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.

YABVU by comparing a spag bol made with a 75p jar from Aldi with your delightful recipie where you're using best quality ingredients including 3 forms of protein, a pot of sun dried tomatoes and allowing flavours to develop for 3 and a half hours in the oven. Your meal sounds lovely, I'm sure it tastes great. It's wonderful that you're able to produce food to such a standard. Did you enjoy your humble brag?

But please understand that your post is a ridiculous equivalece which is dripping in your privilege and utterly tone deaf. Well done. Donate to a food bank on your way out

I didn't know that people thought cooking from scratch was to save money, for us it's for health reasons.
Of course it's cheaper to buy a pack of donuts for a quid and a pizza.

Get the cheap sauce in a jar, ditch all fresh tomatoes, don't put anything alcoholic in it at all. If it's still too pricey get the 50/50 beef/pork mince and/or bulk out with lentils. Don't use olive oil for cooking anything, ever (smoke point is too low, things crisp up much better with the cheaper oils. Olive oil is for dressings). Daft amount of money on cheese - grate a bit of cheddar.

Got to ask - why are you putting bolognaise in the oven at all? Even allowing for frying onions, this should take 15 min on the hob absolute tops.

Of course your recipe is more expensive
You're comparing Apples and( finest) pears.
I have never used sun dried tomatoes in bolognese let alone a whole jar or a bottle of Shiraz!
I do understand GF ingredients are expensive but you can't buy ready meals containing GF as far as I know
I have used a jar of Dolmio extra for speed which actually if you read the ingredients, are natural rather than UPF
Needing 3.5hours in the oven is unusual for a ragu.
That adds to the total cost

Ah yes @MarzipanAndFrenchFancies Can't beat a piety meal lol

I hate cooking full stop.
And i do it very little i can go weeks and not cook.
I dont know how some cook every day and night some cook more than once a day.
Let alone from scratch.

Your ingredients are expensive.
buy ordinary chopped toms or Passata rather than tinned cherry toms. Tomatoes puree rather than sun dried tomatoes. Bacon rather than lardons. But a block or grano padano or Parmesan. Cheaper than ready shaved.

Surely you must realised why your cook from scratch is expensive. I don’t understand why you’re posting????

I get the breakdown of your ingredients but why was it in the oven for 3,5 hours? Surely spaghetti bolognaise can be made on the hob?

I often batch cook from scratch for my dc (3 and 11mo) but it works out cheaper as I freeze any remaining portions which can be used for later.

I can imagine cooking for a full household where there is no remaining leftovers to use at a later date would cost considerably more.

One hack I’ve found works well for minimising costs is to add lentils to minced meat. I only ever use 5% fat minced meat but if you add a tin of lentils it goes much further. 😊

No, you're right that it isn't always true. The food industry cooks and grows in bulk and they prepare food in season to be sold later on. They can obviously do many things much cheaper than someone doing their own at a very, very small scale.

The other issue is having to buy a full packet/bottle/bag of whatever ingredient of course. This is particularly expensive for people who don't cook much. To give an example, all my spices are out of date because I just don't cook often enough. (I know they're still safe to use).

I actually don't think you were wrong for cooking your spag bol over many hours. I think the official recommendations for a good ragu is to cook it for a long time.

It can, but the recommendations are still to cook it for a very long time.

It’s much better cooked slowly for longer, whether in the hob or in the oven. I started using the oven when I had an aga because they keep their heat better with the top lids closed.

Well if you're competing with a Michelin star, yes it'll cost more🙄

I cook from scratch and my meals are cheap, but I am vegetarian.

I get 8 portions from 1 pack of mince (400/450/500g depending on where it's from) and 1/2 a pack of streaky bacon. Plenty of veg (a large onion, maybe 3 carrots, a pack of mushrooms. There's easily enough for 4 meals for me and DH.

A ragu like that in Italy would be mixed through the pasta, rather than dolloped on top, so it goes further that way. I slacken mine off just before serving (with milk, as an Italian taught me to do), and mix it through the pasta.

And this is NOT competitive undereating, as these threads often suggest - it's using the sauce in a different way - I'm not doing it to make it go further, but it's really rich and packed full of flavour (it's cooked for a few hrs), so you don't need a mountain of mince piled on pasta.

Will it last for two weeks, with a massive salad, and leftovers for sandwiches?

A jar of bolognese sauce (the first one Google brought up, a well-known brand definitely not 70p) contains tomatoes, tomato puree, onion, sugar, starch, sunflower oil, a few herbs, citric acid and garlic.

So no meat yet, no pancetta, no carrots, no celery, no wine stock, nothing sundried, no bay leaf, herbs so few they're barely mentioned at the end, no cheese, no pasta, no garlic bread. You'd have to add all these.

Now let's go for a basic version:
Reconstituted Tomato Pureé (48%), Water, Tomatoes (5.7%), Modified Maize Starch, Salt, Vegetable Oil, Sugar, Citric Acid, Garlic Powder, Black Pepper, Dried Basil, Dried Oregano

Essentially, half tomato puree half water.

Do you think if you cooked like that you might end up spending a lot less money?

I'm absolutely using that next time this kind of thing comes up irl!

Did you sprinkle gold dust on it 😲?

I simmer mine on the hob for 3hrs+ (if I have the time) becuase the flavour develops more than it would 30mins on the hob. It really does! I've done it for varying amounts of time and the longer you cook it, the better the flavour. I never use 5% fat because it's too lean - you need more fat for it to render into the sauce for better flavour imo. Obviously, my version won't be a low calorie version. Add sugar for sweetness if required and maybe some chilli for a little kick. Occasionally, I've cooked it in the slowcooker during the week for more practicality but it's better simmered on the hob.You don't need to buy expensive ingredients, you just need to develop some cooking skills and your taste palate as you do so.

Definitely agree with a long cooking time and needing fat in the mince - the fat is the flavour! I remember my dad used to do a bolognese using a jar of domino and a low fat mince and letting it simmer for what felt like about 3 minutes (probably 20!), it was horrid and I thought for years that I hated bolognese 😂

That's quite a luxury version of spaghetti bolognaise. I never use pancetta or sun dried tomatoes in spag bol, and would only add red wine and fresh herbs if I had some lying around that would otherwise go off. A spoonful of bouillon or a beef stock pot, and some dried herbs, are fine.
Glutein-free anything is expensive (unfairly!).

@Gwenhwyfar thank you, I've never heard of putting Bolognaise in the oven but I'm in no way what you would class as a good cook so something like this passing me bye is not surprising 😀

I agree. Also people need herbs/spices, and they're not cheap.

There are numerous studies about food prices/food insecurity/food poverty and obesity. It's cheaper to eat rubbish a lot of the time

What you made was pricier than a ready meal but I bet it was much tastier.
You could also remove or swap some of your ingredients to make it cheaper if you needed to.