Cooking from scratch

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I have started to cook from scratch, batch cooking. I have been thinking by the time you consider the high cost of gas/electricity. Does it work out cheaper than convenience food?

I don’t know if it actually costs less, but it’s much better value in terms of quality of food if that makes sense?

Depends on what and how you cook, tbh. And what sort of convenience food you’re comparing it to.

Cooking Spag bol, chilli. shepherd's pie and soups. Nothing fancy. A curry from M&S is £5.50 (minus rice). I am making home-cooked food for 2. I am not convinced it's a whole lot cheaper.

I agree with @LusaBatoosa it depends what you are cooking and with what you are comparing.
I suspect home made pizza is cheaper than Sainsbury’s TTD but mainly because you are using things you’ve got already. I also think cooking from scratch is cheaper as you can use advantages of offers/discounts/ bigger packs. it also saves you time at difficult moments. We all are unwell atm so I’m using dinners from the freezer, just has taken the last one for tomorrow.
Having them helped me enormously.

Use a slow cooker, air fryer or microwave and it's much cheaper

I’m sure your curry will be cheaper, calculate how much protein (chicken, prawns etc) M&S’s one has, I bet not much.

Curries: the initial investment in spices is the main expense - and they aren’t expensive. Particularly if you’ve an Asian supermarket near you where you can stock up. And they last for quite a while.

After that, it’s just meat and veg, (with the occasional tin of coconut milk if you’re going Thai). I could probably make about six portions for £5.50 (not including spices).

So, yes, masses cheaper!

I’m basing this on the assumption that you’re a reasonably good cook and that when you say ‘from scratch’, you don’t mean using curry pastes or jars.

I made fancy bread rolls yesterday which included eggs, milk and butter. They were not cheaper than the generic dinner rolls but were cheaper than bakery rolls. It also saved me going to the shops for one item which would have turned into ten items.

Yes, a reasonable cook. No jars or pastes. Just that my gas bills were low last year and I expect to get walloped with an increase this time round given how much time I am in the kitchen. I also freeze my efforts.

It might not be cheaper, but there is no doubt that homemade food is infinitely better for you and can be almost as cheap. Roast some tomatoes and garlic. Chuck in blender with ricotta and basil. Add to pan with spaghetti. Easiest meal ever and tastier than anything M$S can offer! Homemade meatballs in tomato based sauce. Cheap as chips. Lo Mein made out of leftover onions and peppers and whatever protein you have with fresh noodles, soy and oyster sauce, sesame oil, garlic, sugar and mirin. Takes 15 minutes and costs very little. Curry is all about the spices you have at home so they are worth investing in.

I don’t think it’s cheaper to cook from scratch, food is one of my biggest spends but I think it’s justified. I’m only talking about the actual food, not the electricity/gas. Fresh food that contains exactly what you’ve chosen is worth the extra spend IMO.

Homemade chicken curry is cheaper.
If you're thinking of the chicken tikka masala for £5.50 then that appears to have only 200g of chicken.

You can get 600g of chicken for less than £5. Then you need some spices, onion, garlic, ginger, tomatoes and cream or coconut milk.

If you like curries then buying the spices is a few quid but it will last for many meals.

It's the same with lots of meals. It does work out cheaper.
And as others have pointed out, much healthier.

I don't think we realise how bad processed food really is and how the lack of nutrients from fresh food affects us in the long term.

It's been proven that an air fryer/slow cooker doesn't work out cheaper

That's interesting about the slow cooker, I never really got along with mine and gave it away. I am not so much concerned about ingredients but more about the cost of gas. I tend to do 2 separate dishes and freeze.

I hear you, it sounds better to home cook and all that, but I often get takeaway cos my partner eats different stuff. So it's cheaper to do that than buy different things. And then pay to cook it!

On 20th Oct 22, an hour of a gas hob use cost 68p.
Not sure how much it costs today.

Have a read of The Road To Wigan Pier. my friend, and ponder on the bit about jam.

@SavageTomato I am sure lots of people think this way, and then the effort of cooking what would be 2 different meals will be cheaper to get take out. It would just be interesting to break it all down- home,. V convenience. Luckily, I'm rubbish at trying to work things like this out, just wait for my next gas bill I think.

blackpanth

It hasn't

I made cassoulet this evening, cooked from scratch. Ingredients were

2 pork shoulder steaks - £1.75
Third of a pack of cooking bacon - 35p
can of tomatoes 45p
can of cannellini beans 55p
an onion 10p
garlic cloves 5p
tomato paste 5p

Total £3.30 for three large portions Plus some brown rice, maybe 10p per portion. Plus a little electricity.

Cooking from scratch is way cheaper and better for you. Ultra high processed ready-food you microwave to heat up is so bad for you!! And contains virtually no nutrients. If you care about your health, bone density and longevity, I'd suggest you sack processed foods of every kind.

I cook everything from scratch including all our bread. Twice a week I make a huge Sourdough loaf (easy) using my own nurtured starters -I have two starters, one I use for sourdough loaves, the other for sourdough pancakes, sourdough missions, sourdough crumpets and sourdough muffins - all of which I make every week. I also make honey & milk bread, farmhouse white, spelt & rye etc and rolls that are so rich and soft and big with butter, milk and eggs in.

Another thing about ready-meals is the size. Tiny. Snack size and no I'm not overweight, I'm slim size 10 and eat huge portions, it's not how much you eat but what you eat. Ready-meals are full of rapeseed oil, toxic to the body and so very bad for you. All seed oils are. You want good fats - coconut oil, avocado oil, goose fat, lard/tallow. And meat, organic is my choice and we have a monthly delivery. Yes organic is more expensive but if you check out organic meats from farms that supply direct, it's not a lot more than meat from say Tesco.

I have every spice known to man in my over-full cupboards and it does take time to build up, I nowadays buy catering sizes so I can use as much as I like of dried herbs such as thyme, basil, chives.

Home cooked food is food of the gods, literally. From basic to a little more fancy. Once you learn it's easy - the BBC Good Food app is all you need plus an internet connection. I place a high value on my health and that of my husband, cats and dogs. We only eat real food. Way up the cost of time & effort towards taste, texture, longevity and staying as disease free as you can. What price a healthy life? and as for time, it sometimes does take more time but if you cook in bulk - cook once, eat twice, you can build up a stock of ready meals in your freezer.

Make the change and your future self will thank you.

Bean chilli and lentil Bolognese are so cheap. As is anything made with Seitan. You get about 30 meals from one bag of vital wheat gluten and they're about £3.

No it hasn't.

It's fairly obvious that a potato baked for 1 hour in an oven will use more energy than 10 mins in a microwave, even if they both have the same wattage.

https://swnsdigital.com/uk/2022/08/this-is-how-much-it-costs-to-run-different-cooking-appliances/

This is where the oven is your friend. I spent today batch cooking, and filled the oven with 6 portions each mince, bolognese and 2 types of curry. The oven was on for 2 hours at 160c, but I’ve made 24 meals

I’ve recently got a bit better at going to my local Asian supermarket-the spices are about a tenth of the cost of supermarkets