Is “home cooking” becoming a luxury these days?

I’ve definitely noticed prices increasing for everything and there’s not many ‘cheap’ home cooked meals now.

But eating out has increased way more and we’re eating out and getting takeaways a lot less.

That’s simply not true. Unless maybe you’re shopping in booths or Waitrose for your basics

Ready meals are never cheaper and seldom taste as good.

We cook at home every day, taking it in turns, and no, I don't find it expensive. I don't understand how ready meals can be cheaper, unless they are really low quality. I can't eat pasta ready meals - the pasta is always overcooked. The portion sizes are small too. Tiny amounts of veg. Also, most of them serve 2, so to cater for a family, you'd have to buy a couple or more, racking the price up.

Ready meals are not nutritionally equivalent to made from scratch, and there are meals which are still relatively cheap to make. Veg stew made with a tin of butter beans is cheap and easy.

A lot of cities with more ethnically diverse populations still have food markets and dedicated shops. Turkish shops are great places to get cheaper herbs and spices and fresh veg.

Good Lord, I don't know what you're coocking at home but my grocery budget as a 30 something single is £20 a week - tops - and i eat healthy home cooked meals. opposite to that is ordering something which is usually £20 minimum, or the equivalent of 4 ready meals.... i think maybe you are shopping in the wrong places!

@PaddlingSwan you are correct - just been to the Netherlands for a few days - fabulous Saturday food market on square in Haarlem- great meat, 3 or 4 superb fresh fish stalls, excellent bread/baked goods - marvellous salad and veg stalls, herbs, deli, cheese etc - and yes their. Supermarkets were pretty good too ( didn’t see a single Aldi or Lidl either, are they not a thing there? )

I think the main issue is the predominance of supermarkets these days.
I remember, back in the mists of time, when the local green grocer delivered a box of fruit and vegetables every week, meat and fish came from the local butcher and fishmonger, bread from the bakery, milk was delivered several times a week etc. etc.
Not entirely sure where cleaning products or loo rolls were bought, because when you are 3 or so, you really do not have any of these things on your radar, but I do remember (around age 8 or 9) having trips to the cash and carry.
Chocolate, sweets, crisps etc. were treats, once a week at the most. There was no "snacking" in today's sense of the word, if you were hungry between meals an apple or banana were the only options.
We ate well, very healthily and all learned to cook and bake.
Yes, cooking from scratch does require thought, care and planning, but it is also a sign that you value and respect your family as well as wanting the best for them - remember that food and nutrition are vital to good development and good health.
I left the UK several decades ago and still relish the fact that I can do my food shopping in dedicated specialist shops as well as visit the local weekly markets for local vegetables, fruit and other "treats". If I added the equivalent of my hourly rate to the cost of buying, preparing and cooking food, we could probably dine at Michelin * restaurants every week, but that is not the point, is it?

I get that but used ingredients wise that lasagna could be pretty much same price or cheaper considering it's only like 14% meat and lots of cheap fillers.

I miss counter butchers and fishmongers in supermarkets in UK. You buy only what you need.

@TheGoodEnoughWife

These same people then describe meals that always cost ‘pennies’ however by the time you are buying the cheapest ingredients the result is no better nutritionally then the ready meals or the ingredients are so stretched (500g mince does us a meal for six with leftovers for the next day - yeah right!) the calories per person are so low as to not be enough food anyway - therefore needing bulking out with snacks or bread or whatnot.

Sorry but no way is a ready meal nutritionally equivalent to home-cooked food. Even a high quality ready meal is packed full of preservatives and e-numbers. A basic pasta with tomato sauce and grated cheese with a side salad or even just frozen peas is cheaper than a ready meal and far better for you. Protein does push the cost up but its not obligatory to have meat in every meal. I'm not averse to the odd ready meal but it's daft to pretend that doing this every day is cheaper than cooking from scratch.

If you buy a pack of 500g mince you can make a bolognese sauce which will do 3 portions of bolognese pasta and then two to three servings of chilli con carne (with the addition of some kidney beans) two days later. I frequently do this on a Tuesday night and it provides a meal for three on the evening and then two sets of leftover lunches during the week with pasta and rice.

