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.

Analogue cheese...shudder

Also wonder about amount of sugar and salt in ready made lasagne

I totally agree on the pp it depends on your budget, if you have the initial budget of £40 a month you can cook and save by cooking in bulk. If you only have £10 per week you can't. It's the same amount but delivered differently as to how you can shop.

Bolognese police would hate me, I did 7 portions of it with 350g of mince. The rest was lentils, tiny chopped courgette, carrots, onions. My carnivore family don't notice as its cooked for 8 hours +. We do eat too much meat, they would have had meat for lunch. They certainly wouldn't need it again

I am asking that all sanctimoniously having eaten fish and chips yesterday

This is the weirdest thread, but if we are all boasting about cheap meals yesterday mine was free.
Home grown potatoes and salad with meat OH had hunted and butchered.

Bit that's prob a step 5 mile hike too far for the show

I use a 250g pack of mince to cook for 4 (2 adults, a 12 yo who eats adult quantity, and an 11 yo who eats around half an adult quantiy). I add vegetables to most meals, whether chilli, shepherds pie or spag bol. If I try using 500g I end up with loads left over.

Seeing as bolognaise is featuring so heavily on this thread I just thought I'd jump on and add that we have lentil bolognaise and it's super cheap and tasty.

Agree with pp that meat is a big cost. I'm pescetarian (eat fish, no meat) and if it weren't for my carnivore dh who likes meat a few times a week, our food bill would be significantly cheaper. If more people switched to a less meat heavy diet I think they'd save money and be healthier too. But I'll get off my soapbox now

Umm.
My bolognese is a shit ton of veg ( onions celery carrot corgette mushrooms, 4x tin toms, tomato pur??e, garlic ,herbs, stock cube)and 500g mince.

That makes a big le creuset 1/2 to 2/4 full. Yep the meat portion is small ( meat as a flavouring not the bulk) but we get at least 2 of our /day , it's cheap and it's at least 1 meal and a home made " ping" meal for later in the week.

Actually all my cook ahead stuff starts with a shit ton of veg lol. Thank you magi mix ! Yesterday I used 2 bags onions, a head of celery, bag of carrots, bag of value peppers , potatoes, frozen peas and spinach and made : potato pea and spinach curry, chorizo chilli (3 tins did different beans- chorizo make a better flavoured chilli than mince) and a veg soup. That'll do most of the meals this week. I sometimes feel I work in an industrial kitchen at the weekend, but to ping and eat home made is good in the week.

How do people get their 5/day ( or more as that's better) without having something in the evening often that's a one pot meal majoring on veg?

Expensive, good quality mince goes a lot further than cheap mince.

I've always been a bit disappointed in that show. I mean, if a family is pissing away £300 a week on food like most of the families seem to do, of course it's going to be easy to save them a shed load of money.

What I want to see is something like family of 4 that spends £60 a month on food, but still needs to cut back. Now that would be a genuine challenge and would actually be helpful to people watching!

"analogue cheese"

I don't know how people could eat it! I always use digital cheese!

Cooking from scratch is definitely cheaper. If you're careful.

Yes you need a few herbs and other store cupboard staples but you can build these gradually and 95% of them are available in supermarket "value" ranges.

Not to mention home cooked tastes SO much better and you can batch freeze.

Schools really need to introduce decent cookery lessons in school all the way through the years. It's a life skill many lack. My DSD went into home economics and got taught to split a bread roll, spread tomato pur??e on it, put on plastic cheese slices and toast it. She's 14!

Winchester, I would like to see Bear Ghrylls meet Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Mary Berry doing the ultimate food economy mashup for this. Roadkill pie would surely be the first dish, followed by hedgerow crumble (breast milk custard might be a step too far).

Boffin, I guarantee that your homemade version would taste better and be better nutritionally. Look at the ingredients on the packet and then choose which you would rather feed your kids (whilst imagining who prepared it, when and where). Occasionally, I buy kids Annabel Karmel ready meals, but feel bad about it. Even as a veggie, I would rather cook them meat from scratch.
I have yet to find a ping meal that I couldn't do better myself, and I ain't no chef!
Going back to the OP, yanbu!

Cooking from scratch is cheaper if you cook the right things!

I do plenty of vegetable soups/lentil stews. They cost under £1 in ingredients each, and last at least a couple of meals for the family.

I agree the families in the show are always spendthrifts. But as pointed out upthread it wouldnt have the entertainment value if it was real budget food, people wouldnt watch it, it woudl be a turn off for some as it would just make people feel guilty for buying Ping meal and ready grated cheese for a start.
I did watch half of this weeks's, and as a consequent made a form of falafel and also made burgers too.
so that's me picked up something useful, even if it is just a reminder that i can make stuff from scratch, but a variation on the usual spag bol

Ready grated cheese is usually cheaper than block cheese.

