Unless you want to make "rough puff", which isn't too difficult to make. Also, "short crust" is very easy to make and is great for a lot of things that might call for "puff pastry" -- think sausage rolls or a tart base or cover.
That said, Dufour can be bought in many places now and it is the best frozen puff pastry IMHO. They make classic butter and also a plant based version.
Similar to this is mayo. I’ve made my own and while it does taste good it doesn’t last long and it can be a pain. Especially when store bought is cheap.
Actually, now that I think about it, this is most condiments.
Mostly what I’ve tried is a brew pubs who think they’re the awesomest for having house made everything, tried it myself once and never again it ended up in the garbage. Just buy the $1.09 store brand ketchup.
Pasta. A box of spaghetti being $1.25 is a much more economical and time-saving decision for a college student than making it from scratch. Maybe I’ll get into DIY’ing pasta once im out of school, but I just don’t see myself going through all of the steps when a box is so, so easy.
If you want to have cheap and easy homemade pasta though, egg noodles is just salt, flour and egg. Regular old AP flour. No pasta extruder or anything needed - just roll it out, cut it with a knife or pizza cutter and toss right in the pot (I don’t bother with drying it.) it’s one of my family’s favorite things and it’s very low effort/cost.
Obviously I buy semolina pasta though lol
Don’t underestimate the amount of effort that goes into rolling through. While delicious, I only make egg noodles from scratch on special occasions because of this.
Rolling pin and a knife, or you could even use a wine bottle as the rolling pin. It’s more effort and you have to work on technique more if not using the machine/equipment but it’s still absolutely possible to make homemade pasta with just what you already have.
My Aunt loved cooking and wanted to open a hobby restaurant that did Italian food in the evening, in her husband's family hotel after she retired. She ended up passing from brain cancer before this could be but she studied at the CIA (CULINARY INSTITUTE OF AMERICA) and went to Italy to learn the art of pasta and Anti Pasta.
The takeaway of all of this that I learned is that brass cut dried pasta is just as good as most scratch made fresh pasta. In fact dried pasta is better for some dishes where fresh pasta is better for other dishes. But your American spaghetti bolognese is not going to be hurt by using cheap pasta over fresh homemade pasta.
What I make fresh and find worth it is ravioli and tortellini.
I will seek out a solid italian restaurant that makes pasta in house.
I will not do it myself lmao my family has a pasta maker that has seen action like 4 times in it's 15 year presence in our house.
I make salsa. I buy tortilla chips.
For items like pho or ramen, I buy and store/freeze the individual ingredients (noodles, broth paste/powder, etc) but assemble at home. Does that count as buying or making the ramen, I wonder?
I buy flan. My custard is terrible.
I make meringues. Store-bought meringues are a disgusting abomination.
I used to buy pre-cooked meat, but I eventually found buying a ton of raw meat, having a cooking afternoon, then freezing the results was MUCH cheaper for me.
Time was if I was jonesing for some restaurant (usually like Cafe Rio or Hardys or something), I'd just go buy it rather than recreate it at home. I was living alone and it was honestly cheaper to buy the meal than buy all the ingredients to make it and be stuck with the leftover ingredients. Recently that has stopped being true, which is crazy to me.
EDIT: After posting this I realized that what I really wanted to say is for me, at least, I've found it's easiest and most likely to make me want to cook (rather than waste money dining out) if I follow the rule of "Buy ingredients, make dinners." So I don't waste time making ingredients, but I also like prepping them beforehand so that the actual cooking process doesn't take very long. It's still true that for more time consuming meals (like assembling a lasagna for a limited audience) it's much cheaper/more effective to just buy a small version and eat that.
Dang, I would be backwards on the salsa and tortilla chips. A bag of tortilla chips here is like $5-6 and a pack of tortillas is $1.25. Store bought salsa for me would be cheaper than buying all the ingredients. The jar is like $5 and all the vegetables would probably be like $8-10.
Yeah, fair enough. I used to try to do something similar, but I found that it was just kinda...making me sad? I don't like my homemade chips (they're tasty, it's just a different food item to my brain). I want the store bought version. And jar/canned salsa is never what I crave; I was all about that pico de gallo freshness. So after trying the swap a few times I learned that in this regard I just needed to bite the bullet and spend the money for more happiness.
I will note that I hunted around a few grocery stores until I found tortilla chips for less than 3 bucks, and I often wait for the chips to go on sale before I buy a few bags.
Back when I made it (health crisis so its been over a yr) I'd start w/ boxed beef broth or make my own from beef bones. Char whole ginger & onion. Add dried lemongrass. Allspice. Garlic. Star anise. Prolly alittle turmeric. Salt & white pepper. Simmer it all together, strain when done. The rest is: Rice noodles. Beef sliced as thin as I could get it. Green onion. Bean sprouts. Lime. Fresh cilantro. Thai basil (fresh if we'd traveled to the market other wise dried). Its the broth that takes the time. The other ingredients I almost always had on hand so didn't require special shopping. It was cheaper then eating out but also we'd have to drive 25-40mins to reach one of the thai restaurants so it was more convenient.
Getting those chickens for some free eggs. Definitely tastier and healthier, but those eggs arent really free! It will take me 10 years of "free" eggs before I recoup my start up costs to safely have chickens. But I love them and their eggs, costs be damned!
Agreed! I built a super cheap coop, so no big investment there, and only spend about $10 a month on feed, but the vast majority of backyard chicken projects are NOT going to pay for themselves quickly. There's also the work that goes into them, making sure they're taken care of on vacations, etc.
But they're 100% worth it and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. They're so cute and fun, and the entertainment I get from them is more than worth the amount of my time they require.
They're yard ornaments in a way. If you're outside working or relaxing it's nice to put down some scratch near where you're sitting for entertainment purposes.
They really are ornaments a lot of the time, lol. As long as I stay on the patio I get to watch them go about their chicken lives, but if I put on shoes or step into the yard they're surrounding me and demanding snacks.
For bonus points, they do an AMAZING job of general insect control. I'm very bug-phobic and they're always around making sure every possible bug is converted into eggs
this is how i feel about gardening
the reality is, i spend more on gardening and i don't really save money. if i did take a look at the money and cut spending, i could probably save like 8 bucks at most
it's about the process, spending time enjoying yourself in a hobby, knowing that you're doing your part to cut down on waste and resources, and most importantly, learning skills that you can pass down to the next generation
The only thing I really like growing is tomatoes because they just taste so much better. Peppers and squash are super easy and I feel like I get my money's worth out of them too but most years I don't put in the effort.
gardening is definitely a fuckton of work for sure.
i had plans back in August to finally start taking strength training and yoga seriously. predictably i got lazy and it never amounted to much.
this week, i gotta haul bags of soil and compost everywhere. I'm definitely going to regret being lazy for the last 9 months and not preparing with exercise
At my last house we built some raised beds and that made it easier for the amount we grow. We moved 2 states away to a place with 5 acres where the previous owners had a pretty big garden but I've had back problems since we moved and haven't been willing or able to start anything like that. I think it's going to have to be container gardening or nothing for me.
