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.

Either you're making a giant cake, and one of a similar size would be far more expensive than a couple of quid shop bought or you're just exaggerating.

My carrot cake recipe uses 250g of flour - i use gf flour so relatively expensive at 1.70 kg but that's still only 45p or so of flour. Ready grated carrots?? a kg of carrots is 45p, i need 200g for a cake so that's less than 10p of carrots.

@Edderkop I think the poster was giving an example of how much initial outlay would be needed if you didn't have any of the ingredients in.

I find cooking from scratch much cheaper as long as you don't stick to a recipe. I have to substitute ingredients and use what I have not what a recipe says and of course you'll need a freezer for left overs.
When I had a hungry teenager I would make loads of flapjacks which are cheap and we ate lots of potatoes.
We were very poor in the 1990's ok now as I got a big promotion and retrained but at one point we had £1-15 a week to feed two people and our cats so I had to be incredibly inventive.

my post screwed up. so the comaprison recipe was missing, but even your cheap ingredients still come to £3:53 and aldi cream cheese is 75p not 50p so you underestimated.
A sainsburys lemon swirl cheesecake is £3:50 and no faff making it.

YANBU. Apart from the odd spag bol and chilli con carne (made with quorn mince as me and DH don't eat red meat,) and omelettes, stir fries, pasta, and pancakes (and obviously easy things like beans on toast, jacket potatoes, salads, and sandwiches etc, ) I don't 'do' cook from scratch.

I CBA. Most stuff already made (ready meals/microwave meals/oven chips/frozen pies/frozen veg etc,) are just so much easier to do/prepare, and are often as good as cook-from-scratch. Morrisons do a lovely Indian takeaway AND a Chinese takeaway for 2 people, for £6-7. (Costs £15-17 for the equivalent from the takeaway.) Also, it would cost a LOT more to do from scratch, AND would take a lot more time!!!

If people want to cook everything from scratch, then good for them! But I don't like people 'looking down their nose' at people who don't. I also don't believe most people DO cook from scratch most of the time. Many claim they do, on these kind of threads, but I don't believe them. They probably do the easy stuff I mentioned, but rarely do most stuff from scratch. I mean, why on earth WOULD you? As has been said, it's more expensive, it's time-consuming, AND most 'shop-prepared stuff' tastes just as good - (and sometimes even better!)

Also, why the fuck would you spend so much time, energy, money, and gas/electric on making your own cake? You can buy one for pennies!

Then again, I am an outside person, and not someone who chooses to spend half my waking hours in the kitchen. I would rather spend 6 hours in the garden, (pottering about/weeding/planting flowers/trimming the bushes and trees etc,) or going for a walk along the canal or through the woods. Life's too short to spend half of it bloody cooking!

Meh, each to their own!!! But I do find the 'I'm better than you, a higher social class, and clearly better educated - because I cook from scratch' brigade quite hilarious and farcical.

This.

I don't know if it's different for meat-eaters, but I'm pretty sure my shopping bill would go up if I bought ready meals instead of ingredients.

But I have an office job 9-5 working from home. I don't come home at 8pm after a 12 hour shift on my feet, without the energy to stand at a counter chopping stuff and waiting for it to cook before I finally eat at 9:30pm. If I did, you can bet I'd have ready meals waiting to be microwaved in three minutes.

I do it because it's healthier and I enjoy it.

Life's too short for gardening, imo.

I never buy ready meals and with the exception of the odd frozen pizza, we cook with ingredients every day. If you don't, that's ok. But it doesn't make me wrong any more than it makes you wrong!

No need to be rude.

I cook virtually everything from scratch and it's been easy since I got my airfryer. I'm eating tons of vegetables now and almost everything goes in together, so less faff. It's cheap to run too.

I also don't believe most people DO cook from scratch most of the time. Many claim they do, on these kind of threads, but I don't believe them. They probably do the easy stuff I mentioned, but rarely do most stuff from scratch. I mean, why on earth WOULD you? As has been said, it's more expensive, it's time-consuming, AND most 'shop-prepared stuff' tastes just as good - (and sometimes even better!)

