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.

500g fro TWO people?

that's over 1/2b of meat as ONE portion.

gosh, do you remember when 1/4lb burgers came out and everyone was like "wow these are f'ing HUGE"

I cook from scratch, I can be super smug because we rear our own livestock and grow some of our fruit and veg. However I can drive to buy food and not worry about petrol, I have a huge kitchen packed with gadgets and we have no money worries. I am also a SAHP and therefore have all the time in the world to cook from scratch. Growing up we lived miles away from a supermarket and never had money to get there, dinner was often a pack of super noodles or beans on toast which was pence each and could be cooked without equipment and bought at the corner shop.

Smartprice

calm down.

Janet you are right but I think that many people think that cooking " from scratch" is harder than it is. I give cookery lessons for a living to both ends of the economic spectrum and people are often surprised by how quick it can be to cook home cooked food.

My spag bol makes meals for 6 meals for about a fiver. Tesco Mince at 750g for £3(I know). 2 large onions bulk bought for pennies, garlic clove, half a dozen basil leaves grown in the garden, two tins of chopped tomatoes for about 80p and a big squirt of concentrated tomato puree, stick of celery and a large carrot. Grate my own parmesan and i have an evening meal for three, (Myself DD and DS) and the remainder divided into tupperware cartons with pasta and taken to work for lunch. If I do a spag bol, a chile and a chicken and mustard casserole when the kids are with me, I don??t have to worry about feeding myself for the rest of the week. If I cook when they??re not here, I do it for pleasure.

500g for two! Bloody hell

Live with DH and 2 teens

About a pound of mince is enough for bolognaise for the 4 of us, plus an extra lunch for DH

How much do people eat?! We are quite big eaters!

Jeeeez. DH and I are big eaters and we always freeze half of 500g cartons of mince and eat 250g of mince between us for a big meal.

If we have lots of veg/pulses to bulk it out, it would be more like 175g - 200g between us.

Some people eat huge portions. In fact if we could make sure everyone in the UK just ate lunch and dinner and no snacks ever and only drank water (and that change would be very very cheap indeed) and that people ate less we would do a lot to help the health of the nation.

I do some cooking from scratch up add in convenience foods to make it quicker. I have a quick veggie lasagne recipe which takes less than 5 mins to prepare and then it goes in the oven for 35 mins. I've just checked on ocado and the ingredient come to around £12 total, it serves 8 if you then put garlic bread with it or 6 on its own.

That's cheaper than buying 6 x shop bought ready made veggie lasanges and much better for you.

Ingredients
Quorn Mince Frozen 500g £2.45
Frozen Garlic Waitrose 150g £1.65 ( 1 tablespoon but I've counted the whole bag)
Frozen Diced Onions Waitrose 500g £1.00 (1/4 of the bag max but whole thing counted)
Frozen Chopped Basil Waitrose 75g £1.65 ( 1 tablespoon but I've counted the whole bag)
Napolina Chopped Tomatoes 4 x 400g £2.00 (2 tiis used but all counted) Pilgrims Choice Medium Grated Cheddar 150g £1.00
Essential fresh Lasagne Sheets Waitrose 300g £1.85
Half Fat French Creme Fraiche Waitrose 200ml 75p
Total £12.35 but that includes onion garlic and basil and 2 tins of tomatoes you can use again

You bing the mince, onions garlic basil and tinned toms (plus each tin third filled with water to get the last of the juice out) into a bowl and mix. Layer that between the pasta and then thrown the tub of Creme Fraiche on the top and sprinkle with cheese.

I sub the veggie mince for a bag of frozen roasted mixed veg for a change which is the same price as the Quorn.

So that's using convenience to cook from scratch.

I was a bit at the families in this show, particularly as both families featured so far have the most lovely, lovely children who are willing to try just about any food offered to them and are really sunny natured and upbeat about it all. If they had been fed total processed rubbish their entire lives I find it difficult to swallow they would start loving home cooked food right away.

