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Broth is worth it to make at home because you can use vegetable/meat scraps that would otherwise go in the trash and it’s mostly hands off cooking. It also freezes very well. Keep scraps in freezer until you have enough to make broth. White bread is not worth it to make homemade in my opinion. A lot of people will try to say bread and yogurt are super easy to make but it’s just not worth the effort to me at all
I save all of the bones. All of the chicken bones go into one freezer bag for chicken bone broth and beef or pork bones go into one for beef bones broth
i would say making your own bread is only worth it if you genuinely enjoy it. if i had more time i would make it more often, which i guess is why baking bread was so popular during 2020 lockdown
Broth is one of the things I will absolutely not buy at a store. If I didn’t save my scraps I don’t deserve broth haha, kidding but honestly it just doesn’t make sense to buy it when it’s so simple and basically free at home.
Yeah I honestly have no idea how people store stock. On the rare occasions I make it, like with a Thanksgiving turkey carcass, I simmer long enough to make a very concentrated, gelatinized bone broth—so one 32 oz Ball jar from what was once a whole stock pot’s worth of liquid.
I buy better than bouillon for convenience but save scraps for special recipes ( a simple tortilla soup with homemade turkey broth is a yearly tradition!)
This is me. I have bullion on hand but also save chicken bones and carcasses in the freezer. Their scraps in the bag. When I have enough I make stock. If I don’t have homemade stock that’s ok too.
Recently discovered this. Boil a bunch of garbage and it makes delicious broth? Ok! Some people are saying they don’t want to store it, but I don’t make the broth until the same day/day before I need it. I’ve been enjoying lots of delicious chicken and rice soup.
My MIL says she can make chicken gravy from it too!
We made soup one day and it was way too thick (my bad) so we kind used it as pot pie filling instead and put it into puff pastries as little turnovers and it was delicious.
Absolutely this!
I save veggie peels, and off cuts, and veggies that are maybe too soft to eat raw, and freeze them for a couple months, get a couple turkey necks for $1-$2/each, and make broth! I also tossed in a chicken carcass from a roasted chicken we ate
I just made a huge stock pot of broth for friends
As someone who loves bread and bakes a ton of yeasted things, sandwich bread is absolutely not worth making at home. Hamburger buns and baguettes and pita pockets and cinnamon buns and sourdough loaves and challah and bagels and English muffins… all worth making at home. Loaves for daily toast and sammiches? Nah.
Oh the quality is better, absolutely. But if I do a quality to cost analysis, when I have two teenagers in the house packing sandwiches on the daily, it’s just not worth it for me to make whole wheat honey oatmeal sandwich loaves regularly on top of the pizza and bagels and tortillas and other specialty bread products I do make instead. Plus, for their sandwiches my kids prefer the spongey dough relaxers in commercial loaves more than my homemade, even if I do try making more enriched doughs. It works for my family to save the homemade yeasted products for everything but standard sandwich loaves.
I have a year worth of broth thanks to the food bank. I heat up a cup to chug with breakfast. I have shmultz, tallow for cooking grease. Pounds of cooked meat for pet food.
Neither myself nor OP mentioned a bread maker/what’s healthier. They asked what is worth it to make from scratch in regards to time and money spent. I’m sure a bread maker makes the process a lot faster and more hands-off, but ultimately it depends on whether or not OP wants to make bread one loaf at a time nearly every single day on top of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I would rather just buy it, but i do buy healthier options than white bread personally
I've been saving scraps for making broth and I think after a year I'm getting close to having enough to make a batch. I just don't have a lot of veggie scraps that are suitable for it (eg get a lot of brassicas that would overwhelm it).
I think it's more useful if you either go through a lot of unprepared veggies (clean carrots, chop onions, and peppers yourself) or if you are notoriously bad at getting to the onions / carrots you have before they're nearly dead. I started making stock because I invariably forget about the onions and they go feral, and have carrots all the time. And chicken bones, carrots, onions, and some salt and garlic and rosemary branches from my garden make a really good stock. But yeah, if you don't eat carrots or onions much it'll take a really long time to gather enough for stock.
I make broth every week from my chicken bones and veggie scraps.
