Does cooking from scratch cost more?
Cooking from scratch isn't always cheap.
When I was first married, my husband brought me home to a classic bachelor pad. The cupboards held nothing hot dog buns. The fridge held beer and bratwurst - oh, and a bottle of mustard.
On my first trip to the grocery store, I had two choices. I could buy a few prepared meals and we could eat for a day or two on $20, or I could stock the kitchen with staples. I chose the latter and spent over $100. Yes, I could have started smaller, but I was fresh out of a household of 12 and hardly knew how to shop for two.
On the bright side, that $100 fed us for a long, long time.
It may not be cost-effective to make biscuits from scratch if one batch of biscuits is all you're going to make. You can buy a can of biscuits for fifty cents, while making them from scratch would require a bag of flour, a can of baking powder, a jug of milk, a box of salt, and a bottle of cooking oil.
But if you add a bag of sugar and some eggs, you can also make your own pancakes, muffins, crepes, and shortcake. With a bottle of vanilla and perhaps some butter, you can add white or yellow cake (iced, if you like), shortcake, vanilla pudding, cookies, and vanilla cream pie.
With yeast, the possibilities explode.
In the interest of simplifying, I have added a few items to my grocery list. How is this simpler? Because these few new items allow me to stop buying a far greater number of items that I can now make from scratch. An added bonus: the homemade versions are nearly always less expensive, more nutritious and generally taste better too.
Here are a few recipes you might want to try at home:
- Catalina salad dressing
- Ranch salad dressing
- Enchilada sauce
- Pizza sauce
- Mayonnaise
- Pudding (chocolate or vanilla)
- Tortillas
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3 Responses to “Does cooking from scratch cost more?”
November 17th, 2010 at 11:23 am
I am starting the path of making from scratch, my mom had gone the path of what is easiest when she started to work, sacrificing some things, for the exchannge of a hot meal at home, even with some convenience foods cooking those things at home is cheaper than feeding a family of 6 out.
I am terrified of working with yeast. I think it is because my dh keeps our house so blasted cold all year nothing will rise.
I tried from scratch tortilla’s and discovered why they can only be eaten fresh from the griddle, mine at least taste of nothing but flour even 1/2 hour after making them. As I inch the thermometor up one degree at a time to see what I can get away with, esp during the day when he is at work, I will work on the from scratch idea:D I keep a well stocked pantry I need to use it better.
November 17th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
I grew up learning to cook from scratch. My dad is a coeliac which means he can’t have anything that contains gluten. That means anything from cake or bread to gravy and lots of things inbetween.
I’m so glad that i have my mum’s “can-do” attitude and I’m not scared of substituting ingredients if I don’t have exactly what the recipe says
November 17th, 2010 at 5:47 pm
i have been cooking since i was ten yrs. old. it was my job to get up every morning and cook breakfast for my 2 brothers and my sister (all younger), do the dishes up and then get ready for school..before catching the bus we all lined up at the foot of my mothers bed to be “inspected”. the morning after my wedding, i was up cooking scratch griddlecakes to my darling husband. there have been only a few rare times in my life that i have not cooked from scratch. cooking too much food is never really a problem as the costs are not that much greater to feed two, four or six. we don’t mind leftovers the next day or so and much is given away or put in the freezer or canned. nothing goes to waste around here. my two dogs love it when it is spagetti night around here.
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