"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.

Onions, garlic etc definitely don't need to be kept in a fridge. My butter lives in my bread bin. Hard cheese is also fine out of the fridge for a while other than in very hot weather.

I think buying the exact recipe ingredients has added a lot. Don't buy a jar of roasted peppers when you can just roast a pepper in advance when you've already got the oven on for something else? Don't pay extra for pre-cut chicken strips when it takes 30 seconds to slice up a piece of chicken.

Think about building up your herbs and spices over time, start with the most versatile, and DD needs to learn to see what you've got and plan around that, maybe adding one new one every week or two. Otherwise you're going to end up with random expensive ones that only had half a teaspoon used 6 months ago.

I havent read the whole thread and I know I sound like a bore but years ago, a sufficient tea/dinner could be scrambled eggs on toast, beans on toast, sardines on toast, beans and bacon, mince and potatoes with veg etc

I like the sort of modern/fancy meals of today as much as from the foods of my childhood but they will cost you more, simple as

No one has to eat like they're at a restaurant every night. I think we've lost sight of simple, quick nutritious foods.

Personally I batch cook and put it in portions in the freezer but then I am left with quite a lot of freezer meals that I work my way through before being able to fit more in. Gets a bit samey

Be careful of buying brands. In your shopping you have purchased the priciest mustard and sweet chilli sauce, there are far cheaper versions. Also you have got branded yoghurts when asda do their own version. You don’t need to buy the sauces every week they will of course lay but you will save money buying cheaper brands.

its great you are making the effort to cook from scratch!

Halve your meat and replace with chickpeas/kidney beans etc

When the oven is on for cooking the evening meal , Chuck some simple cake buns in as cakes are so expensive at the moment.

This has probably been said already but if you were buying diced chicken breast, or even undiced, no wonder your bills were so high. Buy whole chickens and either portion up or have a roast and then take the rest of the meat off for other meals. Shred it as well as it seems like it goes further when bulked out with veg.

simply suggest your dc chose a meal once a week
rather than every day

You've got a lot of chicken there OP. 3 meals with chicken is obviously going to set you back - chicken is expensive.

What are the portions like on those meals/ how many do they make?

If each recipe makes 4 portions, then actually £65 for five home cooked dinners (including three chicken based) is not that bad.

(I took off the price for the herbs/ spices because you won't have to buy those every time).

If you want to do it more cheaply, try doing more vegetarian meals and less meat.

Cooking from scratch is ‘great’ - but quite honestly there are better (more fun, more nutritious, more cost effective) ways of doing it than religiously trawling supermarkets.

The last time I posted this link a few people found it exciting so here it is again:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1gIuV4OztjUWlOV5sx4S9iD_gAUfUvlho5_0r4F1zYZo/htmlview?pli=1#

This is the main website that explains it all:

https://farmstofeedus.org/

It isn’t just potatoes and cauliflower! The list contains suppliers of bread, cheese, wine, coffee, whole foods, as well as fruit and vegetables. And crisps, iirc.

i got a code for Simply cook from mn,
it was great, lots of good ideas, but even that i would use every day.
just once a week, and then stop the subscription and search for similar recipes

Is the price of the pizzas/ garlic bread/ ready made sauces/ chicken nuggets etc that you have added on top of the price for these 5 meals?

Or is this all included in the £75?

Switching out expensive ingredients, as PP have said saves ££. I have never bought pancetta in my life, I just use bacon. I use cream, creme fraiche and plain yoghurt almost interchangeably, depending on what's in the fridge.

If you can make short crust pastry, an egg and bacon flan can feed four with a salad and perhaps a few potatoes.

Beef mince, padded out with lentils, for a huge vat of Bolognese (tinned tomatoes, onions, garlic, stock cubes, dried herbs, pepper and salt, maybe a spoon of flour to thicken it).

Is there a street market near you? Ours is very good value for veg/fruit, meat, and some groceries (you never know what you'll find, ours tends to have cheddar, coffee, teabags, biscuits, nuts, dried fruit, crisps, jam ... and then odd stuff like tinned olives, tomato puree, sugar, dog food, loo roll).

Also feeding the dogs. Working dog food is VAT free, which might save you 20% for the same quality - depending on what you're feeding.

And above all - congrats on having a DD prepared to cook for you all, all the time!

If you mix some cheaper dishes in like pasta bake, jacket potatoes it’ll keep your overall costs down.

I also second meal substituting out cheaper ingredients and ones that you can use up throughout the week. Soup makes a healthy cheap lunch that you can eat through the week.

olive oil is super expensive as is some on the named brands you’ve used. At least you won’t need those for a while.

They sound like good meals but not necessarily the cheapest. I'm surprised at £75 though, I typically spend £80 for 3 adults but that includes everything. I do have lots of spices. One meal each week tends to be veggie pesto pasta (jarred sauce is 99p, courgette, red pepper and an onion comes to £1.20, wholemeal pasta 75p but only use 2/3 packet) I often cook dal with pickles one day which comes in at £1.50 a head, especially if either of my dc are visiting as they are vegetarian. Another cheap eats is risotto (I like to make it with a packet pancetta, an onion, zest and juice of a lemon, mug of risotto rice, veggie stock cube, oregano, black pepper, 3 cups boiling water then once cooked add half a black of hard Italian cheese, doesn't have to be Parmesan top with pan fried asparagus) if the veggies are in town I make mushroom instead, both come is at about £1.75 a portion.

