Is “home cooking” becoming a luxury these days?

[PetsNPaws]

I was chatting with a friend the other day about how expensive cooking at home has become — not just food prices, but everything else too. Energy bills, cookware, ingredients that used to be cheap but now feel like treats. Even a simple pasta dish doesn’t feel “budget” anymore if you want decent olive oil and veg.
It used to be that eating out was the luxury and home cooking was the sensible, money-saving option. But now, between the cost of groceries and the time it takes (especially if you’re working full-time or have kids), I’m not sure that’s true anymore.
I genuinely enjoy cooking, but I’ve noticed I’m doing it less because I can’t justify the effort when it’s often cheaper or easier to grab something ready-made.
Has anyone else noticed this shift? Do you still find cooking from scratch worthwhile, or is it turning into something only people with time and money can afford to do properly?

Pans last years. You don’t need to replenish oil and seasonings in every single shop. You can get a decent extra virgin olive oil for £2.50 in Tesco

pasta, tinned tomatoes, mozzarella, seasoning, bag of carrots, fresh tomatoes, peppers, courgette surely will only come to a few £. Add in a pack of mince for almost a £5 but for 500g it will feed a family of 4

we eat out once a week and spend about £80 including wine. So no I wouldn’t class making a pasta dish at home as the luxury.

ready meals these days are also like £4 per portion so if you’re feeding a family of 4 on a ready meal it will be expensive! Plus you can’t really beat making your own sauces

all in all making a pasta bake or a spag bol still seems the more cost efficient way IMO

You can try frozen veg to bulk sauces out etc

I can't see how it's ever cheaper to 'grab something ready made' if the quality is anywhere comparable.

Home cooking can be very economical and any ready made food for a similar price will be absolute junk.

It can be time consuming but often isn't. Pasta cooks in little over 10 minutes and you can do the sauce/dressing in the mean time. The amount of olive oil that is used per serving will be pennies and if you use seasonal veg, that's usually not expensive.

You can spend a lot of time and money on cooking but you can also do it very cheaply. If you don't have a lot of time or money, then there's always things like omelettes, egg or beans on toast, that sort of thing. Cheaper and less unhealthy than cheap ready made food.

All our cookware comes from supermarkets or Ikea and isn't particularly expensive and lasts for years/decades. Despite cooking quite a lot, using electricity, which is more expensive, our electricity bill is under £2 a day and that includes the shower, lights, dishwasher etc as well

What ready made food are you suggesting is cheaper and quicker than the examples above? And that's before you consider taste and quality - anything ready made with 'decent olive oil and veg' will cost a fortune - you're looking at Charlie Bigham, Cook, artisan farm shop stuff, which is all £££s, especially if cooking for more than one person.

YANBU. I do cook from.scratch but have always recognised the privilege of it, particularly coming from a background where convenience food was much more the norm.

I was fortunate that my parents, DM in particular, did indulge me when I wanted to cook different things at home in my teens. DF was fussy but DM would eat almost anything and loved trying what I made. Also DF really did appreciate fresh food even if his tastes were plain. He did the food shopping and we'd go to the butchers and greengrocers and have roast meat and salads at the weekend, and more convenience stuff in the week.

Even a few years ago planning meals and cooking healthy food from scratch was cheaper but I'm not sure that it is now factoring in energy costs and that good, fresh ingredients are so expensive. Even on a very good salary I do a lot more in the airfryer and slow cooker as I'm not keen to empty my bank account into the coffers of the energy company every month.

Do you add an expensive protein like steak or lobster to make your pasta expensive?

I use supermarket own brand olive oil which I assume isn’t what you’d call decent because decent sounds like you mean premium.

There are some very good ready meals out there and I pick ones that I would have time to cook from scratch.

I don't think that's true. You can't compare rubbish processed crap with homemade meals. Low price ready meals will use the cheapest lowest quality ingredients, with a bonus of additives and fillers.
So easier yes, but not cheaper because it's not comparing like for like. Your homemade pasta dish will be healthier and tastier.

I do agree that with inflation we had to make compromise on some stuff. So we definitely buy lower quality produces, particularly for things like olive oil.

The thing about rising ingredient costs is that it affects ready made items and takeaways too. It's not like home cooking ingredients have gone up while everything else stays static.

(I do know that in some cases, usually single people who aren't home to cook every evening, it isn't always so economical to cook at home. But for a family I'm having a hard time creating a scenario where it's more economical not to cook.)

What happens is that we all start cutting corners on what we make.

@Amba1998what’s this £2.50 virgin olive oil from Tesco ?

I'm not sure what working full-time or having children has to do with it as some new phenomenon. My late DH and I worked full-time in demanding jobs, mine enabling routine OOH work in the evenings and at weekends, and had a child.

All meals were cooked from scratch. Not by me I might add, he did all the cooking.

I also don't get why single people should be out of the house more than anyone else.

All food is more expensive, meaning the cost of eating out is also much higher, as are ready meals.

The cheapest way to a healthy meal is still cooking at home.

In some cases, pre-prepared, mass-produced food is cheaper. It could cost more to make a quiche at home than buy the cheapest supermarket alternative. Same for, say, a cake. Obviously the quality, taste and nutritional value differ wildly.

The thing is that home cooking is cheaper over a longer period of time (obviously depending on what you make, comparing like for like, etc). To cook from scratch you have to fill your store cupboard, your spice rack, your freezer. That costs a lot initially. So if you mean the cost of making one meal from a point of having literally nothing in the house, then yes it would probably be cheaper to get something ready made.

