fresh produce.

Day 1: Rotisserie chickens and herb roasted vegetables.

This super easy, elegant meal is ready in 30 minutes. All that’s required is reheating the chicken and chopping some potatoes, carrots, celery, onions and mushrooms for roasting. Put the vegetables on a baking sheet, toss with olive oil, salt and pepper and set them in a preheated 450-degree oven with a couple of sprigs of fresh rosemary and roast for 20 minutes. Halfway through, flip the vegetables over so they’ll crisp on both sides.

Put everything on a platter and decorate with sprigs of deep green Italian parsley for color. Add a basket of warm crusty bread with soft butter and get ready for lots of appreciative oooooh’s and aaahhh’s at the table.

Day 2: Chicken enchiladas with enfrijoladas sauce.

Be different and try a new cuisine. This Mexican classic is quick, easy and great for a crowd or Sunday brunch. All you need is a couple of cups of shredded chicken, corn tortillas and a simple blender sauce of beans, chipotle chiles, bay leaves, browned onions, salt and milk. Whiz, zip and you’re done. Make the enfrijoladas sauce a day or two in advance and let the flavors deepen—assembly is a breeze.

Day 3: Cobb Salad

Bob Cobb, owner of the famous Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles, raided the refrigerator for a late night snack in 1937 and found a bevy of treasures: chicken, crisp romaine lettuce, cheese, creamy avocados, crumbled bacon, watercress, tomatoes, chives and hard-cooked eggs. Cobb dressed his salad with French dressing, but I prefer creamy blue cheese.

Pair this complex composed salad with good bread or warm corn muffins and life is good.

Day 4: A hearty homemade soup—you decide.

What are you in the mood for—chicken noodle, Indian mulligatawny or perhaps Mexican tortilla soup? A favorite at my house is chicken-vegetable soup with lots of alphabet pasta thrown in for the kids. Most learned to spell their names eating this soup, while I knew the value of N for nutrition, F for flavor, S for silly fun and C for cheap (we’re talking scraps of chicken, leftover vegetables and homemade stock).

Have you grown feathers yet? If not, know that rotisserie chicken meat makes the best pot pies I’ve ever eaten. Simply combine some chopped meat with cooked potatoes, carrots, and celery in simple cream gravy. Spoon the mixture into pie tins or heat-resistant bowls and top with homemade pie crust for pennies, or best-quality store-bought crust for convenience. Bake to golden flakiness or freeze and bake when you, the cook need some delicious comforting.

Bones, bones, bones—always save the chicken bones for homemade stock. You may think its way too much work; don’t worry. Yesterday, I filled my stockpot with cold water, halved an onion, chopped two carrots and two ribs of celery, and broke apart a bulb of garlic then threw it all into the pot. A handful of whole black peppercorns, two bay leaves, five sprigs of thyme, six whole cloves and three chicken carcasses soon followed. In less than five minutes, stock was on the stove. So, easy and now there are eight four-cup containers of stock in my freezer for stews, soups, gravies, sauces and rice and bean dishes.

Four healthy, flavor-packed meals make me once again ask, how I can be on a budget when it tastes so good.

Print these for your convenience.

How to roast vegetables
Enchiladas enfrijoladas with chicken
Cobb salad
Chicken vegetable alphabet soup
Rotisserie chicken pot pie

As I stood in the Walgreens greeting card section searching for the perfect birthday card, a comedic Bubba Gump Shrimp card caught my eye. Perhaps it was the cold rainy day or boredom, but my mind began dancing with visions of shrimp scampi ladled over beautifully flavored lemon-garlic fettuccini.

The more I thought about it, the more certain I became that this was a good time to rework what I considered an already perfect recipe. My goal was to make the dish more affordable for those on a tight budget. Good friends were coming for dinner—and they’d be perfect guinea pigs.

Originally I bought thawed, cleaned jumbo shrimp from my fish monger for $16 per pound and two packages of freshly made fettuccini from the market at $13. Dry white wine for the sauce averaged $10 a bottle, and the lemons, shallots, and garlic costs a few bucks. Scampi and pasta for four ran just under $45. Could I get the costs down to 20 bucks or less without compromising the flavor?

I headed to our local superstore in search of the best prices and battled the crowds with overflowing carts. Strange, but I had never purchased frozen seafood here, so I was pleasantly surprised to find a two-pound bag of frozen, cleaned jumbo shrimp for $12—that’s just $6 a pound. Even better, another brand offered a like amount of cooked shrimp for $6—or $3 per pound. I was inspired!

You should know that shrimp is extremely perishable and fishermen typically freeze their catch at sea before transporting it to the mainland. “Fresh” shrimp from the local fish monger have usually been frozen and thawed, so their advantage is questionable. Superstores buy huge, frequent lots and negotiate significantly lower prices than their competition.

A big bag of oversized lemons costs the same as one-third the amount at my market. I was thrilled to find more affordable wine for the sauce (not to mention the cook and her friends!). Bulk pasta wasn’t a good idea today as I had a huge stash at home—and a one-pound package of dry fettuccini cost only $2. A quick tally confirmed that I had successfully cut my scampi and pasta dinner for four to $20. Wahooo!

Back in the kitchen, I prepped all of the ingredients. Know that proper advance prep is the key to success with this easy meal. You do not want to be zesting, squeezing juice and measuring along the way as you cook, or your sauce will go south, the shrimp might overcook and the whole dish could be ruined.

Storing and thawing shrimp properly is critical for best flavor and safety. Keep yours frozen until ready to defrost. Then place them in a colander under cold running water until thawed. Never soak them in water or you’ll lose significant flavor. Never defrost the shrimp at room temperature or in a microwave—no exceptions.

If using thawed shrimp from the market, buy it the day you plan to use it. Set the wrapped shrimp in a bowl set over a larger bowl filled with ice before refrigeration. (Most refrigerators are not cold enough to keep shrimp perfectly fresh.) Store for 24 hours or less, and remove from the refrigerator just before using.

When ready to cook, pat the shrimp dry, then lightly dip them in flour. Be careful to shake off all excess flour or your sauce will get too thick. If this happens, thin it with some wine or the hot cooking water from your pasta.

If this is your first time cooking shrimp, do not fear as they cook quickly from gray to a beautiful pink-salmon color in minutes. Don’t overcook them or they will become chewy. With practice, you’ll be able to eyeball doneness like a pro.

Since it was storming outside, I decided to bring everyone to the kitchen table for dinner. All was warm and cozy, informal and fragrant with garlic and fresh lemon. I plated the fettuccini and scampi at the stove. As everyone lined up, I topped each with freshly grated parmesan cheese, Italian parsley, and a thin lemon slice just because.

Everyone dug in heartily and I knew the dish was a success—and cheap. Pouring more wine, I told everyone about my experiment and they were amazed at the huge savings possible with good planning. One friend slurped a noodle lustily and said, “perfection!” In the spirit of the moment, another suggested that I bring the costs down more with Two Buck Chuck wine and making my own pasta for pennies. How low can it go?

My mantra is quickly becoming, “How can I be on a budget when it tastes so good.” The economy may be depressing, but we are all learning new—often better— ways to feed our families and friends.

Print copies of Shrimp Scampi and Lemon-Garlic Fettuccini for your convenience.