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.

Ok. You sound furious over nothing.

I do the same even freeze 1/2 tin of chopped toms I also buy a punnet of toms and sun dry them . don't waste anything . I literally run my home like a business and love cooking from scratch but I do have the time I know others don't .

Yeah a nice simple easy lunch. EVERYONE always has those ingredients in their cupboard. FFS this place sometimes!

For my Bolognaise Pricing example upthread, people have pointed out it’s cheaper than the microwave meal.

i realise this, I was making that point exactly! For 93p you could have probably double the portion size of the convenience spagbol. possibly even more than double. I just couldn’t be bothered to work out weight of cooked pasta!

See fried rice is a "using it up" for me, so like a pasta bake
If I've got spring onions in, a bendy carrot, anything looking a bit dodgy, it all gets chopped up or grated. So it wouldn't be chicken probably but I might put a bit of bacon in or just the eggs. Wouldn't buy anything especially for it except Stir fry veg is often reduced (like salad) so it's one I grab if I see it. It's just a way of making another meal with not much in

Cheaper or not, thought it might be helpful

Omelettes are another one, and I had a couple of potatoes left from making mash. Cubed them, spray oil and whatever seasoning and put in the air fryer to go with the omelette

B&M has tuna in at the min, princes and it was 6 tins for about £4.19 when I looked
Not great if you're on the absolute bones but if you're just cutting costs a bit...

@Katypp

Your hummus example is highly disingenuous. Nobody in their right mind would go out and buy all the makings of hummus if money was tight or even if they were sensible. Bought hummus is much nicer and much cheaper. However, if money was so tight and a kitchen was so devoid of ingredients that only buying ready meals made financial sense, I don't think I'd be buying hummus. It would be frozen pizzas and ramen noodles all the way.

I'm a good cook and extremely frugal and I do not have a jar of hummus lying around. I do have olive oil, bottle of lemon juice made from concentrate, and a few cans of chickpeas. I shop in Aldi for staples and pick up a fair few items in Walmart and also at the dollar store. I venture to the supermarket for meats and fish. Cooking from scratch is far cheaper where I live than buying something to bung into the microwave.

Exactly this. Lots of things are much cheaper and more convenient to buy ready made. Some people obviously have all the time in the world to cook everything from scratch. Some of us have busy lives.

@Thehonestbadger - great post.

Depends how and what you cook I guess
I live alone so it's batch cooking a 6 portion cottage pie, then freezing it down individually. The energy cost is then just to microwave it each time. I do alternating meals so I end up with a freezer full of "ready meals"
Or I eat basic food like a stir fry, omelettes, salad, beans or scrambled egg on toast, carbonara

I don’t know what everybody on MN has in their cupboard. I know what I have in my cupboard, and I know it is considerably cheaper than a shop or supermarket meal deal. So you can ffs all you wish but it’s somewhat unnecessary

And don't forget the fuel costs of cooking from scratch. All those years ago in the 1930s George Orwell wrote about this in the Road to Wigan Pier.

Apparently the government had calculated that you could eat a healthy diet on the dole. But it involved a lot of lentils and they hadn't factored in fuel costs. A lot of poor people at that time didn't have cooking facilities either.

In practice mostly people on the dole drank sugary tea and ate fish and chips and were undernourished.

@WhileMyGuitarGentlyWeeps so sorry for not eating only chicken nuggets and chips.

Expense aside, that's not a particularly healthy lunch. It's the sort of 'lunch' I ate when I was suffering from anorexia and it's definitely not something the hospital dietitian would have classed as an acceptable meal for a typical adult!

I think that one of the things that complicates things here is that people who are foodies often cook from scratch. And that can mean experimenting with different cuisines, lots of fresh and some obscure ingredients. And many people who cook from scratch enjoy cooking, so don't mind spending time and perhaps some money on it.

I'm in neither category. I cook mostly from scratch, but mostly with dried, tinned or frozen ingredients. I'm lazy about cooking so I gravitate toward stuff that works in the microwave or airfryer, without much chopping. For me - single, busy, trying to be healthy, not much into meat - this works out cheaply and without waste. If I were buying fresh all the time and making my own condiments, it would be more expensive and much harder to portion and time. I make ten minute meals from scratch, and I don't buy stuff that's too much bother. Would no more make my own hummus than my own cheese ...

Whenever any recipes are shared on MN outside of the Food forum, somebody will argue that they don't have the ingredients
Their kids won't eat it
They are allergic to chickpeas:)
It's poncey or snobbish.
I make a similar sort of chickpea salad except without olives, and with tomato and onions.

It depends what you're doing but yes, it often is. I made a lovely cheesecake a few weeks ago which probably cost 3-4 times in ingredients what a shop bought one would have cost. It was lovely though.

What we need are community kitchens, where people come together to cook large quantities together, teaching basic techniques to those who don’t know, and sending each participant home with a meal.

Also for years of shift work, being on rotation, on call in new locations it makes sense to take your own lunch. On a practical level
cost, obviously lower cost
convenience, I don’t get the time to go out and traipse to try find a vegetarian meal

What's the difference between people who cook from scratch and 'cook from scratch snobs'?

Is this something in the eye of the beholder?

We had ready meals once a week once my mum went back to work, before that it was homemade burgers and cottage pies. Other days (post-working) we we had filled pasta with read sauces, pasta and pesto. Sometimes we had beans on toast. I.e. she was a completely normal working mum. She seems to have selectively forgotten this and seems to be horrified whenever anyone mentions anything 'ready'. It fucks me off - she had all the ease of convenience cooking with no judgement.

Anyway I agree about the cost. I've just cancelled my organic veg box because it's suddenly got really expensive and that's just veg.

They thing is you will always find examples of where shit is cheaper with certain dishes

but that’s not to say cooking from scratch isn’t cheaper

we have a lot of curry’s,spag,bol lasagna and pasta all these were cheaper from scratch

but if your desperately trying to prove a point there will always be examples that support both sides of the argument

Genuine question
How’s that actually work?
define community, who is eligible? Self referral or GP,HCP, SW? What location?
are ingredients bought by participants or the community kitchen

For real savings you need:
Upfront money to stock a cupboard with oils, spices, pulses etc plus fresh food
Space to store all the ingredients
Space for a decent set of cooking equipment
Time to prep all the food
Money for fuel to cook it all
Space to chill / freeze the excess for another day (money to buy & run freezer)

All these must be factored into the 'cost' of cooking from scratch.

It's someone who passes obvious judgement on ready meals, as opposed to someone who doesn't care how other people feed their families.

Veg boxes they are a scam
you pay a lot for random items delivered with their accompanying CV and waffle about provenance
just go to the shop and buy some veg