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.

Well this is the issue, you are making a pretty luxurious version, which is fine if you can afford i but not a sensible comparison.
I would do this for a nice weekend dinner but certainly not for a midweek tea.
If you wanted the equivalent using preprepared sauce etc (i.e. made with the nice cherry tomatoes, wine, pancetta, serve with garlic bread etc) you would still be buying and adding a lot of that to the store bought sauce and be buying premium sauce.

Fresh fruit and veg is particularly expensive, finding what's in season tends to cut the cost and increase the flavour, but I don't think you can generally do it cheaper than frozen/tinned unless you grow it yourself (and even then, probably depends on who much you spend on gardening!).

Batch cooking is definitely cheaper. Make large amounts and freeze.

But yours won't taste anything like a shop brought one, unless you're buying a really fancy version. So no, you can't make fancy food for less than simpler recipe meals.

Still confused by the hours of baking

But you're looking at it from the luxury of being able to buy pancetta and sun-dried tomatoes! Cooking from scratch CAN be cheaper. No one is suggesting it always is regardless of the ingredients

Agree OP, depending on what you cook from fresh and the quality of the bought meals - some have better quality ingredients and less additives than others as well, usually reflected in the cost.

If you don’t have the ingredients in constant rotation then of course it will work out more to buy eg a fresh herb which will be dead by the time you would use it again. Even cupboard ingredients have a shelf life eg I rarely make a cake so would have to buy nearly everything to make one.

Cooking from fresh is cheaper only if you already have most of the ingredients to hand. If you add them up as you have you can see the true cost, although you might pay similar for something from pasta evangelists for example, rather than an own brand supermarket ready meal.

On a mild tangent, I noticed Gousto had emailed me as I hadn't ordered for a year or so, with a 50% discount on a one off box. So 4 meals for two, of cuisines i wouldn't be bold enough to try by myself, for 27 quid. And the first one, a Mongolian beef dish has also had enough for DP's lunch tomorrow. All 4 have meat in them, and we keep the cards and recreate from the supermarket when we like them, i have a well stocked spice cupboard, but would struggle to get 3 meals for 7 quid from the recipe if I bought it in the shops. It's a cheaper food option this week.

Yes cooking from scratch can potentially be more expensive but the quality is considerably better. I would replace the tin of tomatoes with 3 large bottles of passata. This will stretch the ragu much further and it will still be delicious.

Really, you know it could be done this way -

lean mince 350gms /400gms - £3.85
spaghetti - £1
Tinned tomatoes x 2 cans - £1
sundried tomato paste - £1.50
tomato puree - 50p
£7.75 total.

I do, but don’t buy it ready prepped. I just buy carrots, celery and onions

DH says ours costs 2.20 a portion. For men who eat a lot. My portions are a lot smaller.
Mince
Carrots
Onions& garlic
Green pepper
Courgette
Tinned tomatoes
Passata
Italian seasoning

Wholemeal pasta.

I cook like you do and also cater for a gluten allergy.

You aren’t comparing the cost apples with apples since what you’ve cooked doesn’t exist as a GF ready-meal. It barely exists even as a ‘finest’ range. You’d need 3 x Charlie Bighams
which is £24-30 excluding garlic bread.

Not sure what your point is. You’ve used high quality ingredients, of course it’s more expensive that a cheap alternative.

I use 250g of lean beef mince; three times your tins of tomatoes; I bulk with lentils; use mushrooms and finely diced carrots and celery; I do use tomato purée; a lot more herbs and garlic than you. I make about 12 portions from this.

I never add garlic bread - even before I had gestational diabetes - I never ate this. Too many carbs to be healthy

You could make it cheaper by replacing 33% or 50% of the beef with red lentils.
I think home cooking has got expensive because good quality fresh veg have increased in price so much.

I suppose that's what happens when you get your micro herbs delivered from Fortnum and Mason.

When I make my own spag bol the only ingredients I use that I wouldn’t with a jar is onion, garlic, tinned tomatoes, tom puree, stock and herbs. Most of those I have in the store cupboard, so wouldn’t be more expensive. Not sure how your bolognaise sauce ended up so expensive.

Tesco have Italian meals on offer at 3 for £8, so £16 to feed 6. If you add on bread, salad and possibly some Parmesan to shave over the top then easily more than £18. Plus the quality of the home made £18 bolognaise will be incomparably better than a ready meal, plus no additives.

Or Finest are on offer at 2 for £8, so £24 for 6 people which is probably closer in quality to the dish OP is making.

A slow cooker would be so much cheaper. I use a pressure cooker and get exactly the same result with less than 10 minutes cooking.

I have a gas range cooker with slow cook function, it cost a few pence to use it for 3 1/2 hours. A slow cooker would not be a cheaper cooking option in my case plus I don’t like the taste of things produced in a slow cooker.

I agree, I have used lentils in the past and like them. I now use half low fat beef and half low fat pork mince which gives a lovely juicy sauce. I also use several tins of Mutti "polpa" tomatoes which I buy when on offer, with 150ml or so of wine. I cook in a pressure cooker so I think that I end up with more sauce as there is less evapouration. Around a kg of mince gives me a lot of sauce, certainly enough for two meals for 3 adults and two children, with perhaps some left for the freezer. If you look at a "real" Italian pasta dish you're likely to see more tomato sauce and pasta with less meat in the dish compared to an English version.
I certainly wouldn't use the sun dried tomatoes that the OP uses, a waste of money when the Mutti tomato puree is so good. And I don't use expensive pancetta, parmesan shavings or bought garlic bread. The amount of herbs and seasoning used is minimal and costs almost nothing as I have them in the house anyway.
Maybe if you don't cook regularly from scratch it would cost you more to stock up on what you need, but they would last you for ages.

Sorry, my last post was in response to @RaspberryRipple2

I use a pressure cooker and, if I have time, cook it the day before to give the flavour time to develop. You'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference I think.

Soya/Quorn mince even cheaper, better for you and the planet and I guarantee nobody would be able to tell the difference if you don’t tell them. Delicious

I am vegetarian, so cook my bolognaise with quorn. My DS didn't really like bolognese much.

Then I cooked up a meaty one at some point (in exactly the same way as my quorn one, but with meat). He could not get enough of it, he wanted a bowl just of sauce at the end, he couldn't understand why he hadn't liked it in the past, what had I done differently etc.

I love quorn, but it would appear that some people can very much taste the difference 😂

Now I have to make both!