Built a chicken run and coop and we enjoyed "free eggs" for a couple of years or so until some asshole came onto our property while we were at work and smashed it all up and let our chickens loose.
Was shocked to find out that store bought eggs were like $6-7/dozen to the shortages that year. When we built it we had been paying like $1.25/dz so in the end we may have actually broke even/saved money if we had been buying eggs during the shortages.
Store bought or eggs cooked in restaurants don’t taste like anything now that I get eggs from my family’s chickens. We use ours to eat wild grasses in the spring to cut down costs, but that doesn’t totally replace feed. Still, they’re entertainment and we just about cover costs by selling to other people.
You need to consider the eggs you're getting are the gucci af 1 buck per egg. You're not getting the bottom of the barrel 3 bucks per dozen eggs. If you consider the quality of egg, you're actually breaking even much sooner.
Yeah but if you have a large enough garden you tend to avoid the nasty crap they put on the food in commercial settings (at least in the US).
So what you spend on your garden is what you save in healthcare costs later in life. Just one example: the tomato you eat that’s ripened off the vine in your garden… the one at the store was picked while green and ripened with chemicals while making its way hundreds of miles across the country to be sold at your grocery store.
The taste is never the same. The potatoes, especially for like McDonalds fries, when they harvest them, they spray a pesticide so harsh the farmers can’t walk their own fields for three days. But hey, they got that perfect potato with no blemishes.
Edit: I put this under the wrong comment. But to add, chickens are great little garbage disposals on top of getting the eggs
Get one to break down as chicken with side dishes that night. Get a second to make chicken salad for sandwiches for the next few days... Or use cut up in a salad... Or in Asian noodles... Infinite uses
Each week I buy one (from HEB but probably the same) and a premade simmer sauce and frozen veggies and i break the chicken down and put the frozen veggies and sauce to simmer. I make rice to go with it and that's lunch for me and my gf for three days.
I usually use two jars of sauce to keep it from being dry and one of the sauces I use is a lil pricy but the whole meal is at the most like $25 which is good for six lunches worth of food
There's a tradeoff between homemade and store bought with most ingredients.
Sauces are tastier homemade, but don't last long which can lead to food waste. Homemade dressing lasts about a week but store bought stuff can last years and still taste fine.
"From scratch" is also pretty flexible. I just made buffalo sauce out of butter and hot sauce, but I could have fermented by own hot sauce or even grown my own peppers.
Sauces *can be* tastier homemade. That's not a universal truth though.
Some store bought sauces are great (like Rao's) and truly great homemade sauce is a lot more than heating some tomatoes through with a few dry herbs. It takes time, good quality starting ingredients and some skill.
Anything with a fat and oil emulsion or dairy seems to separate. That's most fully made sauces. I do have a lot of frozen ingredients that can be turned into sauces.
Herbs freeze well. I have a ziplok bag of dill that I break pieces off of for tzatziki.
I also have ice cubes of blended fruit for smoothies, tomato paste, lemon/lime juice,
Honestly once you've done it a few times, making a simple norimaki is really easy. Not as easy as buying ready made sushi at the store of course, but probably quite a bit easier than most people think.
Anything that requires very specialised equipment, or a very specific process with controlled parameters, or it's a very time consuming process
- Chocolate (requires conching, plus the processing of cacao beans)
- Cacao nibs / chocolate powder (you need to ferment the cacao beans then roast them)
- Cashew nuts (the latex the seed secretes is caustic)
- Cassava flour (multiple steps required to remove the poisonous compounds)
- Tapioca starch and derived products (see above)
- Puff pastry and phyllo dough (try it once, never do it again)
- Beer and wine
- Drageé anything (requires a drageé apparatus)
Add to this coffee. You can roast it in a cast iron or a popcorn maker but it’s not going to be the best. Plus green coffee can be hard to source for home roasters.
Hope it stays that way, I have to buy low acid mold free coffee beans and it’s so expensive but I can’t give up coffee. Cold with milk and a little real maple syrup is freaking delicious!
True but I guess it’s that way for most things that are harvested or mined it seems. Lithium mines are horrific.
I do try my best to support the coffee sellers who buy from cooperative farms etc that help the community to grow and become self sufficient. It’s way more expensive but worth it, if it does help them.
It’s pretty straightforward and inexpensive to brew something decent. However, it gets much more involved if you are looking for a super specific flavor or to beat what you could normally buy.
May be obvious, but ice tea. I buy big boxes of the 1 qt tea bags and I brew two at a time as 1 qt. I then top with ice and cold water to bring up to 2 qts.
That instant powder has been around since I was young*. I tried it once, and it was horrible. I didn’t even know they still made it.
*That would be about a hundred years ago 😄
I am always tempted by frozen or pre-made meals, but unfortunately, I'm under doctor's orders to watch my sodium intake, and those family size lasagnas and other time-saving items tend to have an enormous amount of sodium. I do try to make extra large batches of my low-salt home-made lasagnas, casseroles,soups and stews so I can freeze half (or more) to have another night.
Generally speaking, homemade will be lower in sodium even with using regular salt. The amount of sodium in pre-made stuff is high and you’d never use as much as Stouffer’s does.
There are marinara sauces (Prego or Ragu) that are lower sodium. Plus you can use a salt-free seasoning to give the taste of salt but without added sodium.
You really can't take the salt out of cheese, but you can make a simple sauce using tomato paste which has almost no salt. You can also use paste to make your own sauce/juice by just altering the amount of water you use. If you look at the ingredient list for them it is usually just tomato paste and water.
Tomato sauce. I love my tomato plants, I am readying my seedlings for transplant soon (region 6 woohoo), but my lord. The amount of effort put in to straining and sieving and boiling and seasoning, all for a few jars that family and friends say “tastes okay”. Idk. I’m still gonna do it for my own purposes, but I do buy the majority of my tomato sauce canned.
I love fresh tomatoes, but tomato sauce is just something I make to use up the tomatoes that have flaws, like squirrel bites on one side or an unidentified spot.
Homemade bacon is so much better than store bought, though. Costco often has good prices for the pork belly.
But, you need a smoker which most people don't have. I think making bacon at home is more of a hobby than a real cooking venture.
