To get annoyed when people parrot that it's always cheaper to cook from scratch?

[Katypp]

Caveats: Home made food is usually:
A. Nicer
B. More nutritious
C: Made with proper ingredients that you can control
D: More filling
E: Not made with fillers, starch etc

But it's not always cheaper!

Time after time, when people post about food costs, the trope is always make it yourself, you'll save money. This post is in frustration after yet again, someone tripped it out on a budgeting forum. Someone commented that Tesco budget hummous is quite nice, to be told, as always, you can make it cheaper yourself.
You can't. Eastman's hummous 69p

Tesco chickpeas 60p + lemon 30p = 90p and that's before you add olive oil and tahini.

Yes I know you can soak your own chickpeas and buy in bulk at an Asian grocer etc, but that level of organisation for most people is beyond the effort of just picking up a tub on the weekly shop.

For the record, I am a very keen home cook and have also run a food business and written about food in the past. I enjoy cooking, but I am sick of people trotting out this line without thinking about it, especially on budgeting and money-saving forums.

But that usually makes tonnes of houmous. More than you'd usually get in a tub and it won't go off as quick. But yes I get your point.

I absolutely agree with you. It is much much cheaper to eat utter shit to be honest!

One tin of chickpeas will not make a ton of hummus

Cooking from scratch is fairly often cheaper. Baking, OTOH, is nearly always massively more expensive. I don’t bake. Cost is a great excuse.

And tahini is an expensive initial purchase. If you’re on a tight budget you can’t afford to buy those kinds of ingredients unfortunately. You’re living day to day.

Maybe worth it if you want to eat humous every day for a week.

it’s definitely cheaper though for things like batch cooking spaghetti bol, when you compare to the amount you’d get in a microwave meal.

@chillipenguin the tub of hummous is 200g and the tin of chickpeas is 400g undrained weight, so you will get more, but not tonnes more and by weight the home-made version will still probably cost more when you factor in olive oil etc

Completely agree with you!

For my diet- Asian food mostly-it is. Not for everyone.

I said this in a thread yesterday. Someone said not to buy frozen pizza as it’s cheaper to make your own. The frozen pizza I buy from Asda is £1.15. It wouldn’t be cheaper to buy pizza dough/ingredients, cheese, tomato sauce and toppings. Yes I’d have more pizza for my money but I don’t want to have to eat pizza for a week.

I think it depends on what you're making..
Batch cooking one pot meals is brilliant, I love doing it but do I want to make my own hummus or baked beans or faffy things like fish fingers, not really!

Surely it depends on the food and quantity. But yes - not always cheaper to cook from scratch.

Cooking from scratch is cheaper than buying ready meals for one or two when you can make a huge amount yourself.

Yes but people are great at deceiving themselves.

It's not unusual for me, purely out of curiosity, to add up the prices of all the ingredients for a meal using my receipt, then divide it by the number of portions I get out of it to get a 1 person cost, and then compare it to the price of a one person ready meal. The price is often roughly thr same as the ready meal or sometimes more to do it from fresh.

@IvebeenUpAllNightNoSleep is it though? Weight for weight? You've said the ready meal portions are small. Could you cook the same amount for less money? People assume it will be cheaper but it's not always the case.

Totally agree it's more expensive and not to mention faffy, I just don't have the time to cook from scratch.

I think it probably is cheaper to cook everything from scratch but you'd need to have the money upfront to buy huge quantities of ingredients in bulk to make big batches. You'd need the room to store ingredients and freezers to store cooked food. You'd also need lots of time to do all the prep. You'd need a car to collect the bulk amounts of ingredients, or enough money to shop somewhere that delivers (Aldi and Lidl don't). You also need basic cooking skills and not everybody has these.

If you want to eat more variety than tinned tomatoes on toast, I believe for most people on low incomes nowadays their cheapest realistic option is to buy processed stuff.

The really cheap cooking suggestions also seem to assume a stocked store cupboard. Yes, you may only be adding 5p of herbs and spices, but they come in packets that cost much more. You need to be able to afford the initial purchase.

And that’s why cancer rates and obesity are soaring!
Your body need whole foods and not processed crap!

You also need to have all the equipment and knowledge to know what you're doing. That's not always the case

Also factor in energy costs of actually cooking the things from scratch, rather than reheating and the difference will slim down again.

But yes, where I can, I'd rather home cook meals.

Agree, it has to be something you'll cook every week to be worth it

That's great but some people now can't afford it. Cost of living and energy prices?
Fed is better than not fed, no matter what it consists of

@Katypp a 400g of chickpeas is 240g drained weight so not much difference at all from a tub of houmous!!

That might be true but what has it got to do with the cost of home cooking?