"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.

I had a conversation with my mum twenty years ago when I was a student. She would say things like, ‘Oh I’ve just bought a leg of reduced lamb and an onion for £3 and turned it into a curry for four, it’s easy to cook cheaply from scratch, there’s no excuse for anyone’. I pointed out she had a fully stocked spice cupboard, staples like rice and flour in the cupboard, the room to store all of her staples, a kitchen with every implement going and a bookcase full of recipe books. These meal delivery kits seem like good value if you don’t have these things in your cupboard.

Years later, I now have my own fully stocked cupboard of basics like spices, oils, grains, pulses. I tried Hello Fresh for a bit of a change and being sent tiny packets of things that I had in my cupboard seemed wasteful and expensive to me. The weekly shop does sort of seem cheaper when you’re only ’topping up’ the odd staple and buying fresh produce, rather than having to buy absolutely every item you need and only using a tiny pinch of each thing; but it does take time and a cost to get there.

My tip is to buy big packets of the herbs, spices, pulses and grains, that you’re going to use regularly, from an Asian supermarket. My local is much better stocked and far cheaper than the big name supermarkets.

Grow your own of anything you can too - if you plant some courgette seeds now, you'll have about a million courgettes to eat over August/ September and you can make loads of meals from them.
Agree with this. Runner beans, French beans and courgettes are prolific. I chop them up, freeze them (without blanching), then make a smooth veg soup for lunch all through the winter, adding whatever else is to hand. (If you have allotments near you, you might find people leave excess produce outside.)

I have an allotment, it's not really a cheap way to grow veg for a family, especially if you are not very experienced. Not knocking growing stuff, there's lots of good reasons too....but it's time consuming to deal with gluts and takes up freezer space. I struggle working full time and growing veg.

And you also tend to end up with a glut of stuff that is very cheap in the shops at the same time as you are growing it.

I think if I was just growing stuff at home I'd concentrate on herbs and salad leaves and tomatoes and have some raspberry canes. Salad leaves are stupidly expensive, poorly packaged and very easy to grow in the smallest of spaces. And home grown toms just taste lovely.

This is mostly true of potatoes, onions, carrots.
Courgettes and runner/french beans are never cheap in the shops, which always perplexes me because of how many we get.
I also have an allotment, and would advise that people who just have a garden or small area at home use the space for courgettes and beans. It's a small thing, but it feels good.

I have an allotment, it's not really a cheap way to grow veg for a family, especially if you are not very experienced.
I have an allotment, too, and I didn't recommend that, as it's hard work and it would work out more cost effective to get an extra job 😃I recommended growing prolific veg and freezing the gluts for the winter to make soup (because you don't even need to blanch then, just throw it in the freezer).

Maybe stop eating so much chicken Op? @Frequency

theres really no need

Cycling through the same five or six meals sounds very normal to me! In fact that's more meal variety than I usually cycle through. We also have a lot of simple meals to default to, like lentil dahl (so, so cheap once you've got the spices and a big bag of rice), veg stir fry (tofu, veg and noodles), beans on toast. Having an expensive protein in every meal and different vegetables and staples will bump the price up. I think it's ok to accept having a set of basic meals you enjoy that you can cycle through, and then when you specifically fancy something different you can splash out on some posher chicken or different veg that week.

I really want to try the batch lady recipes where she cooks 10 meals in an hour to freeze etc. Big up front cost but looks like could make loads of meals for the freezer and save money long term

https://thebatchlady.com/recipe/10-low-cost-family-meals-made-in-1-hour-with-aldi-ingredients/

I cook from scratch and to keep cost down I by frozen veg ( onions, peppers and mushrooms etc) I freeze any meat that I think I am not gonna use, the likes of frozen pizzas for the kids etc I make them from scratch too using wraps and tomato purée they are healthier and saves wastage on a bag of wraps

I always put some aside of whatever we have for tea and freeze a portion to use for lunches and I shop around to see which shops are cheaper for certain items

What a fantastic thread! I’m soon to become a temporary SAHP and am actually looking forward to giving my family (and myself!!) healthier, home cooked food.