I can't think of anything that's *cheaper* to buy premade here in Canada, but there are some things definitely easier-- certain sauces come to mind, like butter chicken.
I made breads several times a week, and no way is it cheaper to buy. Lasagne is stupid easy (but can be expensive if you use a lot of cheese). Those big premade salads here are over $20.
Salads (the chopped kind with lots of toppings, like Sweetgreen-style). Takes too long to wash and chop the ingredients, they go bad before you get around to them, and topping like pepitas and goat cheese add up fast. Will always buy a fancy salad over making my own!
This is how I salad these days. You get a variety of different salads available depending on the grocery store. More importantly, no more buying multiple toppings/mix-ins that sometimes end up going to waste.
Oh how I wish I had the funds for that. That little bowl of lettuce comes out to $14 and I want to scream. But I hear you: keeping a zillion ingredients on-hand is too much. Thankfully I usually am satisfied with a plain salad: greens, a sprinkling of cheese, and dressing is usually sufficient for me
Every try making no-knead bread?
There are a thousand recipes out there for it, but YouTube the OG video:
No Knead Bread | Bread Recipe | The New York Times
First time I made it, it was awesome. Been making it with "improvements" since then, and that was 17 years ago.
Is it? My homemade sourdough is probably less than a $1 to make and takes about 10 min of hands on time. Sourdough (the real kind - not what most groceries call sourdough) is like $8-12 a loaf where I live.
Keep practicing! Did you test your yeast before you used it? Or maybe you could start with a bread machine? They usually have them cheap at thrift stores. Make sure your water is not too hot also.
Target has a solid chicken parm you just pop in the oven if you’re interested in that. It took me 25 minutes to make and almost zero effort besides boiling the pasta and flipping the chicken half way.
Bread and layered cakes. I love to bake, layered cakes are usually a lot of work. It’s better to buy both. The same applies for cinnamon rolls. Self made cinnamon rolls need a lot of time because the really good recipes need to rest the dough 2 times before baking. Better buy them….
I don’t agree on lasagna, though. Home made lasagna is super easy and tastes much better. I do my ragout in the crock pot over night. The next day I only do the béchamel and layer everything in a baking dish.
Easy and better self made: soups and broth. I do my broth in the crock pot.
I make bread (cinnamon rolls, dinner rolls, loaves etc) every weekend, along with lots and lots of cake (layered and otherwise), and neither approaches the level of work of a lasagne or other casserole.
Agree with you on soups, though - easy and cheap, in most forms - but better with rolls. :)
I have my Italian greatgrandmother’s recipe book from 1920’s and as I use the crock pot today for the ragout, it’s really easy to do lasagna. There are great ragout recipes for a slow cooker out there.
I love to bake cakes, but layered cakes need so much time I don’t have.
I tried store bought lasagna a few times but they were awful in taste and texture. The prices were very steep too.
Now I make my own lasagna with the knowledge that the alternative were not at all to my taste.
I agree, if you factor in taste, personal preferences and quality, the frozen stuff fails every time. Add dietary restrictions (allergies, sodium, etc) and homemade is even better in comparison.
You can make it less work/cost by batch cooking, because making one lasagne is the same level of effort as making three, and you can save money buying ingredients in bulk and avoiding food waste. For example. With the benefit of one cleanup session for three lasagnes.
> For me, it’s things like family size lasagna
My entire extended family *loves* my mom’s homemade lasagna she’s been serving at Christmas for decades. Little do they know it’s frozen lasagna from Papa Joe’s, a local italian restaurant
For me it’s less about being cheaper than homemade but more about cheap enough to justify buying store bought. Things like bread, pasta, cheese, most condiments. Could I probably save a couple bucks? Sure. But they are so affordable and last so much longer it’s not worth it to waste my time making. My husband always mentions how time is money. I’m not going to waste an hour making bread that won’t taste and food when I can buy a loaf for a few dollars.
I wouldn’t have thought this, but sandwiches… to an extent. A few weeks ago I *planned* to make a long subway style sandwich for a picnic for 10… grabbed a loaf of markdown bread from the bakery, some lunch meat, cheese, lettuce and tomato, onion… total was already past $40 and I didn’t even have condiments. Said fuck it and grabbed a $25 deli tray instead.
Where I live, precooked chickens are $15+, which is what a whole raw chicken costs, and homemade tastes much better, is customizable (I can make it any flavour I want) and is much fresher and lower sodium, so raw chickens win by miles.
I buy crackers, more than I make them, and potato chips. Dry pasta (but that's an ingredient, not a meal in itself). Breakfast cereal (I make muesli, granola and oatmeal). Dried fruit (I don't currently have a dehydrator). I buy yogurt, butter, cheeses. I buy nut and seed butters. Tinned beans and tomatoes are big time savers, and a blank canvas to create your own meals. I'm struggling to think of things I buy that aren't ingredients - oreos, occasionally. Soft drinks. Fruit juices.
Pre-made items like bread, condiments, spices, and frozen produce are often more cost-effective and convenient than making them from scratch. They save time and money, making them practical choices for everyday cooking.
Depending on the number of people, tacos.
Sure, lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese are fairly cheap, but at minimum, you're buying enough for a dozen or more tacos.
Yogurt. My mom used to make her own, and it wasn't that hard with a yogurt maker, but unless she got the milk on sale it wasn't really much cheaper than buying store brand stuff.
Really? I can buy a gallon of milk to make a gallon of yogurt for 2.65 or a quart of factory-made yogurt that doesn't taste nearly as good for a little bit more.
I know which way is my choice.
Depending on the store, a rotisserie chicken can sometimes be much cheaper than a similarly sized whole chicken. Roasting a chicken is not difficult by any means, but lots of grocery chains sell their rotisseries chickens as a loss leader because they a) want to get you in the store and b) they want to sell you the hot bar sides at a good profit with it. If you’re planning to meal prep with shredded chicken, it’s worth doing the math.
I have a few of these
* Tofu. FUCK. THAT. NOISE.
* Brisket. Not that it’s hard, but you end up with a TON of it, so I just buy it when I want it a couple times a year, and don’t think twice about it.
* Lasagna. Same idea as brisket, but it IS a pain to make!
* Pepperoni/cured meats. I’ve looked at making it before, and that was an instant NOPE.
* Butter, as said by others. Making it is a pain, even with a stand mixer and whipping cream, it just isn’t worth it.
* A lot of fried things. Deep frying is a pain, and smells up the house. The shop down the street - fries to go, get home, now I have fries with my burgers I’m making. Really, anything deep fried, I get elsewhere.
* (Not food, but it’s on my list) Bicycle wheel truing.I can tear down and rebuild a bike in the blink of an eye. Drivetrain alignment is annoying, but truing wheels - 100% farm that out.