Also, why the fuck would you spend so much time, energy, money, and gas/electric on making your own cake? You can buy one for pennies!

You think most people are lying about cooking from scratch? We cook from scratch because we quite like doing it, and because it tastes a million times better! Bought cake is mostly shit,unless it's really expensive, high quality handmade stuff that tastes like homemade.

Yes prices are going up steeply but a whole sandwich cake, for example, even a 23cm one, is much, much bigger than anything you tend to buy in a shop, and weighs more. Shop bought cakes are surprisingly small.once you have lost the packaging, they are usually divided in to small portions full of additives. Even a rectangular plain bought loaf cake, like a madeira cake, is pretty small. You can halve a home made Victoria sponge cake for example and freeze one half for later. I'm.always surprised by how far ingredients go when cooking from scratch.

Generally I find it's much cheaper to buy and cook seasonally, and avoid supermarkets for some things as they are always out to add value (for themselves) . We've cut down on meat, we usually eat veggie four times a wk, and when we do have chicken for example, I buy a whole bird and use every bit, and make stock.from leftover carcass. I use the bread machine and soup machine a lot too. I try and never let any dhop bought vegetables go to waste.

It's helpful to buy a lot of staples from middle Eastern and Asian shops. I have saved so much money not buying wanky small supermarket boxes of rice, lentils, chickpeas etc. So much cheaper to buy kilo bags. Spices are fresher and cheaper too. I admit that doesn't work if cooking for one though.

Also, I have gone back to buying some tinned fruit (but in sugar free or sugar light juice). I've wasted so many fresh pears and nectarines that go from rock hard to woolly in a day. A tinned pear or peach works well in hot puddings and is never wasted. Ditto glass jars of good quality apple or rhubarb compote etc.

That sainsburys cheesecake is going to be half the size and with preservatives and all kind of crap. The bigger, better, nicer one is the exact same price and the "faff" could be you teaching your kids how to make it!
Thanks for proving my point for me.

It definitely does depend what you cook. I make macaroni cheese from scratch and just the cheese is expensive. I then also add some bacon/onions. I could get frozen portions from Iceland for £1 each. Wouldn't be anywhere near as nice but would be cheaper. I sometimes have the Tesco frozen pepperoni pizza at £1.45. I definitely couldn't make my own any cheaper.

I do actually do most of my cooking from scratch but it can be more expensive. I don't want to eat a bolognaise that's bulked out with lentils for example. So if I make one then I do have the cost of the meat to factor in. I'm lucky in that I only have myself to feed now so don't need to stress too much.

@PurpleButterflyWings I'm really not getting that vibe from this thread. There are people out there who really like cooking and enjoy the organisation and the challenge of cooking something which others enjoy. There are phases where I do everything from scratch but then after a couple of days I'm back to pretty much what you described above. Nothing wrong with either approach.

I do however have loads of weeds in my garden and I'm fed up with gardeners looking down their noses at me😉

100% this! I am much younger so sadly had very limited HE lessons in school (was in school 20 years ago) but my grandmother lived with us shortly after we got married and I was absolutely amazed at how resourceful she was when cooking. She would make sure there were multiple things in the oven as you mention, when using a pressure cooker, she had ways of using steaming baskets or other dividers so multiple items cooked simultaneously, when the electric hob was turned off at the end of the meal, she would use that heat for another purpose. Also, the stock example I gave earlier - using all leftover veg trimmings when cooking main meal to pre-make stock.

There is also an element of ensuring all ingredients are used - in our convenience lifestyle, if we don't feel like eating something that involves using up the bits leftover from the previous day, we don't and will make/buy something new. By using up all the last bits, we are being so much more resourceful

If these skills are taught and used, there is no doubt making at home is much cheaper and healthier.

