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I’ve been meal planning for 15 years and still find it overwhelming sometimes. Deciding what we’re going to eat every single week – lol – it’s just a lot.
Sometimes I would try to meal plan around sales, sometimes I’d try to just buy stuff cheap & then figure out dinner at home, sometimes I’d meal plan for the month & then end up with too much extra food somehow.
Sound familiar? Yeah, I’ve been there too.
But I finally figured out the system & I’m going to share it with you.
First of all, the best way to build a grocery list for a week of dinners is to start with the meals — then let the shopping list write itself. (More on this in a sec.)
That’s exactly what I’m giving you today: five delicious recipes for the upcoming week, plus the complete master list of everything you need to buy. One trip to your local grocery store. No guessing. No waste.
The Weekly Meal Plan: 5 Dinners, 1 List
These are real dinner recipes from my own rotation — meals I cook for my family of seven every single week. They’re easy, they’re budget-friendly, and they use ingredients that overlap so you’re not buying 47 different things.
(You can download a PDF of these recipes at the bottom of the post.)
🗓️ Your Week’s Meal Plan
- Monday: Ground Beef Burrito Bowls — Seasoned ground beef over rice with black beans, sour cream, cherry tomatoes, and shredded cheese. Everyone builds their own bowl. 25 minutes, start to finish.
- Tuesday: Crockpot Chicken Alfredo Pasta — Chicken breast in the slow cooker all day with broth and cloves of garlic. Shred at dinner, toss with pasta and Alfredo sauce. Your Tuesday night just got a whole lot easier.
- Wednesday: Sheet Pan Sausage, Potatoes & Peppers — Smoked sausage, sweet potatoes (or regular potatoes), and peppers tossed in olive oil on one sheet pan. Roast and done.
- Thursday: Instant Pot Beef Chili — Ground beef, beans, tomato sauce, chili powder, and brown sugar for a touch of sweetness. Serve with sour cream and cornbread. Hearty, warm, and everyone goes back for seconds.
- Friday: Peanut Butter Chicken + Rice — This is one of those recipes people are skeptical about until they try it. Chicken breast, peanut butter, soy sauce, a little brown sugar, and red pepper flakes. Serve over rice. It’s a favorite recipe in our house for a reason.
Five different meals, five nights covered. Weekends are for leftovers, Tuna Salad, hot dogs on the grill, or whatever sounds good. No pressure.
If you don’t need five meals for the week, then just choose the ones you want.
The Complete Grocery List
Here’s your printable grocery list for this week’s meal plan, organized by store section so you can move through your local grocery store fast.
Cross off anything you already have in your pantry — most of the dry goods and pantry staples are things you probably keep on hand.
🥩 Meat
- 2 lbs ground beef
- 2 lbs boneless chicken breast
- 1 package smoked sausage
🥬 Produce
- Sweet potatoes or russet potatoes (2 lbs)
- Bell peppers (3–4, mixed colors)
- Cherry tomatoes (1 pint)
- Green beans (1 lb — great side dish for any night)
- 1 head of garlic (you’ll use several cloves of garlic this week)
- Limes (optional, for the burrito bowls)
🧊 Dairy & Refrigerated
- Sour cream
- Shredded cheese (Mexican blend)
- Jarred Alfredo sauce
- Butter
🥫 Canned & Jarred
- Black beans (2 cans)
- Tomato sauce (2 cans)
- Chicken broth (1 carton)
- Peanut butter (creamy)
🍝 Dry Goods & Pantry
- Rice (white rice or brown rice — your call)
- Pasta (penne or rotini)
- Taco seasoning (1 packet)
- Chili powder
- Brown sugar
- Red pepper flakes
- Olive oil
- Soy sauce
- Cornbread mix (optional, for chili night)
That’s it. One list, one shopping trip, five dinners for the whole week. The total cost for all of this at Aldi runs is under $100, depending on what pantry staples you already have.
How to Use This Grocery List (the Right Way)
First things first: check your pantry before you shop. This is something a lot of people skip, and it’s the #1 reason grocery lists lead to buying too much food. Open your cabinets, check the fridge, and cross off anything you already have. Olive oil, soy sauce, taco seasoning, rice — these are pantry staples that don’t need repurchasing every week.
2nd: stick to the list. Grocery shopping without a plan is how $60 trips turn into $120 trips. The whole point of a weekly meal plan with a shopping list is to remove the guesswork. Walk in with the list, walk out with exactly what you need.
3rd: prep what you can ASAP. If you do some prep work up front, you’re way more likely to actually make the meals & use all the food before it goes bad. When you get home, brown the ground beef for Monday and Thursday (two meals, one batch). Chop the peppers for Wednesday. Put the chicken in the fridge to thaw for Tuesday. This 15-minute investment on grocery day saves you every single night the next day and beyond.
If you don’t have time to prep the meat, at the very least, freeze the meat you’ll use later in the week! Just don’t forget to pull it out.
Make It Your Own
This is just one week’s worth of meals, but the system works the same no matter what you’re cooking. The idea is simple: pick your dinners first, build the grocery list from each individual recipe, combine everything into a master list, and remove duplicates. That’s meal planning in its simplest form.
If your family has special diets — low carb, dairy-free, whatever — swap what you need. Use coconut milk instead of Alfredo sauce. Skip the cheese on the burrito bowls. Use cottage cheese or Greek yogurt instead of sour cream. The framework stays the same even when the ingredients change based on your family’s needs.
And if you love trying a new recipe each week, go for it — just make sure the other four meals are favorites you know will work. One new thing per week keeps it interesting without the stress of five untested dinners.
Want an entire year of dinner plans with grocery lists built in? (And breakfasts, lunches, meal planning templates, etc. etc. etc.)
My Meal Plan Matrix cookbook gives you a full week’s meal plan for every week — with recipes, prep guides, protein counts, and a custom grocery list builder that does the work for you.
No more staring at the fridge wondering what’s for dinner. No more overbuying at the store.
Get the Meal Plan Matrix →
Start this week. Pick the five meals, print the list, and go. Your future self — standing calmly in the kitchen at 5 PM with a plan — will thank you. 🤍
