"Normal" people who cook from scratch everyday - tell me this gets cheaper

[Frequency]

By normal, I mean excluding those who can feed a small African village with one can of chickpeas, an egg, and a tomato. Normal people, who eat normal portions of normal foods.

We've canceled Hello Fresh to save money, so we've started meal planning with a recipe-building app instead, otherwise, we just cycle through the same 5/6 meals all the time.

One child is away this week. The remaining child has picked;

Cheesy broccoli pasta bake, Piri piri chicken wrap “fakeaway”, easy creamy chicken curry, penne arrabbiata with roasted peppers and pancetta, easy chicken jalfrezi curry.

£75 fecking quid.

It's not even a full shop. I'm not eating breakfast or lunch coz the price now just for evening meals is way too much. I've added a couple of yoghurts and crappy pizzas for the kids lunches and breakfasts and we already have cereal in.

I bought cat litter and cat food earlier or that would have been added too.

Admittedly, we had to buy a lot of spices because Hello Fresh used to send them in handy little packets and DD has used most of the ones we did have jazzing up her instant noodles. But, the spices only added around £10ish. That's still £65 without breakfasts or lunches.

Obviously, next week we won't need as many spices and should have some butter and oil left but still...

If this is the best we can do I am going to have to consider rehoming a child.

This is what we do as well. I go into the supermarket and just buy 2 different types of protein, loads of veg and whatever is on offer and then batch cook curries/stir frys/roasts using spices I am familiar with. My grocery budget for 4 is around 250 pounds a month.

Admittedly, we're vegetarian, but we always include a jacket potato night and either a lentil Dahl or chickpea & potato curry. The kids have beans with the spuds, and we have leftovers from things like chilli. This really cuts the price, but equally we spend over £100/ week on food.

Foreign veggie food with a tonne of spices is probably exactly what my 16-year-old wants to eat. She loves spice but the only meat she will consider is either shaped like a nugget, chicken off the bone, or Richmond pork sausages. She's allergic to eggs and won't eat fish, lamb, beef, or pork which is not a Richmond sausage. I'll look up a few recipes and try them out next week.

Does it have to be sausages on their own or would she eat them in things, iyswim? Sausage casserole with the sausages chopped up is a good one to bulk out with beans, if that would be acceptable to her. You can get a meat meal with not actually that much meat in it.

We cook from scratch every night. I use a rotation of easy meals, usually with overlapping ingredients.

Taming twins & slow cooker.
Bolognaise
Chilli
Veggie chilli (burnt aubergine from bbc good food & not slow cook)
Sausage pasta (not slow cook)
Lentil & butternut squash dahl
Chicken korma (bulked out with veggies and as above chicken thighs - only 'small' potion one ive noticed)
Chicken satay
Fish pie (pricey but I'm trying to keep on menu as dd is still small)
Tomato and mozzarella risotto (River cottage)
Pizza (also river cottage but you can bulk the dough & freeze, take out in morning and let it prove again)
I generally get about 2 months in the freezer in 1 go so expensive month/cheap month and stock up on cleaning and store cupboard on the cheap month. Freeze flat in bags, there's 3 of us and an only slightly bigger than average freezer.

If you want I have a really good Gousto code if you PM me. I prefer them to Hello Fresh. The opening offer is fantastic.

We cook from scratch 4 to 6 nights a week and eat a veggie meal at least once or twice a week. We do a combination of some favourite Gousto favourite dishes, some easy old favourites I can cobble together quickly and easily without following a recipe book and some quick, easy and cheap meals.

I find it easier, cheaper and quicker especially when I am tired if I meal plan for 4-5 days (I couldn’t cope with 7). I also try and make double when I can and freeze some to take out the night before which is a win win.

The webpage mentioned by @sashh is now an app called Trolley so you can check out what is cheapest in each shop all on one place

Hi OP. We’re currently working on this so I’ve highlighted bits below as a note to myself!

To keep costs down:

Start meal planning for the next week using leftovers. We have a leftover shelf in the cupboard and fridge so we don’t forget about them. Eg I’ve somehow got a load of onions going to waste so I’m doing red wine onion gravy with sausage and mash tomorrow.

