To think that cooking from scratch is becoming more and more unsustainable?

[AlternativePerspective]

I have always cooked from scratch, and I will be the first to admit that cooking from scratch has always been more expensive than buying e.g. jar sauces etc. However as things currently stand food prices are going up so much that cooking from scratch is becoming more and more unsustainable for many people who are struggling to make ends meet.

And in an era where we’re being told to live healthily, to cut out additives where possible, and to use the healthiest ingredients, while this has always been hard to sustain, right now for many it’s unsustainable from a financial perspective, and people are going to be forced to eat jar sauces, ready meals and various other foods with additives they didn’t want or need.

I’ve just cancelled my milkman because I can no longer justify spending the money, and it’s going to take a lot before I will ever eat ready meals or cook from a jar. But compromises are going to have to be made, and in many instances for some people, it’s not going to be possible to compromise.

Pasta sauce is 59p. And that’s without including the energy (either power which costs or human which may be needed to earn or care for children)

Also, home cooks can’t buy emulsifiers etc etc - we have no options but to cook to with real ingredients. So while I agree it isn’t comparing like-for-like, it’s still a realistic comparison, isn’t it?

I used to cook everything from scratch, even sausages, but having to cut my budget means having to change my diet somehow. If I’ve got £2.50 left in the budget this week I can’t buy ingredients for a bulk cook that will last me four weeks. I’ve only got this week’s budget, (and I’m often playing catch up with that). But I can treat myself to a ready made lasagne for one. I’ve mostly compromised by downgrading the type of food, but keeping the quality. I rarely eat meat or fish, often having homemade vegetable soup and homemade bread. It would be cheaper to buy the bread and soup themselves, but I’m not replacing like for like - I’m replacing a homemade lasagne. I still make pizza from scratch, but only plain cheese (and I bake my bread, some spuds and a dessert at the same time). But there does come a point where you can’t drop any more brackets.

Most people really don’t ‘just’ need to budget, meal plan and cook-from-scratch more. They need a more holistic solution that accounts for the fact that people with less money often have less energy, time, creativity, transport and fewer purchasing options than people who are not already worn to the bone by being poor. If you’re working two manual jobs, you legitimately have less inclination to dick about in the kitchen for hours with lentils and spices. (I’m not saying people can’t or don’t, just that energy is a barrier, too).

@auldcraw

It must be wonderful to have all that information when being in the trade.

People should experiment a lot more IMO. I've discovered by chance for instance that lots of recipies are just as good with 70% of the sugar required by the recipe, that you don't really need vanilla extract in everything (with a few exceptions like custard, maybe), pricey nuts can be replaced with raisins, lamb mince could be as effective as pork mince with the right process and spices, etc.

You see, we are there. And being there feels very different than hypothesising about it when we when we weren’t before Christmas.

I can’t take my kid anywhere this half term. I have to limit even free outings, because I can’t buy more than one tank of petrol a month. And now I’m supposed to limit the poor kid’s telly as well, if I want to be seen as deserving poor, instead of lazy and unimaginative with poor cooking and budgeting skills. Whereas tinned hot dogs (she has them cold) or sausage rolls and a movie are about the cheapest treats I can give her. (And yes, I think they’re vile too!). Yet when I didn’t have to worry about the electric bill and petrol prices, and had a little room in my budget, I was perfectly solvent adult with adequate budgeting and definitely above average cooking skills (I made my own bread, pastry, sausages. I know how cook from scratch)

I’d eat cold food if it meant my kid could watch telly. It’s about all we’ve got left! It’s soul destroying not to be able to give your kid the most basic of treats.

The OP's premise is that cooking from scratch 'has always been more expensive than buying eg jar sauces etc'. A number of examples have been given showing that there are ways of home made being cheaper (and likely more nutritious).

Families are experiencing varying degrees of hardship - some may only be able to use a kettle to prepare meals while others are finding their food budget significantly reduced and are therefore looking at ways of stretching things.

Cooking from scratch may work for some depending on how much time, resources, cooking skills they have etc while it may not work for others. But that doesn't mean that a whole raft of people won't be able to feed their families more cheaply using home cooked meals.

My finances are absolutely to the bone, I have to think about money and budgets every day. Luckily I love ‘peasant’ food. Not all poor people eat junk of course but there are statistics to back the poorer/uneducated you are the more likely you are to eat more junk (remember those mums protesting about healthy school dinners and pushing burgers through the school fences unless of course it was fake news 🤷‍♀️?). I’m poor nowadays (on UC and a low paid very part time job as am also an unpaid carer to a dementia parent). This might sound weird but I have found Gousto to be a financial life saver. It covers four days dinner for me and my son and I’ve got a big pot full of their left over spices and other bits that I can add to veg, chicken or pasta for the remaining three days all for under £35 a week. I can spend that in my local supermarket and have very little to show for it. It may not work for everyone but it’s been fantastic for me.

eeksteek i'm sorry you're in this position and that you have to contend with judgy comments about TVs and IPads.

