To think cooking from scratch is not always cheaper?

This could also be because the shop bought version has a load of salt and sugar and all sorts of other stuff added to make it extra palatable

Come on OP you are being disingenuous. You are CHOOSING to buy expensive stock pots and expensive tinned tomatoes and pancetta. I don't put any pancetta in my bolognese and often you wouldn't get that in a shop bought one either.

You are not comparing like with like.

It's like saying that it is far cheaper to buy a ready meal paella from Waitrose for £6 than make my own, because by "making my own" I mean organic saffron, artisan paella rice, hand dived scallops and king prawns, free range corn fed chicken etc etc etc.

I love it when people say 'cooking from scratch is definitely nicer'. The amount of times I tasted people's endeavours 'from scratch' when it came nowhere near to a bog-standard microwavable meal. P.S. And it does not cat hairs or dog hairs, microwavable meals, I mean.

I cook my bolognaise in the oven for probably that long because in my opinion it isn't nearly as nice just cooking it on the hob quickly. But doing that is clearly a totally different thing to a ready made jar, it's a ridiculous comparison and I agree quite goady / boasty.

You are choosing to make it expensive by buying luxury end ingredients like sun dried tomatoes, olive oil (75p worth?) and ready grated parmesan and also adding garlic bread. You can't compare that with a cheap Aldi sauce and one onion!
We are a family of 6 and obviously eat much larger portions than nearly everyone else. I would use at least 1kg of mince and have extra veg+/-salad and pasta.

I don't think 18 quid is shocking at all for ragu.

By the time you've paid for a kilo of beef mince, a bottle of wine, some celery, garlic, passata or tomato puree and red onion it really adds up, and the cost of olive pil is eye watering. I get mince from the butcher and it is 13 quid a kilo. But it's made from braising steak and they mince it in front of you. I'd rather pay more for that than the shitty, gritty supermarket pumped through a tube crap.

But then another night would easily be pasta e ceci which is far cheaper per portion for homemade food.

Cooking from scratch can be cheap but not necessarily so. I recently made apple crumble and with the cost of the Bramleys butter, sugar and flour a ready made one was cheaper.

I do that sometimes and I always cook in my slow cooker on high for around 4 hours and it is very tasty, Sometimes I go full veggie with a lentil based sauce and add grated carrots and courgettes.

Yes, me too. We have spag bol as a week day meal (most of us moan about) but it ticks a box and is easy to make.

And we just use 500g mince for 4 adults.

Agreed.

3.5 hours in the oven is the crazy bit. I never pay full price for meat, it's always got a yellow sticker on it.

I do my bolognese sauce on the hob, would never buy wine specially just use a glug of whatever is in the house, mix of fresh tomatoes and tinned. Cook on low on hob for 90 minutes-ish.

Where on earth are you shopping for it to cost that much ? It can be made at a fraction of that price

I think you’ll find it’s the law to have garlic bread with pasta.

Sometimes depends on how many you are cooking for.

I'm having an M&S ready made Mousaka for tea tonight, £6 which for a single portion is so much cheaper than making it from scratch. But, if I was feeding 6 folk, making it from scratch would work out better.

(No interest in batch cooking before anyone suggests it!).

You’re comparing apples and oranges. A jar of Aldi sauce is going to be made with the cheapest possible ingredients. Which is absolutely fine if you need to deliver a meal on a budget or a tight schedule. but if you want it to taste like you’ve put a bit of effort in, you’d expect to spend more.

The trick is to buy only what you need from independent suppliers, rather than multipacks from supermarkets. You’ll get smaller quantities of better quality that way.

Lloyd Grossman jar of bolognese sauce for 2 is £3 in Tesco and contains no meat. So £9 for 6 just for a sauce that based on your listed prices would cost you about £6 to make. If you wanted a good quality ready meal, Charlie Bighams spag bol is about £6 for 1.

I have no idea why everyone is having garlic bread AND pasta. That's £2 you don't need to spend right there.

If you are going to be chucking sundried tomato paste and wine in then at least get to a good butchers and buy proper mince and some good quality smoked bacon bits. It will probably cost less than your 3%fat stuff and expensive tiny portions of bacon scrapings passing for pancetta in most supermarkets and taste much better.

I've just costed up our bolognese (this includes things we buy specifically for this meal and not the store cupboard stuff like stock, oregano, bay leaves, tomato puree)

750g mince - £6.75
Large passata - £2.20
Small bottle of red wine - £2.20
Garlic - 24p
Carrots - 20p
Celery - 50p
Onion - 50p
Fresh basil - 52p
Garlic baguette - £1
Linguine - £1

That's £15.11 without the store cupboard stuff or a side salad (but would cover 10 portions) Although I'd add in another £2 as I'd need another baguette and some extra pasta for 10 portions.

So not cheap at all. 2 meals for our family of 5.

Agree OP - it adds up!

I bought 1kg of mince today and it was £13 (!)

I remember being really hard up when my eldest 3 were little and Jamie Oliver talking about roasting cheap cuts of meat slowly in the oven, I couldn’t afford the electric to have the oven on that long let alone the cost of the the ‘cheap cut’!

Dinner for two adults: spag bol with garlic bread and a tomato & onion side salad.

Lamb mince £7
Two tins of tomatoes £2.50
Onion, garlic, carrot, mushrooms, tomato puree, fresh chilli and dried herbs £3(ish)

Pasta £2
Stock pot for pasta water £0.50

Garlic bread £3.50

Fancy tomatoes £3
Onion, EV olive oil, one lemon for juice £1(ish)

Parmesan £2.50
We usually get through more or less half a block as DH will cut off chunks to snack on while I finish up the cooking.

£25. My saving grace is that I make enough sauce and salad to last us for a couple of dinners.

I think cooking from scratch is cheaper than a ready meal of equivilent quality. I can't make a £1 lasagne and there is a reason for that.

👏🤣😆🤣

100% agree. Soooo much more expensive much of the time, and soooo much wasted time!!! I CBA to cook from scratch 85% of the time. Life's too short to spend it peeling, chopping, baking, and stirring; and cleaning loads of utensils and pots and pans, that results from cooking from scratch.

If people enjoy it, then good for them, crack on, you do you etc etc etc...

I would rather be spending time in the garden, or going for walks in the sun - in the countryside/by the canal/by the river. Or meeting one of my DC, or friends for lunch. Or going out with/spending quality time with my DH. CBA to spend loads of time in the kitchen.

This is the reason why DH and I go for a carvery, or book an actual Christmas dinner at a pub 3-4 days before Christmas, and just have savoury nibbles, snacks, mince pies, trifle, and Christmas cake on Christmas day. I am not spending 4 hours of the day in the kitchen on Christmas day, peeling, chopping, stirring, and baking, and then clearing up afterwards! Even if DH does the clearing up/washing up, it's still 4 hours of the day in the kitchen (wasted!)

Done this for the first quarter of a century I was with DH (before our DC left home.) Stopped it about 5-6 years ago. DH doesn't mind. Well, if he did, he is quite welcome to spend a good chunk of Christmas day in the kitchen!

He doesn't want to do this any more than I do though! So he is happy with the situation.

Re gluten free... presuming its a necessity rather than choice, it does drive up costs (stock, pasta, garlic bread for example, even some cheese isn't suitable).
But I know coeliac who replace the pasta with rice or potatoes since gluten free pasta is too expensive