Well that is the thing - a lot of this is not comparing like with like. I am sure I can eat cheaper by having a special from the local dirty fried chicken place or a pot noodle every night - but that isn't going to do me much good in the long term.

What people are generally saying is it is possible to cook healthy meals at a reasonable price from scratch.

I think we all need to approach this differently as a culture. Cancer rates are rising, obesity is a major problem and while we all live longer, we have a lot of health problems as a nation. We can’t afford our NHS. Our poor health is also making the country poor. There should be more of a focus on individual responsibility for health and cooking fresh meals is a huge part of this. We really are what we eat. Feeding our bodies with ready meals is making the nation sick, poor and unhappy, that should be enough of a reason to prioritise freshly cooked meals.

The smallest pack of mince has got much bigger is over £5 in my local Tesco ...so even if I only used half of it, id still have spend more than £5 to make it, even if I had ingredients left over

A fully stocked spice cupboard is key.

Cooking from scratch is cheaper in the long run . Once you have all the cupboard staples.

I think it can be cheaper to buy ready meals.
Last night we had Thai curry

Rice - 30p
Coconut milk - £1
Thai curry paste - £1.15 (1/2 jar)
Pepper - 65p
2 onions - 20p
Green beans - 65p (1/2 pack)
Broccoli - 80p (1/2 pack)
Cauliflower - £1.20
pak Choi - £1.50
baby corn - £1
Frozen ginger & garlic block - 10p
Seasme oil - 20p max
50g cashew nuts - 85p

Overall under £10 in ingredients and that’s made enough for 4 of us and my husband also took a portion of leftover curry for lunch today. I don’t know what it cost to cook but certainly less than £2.

Alternatively we could have got 4 Indian ready meals for under £10 on an offer from Sainsbury’s (& I’m sure cheaper options are also available) and the cost to cook would be a bit less. On the whole though it likely works out cheaper overall to cook from scratch for us as if we got the ready meals OH would have needed something else for lunch and we would have got smaller portions with same or higher calories so likely would have ended up snacking too.

Home cooking doesn’t need to be expensive and it is so much better for you. I find a lot of recipes are really unhelpful as they require expensive and overly complicated ingredients. If you are an experienced cook then you will be better at using what you have to create a meal, rather than buying expensive ingredients that will only be used a couple of times. I’m getting better at this. I also really like Mary Berry because her recipes tend to require every day ingredients rather than a whole lot of expensive ones. There is also a lot of research now about how much better a home cooked meal without additives and artificial ingredients is for your body. That is well worth it in my view- you’ll save on fad diets and health problems later in your life!

Oh yes i buy 20% fat mince as it is cheaper. It means I don't need to use any additional cooking oil. I skim the fat off once it is cooked.

I think home cooking can be as cheap or expensive as you like really.I mean Spag Bol as an example, can be £5,00 plus a pound 5% fat. Sainsbury s have 25% fat £3.33 a pound .Nan used to cook in a pan and let the fat rise.Cool it and break it off when solid .I have used oats to pad out a dear batch of mince, (.Can use a lot less and make it up with oats and a small amount of water) . I doubt many people would find either eating out or ready meals cheaper!

Re olive oil etc - this is an example of not comparing like with like. You can bet your bottom dollar that ready meals aren’t using much ‘decent olive oil’. An expensive meal out might, but one priced even vaguely equivalent to homemade won’t.

I grow a lot of vegetables and then preserve them to eat in different ways throughout winter. I make a lot of use of the apples in my garden and village - usually I cook them into a purée and freeze it for later. Or I make apple frangipane tart which doesn’t use that much ingredient-wise. Bread-making is important, too, there’s so much you can make with one bag of bread flour.

Except for salads, I only use British rapeseed oil that comes (since I try to avoid plastic as far as possible) in a glass bottle.

Don’t know where you got this idea from. When prices rise everything rises, so takeaways/convenience food rises too. It costs me £4.20 to make a good-quality spaghetti Bol for 4 people. I use a good pan that I’ve had for about 10 years. How can that be more expensive than getting, say, 4 individual ready-made spaghettis for about £5 a pop?

I found home cooking from scratch a LOT cheaper, but we don't eat meat and we don't eat a traditional British diet.

I wish it wasn't cheaper as I hate cooking