Three cuts of beef, seven nights, and nobody guesses the budget

Quick answer: Buy a 3-pound chuck roast, 1.5 pounds of flank steak and 2 pounds of 85/15 ground beef. Braise the roast on Sunday, freeze half the flank, and the rest of the week is assembly. Built for two adults. Rough cost is $85 to $120 depending on where you live and what's on sale.

The trick is that tough cuts cost less because they ask more of you in time, not in skill. Three hours in a low oven turns a chuck roast into the kind of beef people assume you paid steakhouse money for. Flank steak, sliced thin, does the same job on a weeknight in ten minutes. Ground beef fills the gaps.

This is general education, not individual nutrition advice. If you have diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, a pregnancy, a history of disordered eating or any medically prescribed diet, check with your doctor or a registered dietitian before you change how you eat. For everyone else, this is a plain week of protein, vegetables and whole grains. Nobody's counting anything.

The Sunday braise

Pat the 3-pound chuck dry and cut it into three chunks. Salt it hard and add black pepper and a tablespoon of chili powder. Sear every side in a Dutch oven with a little olive oil until it's properly brown. That takes about eight minutes and it's where the flavor comes from, so don't rush it.

Pull the beef out. Cook two sliced onions and six smashed garlic cloves in the same pot for five minutes. Add one 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes, a cup of beef broth and a tablespoon of red wine vinegar. Put the beef back, cover, and cook at 300°F for three hours. Add 1 pound of carrots and 1.5 pounds of cut-up potatoes for the last hour.

Eat a third tonight. Shred the rest and keep it in its juices. You'll use it three more times.

The week

Sunday

• Breakfast: scrambled eggs, toast, banana
• Lunch: peanut butter sandwich, carrot sticks
• Snack: apple and a slice of cheddar
• Dinner: braised chuck with the carrots and potatoes

Monday

• Breakfast: oatmeal with peanut butter and sliced banana
• Lunch: shredded beef and cheddar on whole wheat, melted in a skillet
• Snack: Greek yogurt with frozen berries
• Dinner: braised beef tacos on corn tortillas with lime cabbage slaw

Tuesday

• Breakfast: eggs and toast
• Lunch: leftover taco beef over rice with salsa
• Snack: hard-boiled egg and whole-grain crackers
• Dinner: flank steak with parsley-garlic sauce, roasted broccoli, rice

Wednesday

• Breakfast: oatmeal with diced apple and cinnamon
• Lunch: steak salad, leftover flank over romaine with oil and vinegar
• Snack: popcorn you pop yourself
• Dinner: oat meatballs in tomato sauce over spaghetti, side salad

Thursday

• Breakfast: eggs and toast
• Lunch: meatball sandwich on whole wheat
• Snack: apple and peanut butter
• Dinner: beef and barley soup from the last of the braise

Friday

• Breakfast: oatmeal and banana
• Lunch: soup, reheated
• Snack: carrots and hummus
• Dinner: smash burgers, oven fries, slaw from the leftover cabbage

Saturday

• Breakfast: potato and egg hash
• Lunch: clean-out plate: cheese, crackers, hard-boiled egg, apple, hummus
• Snack: yogurt
• Dinner: steak and egg fried rice with peas and scallions

The four recipes worth writing down

Taco night (Monday). Reheat 1 pound of shredded braise in its juices with a teaspoon of cumin. Shred half a cabbage, toss it with lime juice and salt, and pile both onto warm tortillas. The tomato in the braise does the work a taco sauce would.

Flank with parsley sauce (Tuesday). Marinate half the flank that morning in 3 tablespoons soy sauce, the juice of a lime, two minced garlic cloves and black pepper. Eight hours is the limit. Sear it in a screaming-hot skillet, about four minutes a side. Rest it five minutes. Slice thin across the grain. That last step is the entire difference between tender and tire. Spoon over the sauce you made Sunday: one bunch chopped parsley, two cloves garlic, 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar, 1/3 cup olive oil, salt and a pinch of chili powder.