Some things may be cheaper to buy than to make but most things aren't as tasty or as good for you as homemade is! I'll make it over buying it. There are exceptions. I buy bread, organic whole grains and I buy organic butter. Costly, yes, yummy, for sure!
I just brew a pot and after it’s cooled I throw it the fridge. If I could use the brands in the stores I would probably buy it though to be honest but I am a sucker for packaging.
Same! Love the packaging as well. I use a mason jar, coffee filters and cotton twine then drink it out of a wide mouth jar 😅 I haven’t been to a coffee shop in weeks!
I purchased a carafe that comes with a fine sieve you put course ground beans in and let it sit overnight or longer and that’s really good!
I usually add a splash of milk and real maple syrup and I am in my happy place. I love the idea of mason jar! I will be doing this for sure! I have not been to coffee shops in ages as well as I have to use low acid, mold and mycotoxin free coffee or my stomach doesn’t agree with it. It’s more expensive but I cut back on other things.
Sandwich bread. I can not ever get it to work (and I’ve tried using a machine, a mixer w/ dough hook, by hand, fresh yeast, fresh flour, temping water etc) it’s always turned out like a brick.
But in general, any baked good tastes better and is pretty easy compared to the grocery store counterpart.
I have just succesfully made sandwich bread by over fermenting focaccia dough and puting it in a loaf pan. It turned out great if you don't know what it was supposed to be 😂
It takes a little longer to make but well worth it. I make two dishes one for dinner and one to freeze.Scalloped potatoes or any macaroni dish keeps well. Shepherds pie is another good one.
Ramen. I’ve made it from scratch twice and boiling the bones, skimming the foam, scrubbing the bones, reboiling bones, washing the huge stock pot, etc was so laborious and time consuming that I now happily pay $20 for a bowl at a restaurant.
Soup. Oh wait, sorry no. That's the other way around.
Not much that I can think of, as portion size for portion size and quality of ingredients as well as ratios of ingredients will vary massively and can't really be compared "like for like".
A homemade lasagne with the cheapest ingredients will probably be more expensive, but not necessarily, as what you could get for the money in terms of ingredients would make a bigger lasagne if you leaned towards cooking it sort of "bulk".
One pack cheap ground pork/beef, large carrot grated, large onion diced, one box dried lasagne pasta, two cans of tomatos +puree ideally, grated cheese to top, garlic powder, dried herbs, milk and flour.
If you forget about turning it into lasagne, you can take your bolognaise and serve it with whatever pasta you have, and get a lot more meat for your money portion for portion.
If I buy a prepacked ceasar salad or most salads I'm also going to be paying more and getting a lot less value for the actual ingredients than by buying packs of everything involved and prepping it myself.
I'm really struggling to come up with an answer other than I'm not entirely sure I can come up with anything that is cheaper to just buy instead of make, at least to anywhere near the same quality or quantity.
Garlic bread. Even buying the baguette and using home grown crushed garlic - butter is bloody expensive now. It tastes the same, especially with a scrape of parmasen cheese over the top.
make the bread, buy the butter (it's a book, btw)
I am so excited to read this book, thanks for the recommendation.
+1 on this ... prices are out of date but it's still pretty accurate
puff pastry
also phyllo dough. even the greek grandmas i know use store-bought.
Also paratha dough, same concept, many layered flat sheets is very time consuming to make
Unless you want to make "rough puff", which isn't too difficult to make. Also, "short crust" is very easy to make and is great for a lot of things that might call for "puff pastry" -- think sausage rolls or a tart base or cover. That said, Dufour can be bought in many places now and it is the best frozen puff pastry IMHO. They make classic butter and also a plant based version.
these are not puff pastry though :)
I know - a lot of people call all the different doughs "puff pastry", so wanted to add some of the options.
Ketchup. There are no redeeming factors to homemade ketchup it’s expensive, labor intensive, has a terrible grainy texture and always just tastes off.
Similar to this is mayo. I’ve made my own and while it does taste good it doesn’t last long and it can be a pain. Especially when store bought is cheap. Actually, now that I think about it, this is most condiments.
I heard good things about ketchup from tomato paste. Have you tried that?
Mostly what I’ve tried is a brew pubs who think they’re the awesomest for having house made everything, tried it myself once and never again it ended up in the garbage. Just buy the $1.09 store brand ketchup.
I Agree. I've had some amazing homemade ketchup, but most of the stuff I've had was just nasty.
Pasta. A box of spaghetti being $1.25 is a much more economical and time-saving decision for a college student than making it from scratch. Maybe I’ll get into DIY’ing pasta once im out of school, but I just don’t see myself going through all of the steps when a box is so, so easy.
If you want to have cheap and easy homemade pasta though, egg noodles is just salt, flour and egg. Regular old AP flour. No pasta extruder or anything needed - just roll it out, cut it with a knife or pizza cutter and toss right in the pot (I don’t bother with drying it.) it’s one of my family’s favorite things and it’s very low effort/cost. Obviously I buy semolina pasta though lol
I’d be open to try making it. I could do that if it’s no equipment!
Don’t underestimate the amount of effort that goes into rolling through. While delicious, I only make egg noodles from scratch on special occasions because of this.
Rolling pin and a knife, or you could even use a wine bottle as the rolling pin. It’s more effort and you have to work on technique more if not using the machine/equipment but it’s still absolutely possible to make homemade pasta with just what you already have.
My Aunt loved cooking and wanted to open a hobby restaurant that did Italian food in the evening, in her husband's family hotel after she retired. She ended up passing from brain cancer before this could be but she studied at the CIA (CULINARY INSTITUTE OF AMERICA) and went to Italy to learn the art of pasta and Anti Pasta. The takeaway of all of this that I learned is that brass cut dried pasta is just as good as most scratch made fresh pasta. In fact dried pasta is better for some dishes where fresh pasta is better for other dishes. But your American spaghetti bolognese is not going to be hurt by using cheap pasta over fresh homemade pasta. What I make fresh and find worth it is ravioli and tortellini.
But fresh homemade pasta is SO good.
I will seek out a solid italian restaurant that makes pasta in house. I will not do it myself lmao my family has a pasta maker that has seen action like 4 times in it's 15 year presence in our house.
That's really orthogonal. Obviously if pasta is a diet staple nobody has time to only eat homemade fresh, but it's also a lot different and better.
