Ready made sauces?

maman

It's more expensive to start with as you'll have to buy herbs/garlic etc but if you look at the price of passata or tomatoes and onions which is all you'll need regularly then it is cheaper. I make my own becasue I want to make my meals as 'unprocessed' as possible to limit extra fat, sugar etc bt I do believe it's cheaper too. Same goes for marinades, stir-fry sauces and all sorts of ready-meals.

ab7

I agree with maman, in the beginning it seems expensive because of the herbs etc, but now I can make a great pasta/chinese/curry sauce with very little outlay. My fussy teenagers now prefer my pasta sauce etc to the jars, and its a bonus for me as I can add more garlic/basil etc as I feel like.
Look at http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2830/sweet-and-sour-chicken
and look at the bits for the sweet and sour sauce and how easy it is - even doubling that amount is still way cheaper because the total cost of buying that will come in at well under a tenner - but guess how many sweet/sour sauces you can make for that amount! Uncles bens just got fried :rotfl:
My lightbulb moment came when looking (drooling) at the grocery challenge thread so pop over there (at the top of the thread index) to discover a treasure trove of receipes that will not only taste way better, but can be much cheaper.

Welcome to oldstyle! :beer:

mandi

I absolutely make everything from scratch, but you can't beat Aldi and lidl for cheap sauce.. I love to add extra chilli to the the curry or more peppers and pineapple to the sweet and sour ,

laloopi

The way I see it is that, for me, it's all about gaining skills. So I try to make everything from scratch as much as possible and even if my version isn't necessarily cheaper at first once I've learned how to make things then I can save money by using what I have in the cupboard rather than buying, or taking advantage of promotions on fresh food. Also cooking in bulk and freezing helps save money.

spike7451

Use your local oriental supermarket. I bought a shed load of stuff from there last week,for example,I got;

500ml Light Soy Sauce @£1.10
Pack of Pappads @60p
1kg breaded garlic mushrooms @ £2.50
350ml bottle sweet chili sauce @ £1.00
Pataks Tikka Paste @ £1.10 jar
Pack of 8 Lamb Samosas @ £1.25

You can also buy bottles & jars of sauces for a FRACTION of the cost of the supermarket,not just those but spices,rice & noodles ect. I got a 1kg bag of King Prawns,ready prepped (the ones you get in the Chinese) for iirc £7.50.You only need a few base spices & some yoghurt/coconut milk to make a really decent curry.You can also get a box of uncooked prawn crackers for 50p when in Mr T's,the same ones are well over a quid!!
A lot of these sauces will keep for a few weeks at the back of the fridge as well.Plus the stuff you get from the Oriental shop are the same stuff the Chinese & Indian people use themselves,I'll bet not many Chinese use Uncle Bens stuff which,IMHO,is rank aweful anyway.

GlynD

I'm not a fan of ready meals because everything is an acquired taste and I actually prefer making my own. I do occasionally buy pasta sauces for the convenience. The effect these pre-prepared sauces and mixes have on society is remarkable however and it was brought home to me one day in a supermarket when a female teenager who was a check-out operator remarked as she put a bag of potatoes through that she didn't understand why people bought them as she didn't know what to do with them.

Reverbe

I used to make my pasta sauce HM with chopped tomatoes, dried herbs and garlic back when tinned toms were 27-30p a tin instead of the likes of Dolmio at one pound plus a jar.. Now the price of tinned ones has gone up so much its now cheaper to buy a jar of value ready made sauce..

julietiff

This week for quickness, I bought a ready made pasta
sauce- won't be doing that again it was vile:eek: started making
my own a while ago and believe me they taste loads better
and a lot fresher. I use the ciro?- passata as a base adding fresh
basil thyme and dried italian herbs- much better

spike7451

A few years ago I posted a question on the Good Food Live website,about the cost v quality of ready made meals over home made.I was contacted by the show who had seen my post & wanted to include it in a programme,I chickened out of the phone in part!lol

But they compared a Carbonara microwave meal against a scratch made one.They de-constructed the ready meal & had the same amount of fresh ingredients & priced them,to make it fresh was IIRC 80 pence CHEAPER over the ready meal.Fresh was also quicker to cook by about 20 seconds,& the fresh tasted far better than the ready meal.

tiredwithtwins

I make all sauces etc from scratch because, as others have said, they taste so much nicer - plus you can tweak the recipe to suit your taste.

i tend to buy from chinese supermarkets and polish supermarkets - especially when you can buy those huge tins of tomatoes for about a quid! to make a really lush tomato pasta sauce, I use olive oil, s&p, dried garlic, dried basil and a chopped onion, and cook slowly in the slow cooker ... tastes as rich and better than the expensive jars. and costs a fraction of the price = about £1.50 for about 3 litres!

with sauces these days, there are so many recipes you can find if you google ... all ingrediants are easy to get and once you've cracked the measures (the usa ones are all in cups etc!!) you will find you do it out of habit pretty quickly.

good luck :beer: