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.

Health is wealth.

You can cook from scratch relatively cheaply but I don't think that comparing eg a homemade shepherds pie with a ready meal is valid. The quantity and quality of ingredients will be different.
Making some pasta sauce from a tin of tomatoes, a slug of olive oil and some herbs and bouillon that you already have in the cupboard, will definitely be cheaper than buying a jar of ready made sauce, but you have to have already bought the extra ingredients.
If you don't have the basic kitchen equipment and basic things like oil and seasonings, it's probably cheaper to buy ready made than make your own. But almost certainly less healthy.

Ready grated parmesan is an abonination.

It's not always cheaper to cook at home,i agree, but it often can be and it's nicer and you know exactly what's in it. My moussaka probably comes out at 4 pounds per head, but it has chopped leftover lamb from a shoulder we buy from the butcher, so we have roast lamb, then this time it worked out as 10 portions of moussaka including the other ingredients. So 12 meals from the lamb shoulder which was 34 quid, it's gone up, but worth it in the long term.I have a Delia Smith dauphinoise in the oven right now, spuds from the grocer, milk I already had in, cream, seasoning, probably 2.50 quid for 4 portions if that. I couldn't do that in ready meals for that cost and if I did , I suspect I wouldn't like it.

I think cooking from scratch is cheaper than a takeaway, but I’m not sure it’s ever been cheaper than convenience foods because of the economy of scale. Convenience foods cause so much damage because they’re cheap, if you were paying £18 for a microwave lasagna you wouldn’t pay it.

Agree, it does involve having a herb and spice cupboard, but they last ages so are a good investment if possible.

Not the way you do it, no but if I made veggie pasta sauce I can make it for peanuts and feed us all a few times a week. Use sauce for pasta and then lasagne and then pizzas.

LMAO at these ingredients. You don’t need pancetta, red wine stock pots, ready grated Parmesan, garlic bread 🙄, sun dried tomatoes or two tins of cherry tomatoes. Not buying these ingredients would have saved you over £11.

A good point badly made.
Your example can clearly be made a LOT cheaper. If you bought like for like, say the same volume of premium ready meals, yours would be cheaper and more importantly better quality.

However there is an array of cheap oven food and ready made crap available. I’m always amazed at the deals on food at the likes of Iceland and farm foods - yes it’s all junk but I can totally see why a busy frazzled parent would resort to buying them and save both time and money.
Plus, some people really are completely useless at cooking, i don’t know how but it’s true 🤷‍♀️

I think there is generally a weird attitude towards food in this country, that lots of people don’t value the importance of the quality of stuff they’re putting into their body and spend a fairly low proportion of their income on food. Some people have no choice but lots of us do. it’s just not a priority to many.

I like the red wine stock pots as we don't drink red so it works out cheaper than wasting the end of the mini bottles, but it's 2.50 for four, and you only need one for the spag bol, and you don't really need any.....

I use my own passata from tomatoes I grew and froze in portions. Mince, grated carrot, celery (I buy in the summer slice and freeze it in stick portions) onion, garlic, oregano, bay leaf from plant in garden, stock cube. Sometimes wine mostly not. Nowhere near £18.

Ahahahahah
Lol you can make three dinners out of this.
No one with a sane mind would compare sundried tomatoes and pancetta with a jar of sauce from aldi...

Equally, some people are so used to crappy jars of sauce that they don't appreciate home-cooked food.

This thread wins the Internet today.

I would argue that mostly cooking from fresh is mostly more expensive, there are always exceptions like apple crumble.

But, if you really put your mind to it,, it can end up better value. So I made veg soup today and I think the ingredients and cooking cost would be more then thr cost of tinned soup.

But, where I heve won is that I heve cooked enough to freeze. There will be a week night where we are too knackered to cook, and the word 'take away' comes up. At which point, I can piously defrost the soup and serve a healthy dinner.

Also, whilst the veg cost more than the cost of the tinned soup whilst it was nice and fresh in the shop. It was at risk of becoming food waste.

Yeah, I find it's more expensive to cook (and to eat well) - bit it tastes better (usually)

It doesn't need to cost £18 for make that meal from scratch. You aren't comparing a basic spaghetti bolognese ready meal with a basic homemade spaghetti bolognese. When you start adding ingredients like pancetta and sundried tomatoes it's always going to be an expensive meal.

This made me laugh!

Why are my meals so expensive? Perhaps because you use more expensive ingredients than you need to.

Pious healthy frozen soup is the best!

@murasaki freeze the leftover wine. I freeze loads of small portions of stuff. Every little helps 😁

I simmer it on the hob for 3 hrs + and use a mixture of pork & beef mince. I don't use extra lean beef because I want some fat to simmer/render for the taste! In fact, Aldi sells a blend of pork/beef mince which is ideal for this. 2 cans of chopped tomatoes/passata. Celery, garlic, onion & carrot for the soffrito base, tomato puree, dried herbs, bay leaf, worcestershire sauce, red wine (optional) and beef/chicken stock. Add milk if there is too much fat at the frying off the mince stage. Not sure why you need to buy jars of pasta sauce when you are slow cooking the sauce from scratch. Basic dried spaghetti is fine. The bolognaise is always better the following day. Leftovers are sometimes turned into lasagne or chilli con carne.

I always forget though, then it just sits there and turns to vinegar. So stockpot it is, but i see your point...

Is it not the allergies that make things more expensive too? You (I assume) can’t just buy store cupboard that are on offer etc, and you’ll need allergy friendly versions of things which are so much more pricey.

We are an allergy household, we also always cook and bake from scratch and for 3 of us (shopping largely at Aldi other than free from stuff from elsewhere) we are spending easily £200-250 a week.

That's perhaps more on your recipe than the SC.

This thread is absolutely hilarious

Cheap food comes at a cost was a point made by a food writer whose name escapes me. I think our health service is creaking under the weight, pun intended, of our over reliance on cheap processed food. As a society we’ve lost the skills of preparing simple, tasty nutritious food.

No self-respecting Italian would use half those ingredients, OP. And why garlic bread with pasta?!

If you compare the same quality both homemade jam and homemade biscuits are better value.

Malted milks are really cheap biscuits, presumably made of palm oil etc.
Supermarket jam is low in fruit.