To think cooking from scratch is not always cheaper?

Of course it’s not true if you spend that much on spag bol.

Why are you putting a bolognese in the oven? I have only ever made it on the hob in a big pan.

I agree and it is just basic economics that the ingredients to make 6 portions of spag bol are more expensive than the ingredients to make 60,000 portions of spag bol, distributed as ready meal or jar.

Also - I have never considered ragu to be a cheap dish to make properly, because to do it properly, it should have beef and pork mince AND pancetta, and fresh and tinned tomatoes, and tonnes of good quality Italian hard cheese, and red wine, and and and... it DOES need to be slow cooked. So yes, corners can be cut, but I don't bother, and therefore a ragu is an indulgence. There's a reason why Italians eat lasagne on feast days - done properly, it's an expensive labour of love.

I bulk mine with mushrooms and lentils to make as many freezer portions as possible!

Are you one of those people who puts excess liquid in the slow cooker and expects it to reduce like on the stove?

I always bulk mine out with red lentils - nobody notices and wouldn’t care even if they did. I don’t use stock pots - cubes are a lot cheaper. And I don’t add pancetta - maybe nice but hardly necessary. A good squirt of tomato purée from a tube is good, too, and if we want cheese on top, I grate some mature cheddar.

You are somewhat comparing apples and pears

To make the equivalent of a £1 jar of sauce you'd need a bit of onion, garlic passata or chopped tomatoes and some herbs.

I could knock that out a jar sized portion for a quid, especially if making a bigger batch.

But you can't buy a jar for a pound with pancetta and red wine in it.

I don't understand what was in the oven for nearly 4 hours when you were cooking Bolognaise?

It’s all the nice to have bits that bulk out the cost. I spend £6 on the beef, tomatoes one tin plum one cherry about £1. Herbs come from the garden, olive oil, garlic another £1 I think a slow cook in the oven adds masses of flavour. I quite like to have bolognaise with tortellini so that’s £4.50 and mozzarella balls just tear it up. £2.50. Then some sugar snaps and tender stem broccoli. £4. It’s really nice food though. Flavoursome and filling. I could buy cheaper beef, spaghetti and knock out a meal for five for less than a tenner. It wouldn’t be nearly as nice though.

@FagsMagsandBags me and dd love anchovy pasta basically just like that. Fry up loads of garlic in oil, add some chilli flakes and the anchovies, loads of lemon etc then mix with linguine and top with some crispy breadcrumbs/thyme. Bloody delicious and done in about 15 minutes.

I should have added, after putting anchovies in my cupboard that a really cheap meal is some spaghetti/linguine/similar with anchovies which is full on umami. Add some garlic, black pepper and parmesan and you have a cheap and delicious meal that is SO much cheaper than a ready meal. I love anchovies but know that a lot of people don't and might be looking at this recipe in horror. I apologise! 😁

I’m amazed it costs that much. It costs me €9.60 (just calculated ingredients) to feed 6, and that’s with nice mince, fresh spaghetti and Mutti tomatoes. I add herbs, seasoning and tomato purée.

Cooking from scratch isn't always cheaper but if you're going for quality ingredients then you can't compare your cooking from scratch with a more basic ready meal. It's more of a higher end ready meal. I just looked up Charlie Bigham's spaghetti bolognese and it's £6 for a meal for one. If you bought those it would cost you £36, double your price and still not be as good as the meal you made from scratch.

The other thing to consider is the more that one does cook from scratch the more ingredients are already in your cupboard, dried herbs, spices, tomato puree, capers. anchovies for added flavour to some dishes, all manner of things. It's not cheap because nothing food related is particularly cheap any more but it's not necessarily more expensive and it's definitely healthier and generally tastier too. I've been reliant on ready meals for a while and am just getting to a place where I'm starting to cook from scratch again and it is saving me money in my weekly shop and I'm eating better. I accept that I'm lucky because I'm a decent cook and relatively good at budgeting but it can be done. I wouldn't suggest that the savings are enormous but any saving is worth it.

