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.

I can't imagine having a steak pie in the oven for 3 hours.
Like all mothers (although my DC are now grown), I took the attitude of cooking from scratch some of the time, and buying readymade some of the time.
But I also prep in advance.
ie, when making pastry, I make double and freeze half (or you can buy ready made pastry, and just cook the rest).
Nothing goes in my oven for 3 hours, tho;
When I use the oven, I try to cook other things as well, to make more efficient use of the heat.

I find cooking from scratch is what keeps our budget right down. We only spend £200/month on the three of us and cats because I cook every meal and can do it extremely cheaply at its basic level. I'm creating an ebook around this and plan to sell it at 99p a go to help people with this because I've seen this come up lots. I make meals like that but they don't take an hour, they are quick, easy, cheap, and nutritious.

I would slow cook the beef on low overnight, buy ready made puff pastry to cover it and transfer to over for 30-40 mins to cook the pastry. Not 100% homemade but much easier than 3 hours in the kitchen.

@mavismorpoth
That sounds great! Could you give us an example?

Yes a very quick and crude one, but apply the principle to all recipes.

I've got 14 recipes, so two weeks, and costing up every single meal. Pancakes to feed a family consist of milk, oats, banana, and that's it, that is £2.60 per batch and they can be saved to reuse as a snack.

If you add maple syrup that's another £4 but you can get a bag of crushed nuts or just top it with banana or a cheaper syrup. So you have the basic that will feed you and then the fancy which you customise.

Lentil curry. It's a tin of tomaties, a tin of coconut milk, 1/4 bag of lentils, handful of rice, tin of kidneys, then spices. That's about £4 a batch and it will either feed 6 people or can be saved for later in the week. I will adjust costs for ingredients re-used, so while the bag of lentils was £2 say, it will make about four of the meals including lentil bolognaise which then brings the cost of that meal down.

The legwork of costing it all up is done with a view to making it super easy for a family to just use the book as a quick guide to shopping and cooking for two weeks.

It uses no meat or dairy and minimal processed foods but of course then you can add in these things to your budget.

My concept is a cookery course in a book which actually skills people up to being able to knock out decent meals in minutes, as I can, through sheer practise over many years of being a home cook because I enjoy it.

My aim is for every family to be able to provide nutritious meals for the family without a second thought about cost or difficulty.

You can just search for easier, quicker recipes. I find cooking for a larger family much cheaper for cooking from scratch but it was just the two of us one meal could cost up to £30 and a take away or pre-made would have been £8?? Such a difference.

These days I tend to make cheaper home made meals (rice/curries/pasta/bread soups) that last a couple days and don't take too long on cooking time. Pies, fancy grilled meats and veg etc are once a week or for a treat (more because don't have time with LO).

We don’t buy takeaways but buying from somewhere like Cook is worth it as I don’t have the time or interest in cooking from scratch. They also taste lovely.

I’d say a lasagne takes longer than that, but for most of that it’s in the oven, so hardly onerous.

Cook the ragu and while that’s simmering for 20mins or so make the bechamel sauce. Layer it up and bake for 40 mins.

Yes, it's not including cooking time.

But we ARE including the cooking time in the "inconvenience" factor on this thread aren't we? I doubt the op has just been prepping her pie for 3 hours.

I cook from scratch a lot and have been doing so for 40+ years. A decent lasagne would take me 3 hours at least start to finish, ditto cottage pie. So I only do them when I'm not working and if I feel like making the effort.

How can lasagne take 3 hours?? Genuinely interested in what you do!

I do a slow cooker full of a rich mince ragu that will give me 4 lasagne's or 8 spaghetti bol's.

Presure cooker will always give me a couple of extra curries.

I make a batch of pasta sauces, blending loads of garlic, jars of olives, roasted peppers, sundried tomatoes, tomatoe puree, chilli flakes, and a couple of packets of vacuum packed beetroots.
Blend the lot up and bag it into 8 bags and freeze.

Bubble it up, add passata and cream cheese for a simple dish or fry veg and chicken and add it into the veg with cream.

So easy and fast.

Lasagne only gets made from a ragu in the freezer.
Couldn't be spending hours on dinners at this stage of my life!

Batch make beef stew in pressure cooker/slow cooker. Freeze half.

Remaining half put pastry on top and do in overn for about half an hour. (microwave first if not using straight from slow cooker).

Dumplings or cobbler is alternative to pastry that's cheap and can do in slow cooker.

