How to Meal Prep with Walmart’s Recipe Library for Under $5 Per Serving

Sure, making your own food for the week ahead is more nutritious and affordable than ordering takeout night after night, but every time I commit to a week of homemade recipes, I get lost in the planning stage. I know I’ll never use up all the extra ingredients … and besides, the results will be so underwhelming, I might as well get pizza delivered.

Fortunately, the Walmart Recipe Library takes the guesswork out of meal prep. You can filter by cuisine, budget, cooking time, and even factors like “better for you" and “kid friendly" — and then it’s as simple as clicking “add all to cart" and scheduling a pickup slot.

It seemed a little too easy to fix a lifetime of meal prep failures, but I figured it was worth a try.

My Budget

To keep my costs low, I checked the box for “under $5 per serving." My total for an entire week’s worth of items was only $54.45, which I’m pretty sure I’ve spent on a single Uber Eats order, including tip. (The Walmart recipes were all for multiple portions and I live alone, so your budget might vary.)

Conveniently, Walmart has parking spots for online pickups:

Breakfast

Breakfast is supposedly the most important meal of the day, but it’s also the most skipped. So I went with the easiest recipe I could find: avocado and tomato breakfast toast with egg on top, listed as $2.50 per serving.

(Would a bowl of Cheerios with milk be easier and cheaper? Yes, but my diet was fully in the Walmart Recipe Library’s hands now.)

Slicing a tomato and mashing the avocado was a soothing way to ease into both meal prep and my morning.

Normally I just scramble eggs, so the sunnyside yolk was a colorful and tasty departure, pairing perfectly with a cup of coffee. And now I had a (nearly full) carton of eggs and a (likewise nearly full) loaf of Butternut 100% Whole Grain Bread to eat throughout the week.

Lunch

As an avid wrap fan, I was immediately drawn to the Walmart Recipe Library’s buffalo chickpea wraps ($3.31 per serving). While I regularly eat hummus, this was my first time roasting raw legumes — specifically, wit olive oil, salt, and pepper, and later tossing them in Frank’s Red Hot Kosher Buffalo Wings Sauce.

The other ingredients included celery, blue cheese dressing, and a burrito-size tortilla. My wrapping skills could admittedly use work, but much like my rapping skills, practice makes perfect. And this was a nearly perfect lunch.

Dinner

Since I had a vegetarian breakfast and lunch (you’re welcome, animals), dinner felt like a good time to introduce some protein to my diet (sorry, animals). Walmart’s one-pot lemon herb chicken and rice ($4.83 per serving) seemed straightforward, but after a nearly-perfect record of recipe execution, this is where I screwed up.

I was supposed to add two cups of broth to one cup of rice. Instead, I accidentally used the entire carton of Swanson Natural Goodness Lower Sodium Chicken Broth, only realizing my mistake 30 minutes later. In an attempt to right the ship, I added more rice, leading to a mix of over- and undercooked grains. While the results looked OK, the leftovers eventually ended up in the garbage.

(That said, I would try this recipe again … the right way.)

Snack

Finally, for a snack, I made frozen yogurt bark ($1.22 per serving). Using only five ingredients — low-fat yogurt, frozen berries, granola, coconut flakes, and a mixed-nuts dessert topping — it took barely five minutes to assemble and three hours to freeze. The result, a healthy summer snack, was worth the wait — and a great excuse to clean out my freezer.

My dog enjoyed licking the remnants of my bowl and co-signs this snack. Of all the recipes, this is the one we’ll be barking from the rooftops.

Overall, although I had one fail, Walmart’s Recipe Library was a huge money saver (and a time-saver because I picked up all my groceries at once). Whether you’re a recipe rookie or a master meal prepper, it has something for almost anyone.