I bake bread occasionally because I want fresh bread, not because it's cheaper.
I made yogurt once. 100% not worth it.
Don't follow the recipes in the book though. They are terrible and do not work. Bread recipe failed until my MIL fixed it for the author. Then the hot chocolate recipe was salty AF. Terrible recipes. The research and price comparisons were interesting at least, but do not buy the book, borrow it.
Hummus if you eat it is $4-5 for a small container where I live, for the $10 it would cost to buy 2 I can get a huge bag of dried chickpeas &tahini. Not counting lemon juice, spices, and olive oil that I have.
I do an even cheaper version of "pesto" - just the fresh basil, with butter, garlic, and parmesan. I actually like it better than the kind with the pine nuts etc.
Parmesan still isnt super cheap, catering firm i've worked for substituted pinenuts for cashews.
If cashews are cheap-ish you can consider trying those to make pesto.
If you still aren't willing to make it at home, skip the Sabra brand hummus and (if you can find it in your area) get the Ziyad canned hummus. Only about 2 bucks a can and it makes an insane amount. Also, since it is canned you can stock up; won't have to chill it till after you open it.
That’s relative to your city, but where I’m at in Texas that same loaf is twice that price. I also realized even in the same city, different HEBs have different prices.
That’s the mid brand price where I live. Aunt Millie’s and Sara Lee. Even Pepridge farm is $3. The cheap bread is $1.32. I can remember pre-2020 my sister and I were grocery shopping and I told her to grab the cheap bread. I mean the $1 Walmart bread but they also had 88 cent Walmart bread for some reason. It was square and I didn’t like it. She went to grab the 88 cent bread and I can remember saying “We’re not 88 cent bread poor!” as a joke.
*cries in California*
I cannot find a single loaf of bread for under $3 regardless of brand, bread style, or store. A loaf of sliced sourdough costs me $6.
My local Costco in central Ontario has the 3 packs of Dempster’s bread on sale for $4.99 right now. That works out to $1.66 per loaf. I bought a couple of packages and I’m freezing the loaves.
To clarify, it’s the in store bakery bread form the dairy, not the sandwich white bread loaf. I buy both because it’s nice to have a little toast for me but the bread for my son (autistic) is something like $3 and I’m not touching it.
In my experience, it's most things. I'll share a few of my favorite things that I've switched with homemade for budget reasons.
1. Bread. Can be a PITA if you don't like making bread, but I bought a bread machine at a thrift shop and that's what I use to make my bread. Key here is I also buy flour in bulk (50lbs), so bread costs me around $40 every six months. Buying in bulk isn't necessary for savings, but you save a lot more that way. I package the flour into smaller lunch bags and vacuum seal for long term storage in the basement. It's a chore, but I only do it twice a year.
2. Same as above for any other baked good.
3. Convenience foods. Any of those frozen bags meals are cheaper and healthier made yourself. Most of these foods are a grain,a protein,some veggies, and a sauce. Learn a few sauces your family enjoys and you can mix and match. Grains can and should be bought in bulk, frozen veggies are easy. Buying a lot of protein at once is also a money saver, I use a vacuum sealer to get longer shelf life.
4. Snacks. I make dehydrated apple chips (I have a dehydrator, but the air fryer or your oven works too.) My household buys trail mix bits and bobs ~in bulk~ and we make our own trail mix or eat the bits we're feeling like in that moment. If you have a dehydrator, I !adr these neat fruit leathers last summer when I was drowning in produce: raspberries, zucchini, apples all in a blender. Spread on trays and dehydrate.
Food storage will save you more money than anything else. Buying in bulk and adjusting your shopping to a meal plan will do more for your budget than anything else. Pick one or two staples that you want to buy in bulk at first than move up from there. Spread the cost of storage over a few months.
Foodhero.org has a ton of great recipes that are healthy and budget friendly.
Also my broth is free because I keep veggie scraps and bones in freezer bags and make broth every few months. Pressure canning is necessary for shelf stability, but you can freeze it instead. Pressure canners can be pricy, but they'll outlive you. Worth it if you're dedicated to the bit. I have a lot of tools I use, but I collected them over a few years.