De-lurking to say thanks for the veggie lasagne recipe Katz - sounds good, have saved it for later!

My dh is the cook here, but he would usually get 4 portions of chilli or 5-6 portions of spag bol out of a 450g packet of mince. He puts lots of veg in the spag bol.

I think cooking from scratch is cheaper once you've got all the stock cupboard basics, oil, herbs, stock cubes, etc. Also the pots and pans and equipment you need. You really need a decent knife and chopping board to prep stuff. And you need an oven or hob, and to factor in the cost of that. Microwaving a ready meal may end up cheaper depending on your circumstances.

You're not big eaters if you consider 125g a generous portion. You're just not. Unless all 3 of your meals are equally as big.

katz- your recipe sounds expensive.
Ingredients
Quorn Mince Frozen 500g £2.45
Frozen Garlic Waitrose 150g £1.65 ( 1 tablespoon but I've counted the whole bag) I use fresh garlic- so 25p
Frozen Diced Onions Waitrose 500g £1.00 (1/4 of the bag max but whole thing counted) Again fresh is cheaper- 50p
Frozen Chopped Basil Waitrose 75g £1.65 ( 1 tablespoon but I've counted the whole bag)
Napolina Chopped Tomatoes 4 x 400g £2.00 (2 tiis used but all counted) value tomatoes 31p a tinPilgrims Choice Medium Grated Cheddar 150g £1.00
Essential fresh Lasagne Sheets Waitrose 300g £1.85 ASDA smartprice lasagne 25p
Half Fat French Creme Fraiche Waitrose 200ml 75p
Total £12.35 but that includes onion garlic and basil and 2 tins of tomatoes you can use again
*

if you did a meat lasagne you could still have it for less than £12

500g of mince beef £2 Tesco
Fresh Garlic 25p
two onions - 50p
basil - use dried - so what 20p max
own brand toms - £1.20
150g Cheese £1.50 for 200g of Tesco own
Value lasagne sheets 25p
creme freche 300ml is 90p

so that is less than £8 and that's without me even trying to be savey.

just shop at cheaper shops than Wairtrose!

people seem to make meat the main ingredient of their meals in the UK a lot.

So it could be easy to eat 250g of mince beef in bolognaise, if essentailly you're eating mine, tomato sauce and onions on top of pasta.

but if you're tight like me 250g would feed four people because meat isnt the main ingredient of my bolognaise (pasta is) we do they type wear the meat sauce sticks to the pasta.

Same for our beef stews etc, the meat isn;t the main component, just one part of the meal, so you'd have equal parts (say) meat, carrots and parsnips, along with onions etc and dumplings/mash.

it's meat that makes meals expensive!

But is the money the problem or the cooking from scratch? Because we're not talking about hard up families, so if they want to have a delicious meaty slag bol then what's the problem? I thought the problem here was they weren't cooking from scratch?

Janetblyton, if I ate like that I would go from underweight to skeletal.

500g of mince should be enough for at least 4 adult portions.

Vegetables should be the main bulk of the meal, not meat nor carbs.

lush in the show, i;s the money that's the problem.

They want to...eat well...for less... there's a clue in the title

But they don't need to be scraping the barrel as they clearly have the money- the money they were spending before the trashy informative and groundbreaking show

500g mince cooked with tomatoes, onions, carrot, stock cube, 1tbsp of olive oil and some tomato pur??e is about 1800kcals.
Or about 450kcals per person if you serve 4 with it.
Add in about 325kcals for 125 g pasta and another 125kcals for some cheese on top or a garlic bread slice. That's 900kcals. I'd say anyone eating 900kcals in a sitting is quite a big eater.
Surely 900 kcals just in meat sauce is excessive?

true lush true

I was wearing my judgey pants during the "I can't be bothered to grate cheese" episode because because her kids were playing x-box whilst eating a shit breakfast!!