Ask each of your two DC to pick one meal a week. The rest of the time, do budget stuff like a lentil chili con carne, jacket potatoes, sausage casserole, chicken pasta with pesto and spinach… These are our cheaper go tos and we vary them each week so it doesn’t get repetitive. You could also present them with a list of budget friendly options to choose from.

Batch cook the saucy dishes like casseroles and chilis and freeze some single servings. Have them twice in a week eg when you know you’ve got a late one and won’t be bothered to cook from scratch.

Have last night’s dinner for lunch by making extra portions. This saves time (cooking and shopping and even meal planning) and money.

Btw I totally forgot to say that we’ve cut our shopping costs with Simply Cook as we only need to get the fresh ingredients so save loads on herbs and spices to make reductions and things. We really look forward to our dinners now and there are meals with few ingredients etc.

Hi, a few tips to get the food shop down. Find your local asian store, and buy spices and rice from there. If you don’t know where it is find someone asian and ask them, they will know. Sometimes the asian stores are disguised as off licences. Ideally buy rice in 10kg bags as it works out a lot cheaper. I buy red rice also called matta rice, jasmine rice and basmati rice in 10kgs packs and it lasts about 6-8 months. If you buy smaller packs of rice you end up paying a whole lot more. Chicken thighs and chicken wings are cheaper than chicken breasts. If you must use chicken breasts buy frozen rather than fresh. Ideally for all meals have some carbs, some proteins, lentils and some fresh veg and fruit. So rice, chicken curry, green gram and green beans. This is filling and healthy and 1kg chicken will last for Atleast 2 meals. Other example would be lentil curry, butter chicken, naan bread and salad. These meals are filling and there will be enough for two days. If you eat food in the correct proportion you will be full and be healthy while also getting your food bills down. Also shop at Aldi for meat, much cheaper than Sainsbury, Morrisons, Waitrose and M&S. Avoid buying ready made sauces for pasta or marinades etc. Just make your own, much cheaper.

I’m American and can make almost anything into a burrito. If you cook meat of virtually any kind, you’ll need very little because you’ll also use cooked onions, peppers, beans, cheese, sour cream, tomato, lettuce, loads of veg, virtually any leftovers can be seasoned and wrapped in a warm tortilla. Side of salad or rice, and you’re done. Cold tortillas can make wraps for lunches. Make (or buy) an Alfredo sauce for pasta and use chopped chicken, loads of veg, just seasoned differently than burritos. Fried rice can be made with all the leftovers, too. Use the leftover bits you have on hand. Soup with a salad and crusty bread. Again, your soup so you can use what you have on hand. A broth soup with tomatoes and all and lentils, or dried split peas. Waffles and scrambled eggs make a great dinner, too. There are so many great ideas here on mumsnet! If you have ingredients on hand and can’t think of what to do with them, you could post here and dozens of creative, helpful people will come up with recipes for you.

Hi again @Frequency I hope you don't mind, but I tweaked your meal plan and shopping list a bit to get below £75 and provide plenty leftovers for breakfast and lunches for you too.

Everything is from Asda and I got to £57.96 with loads of leftovers.

I changed the curry to a veggie one but did budget for a whole chicken to provide plenty leftovers after your piri piri wraps. Will try to add some attachments so you can see what I have done. I've added some extra meal suggestions at the end.

Thank you @SmallIslander that's really helpful. I've added screenshots to my notes app and we will definitely try that one week soon.

I feel like I'm on a different planet to most on this thread. I agree with op. We eat jacket potatoes once a week, but unlike a pp I don't want to eat them plain with just butter 3 evenings a week. I don't want to eat anything 3 evenings a week. I get bored of the 30+ meals we regularly have.

And the poster (Prometheus?) and others who claim to be able to use little to make a tasty meal? I can't. She uses only oyster sauce for 5 times in stir fry. I can't get away with that. I use 2 sachets of stir fry, plus garlic, ginger, soy light and dark, 5 spice, other herbs, chilli sauce, oyster sauce. Even then it doesn't even have that much taste.

