'My Thanksgiving Day meal is made with only $20 Dollar Tree items and no oven'

One money-savvy woman revealed how she made a Thanksgiving Day meal with only $20 worth of ingredients from Dollar Tree while only using her stovetop.

With a TikTok account dedicated to showing people how to make Dollar Tree dinners, she (@dollartreedinners) shared the recipe for an affordable Thanksgiving feast.

Receiving so many comments about people not owning an oven inspired her to think outside the box.

Green bean casserole

Start with the green bean casserole. Bring a pot of water up to a boil and salt the water if desired. Add in your green beans and return it to a boil then reduce your heat to low. Cover the pot and let it simmer for five minutes. If you see any “stemmy bits” you can go ahead and remove those in the process.

Drain your green beans and return them to the pot along with a can of cream of mushroom soup and half a can of water. The content creator said you don’t need milk to prepare a green bean casserole, as it only adds creaminess. It is not a necessary ingredient.

Return the mixture to the stovetop to heat through. If desired you can add a handful of fried onions into your casserole mixture. Add your mixture into a casserole dish and top it with your remaining fried onions. You don’t necessarily need to bake it since the fried onions are already crispy.

READ MORE: 'See what my Korean family eat on Thanksgiving - with no turkey or stuffing'

Mashed potatoes

For the mashed potatoes heat up four cups of water to a boil and then whisk in your instant potatoes. The home cook likes to mix two flavors together, roasted garlic and buttery homestyle, and said she really likes the flavor combination. It might be one of her new favorites.

Macaroni and cheese

The macaroni and cheese portion of the meal can be cooked according to the package instructions. Before draining the noodles, reserve half a cup of the pasta water which will be used in place of the milk and butter.

Drain the noodles and stir in the reserved pasta water and cheese sauce packet.

Biscuits

Bisquick mix from Dollar Tree can be mixed with one-third of a cup and one tablespoon of water. The mixture is then fried in a skillet with a tablespoon of oil on a medium heat setting. Once the biscuits have gotten brown on the bottom, flip them over and reduce the heat to low. Cover them with a lid and let them simmer for 10 minutes until the biscuits are cooked through.

Cookies

Baking the cookies in the skillet is an identical process to making the biscuits. The only difference is that you use a dry skillet and you don’t flip the biscuits.

Honey glazed spam

While her honey-glazed spam used to be a hit, the content creator shared that she thinks Dollar General has since changed the recipe for the spam, so she didn’t want to share her recipe as she wasn’t a huge fan of it anymore saying it had an “off taste” and was “sour”. She noted though that deli ham from Dollar Tree is a good replacement.

Lastly, she steamed some carrots in a bag as instructed on the package, and drizzled the carrots with some honey to sweeten them up a bit since they were a bit sour. The last, and notably easiest part, was mashing up some jellied cranberry.

The content creator said of the meal: “Here’s my final thoughts and takeaway. The mashed potatoes were 10/10 amazing. So were the green bean casserole. And I especially liked the macaroni and cheese when it was mixed with the mashed potatoes.

“I used the cranberry sauce as a spread for the biscuits since we didn’t have any butter, and as far as the carrots go I still don’t really like them, but I also don’t really like carrots. And of course, as I mentioned, I didn’t like the honey-glazed spam at all. And the cookies were definitely the best part.”

Grateful for the thrifty woman’s helpful tips, some people left comments on the TikTok video.

One wrote: "This is awesome. You’re out here helping tons of low-income people prepare decent meals on a budget and I love you for that."

Another happy viewer wrote: "Thank you for making Thanksgiving dinner accessible! This is great."

A third said: "I’m so thankful that you do these videos. My church runs a huge food pantry, we serve over 400 families biweekly. I’m thinking of writing up meal ideas for what is in the bags each time. Thanks for this inspiration!!!"

An additional user said: "I love that you openly share the misses and not just the hits. It's realistic and still helpful!"

Feeling sentimental someone wrote: "Idk why but this made me cry. I grew up without much and remember my momma making it work. It’s nice to reconnect to that and be more appreciative."

And someone else with a spam recommendation said: "I could suggest the Walmart brand version of Spam, we actually think it tastes better than the name brand, but it’s still cheap(er)."