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.

You’re comparing apples and oranges. A jar of Aldi sauce is going to be made with the cheapest possible ingredients. Which is absolutely fine if you need to deliver a meal on a budget or a tight schedule. but if you want it to taste like you’ve put a bit of effort in, you’d expect to spend more.

The trick is to buy only what you need from independent suppliers, rather than multipacks from supermarkets. You’ll get smaller quantities of better quality that way.

Sometimes depends on how many you are cooking for.

I'm having an M&S ready made Mousaka for tea tonight, £6 which for a single portion is so much cheaper than making it from scratch. But, if I was feeding 6 folk, making it from scratch would work out better.

(No interest in batch cooking before anyone suggests it!).

I think you’ll find it’s the law to have garlic bread with pasta.

Where on earth are you shopping for it to cost that much ? It can be made at a fraction of that price

3.5 hours in the oven is the crazy bit. I never pay full price for meat, it's always got a yellow sticker on it.

I do my bolognese sauce on the hob, would never buy wine specially just use a glug of whatever is in the house, mix of fresh tomatoes and tinned. Cook on low on hob for 90 minutes-ish.

Agreed.

Yes, me too. We have spag bol as a week day meal (most of us moan about) but it ticks a box and is easy to make.

And we just use 500g mince for 4 adults.

I do that sometimes and I always cook in my slow cooker on high for around 4 hours and it is very tasty, Sometimes I go full veggie with a lentil based sauce and add grated carrots and courgettes.

I don't think 18 quid is shocking at all for ragu.

By the time you've paid for a kilo of beef mince, a bottle of wine, some celery, garlic, passata or tomato puree and red onion it really adds up, and the cost of olive pil is eye watering. I get mince from the butcher and it is 13 quid a kilo. But it's made from braising steak and they mince it in front of you. I'd rather pay more for that than the shitty, gritty supermarket pumped through a tube crap.

But then another night would easily be pasta e ceci which is far cheaper per portion for homemade food.

Cooking from scratch can be cheap but not necessarily so. I recently made apple crumble and with the cost of the Bramleys butter, sugar and flour a ready made one was cheaper.

You are choosing to make it expensive by buying luxury end ingredients like sun dried tomatoes, olive oil (75p worth?) and ready grated parmesan and also adding garlic bread. You can't compare that with a cheap Aldi sauce and one onion!
We are a family of 6 and obviously eat much larger portions than nearly everyone else. I would use at least 1kg of mince and have extra veg+/-salad and pasta.

I cook my bolognaise in the oven for probably that long because in my opinion it isn't nearly as nice just cooking it on the hob quickly. But doing that is clearly a totally different thing to a ready made jar, it's a ridiculous comparison and I agree quite goady / boasty.

I love it when people say 'cooking from scratch is definitely nicer'. The amount of times I tasted people's endeavours 'from scratch' when it came nowhere near to a bog-standard microwavable meal. P.S. And it does not cat hairs or dog hairs, microwavable meals, I mean.

Come on OP you are being disingenuous. You are CHOOSING to buy expensive stock pots and expensive tinned tomatoes and pancetta. I don't put any pancetta in my bolognese and often you wouldn't get that in a shop bought one either.

You are not comparing like with like.

It's like saying that it is far cheaper to buy a ready meal paella from Waitrose for £6 than make my own, because by "making my own" I mean organic saffron, artisan paella rice, hand dived scallops and king prawns, free range corn fed chicken etc etc etc.

This could also be because the shop bought version has a load of salt and sugar and all sorts of other stuff added to make it extra palatable

Surely you know perfectly well that the ragu you're making is unnecessarily expensive and full of premium ingredients, and therefore isn't in any way equivalent to a ready meal? This is a very weird post.

This. ^ Some people think they are much better cooks than they are! 😬

I recently made apple crumble and with the cost of the Bramleys butter, sugar and flour a ready made one was cheaper.

Not the point of the thread but at our old house we had several apple trees including a huge mature Bramley that produced literally hundreds of apples every year. Went shopping recently with DH and his face when he saw what each one of them would have sold for!

Family of 5 + 1 extra portion to take away, so 6 people. That would be very small portions for everyone. Yours came to £15, only 3 quid less than the OPs (you said £18.99, sorry maybe I've missed an update but she said £18 I thought) which could account for 1 extra ingredient or some garlic bread to accompany the meal.

Exactly. The OP is making a meaningless comparison.

Totally agree, but nevertheless. And dog and cat hairs. I mean the absence thereof.

We aren’t on Dragons’ Den.

Well that's all very well if you have easy access to a store, and can be there near closing time when they're putting yellow stickers on them/selling stuff cheap.

Not everyone has the good fortune to be able to get to the shops just before they close.

And yet you're making nonsensical and faux comparisons.

People who have no choice but to pay 75p for tomato sauce are not simultaneously spending on pre-grated parmesan or diced pancetta.

You're not comparing like with like. The mass-produced stuff will have all sorts of unhealthy ingredients (like emulsifiers, additives, thickeners, sugar etc) to pad it out or make it cheaper. Yours will be much better nutritionally. (But I'm sure yours doesn't need to be THAT expensive.)

Why are you putting a Bolognese in the oven? Surely it just goes on the hob. I buy the 5 percent fat mince from Lidl. It cost £3 something a pack. So if 2 pack would be £7. That would make at least 8 portions. Tins of tomatoes are cheap. A squirt of garlic paste, herbs fresh basil and tomato purée. £10 maximum. Then spaghetti.