It's like it's competitiveness cheap chicken for a week ' ness. But I just can't make interesting tasty meals on these basics only.

@Oblomov24
It's a matter of taste though.
You'd hate my stir fry.
I use sweet potato as the carbohydrate, a general pack of stir fry veg and chicken all cooked in coconut oil and the only seasoning I use is 'real salt' which tastes amazing compared to normal salt.
I think it's sooo tasty and so do my kids. It tastes like all of the different flavours of the veg etc and isn't hidden by adding in loads of sauces and spices.

You'd hate it but then I'd hate yours too!

A lot of my favourite recipes don't have many ingredients. I love Donal Skehans creamy chicken pasta with spinach and sundried tomatoes. It has garlic, salt and pepper and that's it pretty much.

For me I generally like to taste the main ingredients, and enhance them a bit rather than change them completely, Don't get me wrong sometimes I will use loads of ingredients and the sauce or the spices are the main star of the show but I definitely don't feel like most meals need that much ingredients.

Some of the best restaurants near me are all about simple food, there was also a netflix show where they were all about making good tasty food with very little ingredients. I can't remember the name because there are so many cooking shows on netflix.

I think if you have really good ingredients then yeah simple can be best but then budget...

Like a really good quality organic roast chicken - lovely. But when I'm buying supermarket chicken it needs some seasoning
Got a Greek yoghurt the other day that was the nicest I tasted and needed nothing with it but my usual needs some fruit or honey

True. They were left to hopefully amuse the store packer working overnight!

Gosh! You are a truly lovely person. You don't find them everywhere. I'm making rude words out of spices at the supermarket ( well that's not a new thing TBH ) and you went to all that effort just to be nice! Have a virtual choccie from me.

Still finding it a little bit funny that everyone in the UK eats Jacket Potatoes ( jackies? ) for dinner regularly , with what I'm understanding are different toppings, and thinks the rest of the world knows what they are talking about! 😁I'm sure they are lovely. I'm gathering it's a large potato ( with skin). Baked. Then cut a crisscross in the top and add toppings.
I hope I've got that right. I may give them a go!
Toppings seem to be cheese, butter or baked beans?
My DH hates bb so cheese it is.

Def last post ( it is daytime in Australia so I'm not that weird).
Fried rice.
Everyone eats it.
So cheap, so easy. And filling. If anyone really wants I can write out my recipe but I'm sure everyone has their own. . Sometimes forgotten though in the rush of getting dinner on the table.

Or chilli. Coleslaw. Sour cream and chives/spring onions. Houmous. Stew. Pico de gallo. Basically anything that'll go on top of a potato.

And always butter first, mashed in a bit, regardless of other toppings (IMO)

Not everyone :)

Mum and DH would look at me like I was mad if I served them a jacket spud for their main meal. DH is a manual worker and takes a pack up with him and looks forward to a hot meal at night and a jacket potato wouldnt fit the bill

However you are correct in thinking jacket potatoes are a firm favourite here in the UK. There used to be a chain of jacket potato "restaurants" called Spud U Like and their toppings were amazing, from just plain butter through to chicken curry and chilli and sour cream and chives. For us ( me and DH ) jacket potatoes would be a lunch meal, or supper is we had eaten something more then a sandwich for lunch

A favourite filling for me used to be corned beef. Cut the potato in half,scoop out the potato, mash with corned beef, salt and pepper, fill the skins back up, smear Branston pickle over the top, cover in cheese and return to the oven till golden and bubbling

I’m definitely a fan of simple cooking. I’d rather put the money into quality main ingredients that taste good already than all the “padding out” that comes with recipes. Also often a single sauce will do to liven up the whole dish. We keep jars of harissa, good quality pesto ( delicious on steamed veg) or sometimes buy fresh tzatziki which can last us two meals. Potted herbs are also excellent. If good quality fresh ingredients are used, you honestly don’t need more in the way of a recipe for mid week meals.

How is a jacket potato not a hot meal? What a weird attitude. If it’s not filling enough buy bigger potatoes add more filling or eat two!

That actually sounds delicious. I love corned beef! Waiting until it's winter here and going to gice that a whirl!! Thank you