To ask the most useless "convenience" food you've ever purchased

[EveryDayIsADuvetDay]

I recently added oven chips to an online shop, not realising they weren't pre-coated with oil.
Given that I prefer skin-on fries why do they always cost more? I'd effectively bought a bag of expensive sliced up potato.
On the plus side, it has made me realise that buying oven chips is a total waste of time, particularly as I have very limited freezer space.
What's the daftest "convenience" food have you purchased before realising it's a total waste of money?

sorry, checked the body of text and not the title - I think cat stomping on the keyboard assisted with that.

I'm not peeling loads of potatos to make the kids dinner when I can just shove some premade ones in the oven.

I was going to say a ready made omelette from the freezer compartment but then remembered my nan used to enjoy these as she found it difficult to crack eggs.

Frozen Avocado is pretty grim. But then there's probably a place for it.

Frozen pomegranate seeds were shit

But oven-chips are coated with oil. They are vastly more convenient than making chips from scratch, and use vastly less oil.

Cake mix, though - why? (Except for Costco's brownie mix!)

Nowt wrong with oven chips, cheep & cheerful Aldi ones are bloody gorgeous.

Pot noodles, shite in a tub.
Them snack cheeses/sausages/cheese straws/chicken on sticks..absolute dog shit.

Ready made chopped up fruit. The grapes are always disgusting, as are the apples. It's also very expensive and much cheaper to do it yourself.

I bought some ready-sliced frozen peppers once and they were vile. So watery and tasteless.

I must say though, frozen ready chopped onions are the best thing since sliced bread. I will never peel and chop an onion again.

I'm always baffled by pancake mix which is basically a small bag of flour and milk powder at about ten times the cost of the same amount of flour and milk.

Which is made even worse when it's sold for pancake day, thus completely missing the whole point of pancake day in the first place.

Even if you don't have scales, there are plenty of recipes available that give measurements in spoons or cups.

I know that some people bake very rarely, but there's a lot more of this sort of thing on the shelves than is accounted for by the people who never bake and have kitchens so small they can't even store a bag of flour.

Pancake mix in case of no fresh eggs.

Packet said mix with an egg.

Oh dear someone's said it.

Pancake mix is 10 times more expensive than flour and milk? It was a quid in Asda! And it's so much easier! Oven chips are hardly expensive either? Probably about the same as a bag of potatoes without the peeling.
Chopped up fruit is overpriced though.

Oven chips are easier for the kids to do themselves so they don't have to get the chip pan out. They are pre-coated with oil. You just shove them on a tray and in the oven for 10-15 mins.

@BarbaraofSeville agreed!

And I’ve never weighed ingredients for pancakes (or Yorkshire puddings) in my life! Just keep adding flour/milk until the consistency looks ok!

Pancake mix is 10 times more expensive than flour and milk? It was a quid in Asda! And it's so much easier!

Genuinely not meaning to be goady but I don't understand how it's easier. For me, the difficult bit of making pancakes is actually cooking them....getting the right amount of mix in the pan, not letting them stick etc etc. Mixing up the batter is the easy bit, and cheap as chips if you use flour, egg and milk

I don't really understand the point of frozen baked potatoes for the microwave when you can just use a microwave to cook a potato from raw. Am I missing something?!

Ready made jacket potatoes? I’ve never bought one but why??

I'm not pratting about making chips from scratch when they're cheap enough to grab out the freezer and chuck in the oven.

Frozen fruit and veg is always shite. Pre chopped fruit is also crap because it last two minutes before going bad.

The pancake mix I bought did include milk powder. But generally I always have milk in.

Pancake mix except for Costco american pancake mix (easy for the kids to do, I get a lie in), cake mix except costco brownie mix & their cinnamon bun mix (can you see a theme here?).
Ready chopped fruit, unless there's a good reason for it.

Now I fancy s trip to Costco

But it's illegal!

Gluten free pancake mix just add eggs and milk.....so its flour in a bottle? And it costs way more

I dont like chopped up veg or grated cheese.

@Dilbertian

But oven-chips are coated with oil. They are vastly more convenient than making chips from scratch, and use vastly less oil.

Cake mix, though - why? (Except for Costco's brownie mix!)

Cake mix is great for people who don't bake often and just make one cake without having loads of ingredients left over.

@OldRailer

Now I fancy s trip to Costco

But it's illegal!

Why is going to Costco illegal? It's a food shop. They're allowed to open and you're allowed to go buy food.

A quid for a pack of pancake mix is still more expensive than a bag of plain flour. Even if you don't bake, you still need it for cheese sauce, gravy, rolling out your (ready made) pastry...

And you can use it for pancakes in the future as well.

Op I've got nothing to add here. I bought some reduced sliced onions once and thought it was a good idea. Frozen strawberries are grim tho.

Definitely frozen fruit and veg. Yuck. I have a friend who only uses frozen veg 🤮