To make cooking from scratch a thing of the past?

[Mumhangingon]

So I'm sat here 1 hour in to cooking a steak pie from scratch. I've totted up how much its cost me in ingredients along with the cost of the oven running for 3 hours and I'm thinking why am I bothering? I know it will be much nicer but is it worth paying 2 or 3 times the cost of a premade pie from the supermarket? Or even a butchers? Same for lasagne, cottage pie etc? I want to do my best for my family but the cost of living is making it too costly.
Is there a secret I'm missing? Or is it just cheaper to buy premade.
I'm grateful to be able to put food on the table of course, I'm just sat here thinking about ways to cut costs where we can.

Roast dinners are very quick to prep and the oven does most of the work. Then you can shred up the remaining meat, mix it with the leftover roast vegetables, pour over the remaining gravy and slice up your leftover roast potatoes for a really crispy topping. Or if you don't have enough, make a mashed potato or pastry topping.
2 meals with minimum prep time and the taste is often better than a dedicated pie recipe.

'Scone' to rhyme with 'bone.' Everyone knows that.

I imagine it’s 3 hours to (probably slow) cook the filling and then bake the pie. That seems about right.

I completely understand OP - the only consolation will be that it’s much nicer.
if you make double the filling and freeze 1/2 it at least means you can make another for comparatively little effort.

Oh my sweet Jesus.

I have a (normally lovely) colleague who said 'scoan' just yesterday. And, tbh, I've gone right off her now.

And I would ban anyone from my village who says SCONN! Just ewwwwww.

I prefer cooking from scratch as I know the exact ingredients and it doesn't have preservatives in to extend shelf life. Also I can avoided certain ingredients that set my stomach off. Its a great way of adding lots of veg to dishes so you know the family are getting healthy food. I did bit a cooking sauce a few weeks back and we myself and dd had upset stomachs after which made me realise what crap goes into some ready foods.

You aren't comparing like for like. Compare the amount of meat in your ready made pie with a home made one and compare the taste.

If you can find a shop bought pie that is cheaper than home made and tastes as good let me know where you shop please

Its a Skon from me!

Pies were traditionally made for using up leftovers. In fact the best moussaka I've ever cooked was made with leftover roast lamb leg (and all the leftover trimmings).

I made a little chicken pie just for me the other day!

Quick pastry in the food processor then rolled out while the filling cooked ( 5-10 mins on the hob), line a pie dish with the pastry and cook on a baking sheet in a hot oven for 30 mins. The whole thing probably took 45 minutes max, with most of that cooking time. Not faffy at all.

I did feel guilty about having the oven on for a pie for one though, so I baked an apple for my pudding at the same time 😂

A lot of PP taking about using slow cooker or pressure cooker. Don’t want to derail the thread but can anyone recommend one? I’ve never had/used one before. Also are pressure cookers and slow cookers the same thing??

Life is too short to make your own puff pastry!

To me, yes it's usually worth it because it's healthier and tastes better.

I've been experimenting with cooking things from scratch and noting the cost pp and how much faff it was. Some things I've kept up with (eg amazing shepherd's pie recipe, and shop bought lasagna is grim), and others I've ditched as not worth the effort (gnocchi). I try to keep the cost down by buying reduced price ingredients and basing meals around those.

What's the fastest cake?

Scone.

^doesn't work if you mispronounce it.

Oh, and a pie has a bottom.

I like Jon Thorners pies from Ocado - probably the only ready-made pie I'd happily switch from homemade - not cheap though. I guess you could just use ready-made pastry (all butter ones) and use fillings that are quicker to cook - not slow cook beef. Agree that planning so that leftover meat from a roast might be more economical than cooking meat especially for a pie. The thing is, the nicest ready-made meals are expensive now so I'm not sure, even factoring energy cost, that there's not much savings to be made unless you buy the very cheapest ready-made food.

Pressure cooker. Perfect stewed steak in 15-20min max. And a million other things. Also batch cook to make the most of the prep, ingredients vs cost etc.

Well as you've described it, no, it's not worth it. But you're not using a very cost/time efficient recipe I think planning ahead is key. Eg I use my slow cooker which is way lower cost than the oven. I make double the amount, one can be used eg for a stew and then use the remainder as a pie filling.

Or a big batch of bolognese sauce, frozen in family sized portions. One for spag bol, another adapted the following week for lasagne, another the week after that for chilli. For example.

I'd buy a pie before I spent the time and money on the recipe you're using. But then I'd never have chosen it knowing there are other ways of preparing a pie filling. .

It's not just the cash price, it's the effort dvd thought involved. I'd need to have preplanned buying the ingredients etc, which I'm not likely to do. And it's so much effort to do, when the kids need watching/interacting with and I'm exhausted. I simply haven't the spoons.

Menopause, two kids with different SEN, food aversions and allergies, a flipping useless DH who is trying his best but actually makes life harder (ASD), I'm ASD as well, housework piling up - fuck it. Pizza for DD, fish fingers for DS and takeaway/something easy for DH and me.

The most I do these days is read the labels to avoid the worst additives and make sure everyone has fruit and fat in their diet. There's more important stuff to worry about.

This risks me sounding like a smug arse, so apologies if that's the case. It's not meant that way.

My mum (and her mum before her) had a very old school cooking approach. They were skint. Grandad was a poacher.

Pies are a way to make cheap ingredients go further. The economy comes from buying a cheap cut of meat that's roasted slowly on a Sunday, and then chucked in with a load of old (about to go off) veg to make a pie filling, stew, and casserole to feed the family for another three nights. In this context, a bit of butter and flour, a few potatoes, or some suet (dumplings) are all cheap ingredients to stretch out the cheap meat.

(Appreciate butter is v expensive atm. Wasn't always the case)

Buying the ingredients for a pie in isolation, never mind the man hours and oven running costs, is not economical at all. Shop bought does make more sense.

In my (old fashioned - I'm not a Tory, honest) view, this is why we have such a skewed food system and economy. We don't have the time or the resources to cook like this any more. My granny was poor, could make a mean pie, but didn't have to earn half the household income whilst simultaneously doing home exonomics magic.

I LOVE cooking. But I work full time and we're still mostly skint. It's a circle I can't square.

They're not the same thing though there is a pressure cooker you can buy that has a slow cooker setting, confusingly.

I have a sc and a pc (with a sc setting). I use the sc a bit (not loads because it doesn't make the sort of food I like) but I've never used the pc because I'm scared of it!

I stopped making my own lasagna because it used to be far cheaper to buy a family sized one - not so sure anymore.

Maybe it's more about adapting. The steak didn't need to go in the oven for 2 hours, simmering on the hob or better still 20/30 minutes in a pressure cooker would have slashed the energy costs for the pie. A shepherds/cottage pie can be put together and then put under the grill for a bit rather than put in the oven or just use the hob to make mince with veg in gravy & mashed potato and serve - it tastes the same.

You and I can be friends 😃

I much prefer eating a 'cooked from scratch' meal as it tastes so much nice but I will only do two 'proper' meals each week .. other times I just have a sandwich, jacket potato, cheese on toast type meal or leftovers. DH does his own thing & likes cooking for himself so it works out that I am not spending too much time in the kitchen. But not so easy if you are cooking for a family.