How One Canned Ingredient Turns Rice Into A Hearty Meal For Less Than $3

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Whether you're a college student in need of inexpensive recipes to stretch your food budget or one of the millions of Americans who have faced food insecurity in recent years, you will likely be familiar with the sometimes unavoidable necessity of a struggle meal that is both affordable and palatable. As the affordability crisis has grown and the price of many basic staples has risen, this has become increasingly difficult for many. Nevertheless, by combining cooked rice with canned beef stew or chunky soup, it is possible to whip up an easy, hearty meal, the main ingredient of which will set you back less than $3.

A 15-ounce can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew with Carrots and Potatoes will set you back $2.89 at Walmart (though bear in mind the supermarket chain's prices may vary state to state), while an 18.8 ounce can of Campbell's Chunky Hearty Beef Barley Soup goes for $2.48 on Amazon. These two brands have more advantages than just being thrifty, however. Dinty Moore has come out on top in multiple rankings of the best beef stews on the market, with its brown gravy praised for being rich. Meanwhile, Tasting Table's own ranking of canned beef soups put Campbell's Beef Barley Soup in the number one spot, noting its "subtle sweetness and pleasant tomato flavor, complementing the savoriness of the beef broth," as well as the substantial amount of meat and vegetables.

To bulk up either of these into a satisfying struggle meal, simply prepare your stew or soup according to instructions and pour it over a healthy serving of hot, cooked white rice. This "effortless" method is endorsed by Dinty Moore manufacturer Hormel and should take you only five minutes.

As with any two-ingredient recipe, the quality of both parts of the meal will have a significant impact on its overall taste. Cooking rice is one of those skills that takes a moment to learn, but often longer to master. For perfectly cooked white rice, you might want to follow Martha Stewart's method, which calls for a ratio of 1 cup of rice to 1 cup of water, simmered in a stainless steel pan for 16 minutes, then taken off the heat and allowed to steam in the pot with the lid on for a further 10 minutes. Allowing the rice to rest after cooking is also a tip endorsed by Tasting Table, with cookbook author Mariam Daud explaining that this "gives the starches time to settle, so the rice ends up fluffy instead of wet or clumpy."

From either of these budget-friendly canned items, your rice will absorb a lot of rich, beefy flavor, and depending on how much you mix them, the resulting texture and consistency may be similar to that of the rice-heavy stew jambalaya. Remember that though Campbell's Chunky Hearty Beef Barley Soup is, well, chunky, it is still a soup rather than a stew, so you may need more rice to soak up its liquid. Some find Dinty Moore Beef Stew to be noticeably salty when eaten on its own, so incorporating it into rice allows its seasoning to distribute further and taste less aggressive. Finally, if you prefer a spicier two-ingredient struggle meal, you could swap Dinty Moore or Campbell's for Hormel Chili with Beans, which rated highly in our ranking of the absolute best canned chilis for its taste, simplicity, texture, and consistency, and will still cost you less than $3 a can.