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.

Yes, every suggestion is met with
You middle class ponce!
Chicken nuggets are cheaper
I hate lentils and will never, ever eat them
What, you expect me to buy five spice? How very dare you?
You must have a kitchen like Jamie Oliver and two Vitamixes
You probably don't work long hours
Nobody taught me
I hate hummus
You are a rich Tory ( ok I made the last one up).

I mean....it's getting a bit ridiculous.

I find it odd that Jack Monroe can make some godawful tarkari ( Hindi for a vegetable dish) from a can of chickpeas and people will praise her for being inventive, but apparently people who actually invented tarkaris are privileged.

Half a population is WC in UK. People need to stop saying essentially that half a population can't cook

Absolutely this.

I think it's about food waste. You can spend your whole Saturday cooking something lovely but by Monday no one wants it again and the rest ends up going in the bin. Collectively we waste a horrifying amount of food. Time is the other factor. It takes time and planning and time spent shopping before you even start cooking. We all have such busy lives and I do sometimes buy ready meals, I try not to do it too often though - all those additives.

That is what freezers are for though. About 96% of population has freezer.

@ClaraZ , freeze some of it, and think of inventive ways to re-use the rest.
You can do things like wraps/fajitas, bolognese, cottage pie etc

@ClaraZ Why are you spending a whole Saturday cooking?
what’s a whole Saturday?8,10, 12 hours? Genuinely,Why is it taking so long?
planning should take a couple minutes, and then obviously go shopping
its a domestic set of meals it doesn’t require whole days and precise planning

You can spend your whole Saturday cooking something lovely but by Monday no one wants it again and the rest ends up going in the bin

Why?

Thank you for little bit of common sense. This thread needed that, although everybody will probably ignore you.

Most folk I work with batch cook and bring in their own food
the students on placement they bring in their own food too. It’s really not that unusual and for folk who don’t have a lot of time it’s actually pretty sensible

unfortunately this has become so polarised and entrenched that some posters are never going to admit batch cooking is achievable and straightforward. It doesn’t take whole days, it’s not labour intensive, it doesn’t require a sandhurst degree to initiate meal planning.meal prep, batch cooking it’s really very straightforward and not a middle class bags of honour

I think most people make the best decisions available to them. If lots of people on very tight budgets tell me that the best way to feed their family is a frozen co-op meal deal i just believe them. They know their cooking situation, stores and budget better than I do.

I get that most people can benefit from the odd tip or suggestion, whatever their situation so im not adverse to ideas, its just they probably need to be quite specific.

@AntlerRose , you'd be surprised - there are people out there who have no idea how to cook a meal from raw ingredients.
I know someone who has no idea what to do with potatoes. She buys the tinned ones and microwaves them

Thank you @kavalkada 😊

But she is doing the best she can do in her circumstance.

She might benefit from specific help with how to boil and store some new potatoes.

Absolutely! There are so many great cooking shows on tv there is no excuse for not being able to cook. Anyone who feels hungry is able to cook. My favourite tv chefs are Jamie Oliver, who I think is a genius because his recipes are simple, healthy, practical and delicious and you don't have to be cordon bleu trained to do them. Sometimes I see him make things (normally at the end of the programme) and I think, come on Jamie, you're just showing off there!! I couldn't make that!! I love the Hairy Bikers but I would say they are more "fancy" than Jamie. Nigella has some great recipes but she tends to use hard-to-find ingredients. Delia is my last resort, her recipes work but she is a tad boring. My favourite food writer is Felicity Cloake, I use several of her recipes regularly and I love that she's so meticulous in her research and first you have the pleasure of reading her and then you get to eat something delicious that you've cooked. She's for your day off, though :)

We can't afford to eat out so I try to recreate the experience at home. Cooking is a hobby of mine. I enjoy doing it.

@AntlerRose , yes. She's one of those people who isn't quite as bright as most.
I think the meal deals can be a quick way of filling bellies, but they won't be cheaper than home cooking. I think a lot of people think fresh ingredients are more expensive than they are. The OP and the hummus is case in point IMO. A 400g tub of hummus is £1.50, the home made stuff I make is much cheaper.

People say they bin fruit and veg - why don't they buy exactly what they need, or meal plan accordingly?

Takeaways are really cheap where I live - it makes me wonder how they can be so cheap, but they are not nice. You can eat cheap food like instant noodles but they are not good for you.

People say they bin fruit and veg - why don't they buy exactly what they need, or meal plan accordingly?

In fairness, it can be annoying to have to buy prepacked vegetables especially if you're a single person. I find that especially in the cheaper supermarkets like Aldi, there's not a lot of loose fruit and veg so you end up spending more on a kilo of carrots when you only needed 2-3. I used to prefer to get my vegetables from a market stall if I had time.

You can't often buy just what you need, though.

At my local supermarket ,I can only buy packs of 3 peppers, or 3 courgettes, for example. 3 onions. Tubs of mushrooms. Packets of creme fraiche or soft cheese or something that's far more than I need. Etc

And when you live alone, that's just too much. So I get out of the habit of trying to cook, and as a result, am not much good at it.

Yes I could try to use up spare creme fraiche or whatever, but when you've already made one recipe that lasts 4 days with it, you don't need to do it again. And I don't want to be finding things to make that I don't really need, like desserts or things to just 'use it up', as that's bad for my health too.

A lot of ready meals are just a piece of meat/fish with sauces on, ready to cook, much like you might make yourself, and you just put them in the oven to cook without having leftover veg, cheese, spices, herbs etc. I don't think it's that unhealthy really and it can certainly be cheaper.

Christmas food is a good example of when ready made is cheaper. I've costed up making a home made Christmas cake and Christmas pudding. So expensive...much cheaper to buy shop bought versions, even the posher makes.

Yes, anyone who can operate the internet to watch a YouTube video can learn how to cook a cheap and tasty meal from scratch if they want or need to. But it has to fit with someone’s life, budget and they need to have the motivation.

My working class grandmothers cooked delicious dinners when they were the age I am now, but they didn’t work out of the home and they had the time. They also didn’t have a choice as most convenience food didn’t exist. I cook from scratch most of the time because I enjoy it and I like particular tastes, but I switched gratefully to ready meals and quick stuff such as egg on toast when I was nursing a family member as I lacked time and headspace. Class doesn’t necessarily coincide with cooking ability.

Should not skim read thread titles.

I thought OP was cooking (and presumably eating) parrots.

😂 I think most would be quite a pita to eat.

I thought OP was cooking (and presumably eating) parrots

Is that just a middle class brag? Are you batch cooking parrots? Check your privilege.

Only when I fancy a snack. One can't always stomach a full swan, you know.

Not entirely sure why a couple of pps are making digs about me.
I find it bizarre that soneo e can't grasp that spending £26 to bulk buy olive oil on a £30 budget is unattainable, but maybe that's just me 🙄
The funny thing is, I do everything that is considered 'good' on here - I batch cook, I cook mostly from scratch and I bulk buy. But I am not blind to the fact that these options are not open to everyone, unlike some posters on here. I am not advocating not cooking, I am merely stating that options to save money in the long run are no good if you have to go without in the short-term. I'm not sure the woman I wrote about originally would want to spend her £30 weekly budget on whole spices and a pestle and mortar!