I haven’t rtft (sorry!) but may I recommend the batch lady’s cookbook “grab and go”? It’s changed my life a bit! 😂

Cooking from scratch gets easier and cheaper as you get more skills and confidence and you build up your store cupboard.

I picked up some reduced price posh small sausages in sainsbury's yesterday - I par boiled slices of an elderly potato we had hanging around and then tossed those, the sausages, some onion, thinly sliced carrot and pepper and some cherry tomatoes in olive oil, crushed garlic, thyme and some smoked paprika and baked it.

It was a very cheap meal for us as we had all the ingredients apart from the sausages already. As you grow in confidence you will get an idea of your base level of tinned and fresh goods you need each week to construct meals.

Also learning what to do with elderly and slightly past their best veg. They can always be made in to soup or thrown in to a sauce or casserole.

Respectfully I think you're over spending for those meals in particular. I might be way off mark but let's list some ingredients for some easy dishes including the ones you've said. And also omitting spiced

Chicken thighs bone in (cheaper cut, bones slip right out of you cook long enough for the curry - do kids portion without bones. Tastier cut aswell stays moist for long cooks)
MAYBE frozen chicken breasts for the fakeaway
Broccoli
Block of cheese
Cream OR coconut powder in a box, makes coconut milk and you get a good few portions, cheap
Big bag of pasta 1kg or more
Big bag of rice 5kg or more
Big bags of dried beans, black, chickpeas, and kidney - really cheap but need soaking for 8+ hours, do this day before, takes literally 10 seconds
Pack of cheap peppers
Pack of onions

Get your spice cupboard filled if you're going full home cooked, you could get kid involved in making some spice blends and that'll be way way cheaper than buying jars, doesn't take long maybe 10 mins roasting bits and bobs
Go to Lidl about 7pm and stock up on the discounted meat. Freeze immediately, I don't even bother portioning them out, I just defrost and defrost the bits I'm not using but that's just lazy me
Excess tins of plum tomatoes - tastier than chopped always and you just mash up with a potato masher when youve put them in the dish
Get fresh veg weekly, I go to my local grocer usually Asian or polish for veg, cheese, dried beans and rice pasta etc. meat all comes from Lidl when it's on discount and I make up dishes with them
I rotate a few different ones if you want some ideas, Indonesian coconut curry is fucking delicious, I made a spice blend and put the rest of what I didn't use in a jar. Next time it's just bang spices in pan, veg, meat, coconut powder. Shepard's pie, chicken thighs with chips and veg, big cauliflower cheese lasts 2 meals, fish pie with frozen fish don't need loads, pesto pasta with peppers and onions, roasted cabbage with chinese pork belly (literally pork belly, star ainais, soy sauce and sugar... so so tasty) and rice

Tbh I'm waffling but if youre interested let me know and I'll list all my staples I make sure to have on hand, and the shop will slim down massively. And trust me, I'm on a BUDGET. I can barely afford my rent so cheapest goes - I make 90% of our food form scratch (for 3)

Cooking from scratch isn't especially cheap, but I'm pretty strict with portion control and freeze leftovers which saves money in subsequent weeks. Also we're happy to have a cheap meal (omelette and chips, jacket potato, cheese and beans) a couple of times a week. Have made decent savings by going cheaper with bread....Aldi's Ancient Grains sliced loaf is great value at 99p. We also changed our snacks..no more KitKats, Tunnocks wafers or tubes of Pringles....we have crumpets or toast instead (yes, I know fruit, celery and carrot sticks are better,but this is real life!)

I find cooking in bulk cheaper. Chunky soups, tuna pasta casserole, spag bol, zucchini frittata bake etc. All bulked out with lentils and lots of cheap veg. Generally get roughly 10 servings out of these, so you could either freeze some, or have it a few nights if there are not many of you, or a combo of both with using leftovers for smaller lunch portions. Cook up a large batch of savoury muffins for lunch and freeze them, so people just get one out in the morning as they head off.

I haven't read the whole thread, although I have read all of the op's posts.
Re yoghurt: you don't need a yoghurt maker, you just need a wide necked flask & a pot of love yoghurt. I use UHT milk as you don't have to heat it up so much. If you have an instant pot you can easily make it in there in a bowl (mine even has a yoghurt setting). I strain it through a muslin to make Greek yoghurt. You get about 500mL from a one litre UHT milk.

