To say think a roast dinner can be a cheap meal?

[HuffyPuffyStuffy]

I grew up eating roast dinners, always on a Sunday and often midweek too. I don't always cook a roast on a Sunday now but we always have a least one roast dinner a week. I mentioned to a newish friend earlier that I was cooking a roast today and she was teasing me about being "posh" and that she only has a roast on special occasions a roast costs so much!
I tried to say that a roast can be a cheap meal and she thought I was lying when I said that today's meal for four (2 adults and 2 teens) would cost under £6.00 and that we would have leftover meat for tomorrow. Obviously, a big joint of sirloin beef or a new season leg of lamb would be expensive but I couldn't get her to accept that a roast dinner could be cheap! I was so miffed I costed it out .........

1.5 kg joint of pork shoulder (Aldi) £4.21
Potatoes - roasted (Wonky Morrisons) 25p
Parsnips - roasted (Aldi) 20p
Carrots - boiled (Aldi) 15p
swede - boiled (Aldi) 20p
frozen peas (Morrisons) 30p
Stuffing made from leftover bread, half an onion and herbs from garden. 15p
Gravy - made from meat juice, plain flour, veg water.......10p

£5.56 for the roast

I didn't use my oven today. Meat was roasted in the slow cooker, potatoes and parsnips cooked in an air fryer and the veg cooked in my pressure cooker.

If you did a roast today how much did it cost?

God knows I've a horror of the Mumsnet 'massive salad' and virtuous eaters in general, but I'm stunned by the number of people who seem to think OP's isn't a proper roast because it's got loads of veg.

And there's nowt wrong with packet stuffing. Love a bit of Paxo in balls. Goes properly crunchy. Can't abide stuffing that clings to the roof of your mouth.

If you didn't use an oven and nothing was roasted how have you cooked A Roast?

It can certainly be cheap if using chicken or pork, & Aldi beef is good quality & a lot cheaper than Sainsbo etc.

It's the sheer simplicity of it I like.

For me, it's the easiest meal to prepare. No seeking out recipes, checking for ingredients.

Just bung things in the oven at set intervals, steam some greenery, gravy from meat juices & that's it.

Wow - some people are being really weird about the OP's roast dinner. I can't fathom why anyone would assume that just because she made a standard roast with a normal selection of commonly-used veg, that her roast wouldn't be delicious or her gravy would be watery .

Dh usually cooks the roasts in this house, often similar veg etc to the OP's. He is an excellent cook, makes stunning roast potatoes and delicious gravy from scratch using homemade stock. A roast does not need to be fancy to be delicious. It just needs a competent cook.

Today, we're having an €11 half leg of Irish lamb, with roast potatoes, honey roast parsnips, Yorkshire puddings, carrots, and broccoli, with gravy and mint sauce. There are three of us. I estimate the veg, flour, egg, etc. came to around €5 for the amount I've used, so €16 for the meal, or just over €5 each. Probably the most expensive meal of the week, but not too bad. I have no idea how much electricity it's taking (am cooking it as I type) to cook.

On a separate note, I bloody love Paxo stuffing - not with lamb, though!

We’re having roast chicken tonight.
Chicken - £16
Potatoes £1.50 (roasted in goose fat - 30p?)
Pigs in blankets - sausages £4 streaky bacon £3
Parmesan parsnips - £3
Chard gratin - £5 ish?
Kale £2
Gravy - £2 ish? Fresh stock tub with splash of wine and the meat juices
Sweetcorn £1
Yorkshire puddings (use our own eggs
) so £1 for milk and flour? Maybe less…

Could definitely be made cheaper but not prepared to skimp on a) animal welfare or b) quality.

I agree with you! Potatoes and veg are cheap. A chicken is £5 in Tesco. Yorkshire puds are about £1.

Forgot all the things like onions, garlic, lemons, herbs etc that go under and around the chicken while it’s roasting but I don’t do the cooking

I agree that a roast can be cheap! We use frozen veggies too so even cheaper - I know they're not for everyone but we don't mind them.

I don't wanna sound like a massive MN twat, but a roast chicken does do two meals in this house, but there is only two adults and a toddler here 🤣

@jb7445

Surely it just depends on whether a roast is a standard/weekly thing for your family or not?

