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.

Badgirlriri it isn't cheaper if you buy pizza dough - that's not making from scratch! It is cheaper if you make your own pizza dough, in which case a base costs less than 10p.

I'm not judging - we buy ready made bases as the teens happily make their own pizzas using them but cba to make dough (and obviously if you do it properly with yeast and leaving it to rise instead of cutting corners and using baking powder/ self raising flour it involves waiting hours).

Often when people say they're cooking from scratch they aren't, and the "half way house" part prepared ingredients make the finished product more expensive than either a cheap processed ready made version or something genuinely made "from scratch".

Obviously genuinely making things from the basic ingredients requires a big store cupboard full of ingredients and is often much more time consuming and absolutely not a realistic option for people who are juggling full time work and extensive caring responsibility (especially if they don't already have the extensive well stocked store cupboard).

Oh dear. I thought I had made it clear in my first post that I am not comparing quality, health or wholesomeness, just price. Which of course, is the criteria you have to use when on a tight budget.
I KNOW homemade hummous will be much nicer and more wholesome with better ingredients, that's obvious. I am not comparing like-for-like, I am comparing cost-for-cost.
And pretty much all of the examples so far rely on an element of bulk buying and a store cupboard of herbs, spices, oil etc.
Yes you can make bolognaise cheaper but that assumes you can afford to fork out nearly a fiver for the ingredients, and are either prepared to eat it every night or have a freezer to store it in. It also assumes you have the cash flow to have most of your outlay frozen for the future rather than to feed your family now

I agree, sometimes it’s cheaper to buy ready made. Where savings can be made is by batch cooking. This is much cheaper than buying several ready meals or convenience foods, but you need store cupboard staples, storage space (for dried goods and freezing) and of course, time. A lot of people simply don’t have that. Many people don’t have the financial means to buy in bulk. There is also the matter of knowledge. I grew up in a family where cooking frugally was the norm. A lot of people have never been taught how to cook from scratch or how you can make several meals from one piece of meat and a load of veg, carbs.

groceries.asda.com/product/baking-jacket-potatoes/asda-british-fluffy-golden-large-baking-potatoes/24932 Is what I was thinking of. I used baked potatoes for most things - often cheaper and no peeling!

Posted at exactly the same time. I think we are both saying the same thing.

That's not a huge sack - thats 4 potatoes in a plastic bag! FudgeSundae

I think if you compare like for like as in your hummus example, it’s often not cheaper. However, in more general terms of planning a weeks menu and making it all from scratch, so mostly cutting out processed foods, it might be cheaper and will definitely be tasty and nutritious.

Jack Monroe tweeted a photo of her shopping yesterday - spent just over £18 and claims she can cook 42 meals - 3 people over a week. Then about 5 tweets down the thread, she agreed that she used lots of her store cupboard and freezer ingredients. So yes, I could claim to cook a meal for thruppence but I’d have to raid the cupboards for most of the ingredients.

Cooking cheaply is all about savvy shopping and economies of scale. I’ll buy mince when its reduced, freeze it and then when I've stockpiled enough, make a huge batch of something like bolognese in my slow cooker, portion it into freezer bags and bung it in the freezer. I can probably get 10 portions for 50p a portion depending on how reduced the mince was. Last week, I made 50 child sized portions of a variety freezer meals using mince, chicken, beans as the bases, cost me £24 for all the ingredients apart from herbs. That’s 48p a portion.

@Katypp

Humous is cheaper to make - I shop in Lidl. Chickpeas were 35p this week, 4 lemons was 55p (use bottled to save more), tahini is £2, olive oil £3 but they last months. I paid 79p for humous last week there but a can of chickpeas will make a bigger quantity too.

Many scratch cooked meals are far cheaper IF there's 3+ people and especially if you have a freezer. There are things that I can buy cheaper shop bought but they are few and far between

With the hummus example I agree (although we get chickpeas for around 30p) – and if you’re on a budget the initial outlay on tahini (£4 min?) is costly. I think there’s also the time spent – if you’re busy and time poor too, sometimes that’s an extra cost to weigh up in itself.

For stuff like dhal and soup it’s massively cheaper to make yourself, and the volume you can produce and store in one go makes it economical time-wise.

I guess the issue is when people get smug about cooking from scratch and use it as a stick to beat others and feel superior! A 60p pot of hummus – it’s not exactly Mariah Carey’s rider is it?

