To think cooking from scratch is not always cheaper?

[IonaNE]

A few posts on another thread (not primarily about this) have got me thinking.

In my local ASDA Weight Watchers ready meals are £2 each. If I buy one for each night of the week (to make life easier for when I get home from work), that's £10 for a hot meal on every evening of the week. For this I get a balanced meal that, over the whole week, contains chicken, beef, prawns, pasta, rice and potatoes, vegetables and a variety of sauces. On top of that it's exactly as much as I need to eat, there are no leftovers, I am not using energy by cooling unnecessary stuff in the fridge. I don't need to keep a host of jars of sauces, oils and spices which would otherwise be needed to cook all this from scratch either. And finally, I am not using energy to cook all that from scratch, and then to wash up all that was used in the process. (I do use energy to microwave the meals, 5 mins each; and the microwave is very cheap to run.)

I can cook from scratch all that is in those meals. I don't enjoy cooking but I can do it if necessary. But I don't think that I would get that variety of hot food for just £10 a week. Furthermore, if I bought all the ingredients, they would be in portions much bigger than what I need for one supper. Then I would either need to freeze them; but also: does everyone who cooks from scratch only eat a WW meal-portion of everything before they freeze the rest? I find I eat larger portions if I cook. And while I'm not overweight, I really don't need to put on weight.

So I think eating ready meals is actually cheaper than cooking from scratch. It is also less time consuming (=more time for other things) and provided you choose the right ones and read the labels, not necessarily less healthy either.

Yes, but £6.65 is a lot of money when you're broke. I would rather feed my family for a couple of days.

And yeah, I've been there. Not with children, but living with no oven or microwave and having to eat meals that require water boiled from a kettle, or just eat cold. I had a fridge. No freezer, no oven, no microwave, and no means of buying one. Thankfully things are better now.

People DO live like that and it's really naive to say people don't live like that. Life throws unfortunate shit at you and you can't always control it. When you're broke, you focus on the immediate - feeding yourself/your family.

Yes, in the long run it's cheaper to buy pots/pans and cook properly, but when you don't have any money left over to save towards those things, the argument is pointless.

I recon you could get everything you needed to cook proper food, and eat it too, for less than a fiver in most charity shops.

Totally agree ElderlyKoreanLady If you look at families in the developing world, most will have access to cooking utensils. That's because coking is a priority and they don't have the culture we have in the UK of eating processed food.

Yes what if you don't have an oven? What if you don't have a house? What if there there's a nuclear apocalypse and all that remains is the ready meals and a single spoon...?

I think we're really talking about the tiniest minority of ready meal eaters who do so through lack of oven or utensils. I'm sure it's down to convenience 90% of the time.

Sure, I'm not saying it's the majority of people. Just that you can't generalise and say everyone does it out of laziness.

But Bunny nobody is disputing that people find themselves in those situations but I think that most people on this thread are speaking generally. Most people have access to pans, ovens etc. However, a lot don't or won't cook. it's their choice but don't put that down to not being able to afford pans and the like.

before DCs, DH and I moved into a house where we had no cooker for a good while. To keep down the expense of eating lots of take aways, we lived off microwave meals with either salad or frozen veg, for several weeks.

I hope never to have to do that again. Even the finest ranges taste really fake compared to home made. The lower fat versions are even worse as they make up for the lack of flavour from fat by adding even more salt and sugar, not to mention all the preservatives etc. The lasagnes we were eating were a few tablesppons of meat sauce, a very thin (not even covering the pasta) layer of white sauce and about 3 shreds of grated cheese.

13% meat in a lasagne can't be that great quality can it?

my homemade one has low fat mince, tinned tomatoes, tomato puree, mushrooms, onions, peppers,carrots and courgettes (all veg very finely chopped to disappear in the sauce), a couple of veg stock cubes, milk and cheese.

I like the idea of astronaut style meals when my life is very busy. All the faff of decision making, shopping, cooking serving and washing up takes a lot of time and energy when I am rushing through the day. Popping a pink pill and a blue pill and mixing a nutrient shake drink would suit me fine as I dash in and out and all about. We were convinced this was the future when we were kids watching the NASA moon landings.

But when I have the time and the enthusiasm I like the slow food approach baking bread and making jam and leaving big casseroles to stew for hours.

There is room for both.

from your post Iona it makes sense for you really in every way to eat like that.

personally, whether or not I was on a diet I simply couldn't eat a microwave meal every evening. the thought of it makes me feel nauseous. i very very very rarely eat them as it is. I saw ready meals on offer recently, which included chicken in them. I thought about buying some for the freezer, for handiness sake, picked it up, read the back of it, and it said the chicken came from A PROCESSING PLANT IN THAILAND !!! ughh.......... I've never bought a ready meal since.

I generally cook from scratch using all fresh ingredients. it is more expensive, time consuming, laborious and you have to be very organised going shopping and doing most of it the night before. but for me its worth it as I feel better knowing its all fresh and not processed in any way. however what ever is left over I freeze for work lunches or another night's dinner so there is never any waste.

Bunny sorry that really Doesn't wash as a valid reason. But if you want to find any excuse not to do something you will.

I cook from scratch and the average cost of a meal per person is less than £1.50 so cheaper.

I also do believe they are more nutritious. No Enumbers, full of fats (and not the good ones) etc etc.
I'm also finding that variety is much better when I cook than if I was relying on ready meals.