I worked in food factories as a teenager. I prefer to eat food that hasn't had ten people's hands in it. Plus there are loads of additives and preservatives in ready meals that are bad for you. They're fine now and again but I wouldn't eat them every week.

If cost is an issue, try reducing the meat a bit and replacing with beans, or make a veggie pie instead.

@Tadpoll lasagne takes me ages because of the meat/sauce, I simmer it for a long time, same with spag Bol

Even now I’m retired and there’s only the two of us I only cook from scratch if it is batch cooking as it all takes too long. So once every few weeks I’ll batch cook mince dishes, bolognese, cottage pie, lasagne and make about 8 dinners. And at the same time do a few casseroles.
So I do cook cook from scratch and then eat them from the freezer. Other days it’s stuff like grilled chicken or fish with veg and rice or pasta or potatoes. At least twice a week it is jacket potatoes with cheese and beans.
There are certain things I no longer cook from scratch though! My days of folding, refrigerating, rolling, repeat for any sort of pastry other than shortcrust are long gone. If I am hauling my vintage Kenwood chef out of the cupboard I batch mix crumble and shortcrust pastry and make a few cakes.
I love cooking and baking but I’m not doing it every day even with more time.

Thank you
@mavismorpoth, it sounds like a good idea.

Bought steak pies are rubbish but I cba cooking them either so I don't bother. Although I'm thinking, I could make the filling in the slow cooker, then slap some premade pastry on, and stick it in the oven for half an hour and jobs a good un.

Shepherds pie I think is cheaper to make from scratch, if you make a big one. But lasagne probably cheaper to buy. Although I'm shit at lasagne so maybe thats affecting my judgement.

That's exactly what I do.

I also do a chicken one.

Chicken breasts, leek, mushrooms a 50/50 mix of crème fraiche and condensed mushroom soup, salt and pepper.

The amounts you use depend on how many people you are feeding and the size of the slow cooker. I use 2 breasts (or the equivalent in/mini fillets thighs) one can of soup, one leek, 4.5 mushrooms in my small slow cooker.

I eat half with rice and veg and then make a pie with the leftovers that I put in the freezer. I use a foil pie tin so it can go straight from the freezer into the oven.

If I'm feeling healthy I might also add some peas and sweetcorn at the 'pie' stage so that it is a complete meal.

I cook from scratch because I enjoy it. I think most meals work out cheaper that way too but it depends on ingredients and also how many you are cooking for and also how much worth you place on nutritional value and quality - I guess a steak and ale pie from the supermarket would work out cheaper, but if you make your own it would include more veg and certainly more meat. You could probably just make your own pie and use less meat and then it would already work out cheaper. But steak and ale pie is probably not the best example re-cheaper meals from scratch! A lot of other homemade meals will work out cheaper, especially veggie ones.

Sounds really nice! Trouble with me is I’m cooking for 5 adult size portions every day- if I cram the slow cooker to the brim it just about is enough but we need at least 4 chicken breasts to go round to start with! So nothing left to freeze and can’t really batch cook as much. So annoying!

@mavismorpoth I'd be genuinely interested in following an Instagram account if you set one up. Your ideas seem really useful

I cooked from scratch for 40 years and once both DC had left home I vowed to live on ready meals forever. I am lucky in that cost isn't a factor.
It didn't last long, I did go back to cooking after a few weeks but am no longer so sniffy about ready meals. What I would say is that I would only buy ready meals without meat as the quality of meat is so dire.
I tried Hello Fresh once. It was much worse than cooking my own recipes from scratch, horrifically salty and poor quality meat. I cancelled after one week.

I follow a great account on Twitter,@OverAtSusies She does meals for people who can cook, so an assumption that you know the basics, but just want the odd bit of inspiration.

Ach @Blix, ditto with the DC's leaving. I was sooooo fed up with the endless grind of feeding the family that I swore: no more cooking for me! .... but like you, it only lasted a few weeks.
It did make me think hard about the next 20 years or so though. And I'm determined not to spend quite so much of it catering at the highest possible level for a DH who's never cooked do much as a boiled egg for me.
I eat a lot of toast now.

Wilko, I love a toast tea! Makes me wonder if I should just have offered mine a toast tea once a week. They probably would have loved it, especially in front of a “ video” and not sitting at the table with knives and forks!

Ummm… No I guess she’s not asking for permission. But she asked a question. I answered. Your problem
is?

Maybe you could answer the OP with your words of wisdom instead of berating everyone else?