British families that go on these BBC save money shows can't be real

[Rufusgy]

Eat well for less.

A mum sends three children to school with shop bought microwaved pancakes laced with nuttela everyday

They spend 5 mins explaining how to use a bit of left over chicken in a stir fry, basically just chop up eveything and stir fry it. As if stir fry and woks are some newfangled invention

They can't afford a house deposit and have zero savings, but won't even consider not buying a brand

Slicing chease is 'too much work"

Seriously is any British family actually like this? Who the fuck is stupid enough that they need a prime time BBC show to tell them proccessed food is expensive and its cheaper to make it yourself.

How does 500g of mince do 4 people for 2 meals? A meat serving is 200g i think. So you'd need 1600g of mince for 4 people to have two meals.

I made meatballs the other day, I used the hairy dieters recipe, I had about 20 meatballs from 500g of mince, ate a portion and froze three portions with dried pasta.

They are frozen as a ready meal to take to work in a plastic container the same as you get from some takeaways.

OK not the 2 meals for 4 people but 4 decent servings, I could have added veg to fill it out and make it a more balanced meal.

Can someone explain the phrase "leftover chicken"? ??

The one they used in the stir fry had a whole breast and leg. The family they were working with had two adults and five children - was it a magic chicken to have fed them a meal from the rest?

In the long run, it IS cheaper to cook from scratch, because you can cook big batches of food and use it for leftovers or to add to meals the following day. Ready meals are one meal and you often end up hungry a couple hours after.

But if you only have £20/week to feed yourselves, you can't always afford to buy all the base ingredients you need to cook from scratch. Things like herbs etc. might last weeks once you have them, but buying them all in the first place is expensive and if you don't have the money, it doesn't matter whether cooking from scratch is cheaper overall. You can't afford to do it.

Thing that gets me is most supermarkets do a pack of value grated cheddar that is cheaper than any of the blocks. I'm with her that grating cheese is a right faff.

What is interesting about the show is the nutritionist woman. I could sit and listen to her all day.

But most of the savings are a bit false. It's all the basic switch down a brand don't eat anything you haven't prepared yourself . If you've already done all that they would save you a penny.

*I can get a family lasagne for between £2.69 that is fine.

To cook one from scratch I need (Aldi):

1 lb mince £2.69
Jar passata 99p
Some herbs from a jar that costs 99p
Onion 17p
Clove from garlic head that costs 17p
Packet of lasagne sheets 59p
Flour from a packet that costs 45p
1/2 pint milk 14p*

In an Asda Smartprice lasagne (1.5kg for £2.98), the meat represents 20% of the 53% of filling. That's 159g of meat in the whole dish. It does not use passata, but tomato concentrate (watered down a lot). The main ingredient in the b??chamel sauce is water too.

If you used the same ingredients as Asda, you would probably save money.

Bold fail, sorry!

I usually buy pre-sliced or grated cheese because it's often cheaper than block cheese, depending on where you shop

Can I ask the name of the show please so I can find it on demand?

Dirty I think it's Eat Well For Less.

Eat well for less on bbc iplayer. To be fair, this weeks wasnt much better - a vegetarian family - stop eating so many crisps and processed rubbish and actually cook some dinners seemed to be the message. It's almost insulting lol but then I guess there must be folk out there needing this sort of message or they wouldnt make the programme.

A good example of saving by cooking from scratch it good quality pizza. 3 large margarita pizzas for under £5. The equivalent shop bought pizza express is 4.50 a pizza, so £13.50 or even on discount £9. You also get to be in control of how much salt is added which is a major plus.

OMG at how much people pay for their food... and throw away. We've been watching this too. I made bolognese last week, with beef mince & vegetables from the farm shop (which is really cheap for fruit, veg & meat, but damned expensive for anything with "added value").

In a really big pan -

900g beef mince
2 large onions
4 small carrots, finely grated
3 small courgettes, coarsely grated
About 15 large mushrooms, some sliced & some finely diced
4 value tins of tomatoes in juice (Aldi)
4 cloves of garlic
About 3 tbsp mixed Italian herbs (Costco massive jar)
2 bayleaves (grown in a pot in my yard)
A big squeeze of tomato puree (supermarket)
Water to cover

It made enough for 4 big portions of bolognese (with spaghetti), I put some in lasagne & got about 9 generous portions of that (dried lasagne sheets from a cheap local market stall). We made pizza with the rest which probably made about 3 portions of pizza. Homemade base dough was mixed in the ancient bread machine.

And that was an expensive week for us, meals wise.

I usually don't use red meat, especially beef, partly as it's so pricey, but this was very cheap, 5 x 1lb freezable packages for £13.

Boffinmum, Aldi cartons of passatta are 35p not 99p.

I also did a chicken. Farm shop, half price as it was slightly short dated (2 days to go so that woman would have chucked it...)

Roast chicken, wedges & salad
Chicken sandwiches
Chicken with mushrooms & leeks in white sauce, rice
Carcass in slow cooker for a couple of days - amazing stock to make soup. Still lots of meat on too.

It was a 2kg chicken though.

Our whole week's fruit, veg & meat cost us 28 pounds. I wouldn't usually have bought 2 lots of meat though, and we've still got 3lb beef mince in the freezer. And the soup makings for next week. And leftover lasagne for tonight!