I don't cook a roast often but when I do I make it basically like a Christmas dinner - allllll the trimmings. To me it feels like a special meal so yeah, it is usually quite expensive. I can see how making it like you say in the OP would be a lot cheaper (but I would be saddened to be served a roast like that in all honesty )

Yep, roast meat + gravy, potatoes and boiled meat is really easy to make. It feels a bit special as we wouldn't normally roast a whole joint or chicken, and a lot more meat is eaten as it's the centerpiece (rest of our dishes are veggies based flavoured with meat if it makes sense). But I still wouldn't call it a proper 'roast'. To me that's what we make for a proper Christmas dinner with stuffing, Yorkshire puddings etc. And that takes a lot of effort.

It can be done very cheaply but I would worry about that animal & the ethical standards of its rearing. I don’t like to see cheap, crappy meat strewn across supermarkets and think it’s shocking that it still goes on.

@euniceanddudley

Or it can be cheap because a 3 for £10 meat deal means that you can feed your family when you might not otherwise be able to afford meat.

This 100%. For some families, a deal like this (I get a 1.2kg chicken, a 1kg pork joint and a 600 gram of minced beef in my 3 for £10), means I can do pretty decent meals. I accept the meat is inexpensive, I simply cannot afford chickens that cost £15 each. For me to be able to feed my family a lovely roast dinner (and it was), makes me proud and happy.

@Mulhollandmagoo

I agree that a roast can be cheap! We use frozen veggies too so even cheaper - I know they're not for everyone but we don't mind them.

I don't wanna sound like a massive MN twat, but a roast chicken does do two meals in this house, but there is only two adults and a toddler here 🤣

Chicken sizes can definitely vary! MN chicken aside. The max at supermarkets are just under 2kg, but I buy large ones from Ocado that are around 2.5kg.. Feeds us (2 people) for a week. We eat a full meal for dinner, light food like salad/sausage rolls for lunch It also doesn't shrink or release lots of water... worth it for the price.

I love a roast dinner but I think even with chicken it can be fairly expensive so I don’t do it frequently but when I do, I really go for it and put a lot of effort in - roast potatoes/parsnips, cauliflower cheese, carrot and swede mash, red cabbage, spinach, stuffing, pigs in blankets, home made gravy etc and follow it up with an apple crumble or cherry pie type dessert.

Obviously that may be standard effort for many but for me, it’s more effort than a casserole, cottage pie type dinner.

@Justcashnosweets

I don't know a single person who makes their stuffing from scratch with bread, onions and homegrown herbs 🤣

Okay, fair enough.

I do have friends who do that (they generally have time, or not a lot of money, or are loathe to waste anything—sometimes a combination).

I do it occasionally and I have (some) time and money. It just depends. I also dislike waste and am always looking to see what can work to help reduce it.

To each their own.

To the poster who talked about piglets: 'surplus' pigs and piglets are being killed on farms NOT sold to supermarkets to provide cheap meat.

Where does your cheap pork come from - in the UK we do at least have basic welfare standards. But elsewhere - hellish. Literally. Breeding sows kept in cages (with metal bars for floors) where they can't lie down or turn around or engage in any natural maternal behaviour with their piglets.

As previous poster said, 'outdoor bred' does not mean 'outdoor reared', let alone free range. An awful lot of pigs spend their very short lives (just five months, for many) indoors bored out of their minds - they are intelligent - in a virtual prison.
www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/pork-production-truth-pig-farming-uk-factory-hughfearnley-whittingstall-sienna-miller-mick-jagger-a7813746.html

When it comes to chicken - do you know how long the average life of a chicken reared for meat is? Even in the relatively decent welfare standards UK system, a chicken bred for meat lives, on average 42 days. Many live for a shorter time: www.rspca.org.uk/webContent/staticImages/BroilerCampaign/EatSitSufferRepeat.pdf
I used to have a few chickens. They gave delicious eggs. They were characters; they were delightful. Most lived for at least 5 years.

To curtail the lifespan of other creatures to such a short time is really, really shocking.

@moderationinWumbsnet

We have Mumsnet pork joint now too.

Yes, but my pork joint was dearer than the OP's at £5.30 - we was robbed!

I’ve given up doing a full chicken for our roasts so only do breasts now.

We had roast chicken breasts, stuffing, mash, cauliflower, broccoli and carrots. The price for the whole packs of these from Aldi is £6.97.

There were 3 breasts in the packet, and we only used 2. We only use a 5th of the potatoes, half of the carrots, half of the stuffing, 2 table spoons of the gravy granuals and half the cauliflower. We use all the broccoli.