The trick is to disperse cheaper meals with more luxurious ones. Oh and another trick is to roast pork shoulder at the weekend, for £10 you can get a large joint that is a roast, a stirfry and eg fajitas or similar, I'll even get sandwiches out of it, it's really good value

Tbh it’s not necessary’s cheaper, especially when you add your time in. . What does make it cheaper is swapping more cheap meals in, bulking out with pulses so you have leftovers….

it’s like the first time you bake your own brownies not from a packet and think bloody hell we could have gone to Wagamamas for what that cost.

These threads are sad when people say you can only have flavoursome recipes at the weekend, should eat lentils daily, scrambled eggs as a main etc. I get it OP we cook from scratch and have a ‘proper’ meal every day, sometimes meet but sometimes fish or veg. We make enough for lunches the next day or for freezing and are mindful of what we eat. A food shop for the 2 adults and 2 primary children is around £120-40 a week depending on how many extras (toiletries, cleaning stuff etc) we also need.

I'm between eu and UK - but in the UK I only buy 1kg or whatever is cheaper price per kg and then I bulk out meat with beans.
If you have a pressure cooker it's better to get dried and soak then cook - cheaper and tastes better. But the prices for gas and electric are mad if you're simmering long term.
Otherwise a tin I think should do it.
Beef is bulked out with lentils, green.
Chicken is cooked and any leftover bulked out with black eyed beans etc.

meal plan around supermarket offers.

keep it simple.

stay with mostly seasonal veg.

keep it vegetarian for the most part.

and don't overthink 'cooking from scratch'.

Do you have a ' refill' shop near to you? You can buy spices in small quantities and with your own container or in a paper bag at ours. It's a lot cheaper than buying them at the supermarket where most of the cost is for the jars!

Why are you all obsessing over spices when the OP is going without breakfast and lunch every day ???

She needs advice on how to build up a sustainable larder of basic, nutritious food.

Meat is a complete food. It is not "bad" for you. You will be healthier eating only meat than eating only super food broccoli for instance. Even Vitamin C which is hard to get in meat can be found in raw liver ( not recommending that, just saying).

Less faffy ingredients will bring the cost down. Things on offer will help.

The problem really is ultra processed food is unhealthy and thats what's tends to be cheap in the U.K.

We eat well and when DS is home too, £75 would do a full week.
We never have a week of meals like in your list!
And curries always use roast chicken leftovers (tastes better too).
Extra large chicken is about £5.50 and does roast for 4 plus one big curry enough for at least 2 dinners, with 2 tins of chickpeas.
Bolognese - 500g of mince for about £3.50 and one cup of red lentils, plus carrots, onions, tinned toms etc does at least 4 meals for 4 of us.
Mary Berry's recipe (Bolognese Ragu) is good, but I replace the pork mince with lentils, skip the wine unless I have an open bottle, and skip the cream (just weird).
Your arabiara pasta - an onion, courgette and aubergine fried, jar of pasta sauce, pasta - can't be more than £3 to feed all of you. Skip the pancietta. Quick midweek meal.
Once you learn to tweak your recipes the price comes down.

Skipping breakfast and lunch is madness if you can afford £75 a week already.
Loaf of bread, jar of jam, butter = whole week of breakfasts.

It definitely can be cheaper than that. I think there are a few reasons that was so expensive: lots of meat and the type of meat (portioned chicken is expensive), using branded prepared stuff (like the peri sauce), using expensive fresh stuff (basil), needing to buy things that will last (spices). I dont think following recipes needs to be so expensive but depends on the type.

Ways to make things cheaper are: less and cheaper cuts of meat, checking what spices etc you have and doing recipes with those in, using supermarket brand (or aldi, lidl whatever). Also try and think of meals across the week e.g.

Say you do a roast chicken on sunday, use the chicken carcass to make stock for soup on monday, and use any bigger leftover bits of chicken in sandwiches for lunch.
Make a big batch of tomato sauce for pasta. Have it just with cheese and pasta for dinner one night, then another night add some tuna, sweetcorn, mozzarella and do a pasta bake.
Do a big batch of dal that will last a couple of dinners (my husbands student version was literally a few spoonfuls of pataks, bag of red lentils, chopped onion and water boiled in a pot all together and is surprisingly delicious), serve with rice and a dollop of yogurt on top (and some spicy chutney on the side!)
Thats 6 dinners already.

Its really great that your DD is cooking, maybe encourage her to also learn to budget at the same time? E.g. say she has a budget of £60 for dinners and ask her to add the things to an online shop. Personally i find online shopping better than going in store because you can easily see how much youre spending and make changes if you need to.

we eat 'flavourful' recipes every day.

keeping it simple doesn't need to mean boring.

we rotate dishes a lot, for example

mon- soup from weekend leftovers & bread
tue- sandwiches & salat (dc activities mean we can't eat all together that day)
wed - pasta (which sauce is decided by veg offers)
thu veg curry (again seasonal veg)
fri fish & potatos
sat & sun 'fancy' meals one of them with meat

we use a lit of tinned tomatos, tinned or dried lentils. onions.
carrots, courgette, butternut squash are in almost every meal to bulk it out.

I'm a family of 4 and can sometimes get my shops to 80/90 a week if I don't need toiletries, washing liquid etc. But I meal plan for the whole week and try plan meals I can use similar ingredients for other meals so I'm not buying individual meals, I also alternate meals so example spag bowl Monday, freeze it have it Friday sort of thing? I don't do that with all meals but if I can save that way I do. Its really hard to cook from scratch, if there's anything I can cheap out on I do but it's really difficult these days, if I need a "proper" shop as I call it I'm spending over 100 it's insane! X