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

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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.

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

It does get easier and cheaper but possibly not as easy or cheap as you would like.

What jumps out at me is that you (your child) are choosing recipes that seem to need a lot of different ingredients and, tbh, sound like a bit of a faff. On the plus side, it does like there is scope for leftovers.

I’m not sure how your recipe building app works but I would suggest making a list of all the meals you can already cook and enjoy. I’ve just checked, my list has about 40 dishes. Some of these are fancy and time consuming others require 3 ingredients and a 30 seconds of prep time.

Consider choosing simpler recipes like a basic protein (fish/chicken/beef/lamb/etc) baked in the oven or fried in a frying pan with seasonal veggies and a sauce (look up ‘mother sauces’ and learn a few - it will revolutionise your cooking and people think it is really impressive.

I’m also going to suggest that, as much as I like international cookery, you might find it cheaper to do more British or even European style cookery. It will be based on local ingredients and therefore cheaper than needing to buy ‘exotic’ spices. People think curries are cheap, and they are in India, but in the UK there are other, cheaper options available too.

You say that you are not eating breakfast or lunch because dinner is too expensive. I’d be worried that is setting you up for snacking (bad for your budget), or malnutrition (bad for your health). If you can spend £75 on groceries for dinners only, you can alter your meal plan to afford toast in the morning and a cheese sandwich for lunch.

There's a few branded items that you could swap out - chilli sauce, Maille mustard, Schwartz spices etc.

And the yoghurts. We buy massive tubs of Aldi Greek yoghurt and use it with homemade granola, and as a substitute for sour cream etc. or stir in fruit or jam for sweetness.

OH bought a whole salmon from Morrisons last week, portioned and we froze it. We can get a whole small chicken in the air fryer. That does two meals then the bones are simmered down to make stock for the dogs.

Vegetables some fresh, some from Iceland that saves waste and can work out cheaper.

Herbs we grow some in the garden, sage, thyme, chives, rosemary. We have an extensive range of herbs and spices in a rack.

I find lentils expensive

Batch cooking is great, we currently have veggie lasagna, meat lasagna and shepherds pie in the freezer, and are about to add 6 portions of moussaka. Homemade ready meals.

If you go to an ethnic shop or go down the ethnic aisle in the supermarket herbs spices and rice can be bought in large packets and the price per 100g is much cheaper

That's certainly true, but if OP isn't aren't using much of them, those big bags will be wasted as the spices lose their flavour.

They're only good value if you use lots of that particular spice (or if you go halves with your mates and split the bags between you - we love a trip to the Asian supermarket)

I cook (substantial portions) from scratch every day and I just look at an average spend, rather than per meal. Some meals are much cheaper than others.

for example, I make pesto in the summer with basil I grow in the garden. The basil starts off as one supermarket plant, which I split into at least three, plant on, water pretty much daily, and it just gives and gives. Add some pasta and bacon and that’s a cheaper meal.

if you don’t fancy growing anything (if you do, say, as tomatoes are super easy to grow and can give huge crops, so I can suggest ideas) then an orzo, cod (frozen), tomato and chorizo recipe is tasty and fairly cheap.

king prawn, lemon and chilli linguine is also really nice if you can wait for an offer on frozen king prawns. My local fishmonger is cheaper than sainsburys.

also remember that easy things jacket potato, cheese, tuna and frozen peas/beans is cooking from scratch and nutritious. Omelettes are cheap too. Spaghetti carbonara as well.

anything with heavily seasoned potato wedges goes down really well here

The more you do it, the better you will get at substituting, buying/making extra to freeze and all those other skills. Also, I only plan 6 meals a week. Five to shop for, one from the freezer (occasionally 2 to shop and 4 from freezer when freezer getting full or I am feeling less flush). Meal 7 is foraged from the cupboards - there’s always something knocking about that needs using up. So I use it up in curry or risotto or soup or other flexible meal. I have a fancy cooking meal limit of 3 a week. The rest is jackets/omlettes/pasta&pesto/stuff on toast. We have a roast pretty much every week and this follows into a second meal (chicken pie, beef ragu, lamb hotpot etc). These are usually our only meat meals. We don’t buy fake meat substitutes. This keeps costs down enormously.

I think the issue is that you think one meal at a time, and need to think more holistically re that as well as cost. Leftovers can become all manner of things, the veg and spuds from Easter Sunday became bubble and squeak on Tuesday, the lamb became moussaka on Wednesday, that sort of thing. Dp makes pies from leftover stew or other meat with a bit of veg.

I tend to structure our dinners like so;

• Two new ‘fancy’ meals a week where I’ll cook something new or that requires specific ingredients that I don’t have in as standard. Usually on days I have more time.

• Two easy batch cooked meals, eg Spag bol and cottage pie.

• A veggie night

• Two cheap nights which are usually something like soup, jacket potatoes, freezer meal.

No way could I afford to cook something interesting every day 😂 we are a family of four. I shop consciously and mainly healthily and we all have breakfast, lunch and dinner either at home or taken with us to work/school. Our weekly shop (done at Aldi with a few bits bought from Asda) is never less than £120 a week total, usually about £90 on the big shop and £20/30 in top ups through the week.

How many people are you feeding? I’ve just googled hello fresh costs and got this “: For 2 people, it costs £26.99 + £4.99 delivery, which totals to £31.98” that’s only 3 meals. So if you are only feeding 2 people 7 meals (5+ pizzas) it sounds like are already spending less than hello fresh even though your shop has cleaning supplies and all the herbs/spices etc that will cover multiple shops ? AND your meals will have left overs. Did I miss anything?