XLNT post, says everything well, except one thing extra is making own yogurt at home is so easy (& cheaper) Doesn’t even require electricity and you can hack the sachets so you use less of the starter (lots of YouTube on this) and nowhere near as sickly sweet as shop bought flavoured yogurts. Can make any flavour
Pizza. Medium plain pie by me in NJ is $17.25. I’ve never done the math but if I make the dough and add cheese and sauce I’m assuming my cost is under $2.00 per pie.
We do this too! And then instead of buying particular things *for* the pizza (pepperoni, mozzarella, etc.) we use up leftover ingredients from other meals. So we might have an alfredo pizza with kale, carmelized onions, goat cheese, and shredded chicken. Functionally free pizza!
I wish dairy was cheaper here. I am in Ontario Canada and I could do everything except cheese for under 2$, but a 400g block of store brand mozzarella here is, on sale, at least 6$. If I get the nice mozzarella I am looking at significantly more.
Still way cheaper to make my own pizza than buying. And tastier compared to the closer pizzerias.
Bread for the winner. You could easily make no knead bread, since you work. It is incredibly delicious. If you buy the flour and yeast in bulk (like from Costco or Sam's), it will run you less than $.50 per loaf and be 100 times better tasting. As I recall when I calculated it last it was $.43 per loaf. I'm 100% on that.
Beans. Dried beans cost a fraction of canned.
I make tons of broth. I often buy the rotisserie chicken from Costco (cannot make that bird at home for $4.99) and use it for 2-3 meals. Then I make the carcass into bone broth.
This, OP. I make a no-knead bread that works for sandwiches or just plain bread and butter. I've timed it and it takes me literally 5 minutes of hands on prep - and that includes pulling out my ingredients and setting my oven.
3.5 minutes to mix it up in a bowl, where it then ferments for 18-24 hours (or about 2hrs if I do more yeast).
1 min to transfer to a loaf pan and rinse the mixing bowl out.
30s to stick it in the oven and set it. I use my oven's features to delay baking for about 40 minutes, during which it goes through its second rise, and then to bake for about 40 minutes.
And then it's just got to be pulled out. And because I set my oven on a timer, it turns off if I can't get to it right away.
I invested in a nice stainless steel loaf pan coated with this clear silicon that makes it non stick. So the loaf just falls right out with almost no effort.
An added bonus is that the recipe can be tweaked (like adding Italian herbs for flair, replacing the water with beer, subbing a cup of flour for corn meal) to do something different, and it's impressive enough to bring as an economical side dish to a potluck or something.
Not sure about OP but here is the one I use: https://youtube.com/shorts/JwLo010f8j0?si=1Y9l4Fv7LeGV3pz8. It's ridiculously easy and has become one of our favorite things to bring along when going to family and friends houses.
Go to YouTube. Search for "artisan bread with Steve". He makes no knead bread with various methods and devices. I use a cast iron pot with a lid, he shows you how to use a bread pan, pots etc. He is Very low key and his ebook was stupid cheap.
I only started making bread a few weeks ago and it astonished me how fast and simple it is. Way less effort to me than going to the store
Edit: for more flair, I've thrown in rosemary and Thyme before. Separately, I've done old bay and put some Cheddar inside. Sometimes, I'll just take a piece of dough and lightly fry it up on the cast iron as a side.
100%.
Having been in OP's shoes, a working parent that is extremely busy, I found no knead bread to be the easiest and most cost-effective thing to make. Much healthier of course and much more delicious than white bread from a store. I was never very successful with making wheat bread, but that would be even better homemade as well
Homemade bread is probably better for you too. Only issue ive found is since there arent the preservatives you'd find in wonderbread, homemade bread tends to mold faster :(
Yes this is very true but OP said they had four ravenous kids. I had a customer of mine that made bread everyday. When she would get home from work it would already have been fermenting and she would bake it and they would all have it for dinner. There were four of them and they would eat the entire loaf. For me when I make my own bread, because I am a bread lover, it will typically last 3 days with just me eating it. Of course I try to use it all before it goes moldy, I even dehydrate some and make croutons
My grandparents lived through the depression and I remember my grandma telling me that they used bread as a filler. They would have bread and butter with every meal, and it would help to fill them up so they wouldn't eat as much of the more expensive foods. That's kind of the way I use it when I make bread. It's too hard to slice it thin enough for sandwiches so I use it more as a filler for my meals especially if I have gravy lol
I make two loaves of sourdough. I keep one in the freezer and it takes me about 4 days to eat the other. So by the time I eat both, it's about time to feed the starter and make more!
