cost of OS. Not always worth it. Maths only here

[Deleted User]

I am os to the core in that I want to do the best I can with what I have. Yesterday I unearthed a pack of dried haricots and duly soaked them overnight and gently cooked them today, using my super efficient portable induction hob. I cooked them to tender and not mushy and that is why I did not use my pressure cooker. I had a look at a tesco tin of haricots and each tin is equivalent to 235g drained weight. I cooled the beans and did the sums

I got the equivalent of 4 1/3 tins and they are now in the freezer

My tesco tin cost 38p. 1 pack (500g) of dried haricots costs £1.20 and the electricity of 1 hour plus 10 mins cost about 12p. The total cost of me cooking my beans was £1.32 and the equivalent cost of buying tinned would be £1.64. So I have saved a grand total of 32p

They are now taking up valuable room in my tiny freezer

My conclusion is that it is definitely not worth cooking haricot beans from dried. My time is worth much more than the 32p saved

Any other maths out there?

catznine

Not maths but I should think the beans you cooked are much healthier than the tinned - which are often loaded with salt!

The same goes for hm jams - you could buy the cheap value jam but I prefer to use natural ingredients even if it cost more it is better for you and tastier. Definately old style if not strictly money saving!

It can be disheartening sometimes to do all that work and only save pennies but it must add up, also the feeling of achievement can't be ignored.

charliee_3

do you know.. im not very good at O/S, i try and im ok on a lot of things, but i think that for some things life is just too short and soaking and pre-cooking beans is one of them...

another is tinned tomatoes.. the other day on economy gastronomy when they made the tomato sauce bedrock dish and got those students to peel and chop their own tomatoes from fresh i was flabbergasted.. WHY?? No wonder it took them 3 hours to make dinner, its not practical unless you have all day spare to cook.

tinned tomatoes are so so cheap and no hassle at all, peeling tomatoes is labourious and messy and unless you have a huge glut of homegrown ones (in which case yipee go right ahead and use your bounty in any way you can), but what is the point of buying fresh tomatoes from the shop and faffing around for the best part of an hour for no reason and no money saving?? The only exception in my eyes would be if you are making a very very simple sauce that doesnt need much cooking and you want the fresh taste with basil or something.. but for bog standard sauces there is no difference

i suppose the dried beans took up less space in the cupboard than 4 1/3 tins would, so that was one plus side... ??

daska

I don't think maths is the be all and end all where OS is concerned. There are lots of factors that have to be applied when working out the value of things - not least how much your time and energy is worth. If cooking from scratch every day means you don't have any energy left to play with the baby or you could have earned £200 in the same time then it's not good value because it's not cost effective or contributing to a well balanced life and you haven't actually made a saving but a loss. Some things are so simple though, like jam, that if you spend the same amount you can have something infinitely better. It's not cheaper but it's better value. I have to be very careful where I 'spend' my energy. If I cook from scratch every day my child suffers because I'm exhausted for the rest of the time. So my compromise is that I batch cook huge quantities and balance the rest with pre-prepared convenience foods. For me that's best value.

Zazen999

What you should have done is to sow a handful or two of those beans in May, and you would be harvesting enough beans to keep you in casseroles for pretty much the whole year.

ubamother

I balance by cooking loads of dried beans and freezing them in appropriate portions. That way I'm using one hob to cook all of them at once, keeping my freezer full which is efficient and supporting my lack of ability to think ahead and prep dried beans in time to eat them! I think the home-cooked dried ones taste better than the tinned.
I haven't done the maths, but I buy big packs of beans rather than small, so I would guess that the cost is about equal, plus I get better cooked beans!
I do agree though that it is worth doing the maths - somethings that used to be OS - knitting for example, have now beeen elevated to 'craft' status and therefore cost a fortune.

mrcow

Another one is home made ice cream.

If you are just making something simple like vanilla or chocolate/strawberry etc then the cost verses a 2l pot of supermarket ice cream is not worth the bother once you accounted for eggs/cream etc.

(Obviously more posh ones do compare price wise)

But once again - it's what's gone in it that counts.

Bitsy_Beans

Sometimes I do things the OS way not to save money but because I prefer to.
OK in the grand scheme of things 32p probably isn't a massive saving but at least you have the satisfaction of knowing how the beans were prepared and what was added at every stage.

mummysaver

I think that working out whether it's worth it to you is always worthwhile! Not something I always bother to do though, some things are just automatic and I do them cos I've always done them!

I generally soak and cook and then freeze my own beans, mostly I buy huge bags of beans though, so it does tend to work out cheaper even including cooking and freezing. Often Morrisons have good offers on tinned chickpeas though, so I buy those, poss if I lived in an area with more ethnic supermarkets then it'd work out cheaper to buy all my beans tinned, but since out local shops seem to think that a few Polish items are exotic then I shall continue with my dried beans!

For something like ice cream, I enjoy homemade stuff, all the more because I don't make it that often, and pricewise I'd compare it with handmade premium stuff rather than the 2 litre tubs in the supermarket. But I agree that making your own isn't really moneysaving.

Knitting isn't something I do a lot, but I know that when I made my girls some scarves a couple of years ago it was only cheaper as I found some bargain wool. Ubamother is right, many things are now seen as a craft or hobby rather than something that saves money.

OS always seems to be a trade off, between what saves money, what you enjoy and what is economical and time saving. We all have differing priorities and the pleasure we achieve from different things often makes up for the fact that they aren't particularly money saving! The trick is in finding what works for you - not everyone feels the need or wants to knit their own shreddies!

Bronnie

kittie wrote: »

I am os to the core in that I want to do the best I can with what I have. Yesterday I unearthed a pack of dried haricots and duly soaked them overnight and gently cooked them today, using my super efficient portable induction hob. I cooked them to tender and not mushy and that is why I did not use my pressure cooker. I had a look at a tesco tin of haricots and each tin is equivalent to 235g drained weight. I cooled the beans and did the sums

I got the equivalent of 4 1/3 tins and they are now in the freezer

My tesco tin cost 38p. 1 kg of dried haricots costs £1.20 and the electricity of 1 hour plus 10 mins cost about 12p. The total cost of me cooking my beans was £1.32 and the equivalent cost of buying tinned would be £1.64. So I have saved a grand total of 32p

They are now taking up valuable room in my tiny freezer

My conclusion is that it is definitely not worth cooking haricot beans from dried. My time is worth much more than the 32p saved

Any other maths out there?

I'm confused, surely 1kg of dried beans soaked, didn't only produce 1kg of cooked beans?

I'd have thought you'd have produced a larger weight of cooked beans than you started off with and therefore the equivalent of far more tins and a much better cost-saving???

zippychick

If we are talking maths only, I expected to come in here and see that it cost you to make what ever it was - in this case beans.

So , mathematically, it was worth it - because there was still a saving, no matter how small.

if you are doing something new, it can be worth working out in advance how much of a saving you would make . This way you start the project with full realistic expectations, knowing the savings up front.