to think that a roast dinner isn't necessarily an expensive meal to cook?

[Granllanog]

Just been chatting to a newish friend, she asked what we were eating today and I said I had cooked a roast chicken dinner........she said she loves a roast but considers it an expensive meal. I asked her what she was having today and she said they were having fresh pizzas from Morrisons (£10).
I told her my roast dinner cost less than that to make!!!

Obviously, if you buy a very expensive cut of meat then the cost will be higher but a roast doesn't have to break the bank surely? Today we had a simple chicken dinner, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, swede, peas, carrots, stuffing and gravy.

Breakdown of today's simple roast
Chicken .........1.4 kg £3.33 (part of a multibuy offer)
Potatoes .......... 30p (taken from a large 7.5 kg bag)
Carrots 25p
Peas (frozen) 30p
swede 45p
parsnips 30p
homemade stuffing 25p onion, fresh herbs, my own breadcrumbs
homemade gravy 10p spoon of flour and some gravy browning

I wonder what the cost difference is in the oven/gas usage too. A pizza is like 10/15 mins in the oven.

Totally agree with you @Loveshelly - to sell a chicken for that cheap shows some serious cost cutting while it was alive. Probably in terms of space in the barn where it will have been reared. It's grim the way we treat these animals.

But agree with you overall OP. For a similar meal without the animal welfare concerns and with extra fibre and unsaturated fat, Jack Monroe has a nut roast recipe which is 42p per portion - 8 servings so roughly the same as the chicken overall cookingonabootstrap.com/2019/12/02/jack-monroes-advent-recipe-2-best-ever-festive-nut-roast-42p/

Pork & chicken are cheap - even high-welfare meat.

Beef can be pricey, but I look out for cheap offers in Sainsbo, & also buy joints for slow roasting from Aldi.
Lamb is a rare treat.

I can't understand people saying a roast is difficult to cook. It's got to be the easiest meal as prep is easy & timing is not at all difficult.

I really don’t buy for a second that she only eats free range chicken but buys ready made pizzas. Morrisons certainly don’t use anything other than their normal bog standard chicken for their pizzas (if they did, they’d certainly highlight it but all it says is ‘British chicken’).

I hate the bad treatment of animals in this country and try to buy meat free range if I can.
I also completely understand that people have very different incomes. If you are lucky enough to be able to afford the best then great.
Just don't expect others on low income to eat bloody chickpeas and lentils.

Don't have to have chicken on the pizza

@Ihopeyourcakeisshit

You'll come under some fire here OP for buying a cheap chicken that hasn't been organically farmed, and hand reared by virgins who periodically dusted its feathers with a handcrafted Jamie Oliver kitchen implement. But yes, I know what you mean.

I expected that!

I have a joint of beef for our roast tomorrow, cost me £7 and it’ll do us our roast tomorrow plus sandwiches for a few days.
I’d say that’s an average priced meal for 4 adults.

We had roast chicken today - Chicken was a free range one which was smaller than I hoped for but cost only £5.70 and fed 3 adults very generously as the meat is much denser and filling than cheaper chickens. The price on-line suggested it would cost £8.50 for the size I ordered but the one they sent was much smaller and therefore cheaper.

Half a bag of King Edwards for roasting about a 60p Half a huge cabbage 25p, a couple of carrots and some frozen sweetcorn and a few Yorkshire puddings made with one egg/bit of flour/bit of milk. We didn't have stuffing but I made gravy. Definitely under a tenner for the meal. It would have stretched to 4 maybe with a couple of extra potatoes and veg or certainly easily fed 2 adults and two kids.

Our roast beef was £13 from local butcher, more than some people pay but that fed three adults. It’s our weekly treat.

All meat is expensive, one way or another. The customer pays, or the animals do.

My family love breath of lamb.
I get it boned and stuffed from our local market. It’s fatty but is delicious. I pay around £10 for 2 but that feeds 10 of us.

Roasts aren’t particularly cheap here.
We bought the beef from a farm shop, it was £62 (but will definitely do another meal out of it). A chicken from the place I usually get them is £16-£20 depending on size.
Home made Yorkshire puddings using milk from the farm shop and eggs from our own chickens, cauli cheese (cheese also from the farm shop and all the veg actually), Parmesan parsnips, cabbage, carrots, beef dripping roast potatoes, bone marrow gravy.
Definitely not cheap but I would rather eat my roast than a supermarket pizza for a Sunday dinner!
You can eat ethically and cheaply for sure, you can do either end of the spectrum really.
Food is our biggest spend per month after our mortgage and we prioritise eating well, including good quality meat.
If we couldn’t afford it we’d definitely cut down on the amount of meat we eat rather than eat worse quality, I think you can really taste the difference (I know others will disagree!).

Spending more money for higher welfare meat or eating less or no meat because you can’t afford higher welfare meat is a choice. Most people just don’t care. Even those who aren’t constrained by budget.

Tomorrow is brisket - was £10 reduced to £4.50 and only reason I’m not roasting is because parents are away so we are having pigeon curry ...

I also love a roast because its so easy. I even roast the carrots.... I think its a real treat with little effort and still affordable with what we call "good karma" chicken. I usually have a nut roast and a slice ends up on everyone else's plate as well. Then left overs can take you through to Wednesday if you are cunning....

@FourteenSixteenTwentyTwo vegetarian pizzas exist.Free range is about animal welfare, not health. I am more than happy to be ready made pizza but not happy to buy cheap chicken, so often I don't buy chicken. Or any cheap meat.

She only said she thought a roast was an expensive meal. Let's be honest OP started this thread to show how much better she was than her friend. Right down the fresh herbs that are costless and the homemade bread that is equally costless and timeless. This isn't a poverty line thread this is a bragging thread

Breast not breath!
Wouldn’t pay £10 for breath!

I think the OP was on about can you do a roast for £10 .
Not animal welfare and being vegan .

All meat is expensive, one way or another. The customer pays, or the animals do

Or the other people in the supply and manufacturing chain. Ergo why 150,000 pigs are about to get culled.

And surely it all balances out over the week? We might have lamb (1/2 leg about a tenner) as a more expensive option but then might have omelette and potato wedges or pasta and sauce or something as a cheaper meal. To be honest our shopping costs pretty much the same per week but some meals are relatively expensive and others not so much. But everyone's budget is different. However i wouldn't think £10 on pizzas was a cheap meal.

I remember one of my uni lecturers talking about this years ago.

A women pointed out to her that she was on an electric meter and couldn’t afford to cook it all.

I only buy meat from one of two butchers. It's always reared and slaughtered locally (this is a livestock farming area) and joints cost a bit more than buying from a supermarket, but other cuts are usually cheaper. I make that choice and happily, I can afford to make it. If I couldn't, I'd probably be vegetarian. I won't eat factory farmed meat.

Buy cheap chicken if you want OP but the tone of your initial post was pretty sanctimonious to start with.

@Loveshelly

Tbf all the trimmings on a roast are extremely cheap. And those Morrison’s pizzas from the fresh counter are pretty good.

I just feel sad that the majority of people happily expect an animal to cost £3 -£4

Are you vegetarian?