Working out price of recipes

[JamieRG]

Hi Mums, etc,

I have been looking around recipe blogs and something stuck out at me on each and every one I visited. They generally don't give a price of how much a meal costs for the whole family etc.

I would love your feedback on my idea, would you sign up to a newsletter or website for free that would give the price of recipes in most of the big supermarkets?

I love to save money and for me, this would give some great recipe ideas for my weekly budget.
Your feedback would be appreciated.

So you'd have the recipe, and then all of the total prices for each supermarket?

I get the concept but I know already that aldi/Lidl will be cheapest.

Also, how will you factor in spices etc? Eg if you need one tsp of peppercorns, will you work out the cost of 1tsp or the cost of buying the whole jar?

It just sounds a bit complicated. How will you work around offers? And varieties of product? Eg - passata - jar, posh jar, carton, carton with herbs?

There's so many variables I think it'd be incredibly complicated to get going.

Sorry, don't mean to piss on your chips.

Do people need an app for that? By looking at a recipe, most people would be able to estimate a rough cost.

it's more about a website to do the maths but also allows you to work out what is left in your cupboard for other recipes. Therefore reducing food waste as well as reducing your shopping bill.

But how will it do that?

Each product has a standard or average weight, based on this we can assume you will next X potatoes from a 1kg bag at Tescos costing £2.80 as an example. If it's peppercorns, peppercorns are in weight and 1 tsp is equal to 3-4g.

But what if I did a recipe using potatoes on a Monday, a family recipe involving potatoes the following day? Your site won't know how many potatoes I have

Also this would involve throwing out everything already in the cupboards and rebuying full packs of stuff?

It will know an estimated weight of potatoes that you will have left over from the following day. It also helps you find more recipes based on what you have not used in your cupboard, reducing your weekly bill, making less waste etc.

How does it know what's in my cupboard?

And how many potatoes I used in my grandma's shepherds pie, for example?

It sounds stressful. You wouldn't be able to deviate. And you've totally changed the plan of what you're doing and why from your OP as the posts have gone on

To answer your question, no i wouldn't use a site for this as i don't see it as a problem that needs solved.

BBC Good Food already have some such function attached to their recipes ( when you're signed in), you can choose from three different supermarkets at the moment, and it will give you the cost per serving based on buying all ingredients for the recipe (all those available from chosen supermarket). It also has some shopping list function.

For personal use I set up a simple a spreadsheet where I put in the pack price (for example per kg) and then the measurement unit (like gram) and then amount used in recipe and number of servings. Can't remember all details now but it works when I need to check costs for biscuits and cake slices, and I update when I restock the cupboard (ouch, the cost of flour...)

Ahh slighty misunderstood the question sorry, just seen updates.

I don't think it's that helpful really because you've got to buy things like peppercorns as a pack rather than 3g or whatever. The exact cost of the recipe doesn't really matter-I do the rough cost in my head.

I want to say thank you for your feedback and taking your time out of your day to read this etc. Is there any other problems that i might be able to solve?

OP, I don't know your circumstances and whether you want to live day to day shopping for food or is it a necessity. I have someting like cupboard staples ( tins, cereals, oil, spices ), meat in the freezer bought when and what's on the offer( I shop at morrisons, co-op and butcher), weekly top up of bread(frozen), milk,fruit and veg. Most of veg doesn't go off immediately if stored properly. Think roughly what do you want to eat and work around what basics you already have in your cupboard/freezer.