Highly recommend anyone who can, goes to a buy by weight / refill type shop if there is one. You can get spices and herbs in much smaller quantities than the expensive glass jars in shops, and for actual pennies.

I go occasionally with old empty jars and buy things I use in either tiny or massive quantities (fennel vs cumin for example). My last fullede jam jar of cumin cost me 67p vs £1+ for a third of the quantity in a supermarket. If I'd only wanted a couple of meals worth it would have been about 6p. Some skint people may be able to stretch a few of their pennies out for something like that and it can make a big difference.

Fat definitely improves the flavour. If calorie consumption is a concern, just eat less! A smaller amount of nicer tasting, richer (from longer cooking) sauce is way better than loads of speed-cooked sauce with no flavour.

What you made was pricier than a ready meal but I bet it was much tastier.
You could also remove or swap some of your ingredients to make it cheaper if you needed to.

I agree. Also people need herbs/spices, and they're not cheap.

There are numerous studies about food prices/food insecurity/food poverty and obesity. It's cheaper to eat rubbish a lot of the time

@Gwenhwyfar thank you, I've never heard of putting Bolognaise in the oven but I'm in no way what you would class as a good cook so something like this passing me bye is not surprising 😀

That's quite a luxury version of spaghetti bolognaise. I never use pancetta or sun dried tomatoes in spag bol, and would only add red wine and fresh herbs if I had some lying around that would otherwise go off. A spoonful of bouillon or a beef stock pot, and some dried herbs, are fine.
Glutein-free anything is expensive (unfairly!).

Definitely agree with a long cooking time and needing fat in the mince - the fat is the flavour! I remember my dad used to do a bolognese using a jar of domino and a low fat mince and letting it simmer for what felt like about 3 minutes (probably 20!), it was horrid and I thought for years that I hated bolognese 😂

I simmer mine on the hob for 3hrs+ (if I have the time) becuase the flavour develops more than it would 30mins on the hob. It really does! I've done it for varying amounts of time and the longer you cook it, the better the flavour. I never use 5% fat because it's too lean - you need more fat for it to render into the sauce for better flavour imo. Obviously, my version won't be a low calorie version. Add sugar for sweetness if required and maybe some chilli for a little kick. Occasionally, I've cooked it in the slowcooker during the week for more practicality but it's better simmered on the hob.You don't need to buy expensive ingredients, you just need to develop some cooking skills and your taste palate as you do so.

Did you sprinkle gold dust on it 😲?

I'm absolutely using that next time this kind of thing comes up irl!

A jar of bolognese sauce (the first one Google brought up, a well-known brand definitely not 70p) contains tomatoes, tomato puree, onion, sugar, starch, sunflower oil, a few herbs, citric acid and garlic.

So no meat yet, no pancetta, no carrots, no celery, no wine stock, nothing sundried, no bay leaf, herbs so few they're barely mentioned at the end, no cheese, no pasta, no garlic bread. You'd have to add all these.

Now let's go for a basic version:
Reconstituted Tomato Pureé (48%), Water, Tomatoes (5.7%), Modified Maize Starch, Salt, Vegetable Oil, Sugar, Citric Acid, Garlic Powder, Black Pepper, Dried Basil, Dried Oregano

Essentially, half tomato puree half water.

Do you think if you cooked like that you might end up spending a lot less money?

Will it last for two weeks, with a massive salad, and leftovers for sandwiches?

I get 8 portions from 1 pack of mince (400/450/500g depending on where it's from) and 1/2 a pack of streaky bacon. Plenty of veg (a large onion, maybe 3 carrots, a pack of mushrooms. There's easily enough for 4 meals for me and DH.

A ragu like that in Italy would be mixed through the pasta, rather than dolloped on top, so it goes further that way. I slacken mine off just before serving (with milk, as an Italian taught me to do), and mix it through the pasta.

And this is NOT competitive undereating, as these threads often suggest - it's using the sauce in a different way - I'm not doing it to make it go further, but it's really rich and packed full of flavour (it's cooked for a few hrs), so you don't need a mountain of mince piled on pasta.