Tesco Mild White Cheese is £7.50 a kilo. Tesco Mild White Grated is £8.00 a kilo. Tesco Everyday Value Grated is £5 a kilo. If money is really tight you pay out for the Everyday Value and use that for the cooking.

Tesco Everyday Value Frozen Cheese and Tomato Pizza is 60p. If you use decent cheese, decent tomato paste and reasonable flour etc you will have trouble matching that.

2 meals plus 4 adult portions from 500g of mince is verging on homeopathy.

This just made me choke on tea and fart at the same time!

For me the crux is that these people do not a) know how to cook, b) think that they can't have something like a jacket spud, beans on toast or an omelette for dinner.

I save around £100 a month alone by making my own baby food. I tend to batch cook and freeze, also do individual portions of fruit and veg that can be defrosted then mixed with other things. DS does eat the same as me and DH at dinner time mostly so I just blend whatever we are eating.
I've always loved cooking so that helps.
The most expensive part of cooking from scratch is probably getting all of the herbs and spices etc to begin with.

Catsize, I think that's the key. If the list of ingredients reads well, sometimes it's clear the meals are fine. Personally I read labels a lot.

I remember staying with a friend who are like this. But she was so broke she never even used the oven as she couldn't afford the electricity. People forget how much cheaper a microwave is to use than an oven.

She also had a lack of kitchen equipment/utensils. Eg only one pan so you couldn't boil 2 types of veg or veg & potatoes.

Slow cookers/bread makers etc are all a big investment that she'd never have the spare cash for.

She didn't have any kind of whisk/blender/mixer. Her one 'sharp' knife wasn't very sharp. No sieve/colander. No scales.

It was like what you'd get in a holiday apartment in Spain.

She had no freezer either so no batch cooking.

Lots of people have no garden so no grow your own.

No car so only ever bought a few items at a time from the shop so no stocking up on multiple ingredients for recipes.

No cookbooks either and no landline/broadband to look up recipes online.

I don't think some people realise how many barriers there are for some people to things as basic as making food.

My eldest children are 7 and 8 and love to cook. They have made (on their own, I bought the I gradients from their list and hover around to help with any tricky chopping) cannelloni, fill chicken pie thing, fish fingers from scratch, coronation chicken thing, meatballs from scratch.
If they can do it by following a recipe then surely a grown woman can!

We cook from scratch pretty much all the time and yes it's probably more expensive than cooking nuggets and chips every day but it's cheaper than buying ready meals and takeaways all the time.

The trick is to be creative with leftovers so I can always make a risotto or pasta bake from leftover roast chicken, you also need to mix expensive meals (salmon fillets, roast, fajitas etc) with cheap meals (jackets suds and beans, sausage and mash, tuna pasta bake etc)

YANBU Yes cooking from scratch is cheaper.

For anyone reading this who is on a budget. Check out the world food aisles in supermarkets. Lentils and pulses are so much cheaper than on the whole food aisle.

We make vegan lasagne really cheap and tasty.

I was baffled by this weeks vegetarian family and to be honest Greg Wallace and co promoting meat alternatives. It's cheaper and healthier and doesn't take much extra prep to make those meals with pulses. I love lentils, so many types it makes really interesting dishes.

Also if you can't eat gluten linda mccartneys red onion and Rosemary sausages are really good and often on offer. They contain soya but are our junk food treat.

Also potatoes have taken a bashing in the press over the years but are really good. Potato stew and soups are gorgeous.

Must admit I do buy pre chopped winter and spring greens but I roast it or cook at at the end of cooking a dish.

I should try buying normal greens and chopping it shouldn't I, I think every one is guilty of a bit of time saving - even the odd bag of pre chopped frozen onions or ready made mash as a treat for the kids.

Loving sainsburys basic potatoes at the moment are £1.90 for 4kg.

BoSelecta I agree would love them doing a real challenge or offering better advice and being more radical. They really could teach people some amazing things to help them save money.

We use 500g mince for a shepherds pie for 2! Mind you we also eat a whole mn feed 20 1.2kg roast chicken between us

Light you are right - Also the cost of the bus to the supermarket means it is cheaper to buy from a poorly stocked minmart. Yes it is cheaper to cook from scratch when you have the things to do that, but if it involves buying the saucepan to cook it in, a ready meal becomes good value.

lightbulbon that must have been really tough for your friend. We don't always realise how lucky we are, your post really made me think. I hope your friend is in a better place in life now.