As for the 'it's cheaper if you are living alone'. Well I cook batch for a family of four. You can also cook batch as a single person. Cook 4 meals instead of 1, freeze it. And here we go, a lot of 3 ready meals in your freezer just waiting for you in the evening. That also means you are only actually cooking maybe twice in the week, which could be in an evening where you have more time.

There are obviously 2 different issues here those who don't want to/can't cook proper meals and often use the cost as an excuse and those who genuinely can't afford the equipment/power to cook.

bunny the other way to look at it is that you are making an investment.
Buying a pan will allow you to cook cheaper meals in the long run for years. Worth doing imo.

Perhaps it is something food banks and similar could look at. I would happily donate some old pans to a food bank if they were going to help a family get the basics they need to set them up.

True, but sometimes you just don't have the money to save. A few quid might as well be a hundred quid to someone who literally has nothing to spare.

I remember living on value bread and instant noodles when I left my abusive ex. Thankfully there were no DC because it was miserable. All my money went on the deposit and rent and I really struggled until I managed to get myself some cheap appliances.

I think a probably 95% of people do use ready meals for convenience and they're not always a bad thing, but saying people who have literally no money to cook from scratch are making excuses makes me angry.

Cooking from scratch is a good thing and great to do, but it's made a lot easier when you have equipment and a cupboard of herbs/spices and staples to fall back on.

I think a lot of people cant see what bunny is saying.

Some people would genuinely have to choose whether to buy a pan, or buy food to eat that day. What good is kitting your kitchen out if there is then no money left to buy ingredients, or to power the oven? If you have spare money over every week, then you are lucky and can buy unnecessary gadgets for the kitchen - some people have no leftover money at all, so would never be able to buy that extra pot/utensil to make their lives easier as regards cooking.

This is one of the reasons our foodbank asks for supplies of instant food that require no more than hot water from a kettle, or food that can be eaten without reheating at all. Not to mention that the initial outlay for a good store cupboard of ingredients is beyond you if you have a very rigid weekly budget.

X-post.

Thank you Phantom. That's exactly what I'm saying. You can't save for things if there's nothing there to save!

xposts

I was thinking exactly the same as the OP. These past few weeks I've hardly cooked at all and have basically eaten out pretty much every day. This is due to a combination of school holidays, work, small children and a child with SN.

The 2 things that prevent me from cooking more often are lack of time and lack of ingredients. So last week I went and stocked up. I bought meat from my local butcher (halal - supermarket not an option). As I portioned it out for the freezer I worked out it had cost me £35 and I'd bought 2kg of chicken breast, 2kg lamb mince and 500g lamb. I put away 9 x 500g of meat, which worked out at just under £4 per portion.

That's £4 without adding anything else. Say I want to cook fajitas, I'll need to buy flour wraps £1, peppers £1.50, salsa £1.60. That's £8. I have the herbs, seasonings, onions etc as well as frozen chips already.

But there's places locally where I can get a decent grilled chicken wrap, with chips and a drink for £5pp. So for the two of us that's £10, no cooking, no shopping to buy the additional ingredients and no tidying. The cost is pretty much the same.

Is it just me? I know we eat big portions of meat, (H is not a fan of bulking out with veg or lentils) but neither of us are overweight.

I agree with TopoftheCliff; there is room for both depending on your time, interest and money.

I think I would be surprised if I went and looked at all the open jars of herbs, seasonings etc in the cupboard, oils, salt & pepper, stock cubes, vinegar, ginger etc - add it all up and if I had to buy it all in one go to start off it would probably easily be £30 if not more. Now, if £30 is your budget to feed a family of 4 for a whole week, what are you to do?

I don't spend anywhere near £4 per portion of meat and normally buy from a butchers.

"How many people who are on a tight budget shop at Waitrose CrochetQuaverMinim?"

well, me for one. On a budget at least, though not really tight. But no, I'm not saying that most people on a tight budget do - I was refuting the points that ready meals all have to contain crap, that jarred sauces have to have loads of sugar, that they're all made from battery meat and chemicals, etc. They don't all, but you do have to look at labels and choose wisely and know what brands/supermarkets/ranges to look for. And sometimes they are more expensive than the cheapest ones, but can still in some cases prove cheaper overall.

For me, well that happens to be the nearest supermarket by far, and can be walked to more regularly and readily than others. And if you stick to the essentials range, or price-matched brand names, I don't find it much more expensive. They do an awful lot of deals at mine, mark downs are quite decent, and you can get a lot of offers if you choose wisely and use loyalty cards. And when buying for one, it's reasonable. You certainly have the opportunity to spend a fortune there if you want, but if you know your stuff, you don't have to. Their ready-meals or ready-to-cook meals sound similar price to those quoted in the first post, particularly when you get deals and markdowns, which I often do.

My points were not related to all the recent stuff about people who can't afford a single pan or whatever; that's not an argument I want to get into the details of as I don't know enough about the facts and figures. But I was answering the original, which is that for certain situations, buying ready-meals can be cheaper than cooking from scratch - it isn't always a black and white situation.

Phantom I think your reckoning of £30 for cupboard basics is way off the mark. You get get a staple a of basics for a lot less than that. Anyway, very few people would shop that way. Most would build up their cupboard staples over a period of time. i know that's what I've done in the past.

Crochet I shop at Waitress occasionally and I think that whilst I too am a relative frugal shopper, it is very expensive. I bought two bags of shopping including meat today from Aldi and it came to just over twenty quid. I don't believe I could do the same in Waitress, even if I was careful. Waitress stuff is very good though

Waitrose not Waitress!