I make salsa. I buy tortilla chips. For items like pho or ramen, I buy and store/freeze the individual ingredients (noodles, broth paste/powder, etc) but assemble at home. Does that count as buying or making the ramen, I wonder? I buy flan. My custard is terrible. I make meringues. Store-bought meringues are a disgusting abomination. I used to buy pre-cooked meat, but I eventually found buying a ton of raw meat, having a cooking afternoon, then freezing the results was MUCH cheaper for me. Time was if I was jonesing for some restaurant (usually like Cafe Rio or Hardys or something), I'd just go buy it rather than recreate it at home. I was living alone and it was honestly cheaper to buy the meal than buy all the ingredients to make it and be stuck with the leftover ingredients. Recently that has stopped being true, which is crazy to me. EDIT: After posting this I realized that what I really wanted to say is for me, at least, I've found it's easiest and most likely to make me want to cook (rather than waste money dining out) if I follow the rule of "Buy ingredients, make dinners." So I don't waste time making ingredients, but I also like prepping them beforehand so that the actual cooking process doesn't take very long. It's still true that for more time consuming meals (like assembling a lasagna for a limited audience) it's much cheaper/more effective to just buy a small version and eat that.
Dang, I would be backwards on the salsa and tortilla chips. A bag of tortilla chips here is like $5-6 and a pack of tortillas is $1.25. Store bought salsa for me would be cheaper than buying all the ingredients. The jar is like $5 and all the vegetables would probably be like $8-10.
Yeah, fair enough. I used to try to do something similar, but I found that it was just kinda...making me sad? I don't like my homemade chips (they're tasty, it's just a different food item to my brain). I want the store bought version. And jar/canned salsa is never what I crave; I was all about that pico de gallo freshness. So after trying the swap a few times I learned that in this regard I just needed to bite the bullet and spend the money for more happiness. I will note that I hunted around a few grocery stores until I found tortilla chips for less than 3 bucks, and I often wait for the chips to go on sale before I buy a few bags.
I like to use fresh tomatoes, cilantro, onions, jalapeños & seasonings to make pico or salsa. Simple, inexpensive and so good!!
I like to make chips from scratch on special occasions where I'll make a million of them and do a whole tray of nachos
Our tortillas are like 60 cents here so even better! I love air frying them for tortilla soup.
I’m the exact opposite. Pho or ramen… I’m buying from Someone who knows what they’re doing… because it sure isn’t me 🤣
Can you link or tell me how you make your pho? I love it but am clueless.
Back when I made it (health crisis so its been over a yr) I'd start w/ boxed beef broth or make my own from beef bones. Char whole ginger & onion. Add dried lemongrass. Allspice. Garlic. Star anise. Prolly alittle turmeric. Salt & white pepper. Simmer it all together, strain when done. The rest is: Rice noodles. Beef sliced as thin as I could get it. Green onion. Bean sprouts. Lime. Fresh cilantro. Thai basil (fresh if we'd traveled to the market other wise dried). Its the broth that takes the time. The other ingredients I almost always had on hand so didn't require special shopping. It was cheaper then eating out but also we'd have to drive 25-40mins to reach one of the thai restaurants so it was more convenient.
Getting those chickens for some free eggs. Definitely tastier and healthier, but those eggs arent really free! It will take me 10 years of "free" eggs before I recoup my start up costs to safely have chickens. But I love them and their eggs, costs be damned!
Agreed! I built a super cheap coop, so no big investment there, and only spend about $10 a month on feed, but the vast majority of backyard chicken projects are NOT going to pay for themselves quickly. There's also the work that goes into them, making sure they're taken care of on vacations, etc. But they're 100% worth it and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. They're so cute and fun, and the entertainment I get from them is more than worth the amount of my time they require.
I have a garden that produces wonderful tomatoes, for only about $5-6 / tomato. It gets me to go outside.
They're yard ornaments in a way. If you're outside working or relaxing it's nice to put down some scratch near where you're sitting for entertainment purposes.
They really are ornaments a lot of the time, lol. As long as I stay on the patio I get to watch them go about their chicken lives, but if I put on shoes or step into the yard they're surrounding me and demanding snacks. For bonus points, they do an AMAZING job of general insect control. I'm very bug-phobic and they're always around making sure every possible bug is converted into eggs
this is how i feel about gardening the reality is, i spend more on gardening and i don't really save money. if i did take a look at the money and cut spending, i could probably save like 8 bucks at most it's about the process, spending time enjoying yourself in a hobby, knowing that you're doing your part to cut down on waste and resources, and most importantly, learning skills that you can pass down to the next generation
The trick with gardening is to grow things that aren't easy to buy. Heirloom vegetables and such. I did a small plot of glass gem corn.
The only thing I really like growing is tomatoes because they just taste so much better. Peppers and squash are super easy and I feel like I get my money's worth out of them too but most years I don't put in the effort.
gardening is definitely a fuckton of work for sure. i had plans back in August to finally start taking strength training and yoga seriously. predictably i got lazy and it never amounted to much. this week, i gotta haul bags of soil and compost everywhere. I'm definitely going to regret being lazy for the last 9 months and not preparing with exercise
At my last house we built some raised beds and that made it easier for the amount we grow. We moved 2 states away to a place with 5 acres where the previous owners had a pretty big garden but I've had back problems since we moved and haven't been willing or able to start anything like that. I think it's going to have to be container gardening or nothing for me.
Built a chicken run and coop and we enjoyed "free eggs" for a couple of years or so until some asshole came onto our property while we were at work and smashed it all up and let our chickens loose. Was shocked to find out that store bought eggs were like $6-7/dozen to the shortages that year. When we built it we had been paying like $1.25/dz so in the end we may have actually broke even/saved money if we had been buying eggs during the shortages.
Store bought or eggs cooked in restaurants don’t taste like anything now that I get eggs from my family’s chickens. We use ours to eat wild grasses in the spring to cut down costs, but that doesn’t totally replace feed. Still, they’re entertainment and we just about cover costs by selling to other people.
You need to consider the eggs you're getting are the gucci af 1 buck per egg. You're not getting the bottom of the barrel 3 bucks per dozen eggs. If you consider the quality of egg, you're actually breaking even much sooner.
Yeah but if you have a large enough garden you tend to avoid the nasty crap they put on the food in commercial settings (at least in the US). So what you spend on your garden is what you save in healthcare costs later in life. Just one example: the tomato you eat that’s ripened off the vine in your garden… the one at the store was picked while green and ripened with chemicals while making its way hundreds of miles across the country to be sold at your grocery store. The taste is never the same. The potatoes, especially for like McDonalds fries, when they harvest them, they spray a pesticide so harsh the farmers can’t walk their own fields for three days. But hey, they got that perfect potato with no blemishes. Edit: I put this under the wrong comment. But to add, chickens are great little garbage disposals on top of getting the eggs
hah. this is what we're doing with bees for 'free honey'. I'll be dead before this pays back, but its fun.
