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.

Lots of people are sensitive to quorn products- my stomach is always in bits. I don't eat meat though, and am thankfully fine with lentils/beans/pulses/tofu etc. I disagree people wouldn't know though unless the sauce was wild rich.

You've disproven your own point.

You can make it as expensive as you want when home cooking- and you're choosing to do so.

Doesn't mean that's the only way.

"How can people be expected to home cook nutritious meals when pancetta, parmigiano and garlic bread is so expensive wahhh"

Come on now.

I’ve never done it in the pressure cooker, usually the slow cooker, but I’ll maybe give that a try😊

You're not comparing like for like. Of course you could go even grander than that, spend £20 on a bottle of red to put in it, use only the most expensive free range steak from the butchers and mince it yourself, add a load of gold flakes to the top, and spend £60! or even £100! But when people say it's cheaper to make stuff from scratch they mean if you make an effort to use cheaper ingredients 😂If you can afford to spend £18 on a spag bol then the advice isn't really aimed at you. It's aimed at people who could really do with saving that extra 50p.

My spag bol (serves 6):

500g of minced beef: £5.50
a pack of dried pasta: £1
grated cheese £1

Those are all things you'd buy whether you used a jar from Aldi or make your own sauce. Same with garlic bread, so don't include that in the price.

For the sauce:
2 tins of the cheapest tinned tomatoes: 66p
dash of Worcester sauce: 10p
squirt of tomato puree: 30p
dash of red wine vinegar (we only crack the red wine out for special occasions): 20p
1 carrot: 7p
3 pinches of various herbs: 15p
onion: 12p
garlic: 15p

comes to £1.75.

For 6 people you'd need 2 jars of Aldi sauce, so £1.50.

OK so it's 25p dearer for me to make it from scratch. But it is nicer and healthier. If I was really broke I could ditch the red wine vinegar and two of the herbs, and just use oregano, and save myself 30p. Mine also has fresh veg in it.

Also Spag bol is just one meal, and probably the very cheapest that you can find in the supermarket. I don't think you can get jars of curry sauce that cheap, or chilli con carne sauce, or casserole sauce etc. So perhaps in that one, specific instance it's almost as cheap to buy ready made, but for the rest of your meals I don't think it is.

Exactly @Cookiesandcandies when comparing like with like for taste and quality, it's far cheaper to cook from scratch.

If you're wanting to objectively compare home made food with ready made, you need to price it against Cook, Charlie Bighams or independent delis, not supermarket value/standard level equivalents.

To think cooking from scratch is not always cheaper?

It’s not always cheaper but it can be cheaper. You’ve said you can afford to do it the way you do and you like the taste better so if you’re happy to pay over £21 for ingredients for one meal then that’s ok. You can’t really question it though when you’re going all out on it and using what some would see as luxury items. Those people that want to make it from scratch to save money will usually have herbs, stock cubes etc already in. So just a few items such as meat and tin of tomatoes or something won’t cost to much to get and make a meal

@Jeezitneverends It does push the flavour of the wine, garlic and herbs into the meat really well, though you may need less liquid overall. I've only started doing it in the pressure cooker recently and really notice the difference, the colour and flavour seem fresher than if it is done in a slow cooker too. I only cook it for 4-6 minutes under pressure and sometimes have to reduce it a little if it's too sloppy. It's even better the next day.

I used to mix Quorn into a meat bolognese and it tasted OK, but it's the texture of the Quorn that we don't like, it breaks into tiny pieces and we prefer the slightly bigger minced bits. I suppose it's down to what you're used to eating really.

I was thinking about your post today because I am making bolognaise from scratch today. Thank you for the tip to add some sundried tomatoes. I had some to use up and wouldn’t have thought about adding to this.

I think in terms of cooking from scratch it depends on your purpose how cheap / expensive things will be. I’ve worked out how much my bolognaise today will cost (without the pasta which will be another 50p ish and we don’t have garlic bread with ours today because I haven’t thought of it) and it’s about £9 with 750g of slightly cheaper mince but including all the herbs etc as you have. I have also added red lentils to make the meal more filling and go further. There is also a higher vegetable content than yours but I’ve used a chopper so they are tiny so the children will eat them.

I have cooked it from scratch so it will feed 3 adults and a child tonight. But this is a lot of bolognaise so I will make it in to the following also:

2 small lasagnes (one for mil and one for my auntie) and a lasagne for our freezer for 2 adults and a child;
1 large gnocchi bake which will have the bolognaise, gnocchi and cheese and will go in the freezer for next week again for 3 adults and a child;
then I will add some chilli, cumin and 3 tins of various beans to the left over sauce which we will have as
chilli with rice
chilli and mac cheese mix
plus with some salad and salsa on some tortillas cut like nachos because we have some broken tortillas in the freezer to use up.

We won’t eat these meals all back to back but they will be portioned up and labelled ready for additional ingredients and frozen or otherwise stored etc ahead of us eating them.

People have different reasons for cooking from scratch. It could be for health reasons / allergies / wanting to avoid certain things or it could be to save money. It isn’t mutually exclusive.

I find making a bolognaise is a ‘starter’ recipe to go to other things. So we can eat home made from scratch food but also save time and money. Like anything in life it is what you make of it.

Ginmonkeyagain · 02/02/2025 17:03

If it cost £18 to make a beef ragu you are doing it wrong.
I made one yesterday (for 4) - beef mince, onion, garlic, carrot, celery, bay leaf, a red pepper, teaspoon of capers, tin of tomatoes, glass of red wine, beef stock. Simmer for an hour or two. I had everything apart from the beef mince already, but I reckon tne ingredients would have been about £6 max.
Mine costs about this too - i use mushrooms instead of peppers

I’m wondering the same thing.

Getting it in a restaurant near me (Oxfordshire) it’s £15.75 per person. For kids, around £8.00/8.50.

Ready meals are obviously cheaper, but many aren’t worth the price.

That's like comparing apples and pears.

Jar of sauce some onion and mince would be comparable to a basic spag bol. Same meat with just tin tomato, tomato puree, a bit onion, garlic and carrot along with dried herbs. I'd estimate using 500g of mince beef, You will be looking at under £1 a portion.

I felt like I had bowels of soup the last time I had food poisoning.

Portion size makes a big difference, what you probably served at home would be larger than a pre made supermarket version.

you have added ingredients that I believe would not be in a normal spaghetti bol (or at least any cook at home weekday recipe that I have seen), very nice of course buts it’s an unfair comparison.

pre made meals in my experience are usually larger in the carb portion than protein.

and at least with your home made version you know exactly what is in it. Check out the sugar quantity in any bought pre-made. It’s super cheap filler and there’s a doco about some where on sugar being used as filler.