Spices can be kept fresh in a freezer. Take out only the quantity you want to use for say a month. Lentils and chick peas keep for ages too and yoghurt is easily made at home - all you need is a bit of live culture and absolutely no special equipment is needed. Tofu (fresh and as dried faux meat) is cheap and very versatile for vegetarian dishes.

Tray bakes of chicken thighs are great too, add flavourings and vegetables as you wish (we do ours in a wide air fryer). Lidl peppers in jars are cheaper than most fresh, you don't need a whole jar. The chicken skins brown up nicely if there's no medical reason to avoid animal fat. Most people (including children) are perfectly capable of taking the meat off the bone themselves unless they're really picky!

Chicken cooked on the bone is much nicer as well - moister.

@Frequency what did you mean by your African village comment?

I cook a lot and I find the best ways to save money are:

• Make your meal plan around using up leftovers / finishing off a multipack. It's cheaper to buy 1kg of chicken and use it all than buying 1 breast at time.
• Use your freezer if you can't use all of something
• Leftovers make great lunch tomorrow - I always make a little bit more so I can eat it for lunch the next day.
• A couple of basic meals a week - e.g spag bol. I can make a lot of bol from one pack of mince (it's bulked up with carrot, celery, sweet potato, etc..)
• Bottom of the fridge veg make great soup - don't throw them out, cook them!
• Don't read recipes! I cook from what I have and not from a book or I'd be forever buying another bloody herb. I keep a good stock of herbs, pastes, etc.. and then I use what I have. Recipes always have the next great thing in them and I have a limited kitchen space for mirin and sake and rice wine vinegar when one of those does the job of all 3 :)
• I buy meat on-line of a specialist cheaper retailer and freeze it.
• You can make a whole ocean of stuff with an onion, a can of tomatoes and a stock cube. Pasta sauces, shakshuka, jambalya, sausage casserole, veggie chillie... I have sometimes started frying the onion before I even know what I want to cook!!

I've really only read the OPs posts and a few of the comments, but wanted to chime in anyway.

I've never used the various cooking/grocery meal boxes. Always seemed too expensive! But in the past year or so I have made a point of cutting our portion sizes by about 20% and put the remainder into the freezer. The last week of the month before payday (so easy to remember) we basically live off leftovers. I also make extra sauces that can then be rejigged as pasta sauces or spices added for curries etc. I love cooking though and so for example in our freezer right now we have a beef stroganoff batch (just cook rice or noodles); a coq au vin (just add potatoes); a shepherds pie; a tuscan chicken base that when I bring out I will heat and add fresh cream and parmesan. Doing that has saved a surprising amount. I always cooked too much (and ate too much) so now it's more 'normal' I guess and saves roughly 1/4 of the grocery bill each month.

Oh- and also we have consciously cheap meals at least weekly. Right now it's 'breakfast for dinner' on a day where the DCs get a cooked roast at school. So scrambled eggs, toast, cooked tomatoes (or heated through tinned plum tomatoes which I love) and bacon. Everyone eats it.

I am asian, we do a lot of food prep and have ready pastes, sauces in the fridge (cook large quantities and store in fridge for up to 3-4 weeks). Besides being cheaper/healthier than store bought stuff, they give you options when you cook on the fly without recipes. Basically saute onions, ginger, a sauce and add meat and veg at hand, and you're good to go. There is a repetitiveness to most recipes, western or asian. Read a bunch of recipes to get the basic gist and then go. Not all ingredients are essential. Most mistakes can be redeemed with a bit of seasoning at hand - lemon juice, yoghurt, coconut milk, sesame oil, and what not. Leftovers are always used up, batch cooking is fantastic when you need a break from cooking.

We do get HelloFresh still but on weeks that I've skipped it, DH gets to go through the previous recipe cards and pick what he wants (3 or 4 meals) and I'll pick one too.

Normally we only have to buy the meat and vegetable to go with each recipe as I've built up a bit of a stock of the extra herbs and spices, etc. Plus a tub of creme fraiche, as that seems to be regularly used in the HF recipes I have, and always have passata in the cupboard too.