What meals are "worth" making yourself?

Magentasue

Well, convenience foods are convenient. They're not going to do much damage as an occasional meal, same for fish and chips or a chinese. But eating them on a regular basis can't be good for anyone who doesn't own a supermarket.

tr3mor

moggins wrote:

DIdn't upset me hun, in fact you've just had me costing out my chicken pie for the hell of it

Chicken - 1 breast and some thigh meat - 66p
Campbells Mushroom soup - 32p (I only ever buy them when they are on BOGOF)
Pastry - approx 30p
few mushrooms - 20p

Total cost - £1.48

What's the cost of a decent family sized pie these days? £2.99? I'm not counting the value ones as you can't equate the two.

So if they're bogof, that comes in at £1.50 per pie. much much easier.

Penny-Pincher!!

Hi

I make nearly all meals from scratch now, compared to say 6 months ago :T

Mostly: Shepards Pie, Spag Bol, Curry, Chilli, Toad In Hole, Roasts, Mac Cheese, All sort of Casaroles & Dumplings, Fish Pie, Savoury Mince etc.

I cant eat beef, so mince dishes are made with lamb.

I have had a quick tot up and all meals except Roast come in around £1-£1.75 each roughly and these feed 2 adults and 1 10yr old. Most of the time i get a small portion left for the next days lunch.

I can post recipes and costs if required.

Thanks

Penny-Pincher!!
XXX

Loadsabob

Downsizing__for_sanity wrote:

For example, for HM beans on toast, boiling haricot beans and taking hours to make the sauce yourself would be silly if you could buy the beans for 50p a tin! Silly example, but do you know what I mean?

DFS

That's not a silly example, it's probably one of the only things I would say would take so long to make that I would buy readymade instead. I buy organic baked beans if I buy them at all, and I accept that they're going to be high in sugar (because I hate artificial sweeteners) salt, but I have them so rarely that I think the rest of my diet can withstand that kind of abuse! If I'm cooking from scratch with beans, I'd probably make something more substantial that the type of beans I'd have on toast for a snack.

My instinct otherwise is that I find everything worth the effort to make from scratch, because of the taste and control. But I haven't costed everything I make. I never buy readymeals, and if it cost me £4 to make a macaroni cheese the way I do it (it doesn't!!!), or buy one for 99p, there still would be no comparison for me.

But I appreciate you're asking about the economy of making from scratch...I guess readymeals appear to compete favourably in the economy stakes now that you can get them for 99p AND BOGOF at the same time! But I wouldn't look twice at them...not even if they were 10p a go, I just can't see them as real food. I don't want my food to be made in a factory, I want it to be made in a kitchen. But even so, if a readymade spag bol was on that same offer, a family of four could eat them for £2, and I know I could make the same for that price and have it taste FAR nicer!

Not really much help to your original question, that!...but perhaps a taste test with your HM and a readymade pizza will help justify the effort and cost?!! Sounds lovely!

Edit: Just costed my macaroni cheese, as you've all got me thinking that way!:
organic butter: 14p
organic wholewheat flour: 2p
organic milk: 37p
Organic cheese: 1.38
1 tomato: 19p (Tesco Finest, because they were from Wales, and the organic ones were imported all the way from Israel!!)
organic onion: 11p
mushrooms: 52p
Breadcrumbs: ???? 5p??? (from HM organic wholewheat crust)
organic wholewheat macaroni: 26p

= £3.04!!!

Three large meals from that, absolutely gorgeous, oven finished. So why bother with 99p readymeals if I can do it for £1 a head with organic ingredients (not all my meals are so organic!), £1.26 if you add a portion of fake bacon each! (Boyfriend has normal bacon, which probably bumps up the cost, but he pays for that...!)

mrcow

Loadsabob wrote:

But I appreciate you're asking about the economy of making from scratch...I guess readymeals appear to compete favourably in the economy stakes now that you can get them for 99p AND BOGOF at the same time! But I wouldn't look twice at them...not even if they were 10p a go, I just can't see them as real food.

I was getting a little confused on this thread, as I know for sure that when I don't buy 'convienience' food, then my food bill is often halfed, but when I look at individual dishes that I make (for example quiche, pizza, pies) I can see that they are probably not any cheaper than the supermarket offers.

