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.

It really depends on what you're cooking. Homemade food does usually tend to be tastier though.

If you have a cupboard full of herbs and spices and the other basics, Tinned tomatoes etc, it's definitely cheaper. But you also need to buy the tupperware to store and freeze it.

For someone who doesn't have the store cupboard staples, then I would agree.

I deffo cba making my own houmous tho.

@Fixyourself you're missing the point. I said cheaper, I didn't say better, and I included lots of caveats to make my point clear.

I agree with the OP, some ready made food is surprisingly cheap to buy and to heat up…but no one should be forced to live on food that is nutritionally poor that won’t support their health.

I agree. I hate when I see recipes costed out saying 1tsp honey (or other ingredient) 2p, for example, when you can’t buy a tsp of honey by a whole jar. And that’s fine if you will be making the recipe loads or it’s a good store cupboard ingredient.

What about the Mumsnet chicken? I thought that fed a family of four for four nights?

For Spaghetti bolognaise I have just worked it oit!

@Katypp Aldi prices:

cheapeast microwave meal is 75p for a 400gram meal

from scratch:
1kg mince
2 tins tomatoes 800grams total
1 tin 400grams green lentils (I always add to bulk it out)
1 pack 500gram spaghetti
Bit of garlic powered and mixed herbs

£4.68

this would make 2.2 kilos of Bolognaise sauce
PLUS the spaghetti. And a whole pack makes loads
If you said a pack of spaghetti serves 5 people (100g dried each obvs weighs more cooked )

It’s 0.93 pence per portion. BUT the weight of the bolognaise sauce per person (without pasta) weighs more than the whole of the microwave meal with the pasta.

Many moons ago when my darling pfb only ate things I made, had 10 fruit or veg a day and the full colour wheel he was ill and off his food and had medicine that needed to be take with food. My gran who crooked from scratch because that’s all she knew and had raised plenty of kids to adulthood advised me “they always eat chips”. I remember buying a sack of oven chips for £1. I spent weeks like an insufferable prig telling everyone that of course people would choose a sack of chips if they were on a tight budget like no one else had joined the dots.

I understand what you are saying op. I do a lot of cooking with base ingredients and enjoy it. My issue is with recipes that need a tablespoon of something and you'd have to waste a pot or or tin of something for that tablespoon.
I've never made pasta, the cost of eggs are not worth it and you are left with lots of egg white. Unless you have planned a pavlova for pudding it seems wasteful.
I have made pizza dough but the hours of proving are not worth the effort vs a ready made pizza. I have made lasagne but my god, the washing up alone is not worth it. Steak puddings and pies take so long to make. I make chicken nuggets, the kids prefer frozen.

You're not comparing like for like though, are you (and your caveats are really you indicating that this is the case).

It don't doubt it's cheaper to buy a ready made lasagne than Iceland, than to make a lasagne from scratch but the the lasagne you make from scratch is not comparable to the Iceland one. To make a similar quality lasagne it would be cheaper from scratch.

I agree

Home cooked food is better in so many ways, but I don't think it's the cheapest way to eat

I don’t think that’s what I thought people meant when they say “it’s cheaper to cook from scratch”. I think what I mean is that if I personally had a really small food budget (like I have at various times) I will eat very cheap homemade meals from e.g. a huge sack of 50p potatoes, half an onion and half a tin of 30p chopped tomatoes, total cost like 30p per meal. I don’t mean that the equivalent to a shop bought thing is always cheaper homemade. I agree if you want choice or a specific thing then some things shops do better.

@Katypp
pesto is another no brainer to make from scratch, due to cost/effort

if you are mega organised, meal plan every week, make in bulk and freeze etc then I can absolutely believe it would be cheaper.

however most of us don’t have the time or inclination to do that. Most of us work too!

Chinese food is designed to be cheap in terms of energy requirements and ingredients. Chop everything small to cook it quicker, only small amounts of meat, fish or eggs used. Inexpensive sauces and pickles used for flavourings.

It is really difficult though to eat that style every day if you have grown up with a different diet.

Hummus is probably a very good example and I agree. And it's a healthy food.
Natural Yogurt exactly the same.
Cheese, the same.
Smoked fish, the same (although smoked food is as healthy, but it probably compensates in case of fish).

Bread, not sure.

Other foods must be cheaper to cook from scratch in a gram for gram price comparison. How you work it out? No idea! There's cooking costs too, like using the oven, washing all utensils etc.