YABU. Prices of everything have gone up so yes, it’s more expensive to cook at home. But show me what ready-made options there are that are cheaper (assuming that you’re comparing a balanced family dinner - not just junk food).

I would say it is still cheaper than the alternatives. like-for-like home cooking is still cheaper than ready-made food, or takeaways, or eating out.

The incorrect assumption that eating or getting ready made meals is cheaper, normally comes from comparisons that are either unrealistic (pricing in isolation, not by portion) or based on unfair comparisons between very healthy cooking and unhealthy alternatives.

That being said, Every year when I'm in the UK, it is notable how much more expensive it is... so I think your observation about things getting less affordable is 100% true. But for me it is across the board. Restaurants are crazy compared to what they used to be (not their own fault..) so are take-aways, so is everything. Its all gone up.

Also, there is a privilege to home cooking, but it isn't really a purely financial association. Its more of a time/culture/education based privilege. It is having the time, having the health, the energy, the lack of burdens/stress/problems etc. and having grown up in a family culture that prioritizes it over alternatives, making it the norm. Those are really where the inequalities in food/cooking come in, and it is finance's impact on those that impacts cooking, rather than just having money to buy or not to buy food.

It probably depends on how many people are in your household.

I’m in my 20s, high earner and got my own place as soon as I left university. I’d say that sometimes it’s more expensive to home cook every meal from scratch as a single adult. Over the years, I definitely ate out much more than I grocery shopped. Or buy ready meals/ordering takeaways in etc. It often was the case that food would go off quicker than I could eat it, so my home cooked food wouldn’t have much variety as I’d have to ensure I’m using X and Y up before Z date first.

I imagine in a larger household that being flipped, where it’s cheaper home cooking every meal as opposed to eating out.

For example I could go to Nando’s and spend £20 on a meal and 2 sides for dinner. It probably would cost me the same in raw ingredients to make that from scratch at home to the same standard. Whereas that may present a saving on the cost for multiple people to order the same thing at Nando’s.

This is a terrible example - Nando's is exceptionally simple and way overpriced 🤣

It's always been the case that you can get cheap processed food for cheaper than homemade, that's why obesity is high in deprived families.

I cant say I've seen anything that's cheaper ready made, definitely find cooking at home the cheapest option!

What do you eat if you don't cook?

We cook every day. We choose to eat high protein, so spend more. This week we bought lots of chicken breasts, beef mince, eggs, good cheeses, nice veg like asparagus, salad ingredients, and some real luxuries, for £120 for 2 of us for the week. I could easily have spent under half that. And a pasta dish costs pennies too make.

Yes I agree op. I like cooking but really well done home cooking is expensive...all the added ingredients, herbs, oils, vinegars...its a lot. I find we're eating home made still but a lot less elaborate.

Sorry, I'll rephrase that to "we eat home cooked food every day". It might be something we made 2 days worth of, or might be something we batch cooked at the weekend.

Also, there is a privilege to home cooking, but it isn't really a purely financial association. Its more of a time/culture/education based privilege. It is having the time, having the health, the energy, the lack of burdens/stress/problems etc. and having grown up in a family culture that prioritizes it over alternatives, making it the norm.

Imagine someone in Italy calling it a privilege to knock up a quick pasta dish. British culture is such trash in so many respects, and we've set the lowest standards for ourselves.

I get your point OP, we wanted to make a slow roast beef dinner the other week and the joint of beef was extortionate! Plus the hours it would have to cook and then all the trimming on top. It was cheaper to go for a carvery! Although agree with many a PP, pasta and such should be a lot cheaper to make yourself. We make a lot of home cooked stuff like soup, chilli, pasta etc because that does work out cheaper. I have found though that the "big" things are definitely a luxury now x

We do everything homemade. We tend to eat meat free in the week - environmental and cost saving purposes- I buy a bulk of veg - courgette’s, onions , peppers, garlic, broccoli, cauli,. I will do a pasta bake, curry, goulash, bulgar. I add lentils to bulk out. Sometimes we will have a jacket potato and filling. Definitely cheaper and healthier than ready meals.

It’s the time more than the cost of ingredients for us- food is expensive whether we buy ingredients or something ready made, but carving out the time to buy the ingredients at the most affordable prices and then put meals together so that we’re eating at 6:30 and not midnight is quite a challenge. I do use some ready prepared sauces to help with that, Loyd Grossman or those Spice Tailor kits, because they don’t seem to put anything in that I wouldn’t.

We are eating more vegetarian meals than we used to because of the cost of food.

How can that be true - even going to macdonalds with my 2 costs 30 quid now.

For that I can have full roast dinner, and whip up some kind of desert (kilo each topside roast, carrots, potatoes, peas, gravy granules, flour, plus, eggs, milk, sugar) - and apart from the meat (which will be gone by the next day with snacking) I'll have veg/flour/sugar/milk left over for use in the next meal

It depends what you like to eat as well...I would prefer a big meal at lunch (when I am usually at work) and something simpler in the evening, so the things I tend to make for dinner...e.g. pasta, jacket potatoes, noodle soup etc are quite cheap. I only tend to make fancier things at the weekend.

Baking tends to be quite expensive but it's healthier than buying cake and I enjoy it so I bake often, plus this Autumn me/my parents/neighbours all have a glut of fruit to use up.