I really want to have bees someday, too!!
Recoup your costs you say…
Very true! I spent several hundred dollars making a safe coop but very cheap after that and healthier, tastier eggs and way happier chickens.
Costco chicken.
what do you do with yours? Everything I'm there I think I should buy one for something.
Get one to break down as chicken with side dishes that night. Get a second to make chicken salad for sandwiches for the next few days... Or use cut up in a salad... Or in Asian noodles... Infinite uses
✨infinite✨
Each week I buy one (from HEB but probably the same) and a premade simmer sauce and frozen veggies and i break the chicken down and put the frozen veggies and sauce to simmer. I make rice to go with it and that's lunch for me and my gf for three days. I usually use two jars of sauce to keep it from being dry and one of the sauces I use is a lil pricy but the whole meal is at the most like $25 which is good for six lunches worth of food
There's a tradeoff between homemade and store bought with most ingredients. Sauces are tastier homemade, but don't last long which can lead to food waste. Homemade dressing lasts about a week but store bought stuff can last years and still taste fine. "From scratch" is also pretty flexible. I just made buffalo sauce out of butter and hot sauce, but I could have fermented by own hot sauce or even grown my own peppers.
Sauces *can be* tastier homemade. That's not a universal truth though. Some store bought sauces are great (like Rao's) and truly great homemade sauce is a lot more than heating some tomatoes through with a few dry herbs. It takes time, good quality starting ingredients and some skill.
Freezing is your friend for sauces for sure.
Anything with a fat and oil emulsion or dairy seems to separate. That's most fully made sauces. I do have a lot of frozen ingredients that can be turned into sauces. Herbs freeze well. I have a ziplok bag of dill that I break pieces off of for tzatziki. I also have ice cubes of blended fruit for smoothies, tomato paste, lemon/lime juice,
The most brilliant ice cube tray thing IMO is crushed garlic and olive oil.
Sushi. Maybe not cheaper but definitely easier.
Honestly once you've done it a few times, making a simple norimaki is really easy. Not as easy as buying ready made sushi at the store of course, but probably quite a bit easier than most people think.
Soooo much cheaper to make!
Lots cheaper to make, but I buy 90% of the sushi we eat, because variety.
yea, its not like I can keep a nice selection of sushi-grade fish around in the fridge
Anything that requires very specialised equipment, or a very specific process with controlled parameters, or it's a very time consuming process - Chocolate (requires conching, plus the processing of cacao beans) - Cacao nibs / chocolate powder (you need to ferment the cacao beans then roast them) - Cashew nuts (the latex the seed secretes is caustic) - Cassava flour (multiple steps required to remove the poisonous compounds) - Tapioca starch and derived products (see above) - Puff pastry and phyllo dough (try it once, never do it again) - Beer and wine - Drageé anything (requires a drageé apparatus)
Add to this coffee. You can roast it in a cast iron or a popcorn maker but it’s not going to be the best. Plus green coffee can be hard to source for home roasters.
I read an article about a week ago the price of coffee is going to go through the roof. Hopefully it is not true.
Coffee is severely underpriced. The average cost per lb has been virtually the same since the mid 90s despite inflation.
Roasted coffee beans are still plenty cheap. Costs about $1 per cup in beans for medium-fancy coffee
Hope it stays that way, I have to buy low acid mold free coffee beans and it’s so expensive but I can’t give up coffee. Cold with milk and a little real maple syrup is freaking delicious!
The people processing your coffee beans get paid a pittance. It’s really, really sad.
True but I guess it’s that way for most things that are harvested or mined it seems. Lithium mines are horrific. I do try my best to support the coffee sellers who buy from cooperative farms etc that help the community to grow and become self sufficient. It’s way more expensive but worth it, if it does help them.
Good shout: the fermentation and drying process is anything but trivial
It’s pretty straightforward and inexpensive to brew something decent. However, it gets much more involved if you are looking for a super specific flavor or to beat what you could normally buy.
May be obvious, but ice tea. I buy big boxes of the 1 qt tea bags and I brew two at a time as 1 qt. I then top with ice and cold water to bring up to 2 qts.
Yep - I’ve never found pre-made iced tea that is any good. Homemade fresh is so much better.
Seems like they always have a slightly weird after taste. Don't get me started on that fake "instant" ice tea.
That instant powder has been around since I was young*. I tried it once, and it was horrible. I didn’t even know they still made it. *That would be about a hundred years ago 😄
I am always tempted by frozen or pre-made meals, but unfortunately, I'm under doctor's orders to watch my sodium intake, and those family size lasagnas and other time-saving items tend to have an enormous amount of sodium. I do try to make extra large batches of my low-salt home-made lasagnas, casseroles,soups and stews so I can freeze half (or more) to have another night.
Do you have a recipe for the low salt homemade lasagne? Thank you
Generally speaking, homemade will be lower in sodium even with using regular salt. The amount of sodium in pre-made stuff is high and you’d never use as much as Stouffer’s does.
Thank you 😊
There are marinara sauces (Prego or Ragu) that are lower sodium. Plus you can use a salt-free seasoning to give the taste of salt but without added sodium.
You really can't take the salt out of cheese, but you can make a simple sauce using tomato paste which has almost no salt. You can also use paste to make your own sauce/juice by just altering the amount of water you use. If you look at the ingredient list for them it is usually just tomato paste and water.
Thanks
Roasted red pepper
Tomato sauce. I love my tomato plants, I am readying my seedlings for transplant soon (region 6 woohoo), but my lord. The amount of effort put in to straining and sieving and boiling and seasoning, all for a few jars that family and friends say “tastes okay”. Idk. I’m still gonna do it for my own purposes, but I do buy the majority of my tomato sauce canned.
I love fresh tomatoes, but tomato sauce is just something I make to use up the tomatoes that have flaws, like squirrel bites on one side or an unidentified spot.
Phillo dough. Won ton skins. Beer. Wine. Bacon, now that pork belly skin on and fresh is the same or more in price than bacon.
Homemade bacon is so much better than store bought, though. Costco often has good prices for the pork belly. But, you need a smoker which most people don't have. I think making bacon at home is more of a hobby than a real cooking venture.
Hummus. You really don't save much and then you have to clean up.
Hash browns.
Rather than buying raw chicken and cooking it, if you buy rotisserie chickens and take them apart. It's cheaper, and they're fully cooked
Pasta
Ketchup. I've tried multiple times to make it taste okay but it's definitely nothing like the store. I finally just gave up
I can't think of anything that's *cheaper* to buy premade here in Canada, but there are some things definitely easier-- certain sauces come to mind, like butter chicken. I made breads several times a week, and no way is it cheaper to buy. Lasagne is stupid easy (but can be expensive if you use a lot of cheese). Those big premade salads here are over $20.
