Stretch-It Kitchen

One-Pot Chili Mac: About Two Bucks a Bowl, One Pan to Wash

Chili and macaroni cooked together in a single pot, the pasta thickening it as it goes. Priced with live Kroger numbers, it lands around two dollars a bowl.

Chili mac is two cheap dinners wearing one pot. You get the stick-to-your-ribs feeling of chili and the kid-friendly comfort of macaroni, and because the pasta cooks right in the sauce, there is exactly one pan to wash. The macaroni also drinks up the liquid and thickens everything, so a single pound of beef ends up feeling like a lot more food than it started as.

What it actually costs

Here is the pot, priced at our Kroger this week. The beef is the only expensive line, as always: a pound of store-brand 80/20 was $7.99. After that it is pantry money. Half a box of store-brand elbow macaroni runs about 63 cents, a can of kidney beans was $1.00, a can of petite diced tomatoes $1.00, a can of tomato sauce $1.00, about half an onion roughly 50 cents, and a handful of shredded cheddar to finish about $1.25. Chili powder, cumin, and garlic come out of the cabinet.

That puts the pot at about $13.39, and it feeds six. So a bowl lands right around $2 to $2.25, cheese on top included. The trick worth noticing is the macaroni: it cooks in the chili instead of a separate pot of water, so it soaks up all that seasoned liquid and bulks the whole thing out. One pound of beef, one pot, six full bowls.

How to make it

1. Brown the beef with the onion in a large pot or deep skillet over medium-high, breaking it up, about 7 minutes. Drain most of the grease, then stir in the garlic, chili powder, and cumin and let them cook for a minute so they bloom and stop smelling raw.
2. Add the diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, kidney beans, and broth, and stir it into a loose chili. Bring it up to a simmer and taste it for salt now, before the pasta goes in.
3. Stir in the dry macaroni, making sure it is submerged in the liquid. Add a splash more broth or water if it looks tight, the pasta needs liquid to drink.
4. Cover and simmer about 12 to 15 minutes, stirring now and then so nothing sticks, until the macaroni is tender and the chili has thickened around it.
5. Kill the heat and stir in a handful of cheddar, then top each bowl with more. Let it sit a couple minutes and it thickens further into proper chili mac.

It only gets better the next day once the flavors settle, so the leftovers are arguably the best part. A spoon of sour cream, a few pickled jalapenos, or some green onion on top costs almost nothing and dresses it right up.

If the pot gets too thick

Chili mac keeps soaking up liquid after it comes off the stove. That is normal. If it looks perfect at dinner and stiff by lunch, splash in a little water, broth, or tomato sauce while it reheats. Do not add more pasta. The pasta already did its job.

You can also stretch the last bowl into a new dinner by spooning it over a baked potato or wrapping it in a tortilla with cheese. It is not fancy, but it works, and that is the point of a pot like this.

This is the cheap-protein squeeze in one pot. Ground beef has quadrupled since 2000, so cooking the pasta right into the chili, where it stretches one pound across six bowls, is the whole game.

What did your family stretch a pound of ground beef into when the budget was tight?

Keep going

If chili mac fits your week, Homemade Hamburger Helper: We Priced It Against the Box is another one-skillet dinner with the same beef-and-pasta math.

For a bigger freezer-friendly pan, Freezer Pasta Bake: Make Two, Freeze One, Skip the Takeout banks the second dinner before the tired night hits.

Recipe is a standard one-pot chili mac. Costs use live Kroger store-brand shelf prices at Kroger On the Rhine, Cincinnati, pulled 2026-06-13. Your store and day will vary.

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