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.

Making pasta is incredibly time consuming! Especially rolling it (and here you really do need the hand roller to het it thin enough, so equipment cost outlay though no electricity). Obviously its faster to cook than dried pasta (so saves electricity long term I guess) but the time outlay is absolutely crazy for an ordinary week night meal!

Comparing home made pasta to fresh from the refrigerator section it is cheaper, but it's not cheaper than the cheapest basic dry pasta.

Also, huge sacks of potatoes go bad.

I went to get a potato from the cupboard yesterday and found the ones in the bottom were rotten, and I have a family of six! It's because they are last years potatoes, the new baking potatoes are not out yet here, so they don't last well.

It was a fairly full bag so 2/3 of the cost down the drain.

@MerryChristmasToYou @notacooldad But again, your examples assume people have time to shop around (supermarket, greengrocer) and have the money to spare to build up a store cupboard. Tahini and olive oil are expensive buys from a small shopping budget even if they are used up for something else

Yanbu.

The money it would cost me to, for example, make a macaroni cheese (factoring in flour, milk, butter, cheese, buying macaroni pasta, buying mustard which would never otherwise be used) it's more expensive than just buying a £1 readymade one and adding herbs that I already have to it.
And also there's the time factor.
Most days I certainly don't have the time to spend standing there scratch cooking after work. And neither does DH.
My mil is very guilty of forgetting that I work full time and frequently don't get home from work until between 6pm-8pm.

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

It takes ten minutes.

Like some PPs have said, the cost of food is not just about what you buy in the supermarket.

It's the old adage that it's expensive to be poor.

If you are set up well - with pots, pans, a big freezer, enough money to have the cooker on for a long enough time, a big supermarket close enough and easy transport then it's easy to make meals in bulk and cheaply by batch cooking once a month.

If however you live in a flat that has space for only a fridge, with a freezer compartment, never had the money to buy store cupboard ingredients or buy a decent set of utensils, and live in a food desert where your only shop is a corner shop that sells ready meals and the occasional apple or you have to get 2 buses to transport your groceries from one of the cheaper supermarkets, that option is not open to you and food / feeding yourself and family will be much more expensive no matter how much you can cook - because the options that are suggested for saving money are just not possible for you.

As others have said, depends what your cooking. Cook a couple of big Chinese type stir fry dishes with rice. You could do lunch and dinner for four people with about £1 of rice, £1 of eggs and maybe £3 worth of vegetables including a bit of chopped/diced chicken plus soy sauce other seasonings. Five quid for a day’s meals. Totally normal, tasty nutritious food

Op, I'm glad you have calculated the cost of making hummus. I've been telling myself to make it from scratch for ages instead of buying from Aldi 70p ( or thereabouts)

I don't have to feel guilty about wasting money now.😊

a big supermarket close enough and easy transport then it's easy to make meals in bulk and cheaply by batch cooking once a month.

Not having a big supermarket close is the reason I batch cook. I do one big shop a month. If I don’t batch cook, the food will be off before I get to use it.

I'm all for cooking from scratch, but houmous, come on!!

My mum makes her own houmous. Slimming world version with no oil. It's pretty gross.

@theworldhas Oil? 'soy sauce and other seasinings' in other words, a store cupboard, the cost of which you have not accounted for. And I am intrigued by the 'bit of chicken' - where did that come from?

It’s also the cost of Energy. Cooking a ready meal in the microwave is very cheap for energy but having a large oven on for a long time can cost a fortune. If you’re making a lot you need to store in a fridge/ freezer ( or the rest of the ingredients if you’ve bought extra of those) Plus there’s the cost of washing up needs to be factored in.

Really the up-front cost issues are huge.

I cook on a budget, I'm not poor but I have a big family on a somewhat lower income than some.

If I want to do a new recipe that uses some type of condiments or things I don't keep in stock - say I need fish sauce and some spices that are different - that will send my bill up that week quite a bit.

Or, I usually use honey we make ourselves, on the odd occasion I have to buy it the outlay makes me wince.

If you are really poor, you simple are unlikely to be able to but these kinds of things very often or at all. My solution is that I keep a pantry of certain things and I don't cook recipes that are asking for a lot of things outside of that - so I keep things for Indian meals in stock, but not generally Japanese recipes.

But people who are really poor and struggling are less able to do even that. A jug of oil, a jar of honey, a jar of tahini, these are expensive investments.

Certainly won't be now leccy/gas costs through the roof..

Not everyone is conveniently within a short walk or drive from budget places like Aldi/Lidl.

and driving from one place to the other to save few ££ on Groceries is a bit daft .

In terms of getting calories in for £ spent, cooking is definitely not always cheaper. In terms of getting real food, I think cooking is overall cheaper. What a lot of people eat is not really food, it is ultra processed food and therefore is incomparable.

But when on a very low budget it is hard to cook from scratch due to equipment, fuel costs, time and other pressures.

I'm not judging anyone's choices but scientifically speaking some of the very low costs 'food' is really unhealthy and it is awful there is no option for too many people.

Same here. I can barely get a tin of tomatoes open.

What can you manage? I eat a fair amount of soup.

It's not ALWAYS cheaper, of course, but you have to compare like with like. My homemade pizza is not comparable to a £1 from somewhere, but even if I compared it with a better quality one, ready made may be cheaper factoring in energy.

Some things are definitely cheaper though - I'm about to make croutons from stale bread. Definitely cheaper. Making a sandwich or coffee at home will be cheaper. Same with smoothies.

Homemade houmous (trad recipe with oil) is way nicer than bought houmous.

Making your own coleslaw is far cheaper.

It also assumes things you make will come out fine as well. I’m a shit cook, so things don’t always come out edible.

OP this is AIBU any opinions expressed on here are not necessarily those of the people posting them.

Also, there's the cost of pots and pans. I have a basic set of saucepans from Wilko and one bent frying pan. I own exactly 1 roasting dish, 2 flat trays, and one ceramic dish. And half of those things are items DH moved in with me with, 5 years ago!

If I was to cook from scratch properly, every meal, it would be a massive financial outlay to purchase the necessary pots, pans, Utensils to do that.

And then purchase a bigger freezer to store food in. And enough tupperware to store it in.

It is absolutely true for me.

I am vegetarian and the majority of what I eat is just vegetables, fruits, rice, tofu, noodles and pasta.

The only processed stuff I will add occasionally are things like fresh veggie burgers and sausages.

I think ready meals are too salty in general and taste incredibly bland. They've always seem like a waste of money to me.

Some things can be made cheaper but there is also a lot of premade stuff that is really cheap as bulk made with cheaper wholesale ingredients