I can't see how its a class thing to cook from scratch, I did it because we were dirt poor. It was cheaper to buy bargain ingredients from a walk round all the pound shops than it was to buy ready meals which we could definitely not afford. We might have a bought pudding once a month as a treat but on the whole we never ate cake or puddings because we couldn't afford them.

@Sallygoround631 - but that's not the real cost of the cake. It doesn't cost £10 to make a cake, and MOST people are not going to buy all of the ingredients in one go. Even if you don't have cinnamon/ginger, you are probably already buying eggs, have flour in the house, have sugar already (maybe not brown but the world wouldn't end if you used white)...

The real cost is more like:
Carrots - c50p per kilo, so maybe 20p for the cake
Oranges - not completely necessary - use a splash of orange juice if you've got that already
Sultanas - 45p max for a cake (totally guessing at quantities)
Flour - 20p max
Oil - 60p
Eggs - 60p
£1 brown sugar
Ginger/cinnamon - pennies (also not completely necessary)

Topping:
optional

That's about £3 for your cake (before fuel). Yes - more than a bought cake will be, but much nicer.

@BarrowInFurnessRailwayStation
What fresh veg do you cook in your air fryer if you don't mind me asking? I am really interested in this as I tend to use it mainly for teen "beige" food like frozen fries and scampy. I'd love to use it for other healthier things too ... .

@Calafsidentity oh, you're so right about the Asian food shops. You can buy bulk spices and sauces from places like Wing Yip so much cheaper (it's novel enough to keep the kids interested while walking around the aisles too).

Why is this thread so focused on cake! We're in the midst of an obesity epidemic - the least concern should be how cheaply families can bake vs buy cakes.
For what it's worth, we cook everything from scratch APART from cakes - I don't have the time or inclination to do so.
Simple home cooked food made with potatoes, pasta, lentils, beans, oats, noodles is still typically cheaper than the ready-meal equivalent.

You don’t believe it because you don’t do it? Bizarre. I cook from scratch because I enjoy it - yes, some of us enjoy cooking! I also think it tastes better - I don’t like most shop bought cakes and I enjoy caring for my family by preparing nourishing food.

I’m also an outdoor person - we grow our own vegetables, another reason I enjoy cooking from scratch.

Sometimes we’ll do a quick meal, but I don’t use ready meals personally. I don’t like them. Each to their own but don’t disbelieve people just because you don’t like cooking

I think actually that ready-made processed crap may become more expensive and people will have to go back to learning how to cook proper food from real ingredients. Only once we realise that butter, meat, out-of-season fruit and vegetables etc are actually really expensive will we learn how to use them sparingly and appropriately. We've become quite used to having eg chicken breast a few times a week or fresh asparagus and peppers in January. It's not really a sustainable way of eating (on so many levels) and it needs to change.

Homemade compared to bought is only fair if you too are using the same cheap ingredients. The point though is that if you're cooking or baking from scratch you can choose to use better quality ingredients - which may cost more, but then you'll adjust for that, so not have cake/meat/etc so often, and instead make much cheaper, more nutritious meals.

Fully agree with your post and the one you quoted.

Less packaging cooking from scratch

Also trans fats & palm oil in shop stuff,

Fortunately both me and my partner enjoy cooking. We do most things from scratch because I'm coeliac so a lot of processed foods are off limits. We do still have lazy meals, but it'll be a jacket potato with tuna and salad for example, rather than a ready meal.

It is clear from your post that YOU feel inferior because you don't cook from scratch. I couldn't give a damn whether you or anyone else does, it is none of my business. I just do what I enjoy and that is cooking! Unlike you, I am not judging and saying that some else is wasting their time by choosing something else to do

As for your cake, the supermarket ones are absolutely vile, far too sweet and full of crap. We don't eat much cake at home as it is an occasional treat. When we do, it will be one that has been made from scratch at home. The children and I get a lot of enjoyment from planning how we will make it, making it, decorating and then eating.