I’m also going to suggest that, as much as I like international cookery, you might find it cheaper to do more British or even European style cookery. It will be based on local ingredients and therefore cheaper than needing to buy ‘exotic’ spices.
Also, are you buying seasonally? Bulk out meals with in-season (i.e. cheap) vegetables.

Herbs we grow some in the garden, sage, thyme, chives, rosemary. We have an extensive range of herbs and spices in a rack.

We had mint in the garden at one point but the bastard dog dug it all up and ate it. I could use a planter on the kitchen windowsill though. That's a nice, deep windowsill and gets lots of sunlight.

I'm guessing fresh basil, rosemary, thyme, and mint are the most useful ones to grow?

That sounds like a great selection

I'm guessing fresh basil, rosemary, thyme, and mint are the most useful ones to grow?

For European cookery, yes. For two curries a week and peri peri, not so much.

Sorry, just want to reinforce my point about thinking local.

Most normal people that cook from scratch don't need to buy all the ingredients for a full week of meals because they have a store cupboard full of things like herbs, spices, condiments, pasta etc.... so over time I would expect you'll build your own store cupboard and it should get cheaper. And personally I usually seek out recipes which use the things I have rather than recipes for which I have no ingredients for in the house already. Other things to do is to have less meat per person and make it go further with cheaper ingredients like beans, carrots etc, and have the occasional very cheap meal, eg lentil soup

Edit... forgot the leftovers thing. Try to cook enough for 2 nights, or have enough to freeze a few portions.

Also don't read too much mumsnet.

I have now added all the ingredients for feta pie to my order ( thanks for that @LaMariposa ) after just getting it EXACTLY to the minimum spend of £50.

One thing I do is a clear the fridge pasta bake

So it might be an onion, a red pepper, some cherry tomatoes, a couple of chopped up bits of bacon, whatever cheese is left over, half a jar of pesto, some roast chicken... you get the idea!
You just need pasta, chopped tomatoes and herbs to whatever else you have

I cook a lot from here and each recipe has prices and a slider adjuster for quantities

www.dontgobaconmyheart.co.uk

I mostly cook from scratch and I do make recipes most nights for dinner.

One big tip I've realised is that you start to learn 'what is a good substitute for what and in what context' over time. Then you can start to make some substitutions which make things cheaper.

One sort of rule I have, is that if a recipe has more than one 'fancy' ingredient, then I google substitutes for any subsequent 'fancy' ingredients. I will only buy one fancy ingredient or spice per recipe. Once you build up some supplies then this becomes easier.

Example tonight we had vegetarian chicken gyros from bbc website. I had all the other ingredients but did not want to buy pomegranate molasses, so I googled that lemon juice and sugar can substitute.

Along with all the other tips such as buying in bulk, stocking up on yellow sticker stuff (I go once a week at 6pm), also if we buy a dessert type item then we have a simple very cheap dinner to make up the money.

Yes to buying a lot of chicken breasts/fillets and salmon when on offer and putting in freezer. Yes also to frozen fruit and veggies.

Tofu stir fries are nice.

What I also tend to do (just me and lodger) is eg chicken pilau that I can have cold next day or heat up, or make ratatouille and do same. With the ratatouille I can have it with chicken breasts/thighs and cheese grated or put it in shell pasta and sauce and bacon and make a pasta bake, which again lasts a few days and can freeze it.

Agreed with @Clutterbugsmum build up a basic store cupboard of essentials and buy when on offer, stuff like flour (for baking and sauces), beans (cannellini, kidney), pesto, pastas and then I find you always have something to choose to make. And you just need to look in freezer or get essential every day items like milk and eggs during a weekly pop to the shops.

Looking at the recipes she has picked I think she has gone all out on the spicy/curry meals while she has full control.

There is usually a lot more compromise. The other child does not like spicy food (and she classes spicy as anything hotter than KFC's original recipes which she deems to be spicy) so I think DD2 is making the most of it while she can.

She usually chooses traditional British meals when she has to consider her sister's tastes as well as her own.

I have always cooked from scratchand it is cheap.
BUT
I have a fully stoked spice cupboard already.

There are a few things I do to reduce cost
for meat:
chicken thighs not breast
use cheap beef and cook it long and slow eg beef casserole/goulash with stewing steak
But the biggest thing is to reduce meat portion size.

100g of meat per person in a casserole/stew/curry is plenty.

I make for example a spag bol. I make double and use half for spag bol and half for lasagne. I fill it with cheap veg. carrots, chopped tomatoes, celery, etc. I use much less meat, and it does the 2 meals. The meat is enough to provide flavour, along with the garlic and spices.

or do a curry, and do 2 vegetables on the side which fills people up cheaply, with less of the meat dish. I often do a cucumber relish thing with vinegar which my kids love, and there is a grated carrot curry side dish which I found on BBC food.

and cook vegetarian at least once a week if not twice. Omlettes, egg bake (which is like a spanish omlette done in the oven. Roasted veg pasta.

cream, sauces, cheeses are all expensive.
tinned tomatoes, chick peas, potatoes, rice, etc are all cheap.

The more you do it, the better you’ll get at working out if a recipe is cheap or expensive. You’ll also get better at scaling things up or down so there’s leftovers.

Are you on Instagram? I have a few budget cook people on there that have weekly menus like “feed 4 people 5 meals for £25 at ALDI” Try users “sugarpinkfood” “tamingtwins” “Cardiffmum” for the sort of thing that I mean.

Oh and for herbs - I cook a lot of casseroles and also tomato based stuff

My most used things are very boring
Thyme
Oregano
Garlic
Smoked paprika
Bay leaves
Stock cubes
Red wine stock pots
Tomato purée
Lea and perrins
Marmite (a tiny bit makes a huge difference in a stew)
Sea salt
Black pepper