Money-Saving Meals Made Easy -- Savings Experiment

You can cook expensive-tasting meals using the cheapest cuts of meat. To make these delicious, cost-effective dinners, all you need is one appliance: a slow cooker.

Cooking meat at a low temperature over time can make tough cuts tender, and the best cuts for these meals just happen to be the least expensive. Stick with shank, shoulder, round, rump and brisket for the most flavorful dishes.

To save even more money, consider buying larger, uncut steaks and then breaking them down yourself. By doing this, you can save yourself the 40 percent markup on pre-cut meats. Just pack the pieces well and freeze them to make them last.

As a bonus, slow cookers are essentially one-pot meals that require little preparation on your part. Slow-cooker recipes call for placing all of the ingredients and spices in the appliance at once, so you can set it and, essentially, forget it. In several hours, you'll have dinner for your whole family for just a few dollars per serving. Bon appetit!