I think that you've hit the nail on the head with the quantity issue, when I cook a dish, it will fill everyone up for dinner and often there will be leftovers, whereas the ready meal portions can be very meagre. Also, when I do our menu planner before going shopping, I'll often combine meals within one week that will share ingredients to economise.

I started ditching ready prepared meals purely to cut down on our salt intake, as I was shocked to read the figures of how much salt we should/actually do consume in an average day. The fact that it works out so much cheaper in an average week was just an added bonus to my tightwad ways

I still can't justify baking my own bread over paying 60p or so for a ready sliced wholemeal which is idea for sandwich making (even though I notice it's been mentioned about the salt content above).

Does it actually work out cheaper? Or is it just nicer?

(I was given a breadmaker by my sister, so I have no excuse really).

squeaky

Cheaper and much nicer to make your own bread. You can have a look at the breadmaking thread by following the blue (The Indexes) in my signature below and I'm sure you'll only get positive feedback on your question in there

Loadsabob

mrcow wrote:

Also, when I do our menu planner before going shopping, I'll often combine meals within one week that will share ingredients to economise.

I have found this, too. Good menu planning leaves me shocked at how little I need to buy.

mrcow wrote:

I still can't justify baking my own bread over paying 60p or so for a ready sliced wholemeal which is idea for sandwich making (even though I notice it's been mentioned about the salt content above).

Does it actually work out cheaper? Or is it just nicer?

(I was given a breadmaker by my sister, so I have no excuse really).

Well I make it mainly to know what's in it, but when I first bought the machine, I costed loaves and it worked out a LOT cheaper. Not cheaper than Value perhaps, but cheaper than the nice bread I would have bought.

For one loaf I use:

Organic wholewheat flour - 46p (a third of a 1.5KG bag)
easybake yeast - 5p max.? (guestimate, as a 99p bag does me for loads of loaves)
then we're into little things like a teaspoon of sea salt (5p max?), a tablespoon of brown sugar (5p max?) or honey (18p?), a teaspoon of butter/olive oil (8p)

I add pumpkin and sunflower seeds to mine, but even with those I think we'd be struggling to bump the cost up to much more than 75p. Some recipes call for milk powder. You don't NEED it, but if you want it, one box of the stuff lasts ages. So if you were using non-organic (perhaps Value?) flour, white sugar not honey, table salt instead of sea salt, and sunflower oil for the fat, I think the loaf from your bread machine would compare VERY favourably costwise, as well as tastewise! I guess you just play with the ingredients until you find a loaf that tastes the way you want it AND gives you a saving on what you would have previously spent on bread...and then you have the pefect loaf!

Get yourself to that breadmaker!! You won't look back!

Badgergal

Hello all, I'm new, but found this thread very interesting.

Loadsabob, what is the recipe for the macaroni cheese you costed? Sounds goood! I'm always on the look out for cheap and easy(ish) recipes...

ta very much!

squeaky

Hiya and welcome to MoneySaving.

There are all sorts of recipes collected here. Just click on the blue (The Indexes) in my signature below for lots of recipe ideas.

cristin

Dear mrcow, I have to admit to being a little confused by your post, as on one hand you admit that the main reason for making your own food is to cut your salt intake and a bonus is that it is cheaper:

I started ditching ready prepared meals purely to cut down on our salt intake, as I was shocked to read the figures of how much salt we should/actually do consume in an average day

but you are not sure about making your own bread. But in the same thread Queenie says

Queenie
If you look at the levels of salt, sugar and fat in "processed" foods, it's shocking! For example, did you realise, the biggest single source of salt in the UK diet comes from ..... .. factory-made bread?

I appreciate that eveyone has to work within their own budgets and diets, but making your own bread in a breadmaker is definitely worth it: it tastes nicer, it is cheaper (depends which flour you use I know) it is healthier and so much more satisfying. I understand that for sandwhiches using shop bought is great, but even if you made your own bread/rolls/pizza dough once in a while it would definitely be worth it - no competition - I don't know about you but I don't want to pay for all that extra salt and air;) and who knows what else they put in to make certain bread taste so "good" no matter how convenient!