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?

Also shocked that someone earlier on this thread tried to pass off Greek chicken breasts and mash as a roast!

@scottishnames

Many people cannot afford £16 for a chicken. There's posts here suggesting that a roast dinner cannot be tasty because the ingredients aren't organic, that paxo (or own brand) stuffing is rubbish and instant gravy is an abomination - eat what you want but don't say the op's or my toast dinner doesn't taste great.

The op's opening gambit was a roast doesn't have to cost a fortune, it doesn't despite the fact you can choose to spend more.

With 4 of us we never have chicken left over i mean 2 of us have a breast each and other 2 a leg , that leaves 2 wings and but if scrap , not sure how people get 2 meals etc out if it unless having couple slivers of meat
I mean i would cook of a couple chicken breasts and slice and divide by 4

Also a proper roast has yorkies , maybe cauliflower cheese etc
Decent meat joint
Otherwise my midweek pork chops , potatoe and veg qualifies as a roast

goghm I could not afford £16 for a free-range chicken. So I don't have it. There's nothing snobbish about that. There's no law to say that we have to eat roast meat. There are plenty of other delicious things to eat.

If people choose to eat cheap meat that involves cruelty in production then, I am sorry, I have said and I will say that I think that is wrong.

You are perfectly correct, the OP did ask whether a roast could be cheap. Yes it can. But at what price for other living creatures? But I think that the OP's double post is weird and possibly intentionally provocative.

Do the people.concerned about animal welfare on this thread have similar concerns re human welfare relating to some of the clothes they buy and not just the cheap ones either?

We can't stand supermarket joints so I buy from the butchers which costs more, but I think it's worth it. So our beef today was 15 quid. Worth every penny it was belting. I made yorkshire puds, roast potatoes, roast carrots and cheesy leeks.

@scottishnames

PicAChew Am of course very sorry if members of your families have problems. But that's not the case with the vast majority. As the old saying goes: 'Hard cases make bad laws' - it's not the exceptions that matter, but the norms. The norm should surely be that we don't have to commit acts of horrible cruelty - as defined by the RSPCA, not me - to eat.

And for heaven's sake stop calling people who care about animal welfare snobbish. It's just not true and it devalues whatever else you have to say.

There are two intertwined discussions going on here.

One is about animal welfare and cheap meat.

I was commenting on the other, which is the vegetables people might have with a roast. I mentioned food snobs because a few people who've contributed to this thread and who clearly don't have to worry too much about their food budget have turned up their noses at the idea of having cheap, seasonal root vegetables and frozen peas because they're not organic and also because the OP cooked them in a nice straightforward way, nothing unduly fancy, but perfectly tasty ways to eat veg with gravy and meat or equivalent.

My point is that comments like that will make some other posters feel inadequate because (a) they can't afford fancy imported veg, (b) they worry they are letting their families down by not buying organic and (c) they don't have the time or the cookery skills or facilities/equipment to do anything fancy and now feel others are looking down on them, and none of this will do anything to encourage people to buy and cook more vegetables.

Personally I will not buy a chicken unless it’s free range, as for pork it must be uk raised and not danish.
If I can’t afford the meat,I do not buy it.

[quote gogohm]@scottishnames

Many people cannot afford £16 for a chicken. There's posts here suggesting that a roast dinner cannot be tasty because the ingredients aren't organic, that paxo (or own brand) stuffing is rubbish and instant gravy is an abomination - eat what you want but don't say the op's or my toast dinner doesn't taste great.

The op's opening gambit was a roast doesn't have to cost a fortune, it doesn't despite the fact you can choose to spend more.[/quote]
I agree with you that a roast doesn't have to cost a fortune if you use the lowest quality ingredients. But it is more expensive than other meals made with the lowest quality ingredients.

It costs a lot with the highest quality ingredients, and more than many other meals using the highest quality ingredients.

A roast using value products and the cheapest available meat costs more than sausage and mash using value products and the cheapest available meat and more than spag bol using value products and the cheapest available meat and more than value pizza and chips and beans and more than value chicken nuggets and mash and peas etc etc.

Regardless of which quality/price point you shop to, a roast tends to be towards the more expensive end of meals of the same quality level.

@RosesAndHellebores

Do the people.concerned about animal welfare on this thread have similar concerns re human welfare relating to some of the clothes they buy and not just the cheap ones either?

Absolutely! Don’t you? I didn’t used to, but the past few months have been a real eye opener. If I don’t need clothes, I don’t buy them. If I do, I used secondhand shops or. Less often, ethical retainers. But I still wear clothes from when I was 18! Or stuff passed on from others.