Oat meatballs (Wednesday). Mix 1 pound ground beef with 1/2 cup rolled oats, one egg, two minced garlic cloves, a teaspoon of salt and pepper. Roll into golf balls. Bake at 400°F for 18 to 20 minutes. Simmer them in sauce made from a can of crushed tomatoes, one sliced onion and a little garlic. The oats keep them tender and stretch the meat.

Smash burgers (Friday). Roll 1 pound of beef into eight balls. Slam each onto a hot skillet, press flat with a spatula for ten seconds, season, and flip after two minutes. Cheddar on top. Cut potatoes in wedges, toss with oil and salt, and roast at 425°F for 30 minutes.

Saturday's fried rice is the freezer payoff. Thaw the frozen flank in the fridge Friday night, marinate it Saturday morning, and slice it into cooked rice, scrambled eggs, frozen peas and scallions in a hot pan.

Grocery list

Quantities are for two adults, one week.

Meat

• Chuck roast, 3 lb
• Flank steak, 1.5 lb (top round steak works if flank is pricey)
• Ground beef, 85/15, 2 lb

Produce

• Yellow onions, 5
• Garlic, 2 heads
• Carrots, 3 lb bag
• Potatoes, 5 lb bag
• Broccoli, 2 crowns
• Green cabbage, 1 small head
• Romaine hearts, 2
• Parsley, 1 bunch
• Scallions, 1 bunch
• Limes, 4
• Bananas, 6
• Apples, 8

Dairy and eggs

• Eggs, 2 dozen
• Plain Greek yogurt, 32 oz
• Cheddar, 1 lb block

Pantry

• Rolled oats, 18 oz canister
• Long-grain rice, 2 lb
• Spaghetti, 1 lb
• Pearl barley, 1 small bag
• Crushed tomatoes, two 28 oz cans
• Beef broth, two 32 oz cartons
• Corn tortillas, 1 pack of 24
• Whole wheat bread, 1 loaf
• Hamburger buns, 1 pack
• Whole-grain crackers, 1 box
• Peanut butter, 1 jar
• Hummus, 1 tub
• Salsa, 1 jar
• Popcorn kernels, 1 small bag
• Olive oil, red wine vinegar, soy sauce
• Chili powder, cumin, cinnamon, salt, black pepper

Frozen

• Peas, 1 bag
• Mixed berries, 1 bag

What it costs

Beef is about half the bill. Chuck roast goes on sale more often than most cuts, so check the flyer before you shop and buy a second roast for the freezer when it drops. Prices swing a lot between regions and stores, so the $85 to $120 range is a ballpark. Add up your own store's prices against the list before you trust it. If you already own the spices, oil and vinegar, you'll land at the low end.

The prep-day plan

Sunday takes about ninety minutes of hands-on work spread over a long afternoon.

1. Start the braise. This is the long pole, so do it first.
2. While it cooks, cook 1.5 cups of dry rice for Tuesday and Wednesday.
3. Make the parsley sauce and refrigerate it.
4. Split the flank in two. Freeze half raw in a bag.
5. Hard-boil four eggs.
6. Wash and cut the carrots for snacks, and shred the cabbage.
7. Shred the leftover beef and portion it into containers. Label them by day.

For a longer prep routine, Two Hours On Sunday That Covers Every Dinner This Week walks through one. And if the beef portions seem big or small for your household, Portion Sizes Without a Scale and a Week to Practice On will help you eyeball it.

Swap freely

Nothing here is sacred. Tired of tacos? Put the shredded braise on baked potatoes instead. Want a different sauce for the flank? Delicious.com (https://delicious.com) has thousands more recipes to swap in, and a braised chuck roast will take almost any of them.

If the week gets away from you and you run short on cash before the next shopping trip, The Pantry And Freezer Plan For The Week Before Payday is the backup.

Cheap cuts don't taste cheap. They just taste like somebody had a plan.