Cost per portion?

C_J

I do include leftovers as part of the cost of future meals. For example I can usually find a joint of beef for around £4 in Aldi, and that will need to make eight portions. The two of us will have a slice each with veg and yorkies as a roast dinner, then I cut another thick slice which I might shred down to add to noodles and veg in a stir fry, then mince the rest to add to veg and a mashed potato topping as a cottage pie which will last us over two nights. So I cost 50p per portion for the meat content of each meal.

Apintplease

I cant cost per meal because nothing I buy has a base price. I can buy a chicken at 50p or £4, it will still make 6 main meals and have scraps and bones to make soup - another 6 portions

At the moment , my freezer is bunged with lamb. Lamb is always cheap over Christmas and hit the supermarkets the right time and its basically peanuts , yet try to buy a leg in the summer, you need a mortgage

I tend to work over a month. I now buy all the shopping for the three adults here, so I average £50 a week - mum likes her own type of bread, a certain cereal, fresh fruits etc, so 50x4 / 7/ 3 is around £2.40 a day per person. I cant break it down any lower as we are 3 adults of varying needs. Mum eats 3 meals a day, plus uses a lot of milk and tea, I eat once a day and maybe a slice of toast when at home but take something for a lunch when I work, the OH has 3 meals a day, likes snacks and has a plate filled to the sky. I eat very little meat so a slice will do me, but OH will eat half a chicken if allowed

My "cheap" meals are those made out of the bargain bits of meat, fish or poultry I come across. And stretching them as far as I can

purpleivy

As I can't take advantage of yellow stickered or steeply reduced produce I think I need to aim to work out the prices of standards that we have relatively regularly. Yes, sometimes the price of these dishes may occasionally be lower, but generally they will be similar.  
I'm thinking of a spreadsheet to help me work out prices, in which case, I can change the price of the base ingredient easily. 
Someone I know has a mental note of what's a good price/kg of 'vegetables' or 'fruit'.   My Nana used to reckon on 50p£1/portion for main course meat (this was some time ago, but she did buy expensive stuff like chops.  Balanced against egg and bacon or mushrooms in sauce on toast. )

freyasmum

One of our current favourite cheap (to us) meals is homemade beef burgers. We use 20% beef mince (which is usually reduced to £1.04 in our Aldi). That makes 3 decent sized burgers. 
I then make my rolls, which work out around 28p per batch of 12, or 2.5p per roll. 
We also do chips, probably around 500g at less than 20p.
With sauce, I make that 76p per portion. 

I buy chicken breast at £4/kg and we use 450g for 4 meals. That's £1.82 for 4 portions, or 45p per portion. 

We have bigger portions than a lot of people on here, so it's important to work out your own costs. Most of our food is either Aldi or catering suppliers.
It's easy to do this, it just takes a bit of time - something I've had plenty of this financial year!

Rosa_Damascena

Stick to what I know - generic cereal with milk is only ever going to be pennies 

purpleivy

freyasmum said:

One of our current favourite cheap (to us) meals is homemade beef burgers. We use 20% beef mince (which is usually reduced to £1.04 in our Aldi). That makes 3 decent sized burgers. 
I then make my rolls, which work out around 28p per batch of 12, or 2.5p per roll. 
We also do chips, probably around 500g at less than 20p.
With sauce, I make that 76p per portion. 

I buy chicken breast at £4/kg and we use 450g for 4 meals. That's £1.82 for 4 portions, or 45p per portion. 

We have bigger portions than a lot of people on here, so it's important to work out your own costs. Most of our food is either Aldi or catering suppliers.
It's easy to do this, it just takes a bit of time - something I've had plenty of this financial year!

Difficult getting a  permanent price on stuff..... I got organic burgers on sale, 4 x 1/4lbers, cheaper than the equivalent price of mince/lb. May leave as burgers, but more than likely will end up as meat loaf or chilli. 
My family is odd. They love their home made bread, but for burgers like cheapo  white pappy rolls!  We have them with hm (of course!) potato wedges. I  needed to get ketchup on my online shop and couldn't believe how much more expensive it was than Aldi/Lidl!

maman

I'm reading along because it's always good to find out what others do. 😊

It seems that there's a difference between cost and value for money.  I do appreciate that there are posters on mse, generally, that are in dire straits financially and not going hungry is the priority. Those people aside, there are things I'll pay for even though there are cheaper alternatives but I will search out the best value.

I'm an Aldi shopper and it amazes me how people are prepared to pay  over the odds in Waitrose or Sainsbury's, for example, for an identical product in Aldi. Fruit and veg and many meat and fish lines come to mind. Again, I'm fortunate that I have a huge choice of shops where I live whereas others are stuck with a little local Co-op. 

RAS

The other constraint is fuel. I re-read Jocasta Innes who cooked cheap from scratch, but many of her recipes require long cooking and sometime combining multiple cooked items into one. For many people these days, the fuel costs of that sort of meal are prohibitive. 

Her planned cooking, where the oven was used once to cook multiple meals was a good idea. And ham hocks and mackerel are no longer cheap as chips.

maman

That's a good point about fuel costs. I do a lot of my batch cooking (Bolognese, chillis etc) in the slow cooker before freezing in meal sized portions. Personally, I don't use it for same day cooking but they're a good investment IMO. 🤔

purpleivy

 Good point re fuel costs!  I looked at an air fryer, seem to be all the rage, but I think they are quite heavy on power. My massive pan (probably about 7l to the brim) that I often make bol, chilli etc in will simmer on the smallest of my gas rings on the lowest setting, once I have got it going. Other than that it's usually the instant pot on slow cooker setting. 
My microwave combi is good for some things, sometimes use the combi feature, but also it comes to temperature much quicker than my big oven.