Personally I think some ready meals are cheaper but its a quality / salt issue. Eg that lasagne, and Im pretty sure you can get a box of cheap pizzas eg from the frozen section of lidl. Problem is would you want to feed that kind of thing to your family on anything more than an occassional basis? Making it yourself is only marginally more expensive and much better quality. Of course being able to cook is a good start and I think thats where a lot of people fall down as they were never taught.

Lovely thank you both!

Just switched on the slow cooker for a beef casserole
800g cubed stewing beef £7
600g pack of casserole veg £1
2 slow cooker recipe sachets £1

That should do 5 dinner tonight and 5 later in the week. Served with spuds or rice.

So about a £1 a portion, and absolutely no effort.

It all balances out though. If I'm running late I grab 3 ping meals from Sainsbury on the way home for the DC.

Some of you ae dead right about the meat portion. I always account for 200g if meat or fish but less if it's going in lasagne etc but we do eat huge portions. I always feel the portions at my mum and dads are tiny but they are very healthy! We can afford it financially and health wise (hubby dies a lot of sport and I have a serious metabolism as well as being pregnant or breastfeeding for the past 4yrs straight) but I had been thinking we need to manage portions better. Will try reducing meat portions to 150g and see how we go. I've been doing more vegan and vegetarian recently and we do eat a huge range if international food so I won't feel too bad about the 1kg of roast beef we are having between 4 for lunch (was hoping to have some left over for sandwiches).

Ohh that was hard for my brain converting the grams, pounds and ££ TIM but agree you can really meat stretch (in a good way) by adding lots of vegetables

If you have the money to buy in bulk and stock your cupboard, cooking from scratch is undoubtedly cheaper. The problem comes when your kitchen is empty and you only have £10 to feed yourself, at that point cheap ready meals are pretty much the only option.

You also have to factor in cooking time, especially if you only have so much money on the meter and can't afford to have the oven on for a few hours. Or if you are living in temporary accommodation and only have access to a kettle and microwave. This is compounded if you don't really know how to cook anyway.

I can cook, but I wouldn't try something new when I could barely afford the ingredients, what happens if I mess it up and it's inedible? The children would go hungry and that isn't an option. I really don't blame people for not taking the risk.

Although I don't think that relates to the family's on this programme as they tend to be quite well off in comparison.

You don't need a store cupboard for what they ate for dinner!

They just had chips, beans and pizza.

They were super proud of their pizzas, even though it was just opening up packets of stuff. Zero veg apart from the tomato sauce and loads of procced meat. Maybe they were eating a bit less shit. But it was still shit.

*n an Asda Smartprice lasagne (1.5kg for £2.98), the meat represents 20% of the 53% of filling. That's 159g of meat in the whole dish. It does not use passata, but tomato concentrate (watered down a lot). The main ingredient in the b??chamel sauce is water too.

If you used the same ingredients as Asda, you would probably save money.*

Exactly! You cook with analogue cheese and fake tomato stuff and it will be far far cheaper than processed stuff.

An example- pulled pork joint £5 which has done three means plus sandwiches. 500g mince to make 2 meals for 4 plus an adult portion left over.

This is a bit like the mumsnet Magic chicken. We would buy a pulled pork joint for the five of us and it would do one meal. Same with the mince.

The biggest saving we make as a family is to shop in Aldi/Lidl and not be fussy about the provenance of our food.

and yes those programmes are ridiculous.

I can get a family lasagne for between £2.69 that is fine.

To cook one from scratch I need (Aldi):
1 lb mince £2.69
Jar passata 99p
some herbs from a jar that costs 99p
Onion 17p
Clove from garlic head that costs 17p
Packet of lasagne sheets 59p
Flour from a packet that costs 45p
1/2 pint milk 14p

You can get a packet of herbs much cheaper than a jar and you will use it for more meals. I tend to buy one packet of something like dried herbs or a tin every other shop, I don't buy them for a specific meal.

The same with the garlic, it will last months in the fridge and do at least 5 other meals.

You have flour so you could make lasagna or you could get some cheaper dried pasta. Tesco sells basic lasagne sheets for 35p

Don't buy a jar of passatta buy a carton, they are 35p in Tesco, but the supermarkets do try to hide them away from the jars.

Now assuming you did buy all of that you presumably bought a whole pint of milk so for the cost of some sausages and one egg you can make a toad in the hole, a packet of not nice sausages can be had for 70p, but if you want to use better ones it might be £2-3.

So cumberland sausages and another 1/2 pint of milk would be (using tesco again) £1.50 + 14p + £1 (th cost for 6)so for under £3 you have a meal for 4 people.

Aunt Bessies would cost you £1 per person, so at least £1 more.

But you still have lots of flour and 5 eggs, garlic, herbs to make a meal from. How about garlic and herb flat bread with scrambled egg?

Or buy some veg and make a Spanish omelette (a packet of frozen mixed veg is about £1).

Ok using your prices the initial lasagna is £6.19, but lasagna + toad in the hole + Spanish omelette is £10.83, so £3.27 per meal, but you still have garlic, herbs and flour left over. You will probably have some lasagna sheets too and maybe some frozen veg. In fact add another pint of milk and a packet of passatta and you can make a vegi lasagna for £0.63.

If you had used Tesco for your passatta and lasgna sheets your initial outlay is £5.31 and £8.95 for three meals with left overs, less if you use cheaper sausages.

Bad processed food is cheaper than cooking from scratch.

If you are on a budget that is small but reasonable it makes sense to cook from scratch. If you have just switched to Universal Credit, or have no money to pay for a new washing machine, or are having to find school shoes then Farm Food is just about all you can afford.