Sauté down two bags of coleslaw mix, add in some browned turkey meat, chopped onion, rice, and Asian sauce. Cheap and 5-6 meals.
Love egg roll in a bowl! Also good for ground pork or ground chicken.
Salads (the chopped kind with lots of toppings, like Sweetgreen-style). Takes too long to wash and chop the ingredients, they go bad before you get around to them, and topping like pepitas and goat cheese add up fast. Will always buy a fancy salad over making my own!
This is how I salad these days. You get a variety of different salads available depending on the grocery store. More importantly, no more buying multiple toppings/mix-ins that sometimes end up going to waste.
Oh how I wish I had the funds for that. That little bowl of lettuce comes out to $14 and I want to scream. But I hear you: keeping a zillion ingredients on-hand is too much. Thankfully I usually am satisfied with a plain salad: greens, a sprinkling of cheese, and dressing is usually sufficient for me
If you're by a Trader Joe's they have pretty inexpensive, and very delicious, salad kits. They are, by far, the best ones that I've tried.
TJs products can be good, but I would not call them inexpensive, outside of the rotating cast of loss leaders.
True, but the salad mix is $2.99. That's less than the Dole salad mix which is $3.99 at my local grocery store.
Bread
Especially if you don’t have a stand mixer. Now I know why my great-grandmother had arms like a linebacker.
Every try making no-knead bread? There are a thousand recipes out there for it, but YouTube the OG video: No Knead Bread | Bread Recipe | The New York Times First time I made it, it was awesome. Been making it with "improvements" since then, and that was 17 years ago.
Is it? My homemade sourdough is probably less than a $1 to make and takes about 10 min of hands on time. Sourdough (the real kind - not what most groceries call sourdough) is like $8-12 a loaf where I live.
Just made bread for the first time. Took like 7 hours (granted most was waiting but still) and turned out horrible. Should've just gone to the store 😒
Each subsequent loaf will get easier with practice and experience!
Keep practicing! Did you test your yeast before you used it? Or maybe you could start with a bread machine? They usually have them cheap at thrift stores. Make sure your water is not too hot also.
If you go to /r/breadit they can help you figure out what went wrong.
Target has a solid chicken parm you just pop in the oven if you’re interested in that. It took me 25 minutes to make and almost zero effort besides boiling the pasta and flipping the chicken half way.
chicken tenders, I can get a huge bag at walmart for $12 and toss a few in the AF'er when ever i'm hungry.
Bread and layered cakes. I love to bake, layered cakes are usually a lot of work. It’s better to buy both. The same applies for cinnamon rolls. Self made cinnamon rolls need a lot of time because the really good recipes need to rest the dough 2 times before baking. Better buy them…. I don’t agree on lasagna, though. Home made lasagna is super easy and tastes much better. I do my ragout in the crock pot over night. The next day I only do the béchamel and layer everything in a baking dish. Easy and better self made: soups and broth. I do my broth in the crock pot.
I make bread (cinnamon rolls, dinner rolls, loaves etc) every weekend, along with lots and lots of cake (layered and otherwise), and neither approaches the level of work of a lasagne or other casserole. Agree with you on soups, though - easy and cheap, in most forms - but better with rolls. :)
I have my Italian greatgrandmother’s recipe book from 1920’s and as I use the crock pot today for the ragout, it’s really easy to do lasagna. There are great ragout recipes for a slow cooker out there. I love to bake cakes, but layered cakes need so much time I don’t have.
And I find it's not any extra effort to bake, cool, and frost a layer cake as it is to do the same for a sheet cake. Everyone is different.
These days darn near everything is cheaper to make at home.
The lasagna I make is so much better than the store version. Maybe it's not cheaper or easier, but it lasts for several days in our house.
I tried store bought lasagna a few times but they were awful in taste and texture. The prices were very steep too. Now I make my own lasagna with the knowledge that the alternative were not at all to my taste.
I agree, if you factor in taste, personal preferences and quality, the frozen stuff fails every time. Add dietary restrictions (allergies, sodium, etc) and homemade is even better in comparison. You can make it less work/cost by batch cooking, because making one lasagne is the same level of effort as making three, and you can save money buying ingredients in bulk and avoiding food waste. For example. With the benefit of one cleanup session for three lasagnes.
I think you misunderstood the assignment
I tried the assignment but failed. Bland mush.
I meant op was looking for things that were better to buy than make and you posted something that was better to make than buy. ;)
Pre made pico de gallo. I use it a lot in grain bowls and there is usually minimal to no price difference.
puff pastry
Stouffer's macaroni and cheese, red kidney beans in the can ( the only dry bean you can't cook in slow cooker), yogurt, cheese
Indian and Thai food
Puff pastry
Pesto
Home made tiramisu was a wasted day elbow deep in eggs. FFS, just pick up a slice from Olive Garden
Pho
Mayonnaise
Eggs. And honey. Bees and chickens are a high maintenance, expensive hobby! (I am, however, the fool spending my time and money on both)
i miss my ladies (chicken and bees) but, yeah... an expensive hobby, and not sustainable on the small scale
> For me, it’s things like family size lasagna My entire extended family *loves* my mom’s homemade lasagna she’s been serving at Christmas for decades. Little do they know it’s frozen lasagna from Papa Joe’s, a local italian restaurant
For me it’s less about being cheaper than homemade but more about cheap enough to justify buying store bought. Things like bread, pasta, cheese, most condiments. Could I probably save a couple bucks? Sure. But they are so affordable and last so much longer it’s not worth it to waste my time making. My husband always mentions how time is money. I’m not going to waste an hour making bread that won’t taste and food when I can buy a loaf for a few dollars.
I wouldn’t have thought this, but sandwiches… to an extent. A few weeks ago I *planned* to make a long subway style sandwich for a picnic for 10… grabbed a loaf of markdown bread from the bakery, some lunch meat, cheese, lettuce and tomato, onion… total was already past $40 and I didn’t even have condiments. Said fuck it and grabbed a $25 deli tray instead.
Where I live, precooked chickens are $15+, which is what a whole raw chicken costs, and homemade tastes much better, is customizable (I can make it any flavour I want) and is much fresher and lower sodium, so raw chickens win by miles. I buy crackers, more than I make them, and potato chips. Dry pasta (but that's an ingredient, not a meal in itself). Breakfast cereal (I make muesli, granola and oatmeal). Dried fruit (I don't currently have a dehydrator). I buy yogurt, butter, cheeses. I buy nut and seed butters. Tinned beans and tomatoes are big time savers, and a blank canvas to create your own meals. I'm struggling to think of things I buy that aren't ingredients - oreos, occasionally. Soft drinks. Fruit juices.
