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.

Truth

Of course all the store cupboard items,the herbs,the oil,the seasoning have a cost and outlay to initially purchase them.

Absolutely

I make bread, pasta, pastry, sausages, ice cream, yogurt, gnocchi, chutney and jam. I don't do it regularly only when I have the motivation, inclination and spare time.

Except chutney, I also buy all of the above regularly because I sometimes don't have the time or inclination. There is a big difference between being able to do something and wanting to and being able to afford to do it.

I grow my own vegetables and herbs but I also buy other things I don't grow.

These are some of my hobbies. I know it is expensive and I've amassed equipment and foodstuffs over the years.

I don't look down my nose at people who enjoy other foods and things in life and I don't expect people to judge me for being me. Thankfully we are all different.

I suppose the difference with the home made houmus is that if you have that with some toast you know you have eaten a meal with some protein and vitamins whereas the cheaper bought stuff won't have the nutrients nor be as filling .

It's a difficult one .

Regarding the cottage pie, if making from scratch then halve the amount of mince you would normally use and pad it out with veg or beans (I think baked beans goes nicely but others won't!) . After adding the mash just pop it briefly under the grill rather than putting the oven on .

That is why meal planning is so important, though. The kids and I sit down every week and decide what we will have that week - each get a free choice of two dinners and I make the other three based on what fits with the ingredients.

It takes me no longer in the shop because I shop weekly - I did that even when I had to schlepp four bags and a rucksack from the nearest Aldi.

This is another fallacy .

Meals which are more calorific are either the luxury versions or food eaten out, particularly fried chicken or the 'gourmet junk food ' now sold in most pubs.

An economy spag Bol or cottage pie ready meal is mostly very low in calories - definitely lower than the one you have made yourself .

You are correct @Katypp
I cook from scratch most of the time and it is definitely NOT cheaper.

Every time I cook from scratch it is more expensive!!

I cook from scratch and it is considerably cheaper and it’s tasty too.

Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you.

I think there is a halfway house between eating only Iceland ready made meals and making your own hummus from scratch using dried chickpeas.

I'm a reasonable cook and cook most days from scratch, but wouldn't dream of making hummus.

Pots of soup, casseroles etc bulked with veg and pulses etc are cheaper. So is most batch cooking.

Yes batch cooking, soups, pasta sauces, pasta bakes are all cheaper when homemade

Reading this thread makes me so glad that I don't like hummus or much other ME food, I once had a bad experience with chick peas, even writing it makes me heave!

But, as has been said over and over again, batch cooking assumes you have money, a freezer and are happy to tie up cash in food for another day. If you have a small weekly food budget and fussy kids, batch cooking is unlikely to work.
I don't get why this is so difficult to understand.

Jar of Tesco value pasta sauce = 39p

Cheapest tin of tomatoes is 28p, which leaves you 11p for onion, garlic, oil and anything else.

You might be able to make if for the same price if you go easy on the oil and have herbs 'free' in your cupboard, but 'much cheaper'? I doubt it.

I think it’s about right 750g 5% Steak mince 4.79 tin cherry tomatoes 80p tin plum tomatoes 40p garlic, tomato purée, herbs, paprika.Grated cheddar ( kids prefer it) Spaghetti 30p. I suppose the cost is in the mince but my dc weren’t keen on half mince bulked out with lentils version. Feeds 5 with a lunch or two leftover.

But houmous is such an easy thing to make, it is fine if you don't want to but the reason many people do make it is it is so easy and tastes good.

I'm guessing you have a blender?

It would be interesting to think about demand for a home cooking go starter kit, for repeat food bank users in the right circumstances. A large bottle of cooking oil, salt, pepper, vinegar, a couple of spices, oatmeal, milk powder, sugar, flour, red lentils, stock, cocoa powder - would that kind of thing have helped people in difficult circumstances? Trying to stick with things that could be useful without two much energy consumption

this is the kind of relief food parcels some NPO /NGO distribute in many countries , but for various reasons I don’t think it could work here ,

but what I don’t get is the lack of fresh food distributed by food banks, There are things that last weeks like , hard cheese, eggs , veggies like potatoes , onions, carrots, Garlic in fridge and when distributed will probably be consumed very quick.

Yup.plus the mental headspace.the tins,foil, and pans,herbs and spices,and of course the money for electric to cook these things.

Yours is cheaper than the £8 for 4 people. I put carrot and courgette in mine. I have a blender so used to purée the sauce when dd was little… A couple of big carrots, two tins of tomatoes and a medium sized courgette with 500g mince at £3.50ish and a large onion with spaghetti and grated cheddar feeds 5/6. So a little cheaper again… not that I’m trying to compete as I spend plenty on other food. Just illustrating it is possible to cook this on a tighter budget.

That is why meal planning is so important, though. The kids and I sit down every week and decide what we will have that week

@Skethylita and in the process you are teaching your dc some great life skills about meal planning and budgeting and eating.

I've been doing some satellite work that's drawn me into contact with refugees living in hotels. Every family there is desperate to cook. They don't have a thing, and what they want most is to buy a few spices, a few vegetables, and just cook food, in a kitchen, that is familiar, comforting and meaningful to them.

I don't know, I'm just looking at this thread and the comments with enormous interest and thinking about the fragments of the big picture - how people eat in poverty. It is absolutely the case that the poor in this country have much worse food and food choices than poor people in many other countries.

Love of good, locally-sourced, home grown food and cooking with whole ingredients in this country is seen as almost elitist - it's the absolute norm elsewhere. Only a few decades ago, it was the opposite - poor people grew crops and cooked basic but healthy food.

Around the world, people bake bread every day - on hot stones, in community ovens, at home. Here, making bread is sneered at as being a middle class folly.

I'm not arriving at any major point, just putting my thoughts out there.