Christ isn't life too short to make your own hummous

These work out at 56p a kg. Buy these, same potatoes, and you'd be paying 39.6p a kg
groceries.asda.com/product/white-potatoes/just-essentials-by-asda-white-potatoes/910003089142

I used to cook loads from scratch but arthritis has killed that.

@Badgirlriri

Pizza cost depends on numbers of mouths. The £1.15 pizzas (a) serve 1 and (b) taste horrible.

The cost of dough in my bread machine is circa 60p including electricity. That makes 4 bases, add 2 balls mozzarella (50p each) passata (50p) and whatever else needs eating in the fridge - say a pepper (40p), onion (10p) chorizo (£1) 1/2 punnet mushrooms (50p). £3.60 (the electricity is a cost for shop bought too) for 4 adults

It’s relative, isn’t it? Depends on amount, number of people, outlay of ingredients and energy. Plus what you spend your time doing usually, too. There’s no point flapping about with chick peas if you hate cooking & your consultancy fee is £xxx an hour. Quicker to open the tub!

I see where you are coming from but I have mainly always cooked from scratch

Yes, I totally agree with this.

And what people don't seem to realize is that you are not swapping out equivalents. It is not, I can by canned spaghetti sauce and pasta or make my own sauce and maybe even pasta.

If you are really short of money what is more likely is you are buying something like bulk frozen mini-pizzas on sale which can be incredibly chap. There isn't much to them, but they cost less.

What I see a lot of the poor kids in my job eating is Mr Noodles.

I am on a tight budget with no transport. I find that unless you beat the others that buy the yellow sticker food, making from scratch while healthier costs more some times. I always buy rice, and sacks of potato's , and packs of mince.

@ThePresentTimeIsNow

Number of mouths being fed is a huge factor. I'm often cooking for 6 adults, it costs me circa £10 but when (phew) there's just us two home it doesn't cost much less because (a) no economies of scale and crucially (b) I cook differently, we often get Gousto boxes for instance. Money isn't tight these days

Chickpeas in World Foods section 3 for £1.
Lemons from greengrocer 6 for £1
Tahini from 99p shop 99p
Garlic 69p for 4
Olive oil - I don't bother with it, use a bit of the chickpea water if dry.

2 tins of chickpeas, juice from 2 lemons, 2 cloves of garlic or to taste.
4 tbsp of tahini.
Blitz with blender. Put half in freezer.

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
This is why I do meal planning. Many ingredients crossover to different receipes. I use tins and tins of chickpeas peas for convenience but always save the water for other meals for instance.
Sure there's often an initial outlay eg tahini,olive oil etc but they are used in so many other recipes it's not a one off purchase.

You don't need a bread machine to make pizza dough - I find bread machines a collosal white elephant and they take up a lot of space as well as using unnecessary electricity.

I'm not disagreeing that expecting people to make their own dough as a money saver is unrealistic though!

I used to make 'deconstructed' shepherds pie and just assemble on the plate. Definitely not quite as yummy without the grilled layer of mash, but when I was living in a van and had a craving for it, it was so-able

What a lot of people don’t allow for, is that it’s not JUST the basic cost of ingredients that many have to factor in. There’s the Fijian I’ll implication of the time element, time to shop around for cheap ingredients and bargains. Time to actually cook the meals. Time when you could have been working and earning money.
Theres the cost of fuel. To drive yourself to these various shops to look for bargains. Fuel to cook the food, which will usually be far longer than putting a ready meal in the microwave.
There’s also the “set up cost” of purchasing lots of items that you only use a small amount of at a time, but are a costly outlay in the beginning. I remember watching “Ready Steady Cook” back in the day, where contestants were given a budget of £5 per meal. However they had the use of a store cupboard of “essentials” that would have cost a small fortune to purchase.
Bulk purchasing brings the average cost per meal down, it’s cheaper to buy a 2kg pack of chicken, than it is to buy 10 lots of 200g, but if you only have £5 in your purse, you can’t afford to buy the £20 pack to start with.
Not to mention the cost in quality time. Especially for those working around families, family/ quality time is an increasingly precious commodity. When I get home from a 10hr shift, exhausted, is it more important to spend the two hours before my child goes to bed with THEM, doing things that they enjoy, helping with homework etc, or in the kitchen slaving over a hot stove? Yes, they can help with cooking, but they’re not going to want to do it day in, day out, everyday when they get home shattered after school and childcare.

I buy 12.5kg of potatoes at a time for £7 from a local shop selling fruit and veg. I've lived in a few different counties in the UK and always found shops where I can buy in this way. It involves going to more than one shop for groceries but the sacks will obviously last longer, so for me it averages at once a month.