Aldi fan's $7 budget dinner hack sends shoppers wild: 'Best meal I've had'

Finding a meal for less than $10 has become a bit of a stretch thanks to the rising cost of living. But one Aldi fan says she's found a tasty and super-easy meal for less than $7 per serving.

Using just three ingredients, the shopper hacked a quick meal by combining The Soup Co's Beef Pho Soup packet, a bunch of bok choy, and pork dumplings to make the "very filling" lunch or dinner.

"Quite possibly the best meal I have ever had for $7," the Aldi fan shared on social media alongside a picture of the dish. "I used a quarter of the $8 bag of dumplings and added chilli oil and coriander from the fridge. Delicious!"

All of the ingredients were purchased from her local Aldi store, including the $3.29 soup, the $7.99 dumplings and the $1.29 bok choy.

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While the serving the Aldi fan dished up was for one, she said it was big and could easily be stretched to feed an entire family, adding that even her two young children enjoyed it. "The broth would feed one (huge feed), but you could stretch it with half a cup of beef stock to feed two easily," she said.

The recipe sent fellow Aldi fans wild, with dozens keen to give the super simple meal a go. "That looks awesome," one shopper wrote, with another adding, "Great idea! Love this!"

"The Beef Pho Soup is absolutely amazing!" Added a third.

Explaining exactly how she pulls it all together, the mum from Perth said she starts by cooking everything separately. "I use a separate pot for dumplings. Blanch the bok choy in boiling water first, then remove that to a bowl and chuck the dumplings in," she explained.

The soup range is a limited-time-only grocery item and is available in three flavours: Coconut and Lentil, Beef Pho and Laksa.

The Beef Pho flavour offers a traditional Vietnamese-style soup and includes konjac noodles and sliced beef infused with fragrant herbs and spices.

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Meanwhile, others who had already tried the Aldi soup/dumpling combo shared their own variations. "Fabulous... to the soup, I add bok choy or spinach leaves and a handful of seafood marinara mix (frozen from Aldi) and a dash of soy sauce, stretching it a little further for two. I boiled the marinara separately and added that water to the soup as well. You can tweak it with any sauces/spices you like... we love it. Turns it into a meal," commented one home cook.

Others suggested ingredients to make it a bigger meal, including a bag of Thai salad vegetables, rice, thick rice noodles and garlic, chilli and ginger-infused stock.

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