In addition there’s a bit of butter out of the tub in the fridge a splash of milk and some seasoning for the chicken which is an old Greek seasoning mix I bought about 15 years ago.

Although £7 for two adults and two primary kids seems a lot, there’s lots of ingredients left for other meals.

I also took a photo for my mum.

hmmm so lets say I eat meat which I dont.

you want me to get the 2-3 buses there and back to a aldi to get1.5 kg joint of pork shoulder £4.21 plus £3+ for travel.

you want me to shop in morrisons for the Potatoes (Wonky Morrisons) 25p which I have never seen because morrisons rarely actually have any of the wonky veg or fruit in, and I go there about once or twice a week after taking my kid to school, the last wonky thing I saw in there was the wonky mangos which I did buy 3 for £1.65 about 2 weeks ago.

Parsnips - roasted (Aldi) 20p again dont have one never been to one as far as I known the nearest is 2 buses away maybe 3, never been there, Carrots - boiled (Aldi) 15p, swede - boiled (Aldi) 20p.

frozen peas (Morrisons) 30p if you say so never noticed any that cheap in there unless your talking tinned.

Stuffing made from leftover bread, half an onion and herbs from garden. 15p, dont have a garden, you have not factored in the price of bread and an onion and are assuming someone has those things anyway (I dont buy sliced bread, only flatbreads normally)

Gravy - made from meat juice, plain flour, veg water.......10p, how is it ten pence, you need to buy a bag of flour thats not 10p.

so for you with the shops you have in your area and how they are regularly stocked it costs that much along with what you have in the cupboard normally, that doesnt make it the same for everyone.

and then theres the price of gas and the assumption you have a cooker large enough for all that, my oven has 1 shelf and the max tray size it can take is the IKEA konics 34x24cm tray.

@VelvetChairGirl

hmmm so lets say I eat meat which I dont.

you want me to get the 2-3 buses there and back to a aldi to get1.5 kg joint of pork shoulder £4.21 plus £3+ for travel.

you want me to shop in morrisons for the Potatoes (Wonky Morrisons) 25p which I have never seen because morrisons rarely actually have any of the wonky veg or fruit in, and I go there about once or twice a week after taking my kid to school, the last wonky thing I saw in there was the wonky mangos which I did buy 3 for £1.65 about 2 weeks ago.

Parsnips - roasted (Aldi) 20p again dont have one never been to one as far as I known the nearest is 2 buses away maybe 3, never been there, Carrots - boiled (Aldi) 15p, swede - boiled (Aldi) 20p.

frozen peas (Morrisons) 30p if you say so never noticed any that cheap in there unless your talking tinned.

Stuffing made from leftover bread, half an onion and herbs from garden. 15p, dont have a garden, you have not factored in the price of bread and an onion and are assuming someone has those things anyway (I dont buy sliced bread, only flatbreads normally)

Gravy - made from meat juice, plain flour, veg water.......10p, how is it ten pence, you need to buy a bag of flour thats not 10p.

so for you with the shops you have in your area and how they are regularly stocked it costs that much along with what you have in the cupboard normally, that doesnt make it the same for everyone.

and then theres the price of gas and the assumption you have a cooker large enough for all that, my oven has 1 shelf and the max tray size it can take is the IKEA konics 34x24cm tray.

Not sure any of this is the OP’s fault, and fairly certain she doesn’t want you to trek 86 miles, catch 9 buses, a boat and train or cook by candle either.

Is it a roast without roast potatoes?

I always think of a roast being one of our cheapest meals as long as its chicken or pork.

A normal weekly roast for us would be chicken/pork, roast potatoes, homemade yorkshire puddings, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and gravy. (Veg can differ i usually buy whatevers on offer)

We only really have Lamb at Easter and christmas is Turkey and on those roasts we have different veg and stuffing and pigs in blankets so is more expensive.

I only had to buy the chicken. £5 local butcher, I always have veg in the house, didn’t buy them for the roast.

I have one every Sunday.

@CrimbleCrumble1

Is it a roast without roast potatoes?

No! Potatoes maketh the roast.

You can have a roast without meat but it can’t be a roast without rosaries.

Oh my goodness, @VelvetChairGirl, talk about missing the point!!!

Substitute OP's choice of supermarket for yours. Is a roast still cheap for you??