Ready meals vs home cooking

Every time someone tries to compare the cost of ready meals against that of cooking at home, they’re really trying to answer this question

Is it really cheaper to cook at home?

The word really creeps in as a first act of resistance against experts who insist, with underlying sarcasm, that “of course it’s cheaper to cook at home”. And then go on to provide us with recipes where people are supposed to be using expensive utensils, pricy ingredients with no cheaper alternatives, portions barely enough for two people and so many other things that eventually put people off from cooking. Especially those families on a tight budget, struggling to make ends meet.

Allow me to answer the question.

Yes, it is cheaper to cook at home if you’ve got the right guidance. I hope this blog does exactly that; sharing experiences of people on tight budgets with other people so that we can all benefit.

Are ready meals good for you?

If you’ve ever cooked for yourself, you’ve probably noticed that your home cooked meals don’t last long, even if you put them in the fridge. After a couple of days, they lose their initial texture and taste and the feeling you get when a reheated meal comes off the microwave is that it doesn’t taste the same as it did when it was freshly cooked.

This is quite reasonable. So why are we not a bit more suspicious when a precooked Spaghetti Bolognese wrapped in plastic and bought several days later at the local supermarket, tastes and smells as if it was freshly cooked?

Basic chemistry would imply that these companies are using several other things, apart from the main ingredients, to keep the taste, texture and smell intact until you consume these products. And bear in mind that every single one of them asks you to not reheat them! A quick look at the fat, salt and sugar contents in these meals will convince you that these meals are certainly not to be consumed every day of the week. Any nutritionist worth his salt would tell you that these numbers don’t sound right.

What about your budget?

Is it patronising when multimillionaires insist that home cooked meals are cheaper? Probably. Especially when they’re asking people to ditch the microwave meals for a Vincisgrassi that will only cost them £20.00 for the ingredients at Waitrose.

The answer doesn’t lie in some rich guy’s Instagram or YouTube account.

The initial investment

Firstly, I’ll agree to the fact that cooking at home requires an initial investment. This is because cooking at home would require some cooking equipment, spices, oils, herbs and containers to store our food for next day’s lunch break.

So, yes, the initial cost of starting to cook at home would make microwave meals seem like a reasonable alternative.

A minimum budget for pots, pans, utensils, a few basic herbs and oils would be set at £40.00 if you weren’t buying the fancy stuff.

What about the time involved?

Another valid argument I’ve heard co-workers, friends and family using is the time involved. It takes around 30 mins for most quick recipes. If someone was to cook every day, they’d be spending 3.5 hours a week (half a working day!) in doing so.

A microwave meal takes around 5 minutes to prep and heat.

I’ll agree to that too.

As with a lot of other things, stuff that benefits us might take some time. A simple example? Exercise. It takes up time from other activities, but it is something we should dedicate ourselves to if we really want to see some benefit out of it. I would say that cooking falls in the same category. It is certainly more time consuming to cook, but the benefits of controlling what you eat instead of depending on what chemicals the local supermarket has used, are obvious.

Besides, doesn’t your body deserve some more time than the 4.5 minutes it takes to pierce the film lid and put that container in the microwave?

 Let’s do some numbers

For the purposes of this example, I’ll use my favourite meal, Spaghetti Bolognese. I’ve concluded that there are four ways to have a meal.

1. Cook completely from scratch
2. Cook from scratch using some ready ingredients i.e. sauce jars
3. Buy a microwave meal from the (not frozen)
4. Buy a frozen microwave meal

Here’s a quick comparison table of all four methods. Prices are taken from Tesco’s website correct as of 14^th May 2018.

	“Fresh” microwave meal	Cheap microwave meal	From scratch	From scratch with jars
Portions	4	4	4	4
Total cost for ingredients or packs	£10.00	£4.00	£3.73	£3.95
Ingredients Leftover value	£0	£0.00	£2.02	£0.00
Cost per person	£2.50	£1.00	£0.93	£0.99

 

Based on this, it’s obvious that cooking from scratch is the cheapest option. Not by far though. If someone wants to reap both the benefits of a home cooked meal and the time saving benefits of a microwave meal, using jars would be the way to go right?

It is cheaper than microwave meals, much tastier than a cheap microwave meal from the freezer and quick to make.

The leftover ingredients value

You probably noticed that

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I’ve coined the phrase “leftover ingredients”. These are all the things that you need to buy but not using in full i.e. spices, chopped tomatoes, tomato puree. You’d only be using portions of these to make this recipe and keep the leftovers to be used for something else.

Summary

By keeping the leftover ingredients and by planning your groceries and cooking, you can throw less stuff in the bin, waste a lot less money and take control of what you spend on food. This way, the answer to the question “is cooking at home cheaper than ready meals” is Yes!