I prefer home cooked food for taste and health reasons, even the frozen meals from Cook are not as tasty as home made versions but I think they pass the health test. Regular ready meals from supermarket (including M&S) are not that great and I never use them.

When all things considered, it can be expensive spending so much time working out the cost of food shopping and cooking. I could be using that time working and earning money instead. Which is more enjoyable in my case.

In other countries, there is more acceptance that food is not cheap. People are used to spending a higher proportion of their income on food. And it tends to be more on fresh produce. I wouldn't think they are delighted to spend so much, but it has always been that way.
Maybe the UK will go the same way.

Your example is wrong

Tesco chickpeas 60p 40p (usually on a 4 for 4 for 3 offer so usually 30p)+ lemon 30p a squirt from a bottle = 90p 50p and that's before you add olive oil and tahini sesame seeds or sesame oil.

If you do 3x tins of chickpeas (so approx £1.20 ingredients) you can fill 2 sandwich box Tupperware.

So the example you gave is cheaper to make your own.

And you can make substitutes. Unless you are using premium olive oil then sunflower will do just as well.

Energy bills will now play a huge cost as well. Take something like shepherds pie - you need the gas/electricity to make the mince and the mash then the oven to cook it afterwards. our smart meter already says if we use 2 hobs for 20 mins it costs about a pound just for that alone.

yet a own brand ready meal could cost something like £1.25 and then 2 mins microwaving cost. So infinitely cheaper.

I’d generally agree. (Although you can buy tins of chickpeas and lemons for less than you say, even now, and you’d get much more. Also not entirely sure 69p humous would have any noticeable amount of Tahini in it)

a huge sack of 50p potatoes

Out of interest @FudgeSundae where are you getting potatoes at that price? The cheapest ones in tesco yesterday were 99p and were neither huge nor in a sack, a normal plastic bag of wonkly potatoes

The cheap houmous won't be made from olive oil though - it'll have vegetable oil, almost no tahini and also quite a lot of water. So if you were following a similar recipe your can of chickpeas (240g drained weight, 60p) plus lemon juice (bottled, not fresh, 10p's worth), vegetable oil (2p), plus a couple of garlic cloves (6p) plus water and salt would give you about two tubs of houmous worth and only have cost you 78p - so around half the price. So if other things have similar mark ups (I think they do in average) overall you'd halve your food budget by cooking from scratch. Yes it is more work and requires a bit of cupboard storage.

Last time I tried to make hummus it broke my food processor.

it wasn’t cheap!

I know you listed your caveats but I just wanted to add that cooking from scratch is an investment in your good health.
The fresh homemade hummus will be more nutritious for sure, but it also has fresh garlic and fresh lemon juice both of which can help your body fight infections and keep your immune system functioning well.

If you're feeding a family, I think cooking from scratch does often work out cheaper. For a single person or couple, then maybe not.

You also need to consider the recipe you are following. If it is a premium one then they want to recommend top ingredients so that it is the best version of itself. If you look at a basic online recipe or a book aimed at budget cooking you'll get a different recipe- because the aim is to make something palatable for dinner, not something to show off at a dinner party.

Lots of people living alone have very small cupboard and fridge/freezer space, too, which limits storage of raw ingredients, all the leftover raw ingredients, the containers, the finished products etc. Add in the cost of the energy use, too.

I find a lot of ready meals quite good value. You can get Waitrose 'ready to cook' meals, used to be 3 for £10 though I think it's now 2 for £7.50, and they're not totally processed or full of crap - they're mostly stuff you'd use yourself, but just don't need in large quantities. For a similar price to the meat/fish/main veg, you also get the sauce or spices or coatings or whatever, and then just have to bung it in the oven. Same with the Cook meals.

You might make tastier ones yourself ,but I don't think I do! Cooking for one is a pain at the best of times, so a decent selection of ready meals can help. I do get a bit tired of the same ones repeatedly and wish they had a few more, but it's still not too bad.

I'd like to find some cheaper recipes that are easy to cook for one and don't take much time after work, but I don't think it's as easy as it might sound.

If you're just buying ingredients to cook one portion then of course it's not cheaper - because most ingredients come in pack sizes enough to make many portions. But, if you have a decent store of dried food, and batch cook and freeze portions, it can be cheaper.

The thing is it's not only money that's worth something - your time is worth something too, and if you decide that a ready meal (for example) or a pre-made sauce saves you enough time to make the extra cost worth it, that's absolutely fine.