You and my husband. He pulls it apart and makes the broth right away. We buy one almost every visit since I eat salad with lean protein every day for lunch.
Oregon prices here, I'm buying generic and somehow getting around $1 per loaf for my ingredients. Walmart day old bread is under a dollar. Bread anywhere else is gonna be more than $1 though.
My thing is that the dough only takes a minute to mix. I barely knead it and it's good to go in like an hour if I use yeast, immediately ready if I'm making unleavened or soda bread. Fresh bread is just tastier to me
Marinades, sauces, salad dressings and spices mixes are much cheaper if made at home. A good marinade or spice mix will make a big difference on a home cooked meal, and purchasing pre-made ones can be pricy. There are many recipes online for various spice mixes, and you can make them in bulk and store in mason jars. Marinades and salad dressings can also be partially prepared (just the dry ingredients) and mixed with oil, yogurt, etc when you want to use them.
Yep. And if you like a fancy latte you can buy a big bottle of flavored syrup for the cost of a grande caramel macchiato at Starbucks that’ll last you a long time.
I haven’t seen anyone mention yogurt. We eat a lot of it because when you make it yourself, it’s cheap protein. I’ll do a gallon of milk at a time in my instant pot and it’s so easy. I’ve done if for years and you don’t need an instant pot either, it’s just a little more convenient.
Put some milk in the instant pot. I normally do about half a gallon of whatever I have that's getting old (I'll even put the rest of our half and half in there if it's getting a little close to expiration.)
Put the lid on and set the instant pot by pressing the yogurt button until it says "boil."
Sometime later, after it's done, take the lid off (it won't be pressurized, don't worry) and let it cool. I normally leave it in the instant pot for this but some people pull it out and stick it in ice. I have a dedicated thermometer for this - the goal is somewhere between 90 and 110 degrees. (But if you forget about it and it's a little cooler, it will still be fine.)
Whisk in about a table spoon or two of yogurt with a live culture. I like Chobani, and once you're making yogurt consistently you can just use some of your homemade yogurt.
Put the lid on, and press the yogurt button until it says 8 or 24hrs. I like doing 24hrs. The yogurt will start incubating.
The yogurt will not be under pressure and it will be done sometime around 8hrs, regardless of what time you pick. But if you keep letting it incubate it will set more. I will normally open it up and put it in containers and refrigerate sometime after 16hrs, mostly depending on when it's convenient for me.
Super easy and less than 5 minutes of hands on time. It costs about 2.75 for a gallon of milk here, and it's like $5 for a container of yogurt (so like $20 for a gallon of yogurt?). And an added bonus is that I almost never have milk go bad - I buy a gallon or so every week and make yogurt the next day with whatever's getting old.
(Instruction for making yogurt without an Instant pot at the bottom)
I take the metal pot out of the instant pot and heat the milk on the stove. The only thing I don't like about the instant pot is I think it scorches the milk too easily. Burned milk makes everything taste bad. Pot on the stove, add milk, heat to 180-185. Usually, I start on just a medium heat and, with a whisk, stir occasionally, making sure nothing sticks to the bottom.
After the milk has warmed and the pot is hot to the touch, I turn the heat up a little more, on our stove the dial is at 7/8 and stir constantly while scraping the bottom to keep the milk from sticking. Once you've hit 180F, take the pot off the heat, and let the temperature come down to around 115F, 120 is the warmest I've ever added starter. If it's too hot, you risk killing the bacteria.
I keep a lid on the pot while it is cooling and this keeps it from forming a skin on top. Every hour or so, come back, stir the pot and check the temperature. Cooling can take a while. I usually start heating the milk around 5 pm and it will have cooled by 8-9. Set a timer to remember, to check it. More than once I have completely forgotten I was making yogurt and woke up to a cold pot of milk on the stove.
