....

At least 10 to 15-ish years ago, I would actually be closer to agreeing;

You could get Cube or Chuck steak for 3-5$ a pound and potatoes were cheap as hell too. Toss some diced onion in and You'll have a good dinner.

How do I know? Well I grew up in a family where for... reasons[0] we were not that well off for quite a while.

Cube Steak was one of the big things we did for a family meal that Dad cooked. (Chili was his other favorite to make, which was also cheap to do for how much food came out of it...)

However the current prices of beef, I feel like you'd need to have a long standing personal relationship with a local butcher or rancher to make this true.

[0] - My mother's over-propensity for being truly Christ-like in her charity to family and others, also sending myself and my three siblings to Catholic school to avoid the then-absolutely-failed Detroit Public school system were major factors.

I'm québécois, my grandma came from a big family (12 siblings IIRC). She used to cook with ground beef all the time cause that's what her mother cooked with too - it was THE cheap source of protein. Meat loaf, shepherds pie, meat pie, beef and cheese macaroni, the whole shebang. Nowadays, when I cook any of those meals, it's cause I feel like eating that specific thing, but it often turns out to be the most expensive meal of the week.