To think it’s impossible to food shop cheaply if you want to cook recipes from scratch

[onetwoshoe]

There’s a few recipes I want to try from my cookbook but all of them command different, infrequently used ingredients which I’m not sure I can justify when spices and herbs are now over £1 dried, more if fresh.

Another example is that I’d like to try making my own naan bread but shop-bought is cheaper, goes further and lasts longer. I’d love to make hummus homemade but again, cheaper to buy it from a shop than the initial outlay of all the ingredients separately.

AIBU to think it’s impossible to cook nice, different meals from scratch for two adults every night on a food shop of less than £100 a week?

We do have the odd night of jacket potato and beans or similar to bring the cost down but I just think most times ingredients are very costly right now.

I think we have gotten very used to being able to "cuisine dip" throughout the week, which leads to having to buy multiple spices etc each week. And that makes things much more expensive.

I think you can cook from scratch relatively cheaply, but not if you want foods that go with naan breads, hummus etc on different nights throughout the week.

Can you make hummus this week, but in bulk and have it 3-4 times? Make flatbreads as well (the flour & water ones so cheap)
One night have halloumi & roasted veg with it
Another with couscous stuffed peppers
One night with marinated chicken breast (use spices you have in)

I highly recommend batch cooking. We spend £100/£150 a week on everything including (but not only) food. We cook from scratch most nights doing spag bol (lasts two nights) pasta bake, risotto, chicken pie, Chinese noodles or egg fried rice etc. But we cook for 5 of us including two teenagers and make a lot of two night meals. For 2 of you, you want to cook a lot then freeze and store so you're not eating the same meal for 3 nights on the trot and can spend a bit more on making interesting meals.

The only expensive ingredient for hummus is the tahini and you can get a jar for less than £3. So yes there is an upfront cost but you will more than make your money back. If you only ever buy for solo meals it is going to cost more

agree that some recipes use some obscure ingredients but I would just avoid those.

also agree about bulk cooking - if you expect a radically different meal every night then you will struggle

I agree that herbs fresh or dried can be expensive , but with dried ones the will last you a while / few recipes.
Don't get either from a normal supermarket tho , go to a Indian/ Chinese/ Jamaica etc grocer's. Or if you can get a cash and carry card for somewhere like Costco or go with someone that has one.

It's a bit of a pain to do the extra travelling but imo it's definitely worth it .
Don't buy huge amounts that you won't get through , ( my local Indian sell spices in 250 g 500 g 1kg and 2 kg bags ) .
There is also huge range of flour , dried pulses, and a small but good range of fruit & veg .

For hummus if you use the dried garbanzo beans and cook in a slow cooker your homemade hummus will be much cheaper. Olive oil is still a good buy as you dont use a huge amount, and as pp said tahini is quite expensive but a little jar goes a long way.

Jars of herbs and spices last for ages though so if you just buy one or two a week it shouldn't be unaffordable. Very easy to build up a good stock of them and just replace as they run out

£100 a week?! We do hellofresh which is not the cheapest way to shop and cook, and we spend less than that. More like £45 for 4 nights. So it's definitely doable if you meal plan, more so if you batch cook

Yes it is expensive at the outlay but once some of the ingredients are bought they last for ages and are there for next time or for other recipes. Or some things can be frozen for another time. I suppose it kind of depends on if you’re going to use these ingredients again or if it’s a one of as a novelty. It also depends on what new things and therefore how obscure and expensive the ingredients are.

iv found that it is a balance buy a couple of extra things in a shop at a time to put towards trying something new but not thinking I’m going to try 3 new recipes this week and need to buy all the ingredients in one shop to make them.

There are plenty of recipes that don’t need ‘exotic’ ingredients, or those you’ll probably use just once.

I find that recipes from Waitrose or M&S in particular are likely to need several ingredients you’d probably have to buy. Presumably they concoct them on purpose with items you’re less likely to have in the cupboard.

Try checking the BBC Good Food website.

Nan bread is relatively simple to make and the ingredients are store cupboard staples which could be said for a lot of herbs and spices if you like to cook. I generally don't bother with hummus as it never tastes quite the same.

We grow quite a few of our own herbs (sage, mint, rosemary, thyme and oregano) which means that we don't need to buy. You don't need a lot of space for it or need to be a gardener (I most definitely am not).

We are a family of 6 and I have spent £130 this week but that includes cat food and some toiletries. I meal plan and we haven't got much meat this week although the meat we have is high welfare. This weeks menu has:

Roasted summer veg orzo soup with wholemeal flatbreads
Chicken satay, brown rice and carrot and cucumber salad
Peanut and coconut curry (using the batch of roasted summer veg from the soup) + homemade naan
King prawn arrabiata spaghetti
Pizza (from scratch)
Quiche Lorraine, salad and smashed roasted new potatoes.

It can be done but it does take time and I can only cook because I'm off work at the moment.

It's always worth Googling to see if there's a substitute you can use in place of the given ingredient.

