Cooking from scratch more pricey a myth?

Peggybabcot

Maybe we're just greedy in our house but ready meals would never fill my lot. I think there quite clearly is a market for them and maybe they are cheaper but £s per full tummy I think a £s worth of homemade would sustain you more than a £s worth of ready meal. I'm sure the previous poster's portion of lasagne which compared to a ready meal in price would be significantly more filling though. At least I know what's in my homemade food and you can't put a price on that x

BitterAndTwisted

eamon wrote: »

Anybody remember Jamie Oliver and his sojurn in Rotherham? One of the participants had a decent kitchen and a fancy gas range with 5 burners, 2x ovens etc and it was never used!

I don't remember that show but do recall the one where he was showing them how to cook salmon. The woman cried and complained that she couldn't afford to buy salmon to serve to her kids. While smoking a fag, which probably cost six quid a packet at the time.

And I agree with you about it being a numbers game. It's quite hard to cook economically from scratch if you live alone and work long hours. That M&S macaroni cheese looks very tempting when you don't get home till 7 or 8pm

wouldbeqaulitymoneysaver

I find homemade meals to be much more substantial. The costs may still be the same because of supermarket inflation of 30% on groceries but homemade food has a much better quality.
What I do is have suitable quality ingredients ie waitrose columbian blacktail eggs pack of 12 then have lots of eggy dishes throughout the week/two week period.
Ditto with meat. I am fortunate to own a freezer and a fridge and my Kitchen is the last word in obsessive hoarding storage with all the vulnerabilities that supposed.
Quality which means tastiness makes it easier and more pleasurable for me to keep to a budget. Though I can spend for England.

wouldbeqaulitymoneysaver

Delicious Salmon or fags. The poor girl/evil scum is probably addicted no thanks to the big tobacco.
If she got off fags than exquistively cooked Salmon could be lived on rest of the week.

wouldbeqaulitymoneysaver

I find a sensual appreciation and meditation on food helps one find the right ingredients with the aim of nabbing them at a very MSE price.

lindseykim13

My lasagne for example would feed 5 and it would come in at less than £4 and we wouldn't need any sides with it as that would fill us up. The only ready meal verison we have ever had was the family one from iceland which is £3 but had to have chips/veg with it too as not enough on it's own.
Nowhere near as much meat either in a ready meal, your paying for tiny grains of meat and pasta. IMO you might as well knock some pasta up with a carton of 29p pasata and some grated cheese on top.

surely even if your only cooking for one- some veg and a slice of meat would be just as cheap as a ready meal.

Pooky

Cooking from scratch 7/7 could be pricey if you cooked with the ingredients contained in your average ready meal, but if you're willing to eat the same thing more than once a week you'll be quids in. I don't buy parmasan for my lasagne, I don't buy fresh hebrs for any dish and if something requires "stock" then it will wait until I've made stock. I tend to cook and eat around what's in season and on offer and what's available in the cupboards/fridge.

Ready meals and frozen dishes have their place in today's society, I don't need to use them but if I was unable to cook for myself I'd welcome them as an energy source. My DH is disabled and wouldn't be able to manage alone, he'd have to rely on ping meals whilst knowing that he could do much better if he had the dexterity and mobility.

Comparing a shop brought lasagne and a home made one is only ever going to show glaring differences. The quality of the ingredients will be different as will the amount of additives used to obtain a flavour. If you're happy that a £2 version is just as wholesome and natural as your home made £1 per portion one then go for it. Personally I'd rather swap some of the more costly ingredients for something cheaper that I'm willing to eat. Ie. a veggie sauce (bulk cooked costs around £1 per lasagne for us, I make the pasta out of "stock" items and make cheese sauce in bulk to make it cheaper. My veggie lasagne costs around £3.50 per tray (8 portions on their own, 10 if served with a salad or bread). But we rarely eat it as that's still a costly meal to me.

Having a basic store cupboard of herbs, spices, condiments and baking ingredients is where most of the cost comes, if you have nothing and need to buy everything for each meal then yes it will be expensive but once you've got a store cupboard going, it can be as cheap or expensive as you want it to be.

wik

I have just had an add up of how much my lasagne costs to make...
I get the ingredients from Mr A....
And it costs approx £8, and that feeds four of us, and makes another 4-6 portions that I freeze.

Onions x 4 18p
Turkey mince 450g - £2.22
Basic Passata x 2 - 58p
Tomato Puree 142g - 29p
Basic lasagne sheets - 39p
Butter 2oz - so 24p from the pack that costs 98p
1 pint semi skim - 49p
1/4 block of cheddar grated - £1 from a £4 block
2 tablespoons plain flour - from stock cupboard
1 teaspoon mixed herbs - from stock cupboard
bit of black pepper

I am lucky that I have a large freezer, So I try to buy in bulk and do large batches of cooking. I keep any tubs and boxes that I get that can be used for freezing things in, this saves me a fortune.
In the last few months we have stopped buying pizzas, we make the bases in the bread maker, I use tomato puree on them, and then we all top with the meats n cheese that we like, its a great way of using bits and bobs up

[Deleted User]

While out tonight with my DGD Katie we were talking about the ready meal market and she (19) said that if you buy a meal for a pound frozen how much does it actually cost to make taking into account i.e. advertising,shop overheads,etc probably not worth maybe as much as half of that as the shop wants to make a profit .She cooks from scratch for herself and her fiancee and said that no way would she buy a ready meal as Tommy (her BF) does a fairly manual job so he need a 'proper meal' at night She is a nursery nurse and looks after small children during the day so she is fairly active ,but what she does is when Tommy has gone to work often at 5.30 a.m. before she goes off to work herself she will prep the food for the evening so when she comes home its only a case of cooking it.She is a very sensible lass for her age and learned a lot from her Mum (my DD) before leaving home last year.
We exchanged cooking tips while waiting for our meal tonight at the restaraunt :):)

Downsizing__for_sanity

I find that cooking from scratch for 5 is much cheaper than buying ready meals. However, if I was only buying for myself and was contented with a £1 frozen ready meal, yes it might be cheaper. However - I have recently switched to using a small (extra lean steak) mince packet (instead of the medium one) but adding 50% extra soya mince and as much extra veg as possible, both in the meal and on the side. I find so far no one has noticed but me, we are still all full and there are a couple of extra portions left for lunches. I am happy to reduce the amount of meat we eat although not a vegetarian, but I just find we need to think outside the box a little more. For instance, we recently had a delicious butternut squash open lasagne and pasta carbonara, with only a couple of slices of bacon stretched between them. We were filled though and no one felt deprived!