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.

Why would anybody be comparing humous and ready meals with the homemade versions of those? That’s not what people mean when they’re buying processed food because they can’t afford to cook.

They mean toast for breakfast, instant noodles with more toast for lunch and crap chicken nuggets with chips and beans for dinner.

£1 for potatoes, 40p on the cheapest bread,, 80p for 2 noodles, 80p for nuggets and 50p for 2 teams of beans so for £4 you’ve fed 4 or 5 people for the day and got leftover potatoes and bread to go with cheap sausages or burgers or whatever for the next day too.

I’m vegetarian my experience is cook from scratch is always cheaper
no one is compelled to,it’s my preference
if you prefer the shop bought then crack on,buy that. I buy frozen veg it’s cost effective, portion controlled,no spoilage
regard baking, imo it’s cheaper to make a banana loaf than buy one. I already have purchased all the other ingredients. The additional cost is the energy costs

i appreciate that cook from scratch isn’t something everyone wants to do or can do. I do what works for myself. I’m not evangelical about it, simply it’s cost effective and I don’t need to cook when I get home. I reheat a meal I’ve cooked.

Have you factored in the cost of new clothing when you go up three sizes eating rubbish?

I can assure you that you can put on a shit ton of weight just eating food you've cooked from scratch. In fact a a homemade lasagna will probably have way more calories than a ready made one..

If you meal plan and ensure you use leftovers for another meal you can stretch out your food. You also need to try and build up a stock of herbs and spices etc as those are needed to make things tasty, those cost money. You also need to have knowledge as it can be quite daunting for some - I love cooking but only got better in my 30s.

Some things are cheaper if you cook them yourself. I made a really Big Pot of Mac cheese for tea yesterday. 30p a packet penne. Cheese and butter are expensive so it cost about £3. Two pounds for side salad. It fed 6 with a couple of lunches spare.

loads of things are really cheap to buy like biscuits. With oven costs I can’t see how it is ever going to be cheaper to make your own.

It really depends on how many people you’re feeding/ facilities/ storage for batch cooking but generally cheap rubbish is more affordable in the moment.

My son doesn't cook from scratch very often and when he comes over I normally buy him a 'boxed' take away curry to take home. This time I thought I'd treat him to the Wagamama pad thai packet so he could make it himself. Cost me the same as a curry pack - Wagama packet was £2.50, chicken £4.50, beansprouts £1, red onion 21p, fresh chillies 59p, mange tout £1.50. Junk is cheaper!

It's obviously not cheaper to cook from scratch if you have to buy in lots of store cupboard basics beforehand, but once you've made that initial outlay it can be both cheaper and much better.
And I appreciate that buying-in staples or bulk buying might not be possible for some, or even many, especially while ready meals appear reasonably cheap. But with ready meals sometimes you don't get very much for your money - portions can be small, especially for anyone doing physically demanding work, or for growing pre-teens and teenagers. Nutritional values might not be very high either.
It seems many of us will have to do some working out to see what works best, even if it seems difficult. Eg for a family of four, with medium to hearty appetites, buying ready meals could work out more expensive -- while an older couple, on the state pension and with smaller appetites might find ready meals are sufficient for them and not wasteful, especially given the expense of cooking.
There's no easy, one-size-fits-all solution, IMO. I'm sorry if that sounds patronising, I don't mean to be, but what else can we do? I wouldn't hold my breath over help from government, if I'm honest.
(And yes, I'm a grandmother and I know how to suck eggs.)

Similar here, I spent many a miserable winter with shite microwave food or worse just plain noodles, i do remember a few neighbours trying to tell me how To batch cook, then I'd take them inside and show them what I had. I've always been able to cook, I learnt from my mum, I'm pretty good at it.
But as good as you are, you cannot magic up ingredients, storage, cookware from nowhere.

No kind of life for anyone, and I'm glad I'm out of that era and highly unlikely to be back there again. But more and more people will be in fuel poverty and unable to cook anything but the most basic, quickest to nuke microwave meals or omelettes or stir fry. Anything quick, using the least pans and utensils.
These are the things we should be sharing.
Utterly pointless saying cooking from scratch when turning you oven on for an hour is beyond your means.

I do feel for people, who are unable to batch cook for a variety of reasons already discussed. Sky news recently featured a nurse, who said she couldn’t afford to eat a proper lunch so bought a tub of meal replacement / protein powder and made shakes as it was cheaper than food. My understanding is that it cost £2 a shake. She seemed to live alone but obviously I don’t know her circumstances and commitments, when not at work. However, this sort of thinking illustrates that many people in many different walks of life don’t have the means, whether it be money or the skills required. She is one of the people, I presume, who would have enough money to buy basics, batch cook, buy a food flask and eat a hot meal at lunch daily.