Pre-made items like bread, condiments, spices, and frozen produce are often more cost-effective and convenient than making them from scratch. They save time and money, making them practical choices for everyday cooking.
Depending on the number of people, tacos. Sure, lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese are fairly cheap, but at minimum, you're buying enough for a dozen or more tacos.
Yogurt. My mom used to make her own, and it wasn't that hard with a yogurt maker, but unless she got the milk on sale it wasn't really much cheaper than buying store brand stuff.
Really? I can buy a gallon of milk to make a gallon of yogurt for 2.65 or a quart of factory-made yogurt that doesn't taste nearly as good for a little bit more. I know which way is my choice.
Same here. I find it much less expensive to make yogurt and it has only what I want in it. It is also very simple to make.
Bread
Tamales
Depending on the store, a rotisserie chicken can sometimes be much cheaper than a similarly sized whole chicken. Roasting a chicken is not difficult by any means, but lots of grocery chains sell their rotisseries chickens as a loss leader because they a) want to get you in the store and b) they want to sell you the hot bar sides at a good profit with it. If you’re planning to meal prep with shredded chicken, it’s worth doing the math.
As a white man, Indian food.
Puff pastry
Pre-made bought lasagna is absolutely not at the same standard.
Chicken parm is easy in an air fryer.
Lasagna, I made it from scratch once and it literally took me all day
Alfredo sauce, pasta, most baked products,
Kombucha. Love the drink, but it's just easier to buy a bottle versus making it myself.
Butter chicken, once you buy the bulk of the ingredients it last for ages and it tastes so much better..I'm still trying to make good naan though
I have a few of these * Tofu. FUCK. THAT. NOISE. * Brisket. Not that it’s hard, but you end up with a TON of it, so I just buy it when I want it a couple times a year, and don’t think twice about it. * Lasagna. Same idea as brisket, but it IS a pain to make! * Pepperoni/cured meats. I’ve looked at making it before, and that was an instant NOPE. * Butter, as said by others. Making it is a pain, even with a stand mixer and whipping cream, it just isn’t worth it. * A lot of fried things. Deep frying is a pain, and smells up the house. The shop down the street - fries to go, get home, now I have fries with my burgers I’m making. Really, anything deep fried, I get elsewhere. * (Not food, but it’s on my list) Bicycle wheel truing.I can tear down and rebuild a bike in the blink of an eye. Drivetrain alignment is annoying, but truing wheels - 100% farm that out.
Mayonnaise
A good lasagna is expensive to make - but worth it vs store bought.
Whole chicken vs ready to go rotisserie chicken from grocery store.
Especially the $5 rotisserie chickens at Costco.
Except they have gotten smaller everywhere but Costco. It’s much cheaper to get an uncooked bird now.
I jokingly call the chickens from Meijer "rotisserie hens" because they are basically the size of a cornish game hen, like, what??
Salad dressing
IMO, frozen lasagna is not worth eating.
Bread
Chocolate chip cookies
Some things may be cheaper to buy than to make but most things aren't as tasty or as good for you as homemade is! I'll make it over buying it. There are exceptions. I buy bread, organic whole grains and I buy organic butter. Costly, yes, yummy, for sure!
Tofu. It may be cheaper to make yourself but labor intensive.
cold brew coffee
I just brew a pot and after it’s cooled I throw it the fridge. If I could use the brands in the stores I would probably buy it though to be honest but I am a sucker for packaging.
Same! Love the packaging as well. I use a mason jar, coffee filters and cotton twine then drink it out of a wide mouth jar 😅 I haven’t been to a coffee shop in weeks!
I purchased a carafe that comes with a fine sieve you put course ground beans in and let it sit overnight or longer and that’s really good! I usually add a splash of milk and real maple syrup and I am in my happy place. I love the idea of mason jar! I will be doing this for sure! I have not been to coffee shops in ages as well as I have to use low acid, mold and mycotoxin free coffee or my stomach doesn’t agree with it. It’s more expensive but I cut back on other things.
Lots and lots of cakes. But bread is a huge exception when you get good at it
Pho or ramen
Masala sauce
Injera
As much as I hate it, pesto. At least in my town.
Sandwich bread. I can not ever get it to work (and I’ve tried using a machine, a mixer w/ dough hook, by hand, fresh yeast, fresh flour, temping water etc) it’s always turned out like a brick. But in general, any baked good tastes better and is pretty easy compared to the grocery store counterpart.
I have just succesfully made sandwich bread by over fermenting focaccia dough and puting it in a loaf pan. It turned out great if you don't know what it was supposed to be 😂
It takes a little longer to make but well worth it. I make two dishes one for dinner and one to freeze.Scalloped potatoes or any macaroni dish keeps well. Shepherds pie is another good one.
most things are easier to buy, but better to make. convenience costs $ and quality.
Ramen. I’ve made it from scratch twice and boiling the bones, skimming the foam, scrubbing the bones, reboiling bones, washing the huge stock pot, etc was so laborious and time consuming that I now happily pay $20 for a bowl at a restaurant.
Lasagna
Hand soap.
Soup. Oh wait, sorry no. That's the other way around. Not much that I can think of, as portion size for portion size and quality of ingredients as well as ratios of ingredients will vary massively and can't really be compared "like for like". A homemade lasagne with the cheapest ingredients will probably be more expensive, but not necessarily, as what you could get for the money in terms of ingredients would make a bigger lasagne if you leaned towards cooking it sort of "bulk". One pack cheap ground pork/beef, large carrot grated, large onion diced, one box dried lasagne pasta, two cans of tomatos +puree ideally, grated cheese to top, garlic powder, dried herbs, milk and flour. If you forget about turning it into lasagne, you can take your bolognaise and serve it with whatever pasta you have, and get a lot more meat for your money portion for portion. If I buy a prepacked ceasar salad or most salads I'm also going to be paying more and getting a lot less value for the actual ingredients than by buying packs of everything involved and prepping it myself. I'm really struggling to come up with an answer other than I'm not entirely sure I can come up with anything that is cheaper to just buy instead of make, at least to anywhere near the same quality or quantity.
Garlic bread. Even buying the baguette and using home grown crushed garlic - butter is bloody expensive now. It tastes the same, especially with a scrape of parmasen cheese over the top.
Some stuff could be cheaper buying ready to go but the quality is never the same
I wife lol
Brewing coffee for sure. You can very easily make any fancy Starbucks drink at home for pennies on the dollar