Mushroom potstickers: $1.68/serving

Though these aren’t the best-ever potstickers, which by definition must involve pork*, they just might be the best vegetarian/vegan potstickers. Two kinds of flavorful mushrooms (or more, depending on your budget) sautéed with green onions, cilantro, soy sauce, sherry, sugar, and oyster sauce (or vegan oyster sauce), and that’s it. They’re easy enough for a weeknight meal if you’re used to making potstickers by hand, or a great appetizer choice for a mixed-crowd dinner party or potluck. You’ll never go back to the processed, frozen-in-a-bag kind again.

Asian cabbage slaw: 50 cents/serving

This very well might be the most versatile slaw I know of—it’s terrific on its own as a salad, as a side with meat, or as a meal in a wrap, over noodles, or with rice, as it was enjoyed this time. I’m not a fan of mayonnaise-based slaws, so this one features light, crisp flavors and a sesame vinaigrette—perfect for summer, when it might have to sit outside in the sun. Make up a big ol’ bowl and keep it in the fridge for light, cheap, filling lunch salads throughout the week. (If you do this, save the peanuts as a garnish rather than mixing them in, as the acid in the rice vinegar will turn them mushy after a few days.)

Szechuan chicken: $1.44/serving

I have a complicated relationship with this dish, which originally came out of an old Jeff Smith “Frugal Gourmet” paperback (I couldn’t tell you which one; I threw out the book long ago and kept only this page) that belonged to my mom. Though she wrote on this very recipe (“great!”) and I remember eating it growing up, she denies ever having made it. I started cooking it myself about a decade ago simply because it was easy, but B. is, has been, and probably always will be completely obsessed with it. He can eat an entire pan by himself, and for some reason never tires of what, to me, is a depressingly rudimentary flavor profile of pepper, soy sauce, and sherry. That said, it is a simple, tasty, cheap weeknight meal that can be used as a template for whatever you have on hand—feel free to add greens, vegetables, garlic, ginger…whatever strikes your fancy. Or keep to the original recipe, in all its original glory. It just might become an unexpected favorite in your house as well.

Chinese takeout-style pork lo mein: $1.86/serving

Given the popularity of last month’s orange chicken and sesame noodles, I thought it’d be worth taking another crack at some Chinese “takeout” for under $2 a serving. (It should be noted that although it’s a smaller serving than what you’d receive at a restaurant, it’s not dramatically smaller.) Employing the help of Cook’s Illustrated, I think I was able to pull off a version that’s pretty dang close to the real thing. In fact, not only was it about three times as flavorful, it was missing about three times the amount of grease. As I recommend in the actual recipe, it’s worth investing in a large bag of dried shiitake mushrooms (available at all Asian markets) for this and other meals that call for shiitakes; they’re about one-third the price of fresh, and the liquid left over from reconstituting them makes an amazing mushroom stock or soup broth you can freeze for later.

Stir-fried cabbage with ginger, chilies and rice: 70 cents/serving

This is not the first time I’ve set out to prove that if you have a head of cabbage, 20 minutes, and some pantry staples, you have a meal (see: pickled cabbage stir-fry, white beans and cabbage), but it bears repeating because this dish is so surprisingly good and involves so few ingredients. And in addition to costing under $1 per serving, it’s versatile—B. had leftovers the next day on bread with a fried egg on top and declared them even better than the night before. It may not be the photogenic bowl of food, but part of this is because the cabbage is so well-cooked and deeply flavored that it doesn’t even look like cabbage anymore, let alone taste like it.

Chinese takeout-style sesame noodles: $1.30/serving

In my second attempt this week to prove that takeout-style Chinese food is easy enough to make at home, I present these noodles. I admit I’ve never actually had them myself as takeout, but they do exist as such, and certainly taste takeout-quality. The key to truly satisfying that Chinese-noodle craving is to cook the noodles just to the point where they’re still slightly chewy and springy but not yet soft. Something about that texture and the creaminess of the sweet-spicy peanut-sesame sauce really hits the spot. They’re also really quick and simple to make, pretty much eliminating your last excuse for wanting to eat out.

Chinese takeout-style orange chicken: $1.30/serving

You know those occasional dark days—you’re dieting, perhaps, or on a juice cleanse, or had a bad day at work—when you drive by a Panda Express, which is unfathomably gross under the best of circumstances, and your eyes suddenly do this and you’re unable to think about anything but stuffing your face with gloriously greasy, MSG-laden Chinese food? No? Then we will never be friends. But, more to the point, despite my best intentions, I have these days, and I’m ashamed to admit that the only thing stopping me isn’t health considerations or dignity, but price. Unless it’s a super-special occasion, I physically cannot bring myself to pay more than $3 per serving for dinner. I just can’t. Especially for what’s basically a small pile of fried meat pieces of indeterminate origin. Thankfully, most takeout-style Chinese food is easy to make at home and is not only infinitely cheaper, but tastes better and is (somewhat) healthier.

Chinese chicken and ramen soup: 76 cents/serving

This is, admittedly, the first thing I’ve made in the slow cooker since November’s Malaysian beef curry that didn’t have me thinking, “meh.” I want to love my slow cooker, I really do, but anything cooked over four hours or so (with the exception of large cuts of beef or pork) just ends up tasting homogeneously, disappointingly bland. And if you’re only going to use a slow-cooker for four hours, that more or less defeats the purpose of using one in the first place, doesn’t it? Maybe this problem is due to my having a cheap Rival model, but buying a super-expensive slow cooker is just not something I ever plan on doing. Oh well. In any case, this is essentially glorified ramen, but the broth is phenomenal, the prep is simple, and it makes a ton.

Chinese black beans and tofu: $1.96/serving

This almost-vegan (provided there are real oysters in your oyster sauce) weeknight dish is surely poised to become a favorite in the $35-a-week rotation. Not only would it be super-cheap with on-sale tofu and from-scratch beans (neither of which I had this time around, unfortunately), but the flavors echo those in Chinese black bean sauce, which I love, but with the added bulk and fiber of whole beans. Crispy fried tofu cubes add textural interest and even more protein. It would also, for you non-budgeting-folks, make a great side dish for duck or chicken, with or without the tofu.

Best-ever potstickers: $1.08/serving

When B. and I first started dating, he had to travel a lot for work. During one particular trip, I got the idea to stock his freezer with something he could eat when he got back. For reasons that remain unclear even to this day, potstickers came to mind. I had never made them before, but I forged ahead all the same with what I thought was a reasonable approximation of the frozen ones I had been buying at Trader Joe’s. What resulted were inedibly salty, dense little meatballs in inelegant rubbery pouches. These Best-Ever Potstickers, the result of many subsequent years’ worth of trial and error, are better than anything you could buy at the store. Not too salty and not too dense, with a burst of freshness from ginger and cilantro. They’re great for snacks, appetizers, lunch, dinner, or to freeze uncooked for later, and I guarantee whoever you make them for will be impressed.