For instance, instead of tahini, you apparently can use a nut butter. But better still, you can make your own tahini- it's just sesame seeds, with some light-or-flavourless oil (which you can also use for the hummus).

I have a decent herb selection, but sometimes a recipe calls for something I just won't use again (or not for another year or two anyway!) so will either Google for an alternative, or leave it out altogether.

Disagree. I feed three adults for less than £100 a week on food made from scratch. Admittedly we are vegetarian, but we also only eat food made of "exotic"ingredients. So the outlay justifies the initial cost.

Another hack is to grow your own herbs from seed (some are easier than others of course) or to buy packets of fresh when they are discounted ans then freeze them. Or if it's a herb that doesn't freeze well, like basil., buy one of those pots you can get in the supermarket and then divide it up into several smaller pots and these grow very nicely indoors so yes a £1.30 outlay but you'll get a summer worth of basil if you are careful how you do it (Google divide basil plant foe a YouTube video on how to do it)
There's also a garden near me with a massive rosemary bush that overhangs the pavement so I often grab a sprig or two who saves me buying it. I've also seen herbs on Olio (free food waste app).

YABU. Once you've bought the dried herbs and spices they last ages, you don't have to buy a new jar every time you cook!

I'm on a really tight budget and bulk buy my herbs and spices from amazon (400-600g mainly). I probably only buy one every few months now so not a big expense as buying all at once. I also keep it to specific ingredients that I use in lots of different recipes eg chilli, garlic and mixed herbs.
I don't really follow recipes because they tend to use too many ingredients/too much expensive meat. If I do follow recipes I'll half the meat and bulk out with vegetables or beans. For example this curry but with 2 chicken breasts and extra vegetables https://www.aldi.co.uk/slow-cooker-chicken-curry.

I should of also said batch cooking really saves time and money . I do all mine on a Sunday, ( currently waiting for things to cool so they can be frozen)
This rime I have done a
veg Thia green curry ( tesco jar )
Taco mince
Beef chilli
Marinated chicken for stir fry or salad
Small roast beef joint for sandwiches, salad and Sunday dinner

Plus a few other dmall things .
It takes me a few hrs but it means that the rest of the week I just need to take a packet out of the freezer for lunch and dinner .
There is virtually no cooking done during the week so this saves gas and time too.

OP, I make my own hummous, it's staggeringly better than shop bought. But better still, you can freeze it! So make a large amount and divide up into 200g batches ( or whatever size). I just pop them in little freezer bags.
I use the Felicity Cloake "Perfect Hummous" Guardian
I can't link as on my phone

It is but you need to be prepared to buy large amounts to make it cost efficient

Depends how you cook. I go for sturdy well priced ingredients not the ones named in a recipe.

It really depends on how well stocked you are for store cupboard basics.

I have a big spice and herb collection, and a constant stock of dried goods. They are all replaced as needed rather than needing to buy them all at once.

The individual cost of a particular spice might be over a pound, however you won't be using it all in one meal.

The big packets in "world food" section or country/region specific stores are often much better value. You can get a huge bag of most spices for less than the cost of a single small drum in the general supermarket section.

From scratch is infinitely better and nearly always cheaper. You just have to plan carefully, use seasonal and local stuff.

My son and his GF have got into cooking. It’s frustrating to see them shop wastefully and fail to plan leftovers. Eg. They made something that required fresh coriander and a tiny bit of parsley. And juice of half a lime. The coriander is essential but the tiny bit of parsley wasn’t. The lime juice could be taken from the bottle I always have in. They bought a pack of four chicken breasts and cooked three.

Cooking frugally requires some knowledge of when you can substitute ingredients and tweak.

Nan and hummus are definitely cheaper homemade. For flatbreads though I do the mix with Greek yoghurt and dry pan fry the dough. Quick and cheap and delicious.

YABU
It takes a while but just by adding in an ingredient or 2 a week to your shopping you can soon build up a larder of ingredients to use many more times.

£100 a week for two people?? I spend about £50-60 and I thought that was a lot. I cook from scratch about 5-6 nights a week with a pretty wide variety.

There's some initial outlay for spices...but it shouldn't be much unless you're doing all your shopping in Waitrose.

Do you eat meat every night? That will pull the cost up significantly.

I have a decent spice cupboard (takes up the whole top shelf of a double cupboard). I have built it up over the years buying in bulk from Turkish supermarkets.

Once you have your collection it makes cooking from scratch easier and cheaper.

If you're planning to cook seven different recipes per week, perhaps involving half a dozen different cuisines, yes, you will spend a lot on ingredients.

If you plan on cooking maybe three meals and adapting leftovers then you'll spend less.

For instance, shepherds pie made with mince on Monday, empanadas and salad on Tuesday, pasta bolognese made with mince on Wednesday, pasta bake on Thursday, with spinach and cream added to Tuesday's leftovers, leftover clearout on Friday, Saturday roast, leftovers on Sunday, maybe hash on Monday...