Yeah - the cost of baking is astronomical 😱

Also, it occurs to me that people are being told at the same time to work harder, take on a second job/“side hustle etc”. You can’t do that and cook from scratch, you need plenty of time.

Haven’t RTFT but you can buy dried chickpeas in Tesco, you don’t need to go to a specialist shop. And they are definitely much cheaper. And you can leave the tahini out, most supermarket hummus barely has any either.

A home made spaghbol by the time you buy mince, onions, tomatoes, other veg, pasta, parmesan and you’ve paid the cost of gas/electricity you’ve probably spent about 7/£8 on making a meal for 4 people.

I don't think those figures stack up at all, for that sort of money I would probably make enough to feed 8.

No,it doesn’t necessarily take loads of time to batch cook,you cook a few things at once and freeze
i batch cook about monthly and that’s soup, curry, ragu, pasta sauce. 3hours tops from the prep to completion. Cooked and portioned up in 2-3 hours.

Agreed and I wouldn’t be buying Parmesan if I were on my uppers.

It’s a funny ole thread. Usually mn is falling over itself to cost the MN chicken that cost £3 feeds 19, makes soup,risotto, sandwiches,curry and leftovers that a 6’6” rugby playing dh and sporty (always sporty) teens couldn’t finish.
However, today it’s £8 to make a spag Bol that only serves 4

This was brought home to me recently when I got a free week’s delivery of four Gousto DIY meals (thank you to the @ Mumsnetters who posted the codes for a free box!).

it really struck me how expensive they would be if you had to buy all the items yourself - ie not so much the headline items but all the bits and pieces (eg a teaspoon of ground cumin, a tablespoon of tomato paste, a teaspoon of chilli powder, soy sauce etc etc).

I have a good cupboard of spices etc but I hate to think of the cost of cooking from scratch from scratch

same as making or growing your own stuff. I think it’s from times gone by when convenience stuff was rarer and more expensive. But definitely not now

In much of France, you can go to any village market and literally ask for a few pennies worth of a spice or herbs. There are huge sackfuls...hand over your money and the guy will measure out how much you've got money for.

I'm not romanticising - it's practical and accessible for everyone. I wish this country valued food and people more. Poor people SHOULD be able to eat well.

Re: the 'bit of chicken' upthread, any butcher will sell one chicken drumstick if you ask, and many will hand over chicken carcasses for soup for nothing.

Tesco chickpeas are 60 pence - lucky you to get them cheaper

I agree that poor people eat worse in the UK than in other poorer countries. For a variety of reasons. My gran was dirt poor and from a country with no benefits or safety net, and even she ate better.

The ones (chickpeas, tinned tomatoes) you get in the “world foods” aisle are usually cheaper - I can’t remember the brand and can’t be bothered to walk downstairs to check

@WhileMyGuitarGentlyWeeps and @DorritLittle - thank you, yes that makes sense. There seem to be people here who are missing the point that any food at all is better than none, which is the reality that more families will face over the next 12-18 months.

I agree with DrCoconut that there will be a lot of idle ovens and hobs and pots and pans that won't aee much use this winter. Plus long lines at the chipper.

Farmers' costs are going to rise as winter feeding costs kick in, and thanks to drought in Europe and war in Ukraine corn/maize based animal and poultry feed will be in short supply. What was the UK hay yield this summer? In the heel of the hunt, the consumer will pay more across the board for both processed/convenient food and for ingredients for home cooking.

I was thinking about the MN chicken today after DH suggested that we might need two chickens and was I sure one was enough.

There's no such thing as "leftover chicken" if you're feeding four teenagers after a football match.

There was actually nothing left - clean carcass (1.5kg chicken), no leftover roast potatoes or carrots nor the slightly random stir fried sugar snap peas and three peppers and sweetcorn I served because they needed using, not any left over gravy (made from chicken juices - polishes halo - and ready made stock power stock (scandalous). DD and her boyfriend praised the food and helped clear up then DD asked if it'd be alright to make a sandwich later.

We're lucky to have well stocked cupboards and a big separate freezer, but I find the claims that meals cost pence because you can just use up left over xyz so disingenuous. Where do all the leftovers supposedly come from?

The MN chicken only works for a very small, sedentary household (perhaps a single mum with a desk job and a toddler).

@Abra1d1 - the Hubb Community Kitchen is an example of what you're talking about. It was highlighted by the involvement of the Duchess of Sussex.