@BellePeppa is that 4 days of food or four dinners for £35?

Gousto is £35 for 4 dinners only.

If you can spend £35 in a supermarket 'but not have much to show for it' then you need to look at what you're buying and think before you go in and make a sensible list.

Because paying Gousto £35 to send you what is probably £15-20 worth of groceries and a few recipe cards is probably not the best thing to be doing if you're short of money for food.

Four dinners - Gousto just does dinner-type meals, not whole days of food. To be fair their portions are generous so you will likely have leftovers, but it's definitely much more expensive than buying the ingredients yourself. You're paying for convenience.

Ahh okay, no id never be able to spend £35 on 4 dinners. Our entire weekly shopping budget is £60.

our dinners probably aren't as tasty or nutritious but they will be cheaper

I can sort of see how gusto works in the sense that you just get a portion of herbs for that meal and enough balsamic for the meal.
your pot of herbs would be £1 at least and your balsamic a couple of quid. So if your stretching £40 for the week it means you’ve got more interesting meals than you would have.
however it’s expensive in the long run as you’d be able to make more meals out of that pot of herbs and bottle of vinegar. But in the short term it’s costs less.

it’s like the people that make money dividing up a tub of washing powder and selling it for £1. It will last the week, it’s more expensive buying it that way, but you can stretch your tenner for the week by buying just what you need for that week.

this thread is completely proof of differing ways people have to budget

This.

All the herbs/spices/seasonings in my cooking mean one big outlay but then lots and lots of tasty meals. Many have lasted me at least a year (depending on the quality of said seasoning)

Indian vegetarian recipes are cheap as chips, tasty and nutritional.

Again I can only speak for the vegetarian option, but I bet you can get full-size ingredients for most of the recipes for £8-9. I can't be bothered to do a fake online shop to find out, but if anyone wants to, I picked a random recipe from this week's options:

1 red onion
2 tomatoes
2 garlic cloves
2tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp garam masala
80g spinach
6 cardamom pods
32g tomato paste
80g natural yoghurt
130g basmati rice
200g paneer
15g root ginger
11g vegetable stock granules

That's probably one of the most expensive veggie recipes this week because of the spices and because it has paneer rather than a vegetable.

So, I costed out my veggie chilli and the result is:
Olive oil: 10p
Red Onion 10p (could have used brown)
Pepper x 2 80p (two from a £1.20 pack of three)
Garlic Clove 5p
Spring Onion x 2 10p
Lime 17p
Mixed Beans 60p
Chipotle Paste 1/6 of a 95p jar = 11p?
Smoked Paprika 10/10 of a 90p jar = 9p
Tomato Puree 1/4 of a 31p tube = 8p
Chopped Tomatoes 45p (no, not Mutti)
Vegetable Stock Cube 6p
Wraps x 4 50p
Feta Cheese (I used 'salad cheese') 60p (1/2 the back)
So a grand total of £3.86 (I did say about a fiver, not exact)
To be honest, I have calmed down a bit today, but my point stands I think about how people completely underestimate the cost of cooking from scratch. In the recipe above, around 40p comes from ingredients I bet most would not count when costing out a recipe as they are 'practically free', 'cost next to nothing' etc etc.
And posters are still not grasping the concept of only having a limited budget every week with which to buy food. I am more comfortable now, but there was a time when I would have had to pass on 2kg bags of brown rice as it would take too much money up that week, even thought I knew it was cheaper in the long run.
And to the poster upthread who scorned my post about mini rolls - of course there's no comparison between home-made cake and mini-rolls, that's obvious. But if you need a sweet treat for your child's lunchbox and you could either make a cake at £2+electricity/gas or pay £1.30 for 10 mini rolls and you had a very limited budget, which would you choose?

To be honest, I have calmed down a bit today, but my point stands I think about how people completely underestimate the cost of cooking from scratch.

This thread has changed my mind on that. Your chilli sounds lovely but have you seen some of the other homemade recipes posted? Some people are happy eating extremely basic food that really does cost £1-2 to make.

