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?

I’ve just checked, even one of those tiny bottles is £2.65 , a really expensive way of buying it and would last 2 minutes!

Unless you are buying the most expensive, or out of season ingredients it is always cheaper to cook at home. I can easily feed four adults for the cost of one standard chain restaurant meal.

Your salmon dish sounds lovely Meadowfinch, I will try that soon!
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I use olive oil (a premium one) a bit, but I actually usually prefer a good quality rapeseed oil and it's much cheaper.

Me too, I don't like the taste of olive oil. I use butter to cook stuff in quite a bit with just a dab of oil to stop it burning.

30p difference in that oil is crazy. Some of us live in more expensive areas than others, it seems. That’s, what, 20% more expensive?

I miss salmon and lamb, though I managed a lamb shoulder a few weeks bag and made a fabulous curry. The flavour of the lamb goes a long way, so you can add lentils and spinach and still get a great meaty curry.

It really isn't that hard.

A decent sized omelette with cheese and two veg, or a pan fried hake fillet with some capers, sweetcorn and a jacket potato with butter, take 10 minutes.

Today I'll sear some chicken thighs and put them, a can of tomatoes, some cannellini beans, onion, garlic and sliced chorizo in the slow cooker. 10 minutes effort, then ignore it. Six hours later, ready to eat. 😊

The issue is when people cook complicated recipes with lots of ingredients, it takes ages. Keep it simple.

Statistics don’t corroborate your experience. 6% of adults are not confident cooking from scratch when following a recipe, according to a yougov poll. Even I was surprised it was so few, but Gen z are the least confident group and most can access simple recipes if they are capable of watching TikTok or YouTube. These resources can also help adults with literacy problems who would have previously struggled to follow a recipe in a book.

Your profession will bring you into contact with people in niche situations. It’s important that people like yourself support people who have difficulties with cooking, but I feel that the 94% who are finding their own way in the kitchen to cope with the high cost of living need to be the focus for a change.

I also think that proper funding of basic services will better help tackle the root of the problems that some people have with tasks like preparing meals - such as NHS mental health services, adult literacy initiatives.

Who on earth is cooking with extra virgin olive oil - just why?

Another massive privilege is the cost of failure. When I was younger, I didn’t buy joints at all. They were so expensive and never turned out right. I still rarely roast beef. Too unreliable.
If you make something no one wants to eat, it’s expensive in money and energy.

But doing that for four… keeping things warm while you cook the next round!

This! I only use extra virgin olive oil for salad dressings. For shallow frying I use veg oil for everything 🤷🏻‍♀️

Me! It’s really good for health and suitable for cooking. Just be careful with how you use it.

When the recipe says to use one tablespoon, measure it. Don’t just add a splash to the pan.

If you are cooking a piece of meat or fish, coat the meat or fish in a little oil, salt and pepper. Then cook in a hot dry pan on the stove, or bake / air fry.

I get through a litre every few months this way.

I don’t deep fry anything ever. Deep frying in olive oil would be expensive!

You can use cheaper olive oil to cook with - cooking with EVOO is madness in my view.

I do think the OP is right on some things. I wanted to make a homemade pudding for the first time in ages recently but by the time I’d bought all the ingredients (admittedly this included ground almonds which are expensive) the total for my basket came to nearly £20 just for the stuff I needed - the next time we had people over my husband got two nice puddings from Waitrose for £7!

I think there is a huge difference between "occasion" or "treat" cooking at home that often uses pricing luxury ingredients and the every day basic cooking to feed ourselves that can be done fairly economically.

Using largely seasonal, U.K. grown veg, and stretching any mince based dish with red lentils (nobody will notice) helps to keep costs down.

Chicken thighs are cheaper and tastier than breasts.

In cold weather, substantial multi-veg soups (not puréed) with added red lentils and/or pearl barley/orzo pasta, are a cheap and popular staple in this house. Serve with grated cheese for protein.

I do. It is natural, and good for health. I buy a big bottle, and it lasts a while. I am not sure that it is out of the ordinary to do so.

You could cook seasonally instead. People are giving apples away at the moment. You could have made a large tart tatin with butter pastry for £3.

A woman after my own heart 😊

I agree its eye-watering cooking a nice meal for friends now. But homecooking generally is cheaper than similar quality take outs or ready meals.

@LadyKenya I cook with olive oil too - just not EVOO - that is for salads etc..

Any seed oil can be described as 'natural', and so can butter. EV olive oil is expensive, has a strong and distinctive flavour, and a low smoke point - I think it's quite unusual to use EV olive oil to fry everything? Blended olive oil not as unusual, obviously.

Yep. Supermarkets have been full of cheap plums lately. I think it's down to using what's seasonally available and knowing how to substitute things.
Plum crumble
Plum tarte tatin
Plum sponge
Plums with cinnamon and Greek yogurt, etc

These same people then describe meals that always cost ‘pennies’ however by the time you are buying the cheapest ingredients the result is no better nutritionally then the ready meals or the ingredients are so stretched (500g mince does us a meal for six with leftovers for the next day - yeah right!) the calories per person are so low as to not be enough food anyway - therefore needing bulking out with snacks or bread or whatnot.

I think it's because people have very different definitions of cooking. There are loads of extreme budget cooking videos on Youtube, including how to shop for groceries to get the cheapest items. The result is always a mess of unripe, cheap produce, UPF laden processed items, skipping on essential flavour carriers like herbs, fats, spices and tiny portions. Yes, I do believe it's possible to cook from scratch for less than a fiver per day but most budget cooking recipes literally look like human dog food. It's a conglomerate of chopped up ingredients, heated up without any real seasoning, sauces or flavours.

It's simply not possible to create extremely tasty and nutritionally healthy dishes on a very tiny budget. Especially if you take animal welfare and organic farming practices into account. It's probably healthier to get a supermarket sandwich than buying the lowest quality of raw meat and eggs just to claim you "cooked" from scratch.