Sorry, typos/autocorrect

PicAChew Fair enough. I would not dream of criticising cheap seasonal veg - apart from anything else, I really like carrots and swede . Frozen peas are very nutritious -and one of the 'freshest' thing we can eat; they are famously taken from field to freezer in (I think) less tan 40 minutes. Organic farming is great, but I do gree that it can be very expensive. But, on the whole, re veg, welfare issues are not involved, as they are for meat animals.

Rosesand Hellebores Speaking personally, re clothes, yes we do. Most of my clothes are secondhand and come from charity shops or EBay. This is ridiculously stereotypical, but I have also just purchased some organic cotton jeans from Seasalt (seconds) in a sale.

Sorry for typos - laptop keyboard seems to be sticking.

Do the people concerned about animal welfare on this thread have similar concerns re human welfare

Yes. Since I can afford to make that choice, I try to always choose fair trade, fair wear ... environmentally and ethically produced clothing and footwear.

Today's roast .
Topside from Lidl £10.26
Potatoes from Lidl -£1.29 Maris pipers -lovely mash and Roasties
Broccoli -Lidl 69p
Carrots Lidl -40 p (half a bag left )
Homemade Yorkshire's 30 p for flour 40p for milk.
50 p cornflour and stock cube to make gravy
79 p horseradish

Yummy and fed 6 adults .

Yes, I have always been concerned about ethically produced clothes.

Oh and an 89p frozen apple strudel and a 59p carton of custard(am awaiting the critics) because I was too busy to bake 🙄

And 4 eggs for Yorkshire's 80p

@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?

No yorkshires????

@RosesAndHellebores

Do the people.concerned about animal welfare on this thread have similar concerns re human welfare relating to some of the clothes they buy and not just the cheap ones either?

I absolutely do, but even if I didn't would that make caring about animal welfare bad? Caring about animal welfare in a farming sense is caring for our land, our economy and our planet. I am a proud meat eater. Farmed correctly, in small scale production - free range and grass fed beef, for example - cuts down enormously on the use of fertilizers and creates a more natural cycle for the land. It helps prevent soil erosion. It's proven to help keep the soil healthy and full of nutrients. It keeps small family units in working roles in areas often with lower employment and higher poverty levels.

I fully recommend reading James Rebanks' English Pastoral if you want to know more.

Everyone saying "but not everyone can afford high welfare meat" is missing the point. Can I afford an expensive cut once a week? Absolutely not. So I have a full roast once a month or so. I eat meat perhaps 3 times a week, and fish once. I value and enjoy those meals, as well a enjoying my vegetarian meals as well.

We shouldn't be justifying poor farming practices by thinking we have some kind of right to eat meat. We don't. It's a luxury we should value. It's frightening how misleading labels are too in supermarkets. People think if it is RSPCA assured or has a red tractor it's high welfare. It's not. It's meeting the absolute minimum standards which are a single step above horrific animal abuse. It's not battery farmed, it's just stuck in an enclosed shed so crammed in it can barely move with a window opened once a day for 15 minutes. It's never known grass, or the warmth of the sun. The farmer has to rear hundreds of thousands every month just to break even. The waste produce isn't used in any way because the farms are single production units. Farms should work in harmony - waste produce used to fertilize fields that grow crops which feed either humans or the animals. Animals outside for at least 8 months of the year, eating a varied diet that is mostly self cropped. All that in turn brings in natural wildlife attracted by the nutrients in the soil - worms, which bring birds and hedgehogs and shrews. These in turn bring other animals onto the land. It's so much more than wanting to pay sub £5 for a chicken.

@keladrythesaviour I agree all of that would be absolutely marvellous and it works a la Hugh Whittingstall but most small farmers have to maximise the use of their land. Have you ever grown a veggie patch or allotment and seen what happens entirely naturally.

My grandparents were farmers in a small way, the principle business was horses. However, the farm went in the early 90s, partly to deal with the left over sting from IHT and partly because my mother didn't want the farm but did want the money.

To achieve what you describe would require the break up of the huge farms and reversion to small-holdings of 40/50 acres. There aren't the skills available and it wouldn't be viable.

I do however think that the industrial farms need to be kinder. It may be a positive of a post brexit world.

I would rather do it with very high end good quality Cumberland sausage and Yorkshire’s than cheap meat. I’m really funny about cheap red meat and honestly prefer very good quality sausage or a free range chicken- but you are correct OP, a meat and 2 veg type dinner can be really cheap

I think it's the effort and the idea that it's a thing you do on a Sunday - I remember my aunt starting the chopping and cooking while we were still eating breakfast!
But it need not be too much more effort than any other meal (unless like me You simply unwrap and stick in oven and microwave the veg)!

It’s not a roast without Yorkshire puddings whatever the meat is.