@ArmWrestlingWithChasNDave I realise my chill was not a 'basic' recipe it was merely posted as it struck me as the kind of food people would claim cost pennies to make as it contained the usual cheap suspects (tomatoes, beans etc).
Two years ago, I fed four of us (+1 cat) on £50 a week all-in, so I am well aware of how to stretch food to cook as cheaply as possible. I am aware prices have risen lots since then, obviously.
And @BarbaraofSeville , I'll bite about the dahl and rice for £1.50. The rice, you are right at your costings comes out at 60p for 4 people. Red lentils are £1.80 for 1kg, and I would guess you would use around 500g for four people, so 90p. 90p + 60p = £1.50. I said the rice and lentils alone would be around £1.50. The pp said she made a coconut lentil dahl that used around 25p worth of spices for 4 and the cost was about £1.50. How can that be when the two basic components of the meal take up all the budget, before you add the 25p spices, coconut etc? As I keep saying, people completely underestimate the cost of home cooking! (I'm sure the dahl was lovely, but it DID NOT cost only £1.50)
You say I am nit-picking through recipes, I'll admit I am, but I can't help myself when some of the claims on here are so woefully unrealistic.

Katypp Yep I get you. You could make something resembling a chilli for less, but it wouldn't taste half as good. I really can't blame anyone - no matter their finances - choosing a jar over some of the recipes posted here.

500 g of lentils would make a lot of dhal. More like 8/10 portions, not 4.

Your chilli recipe includes over £1 worth of 'extras' ie the cheese and the wraps, you'd need to add these whether you made your own chilli or had the ready made version instead.

I still don't think anyone is making unrealistic claims, and apart from cakes, no-one has really suggested what people are eating if they eat ready made food, apart from cake and chicken nuggets, neither of which are very filling on their own.

I think cooking from scratch is much cheaper. Surely, anyone who has already been doing so will continue to find it the cost effective (and nutritious) way of eating. After all, you would already have all the dried spices and herbs. Herbs for garnish etc can be purchased in little freezer packs now, so there is no waste. It’s cheap to grow chilis etc from seed and they freeze brilliantly. I still have loads from last year. I can’t comment properly on meat because we don’t eat it, but I’d guess it is cheaper to have it in a microwave meal. God know the quality of the meat in that though. As for baking, as others have said, the ingredients you buy make several cakes, scones etc.

@BarbaraofSeville BBC Good Food's recipe for Tarka dahl (which it says is ideal for cooking on a budget) uses 200g lentils for two people. So 400g for 4 people. The poster said hers fed four adults with leftovers, so unless they have the appetite of birds, I think 500g for 4 is more realistic than for 8/10.
True enough about the wraps and cheese on the chilli, if I remove them, the cost comes to £2.76 for two people. I would call this a cheap meal, but compared to some of the claims on here, it's on the expensive side. By the way, I can't seem to find a ready-made equivalent to compare - veggie chilli must not be on trend at the moment!

I used to love good quality jam on white buttered toast as an after school snack when I was a kid, same with cheese spread on oatcakes - even with price rises I honestly don't think food is the biggie because you can vary it and budget accordingly with a bit of imagination- I think the problems are more energy, council tax, fuel, transport, private rentals in lots of the country and childcare -- some of these are non negotiables.and very hard to cut back on in any way

@BarbaraofSeville Ready meals I eat are that i think are the same price or cheaper
Baked beans on toast
Frozen lamb shanks in a red wine gravy
Quiche
beef and ale pie
A few frozen fish things that have a flavoured butter or coating that cost the same or less than the same fish fresh without the butter. But the fresh fish has still been frozen anyway.

Today I'm making chicken curry and rice. I used chicken thighs, onion, garlic, spices and tomato.
If you buy the cheapest ready meal, it costs about £1.60. You'd need 4 to feed a family of 4 which costs £6.40.
I'm not working it out but mine works out similar price if not cheaper plus there's probably some leftover.

I made a chilli for lunch, the sauce was 2 tins of toms, tomato puree, white onion, 3 garlic cloves, smoked paprika, chilli flakes, groune cumin, salt, pepper, henderons relish. It’s much cheaper to buy a jar of sauce and jazz it up a bit, much faster as well and uses less power.

When I was living on a very tight budget I always bought jar sauce, always supermarket brands and jazzed them up with a few spices etc. I simply couldn’t afford to make sauces myself. I used to buy the powdered chilli sachet and add it to a tin of tomatoes, I think the sachet was about 20p and very nice.

Looking at morrisons online my sauce today cost £2.32, the sachet I used to use is now 30p and a tin of toms 45p, so a total of 75p for shop made and with rice, kidney beans and mixed beans, I could probably make rhe entire meal for less than £2.32.

At last, a voice of Reason and intellect.