To think cooking from scratch is not always cheaper?

[RainbowSlidders]

I would like to start by saying due to allergies I do cook and bake from scratch. I see people on here saying it’s so much cheaper cooking everything from scratch but honestly I think a lot of time it isn’t although it is definitely nicer.

Last night I made spaghetti bolognaise the ingredients cost me over £18 for 6 portions (family of 5 plus 1 portion for dc to take back to uni). How is that cheaper? A jar of sauce is about 75p in Aldi so I can see why people use it and not to mention the extra cost of fuel and the time it takes, 30 minutes on the hob followed by 3.5 hours in the oven.

Far more healthy to cook from scratch! ready meals full of fat

I'd lay odds that the majority of people don't make spag bol like that which is why theirs is cheaper than shop bought.

The stupidity of some posts.....

@Crunchymum it was very simple meals, porridge with water / splash of milk for breakfast, tea and a plain biscuit mid-morning, lunch would either be a ham sandwich with margarine or home made soup e.g. lentil - mid afternoon would be a cup of tea and a biscuit again, dinner would be a slow cooked beef joint with boiled potatoes/cabbage/carrots on a Sunday, stovies the next day, mince and tatties a couple of days, corned beef hash one day and one day a week would be a small fry up for dinner. In the evening again tea and a chocolate biscuit, no coffee/juice/squash, very rarely there would be apples/yogurt.

I don’t make ragu. I make spaghetti bolognese lol (or Spag Bol as it’s also known round these parts)

You are being disingenuous. It is always cheaper to cook from scratch, especially when batch cooking.
Anything else is merely laziness

exDP would always say spag bol but when texting would say spag bowl.....made me shudder each time.

Ouch!

A friend of mine does that too. And there's another one who writes "bowel of soup".

That's a lot of meat to me, I can make a spag bol for a family of 5 with only 250g for less than £3.

If you are comparing as close to like for like you’re probably talking a ready made fresh pot and you’d need 2 to serve 6 so that’s £6 for sauce.

Your pasta, Parmesan and garlic bread costs the same and I doubt there’s wine in those pots so take that off, so you’re already up over £10 for the cheap processed stuff. The cheap jars of sauce are pretty much tomatoes so you can do that for £3 anyway

Presumably served with a massive Mumsnet salad and tomorrow a medium chicken will do 6 dinners a pasta bake and loads left over for sandwiches !

My recent recipe is
without the pancetta, I use smoked streaky bacon , only half pack for six
reg tin tomatoes ( much cheaper)
plus tube purée, not much
lots of grated carrots to add bulk and flavour
and finely chopped celery.
always have a block of Parmesan to hand it’s cheaper , sun-dried tomatoes are really expensive if you must have them just use a couple of dried tomatoes,

not any garlic bread tbh pasta is enough,
take a look at how Italian Nona’s cook bolognese Sauces , it’s amazing how few ingredients they use
you are not cooking from scratch tbh

Well you can cook spaghetti bolognese cheaper than a ready meal is to buy. You can also use a more expensive recipe.

It’s like saying fish and chips is more expensive when you make it at home because you have lobster and caviar in your recipe.

wow talk about a bait and switch.

Okay, so you want to compare your home cooking to the 75p jar in Aldi? A more accurate like-for-like comparison would be trying to emulate that jar. Which is more along the lines of:

Less than a full 500ml of passata/ one tin of value tomatoes
Some dried herbs
Water to water it down
Wave 100gr of beef in front of it (assuming the jar has meat? Or are we comparing this to something without meat?)

Whether or not you think "it's not worth cooking" or whatever unless you're doing this luxury version, it's disingenuous to pretend as if you have made something in any way similar to the Aldi jar.

Whilst I definitely wouldn't spend £18 to make spag bol, I do agree that many meals are more expensive made from scratch.
When I was a child, Mum would bake cakes as they were cheaper than buying ready made. The last cheesecake I made from scratch cost nearly £12 in ingredients. You can buy a cheesecake at the supermarket for £3 to £5, although it would be nowhere near as nice.

I normally cook Sainsbury's mince 1kg x 2. Yes 2kg serves us as a family of 4, one meal, and only 1 bag to freeze, or 2 bags at a push.
I use all sorts of bits to add, inc Dash of Worcester sauce, mustard, mixed herbs. All this mn, 250g of mince cooks 6 doesn't work with/for me.

I thought I was generous with my 750g of mince for five!

Invest in a slow cooker. Much cheaper the having the oven on for 3.5 hours and you don't have to worry about burning it!

Don't use a sauce. Use a tin of tomatoes and Oregano.

That’s not comparable with a jar from Aldi FFS!

Maybe I've been reading the wrong recipe but I've never heard of spag bol being cooked in the oven, never mind for 3.5 hours!!! I just cook mine on the hob for half an hour and with the usual additions of toms, tom puree, wine, garlic and onions and a stock cube it's delicious. And nowhere near £18! I use chopped tomatoes from Lidl at 39p a tine which are excellent.

I cook from scratch as a default setting and find we get at least twice the quality for half the price of readymade. It's a lot of work and a personal choice, so whatever you prefer to do is right for you.

But it is cheaper. Waitrose charges £2 for 2 naan. Our own cost 60p for 6 naan plus cooking time on the skillet. Chicken curry is £2.29 for 5 chicken legs (drumsticks+thighs) plus spices, home made passata, garlic, ginger and a good onion. That's about £3.50 for 3 good portions, including 2 naan each. Waitrose chicken curry with rice is £7.60 for 2 portions.

There’s a sandwich recipe I really want to try but the ingredients are coming out at about £15. Granted, I won’t use the whole jar of mustard and mayo, so can use them for other things…but still.

The difference is clearly that op is buying very high quality (butchers ) lean mince beef. Maybe organic? That will bump up the price.

We cook from scratch and it's expensive. I could easily spend that much on a spag bol. But I get high quality ingredients because for me I cook from scratch so I eat more healthily, not to save money.

If I wanted to save money I'd only cook some things from scratch, would generally only use herbs I grew myself, and what I cooked would depend on what was cheap in the shop, not what I fancied eating.