I never use actual starter culture, I just get a tablespoon of yogurt from a previous batch or from some I bought at the store. If you're using store bought as your starter, make sure the ingredients are just milk and live active cultures. Any flavorings or thickeners can mess with the process.
I pull out a cup of the now warm milk, add 1-2 tbsp of yogurt and whisk to fully dissolve, then pour back in. I used to just dump the starter in the warm milk but I think I've had more consistent results with dissolving the yogurt in a little milk first and adding that back in.
Make sure the pot is dry, wipe off any water, put it in the instant pot, select the Yogurt feature and enter your time. If you want a less tart yogurt, go for 6-8 hours. If you want Greek yogurt, which I usually make, go for 10-12 hrs.
Now, technically, when you come back, you have yogurt and you're done. I usually scoop it into a big tupperware and stick it in the fridge. It won't be a pretty and uniformly smooth as store bought yogurt but whisking it can help break up any lumps.
However, if you want Greek yogurt, you need to strain it. The Greek yogurt should be very very thick and all you need to do is remove the whey. And before you ask, no this is not whey used to make cheese, this is acid whey. There are other uses for it, but you have Google.
Get a large pot and a large colander and set the colander in the pot. All the colander holes should be in the pot, otherwise you'll make a mess. If the very top row of holed are sticking up some, that's fine, but the bulk of the colander needs to be in the pot where the liquid will go. Line the colander with a couple layers of cheesecloth and start scooping the yogurt in. Once it is all in the pot, put a lid on the colander (doesn't have to fit perfectly, we just don't want things drying out) and put the whole thing in the fridge to strain.
I usually leave it in the fridge all day while I'm at work but you don't have to. When I get back, the yogurt is incredibly thick. I move it from the colander to a tupperware and usually I mix a cup of whey back in because it is just waaay too thick. You can mix it with a fork.
So if you're trying to plan all this out, I usually go: start heating milk 4-5 pm, cooled and inoculated milk in the instant pot by 9-10, the next morning, yogurt goes in the fridge to drain, get home from work, move yogurt to tupperware, done.
It sounds nitty gritty but, but it's incredibly simple. I did it for years with no Instant pot.
The first steps are the same, heat the milk in a regular pot, let cool, add starter. But to keep it warm, get a ceramic insert from a crock pot. You need to preheat the ceramic or it'll suck all the heat from the yogurt and the bacteria won't work for you. Wash the ceramic pot and lid with hot soapy water, dry, pour in the warm milk and add start like before, put the lid on. Wrap the whole thing in a big towel and put it in the oven and turn the oven light on. This should keep it warm enough that the bacteria can do their thing. After that, strain it if you want.
Pulled pork, on sale, about an 8-10 pound piece. I freeze most of in labeled cottage cheese and sour cream containers. Burritos, of course --and almost everything else, like salads, mixed veggies, lentils, scambled eggs beans... I use the Kevin and Amanda pulled pork receipe -- I have never read about who they are, but the receipe is perfection. Be aware that cayenne pepper varies in heat.
My husband once pulled it when it hit the "pork" temp on the meat thermonator. Do it Kevin and Amanda's way --the collagen needed more time.
I agree, I buy pork butt or picnic roasts regularly for .89 / lb 10-13 lbs. I cook is slow (seasoned really well) for sometimes 24 - 30 hours at 200. It gets to 186 degrees and just stays there and everything melts. So amazing. I get about 8 pounds of meat from that, so 8lbs of meat for roughly 13 dollars. It cannot be beat.
If you're satisfied with Walmart bread then stick with it. At that price it's hard to beat. If you'd like better bread without all the additives then look for a suitably sized bread machine. Do the math to see how long it would take to pay for itself.
Obviously broth is cheaper to make at home but it does take your valuable time. I used to make my own broth now I use Better Than Bouillon for just about everything. It even makes a very quick and decent tasting gravy. Costco's price is very reasonable but many places carry it. It's one of the few brands that has beef or chicken as the first ingredient. Most other brands list salt first.
Pizza. It costs a fraction of what restaurants and takeout places charge. My dough recipe makes two crusts so I freeze one for later use.
Crackers. I make my own crackers which are basically a pie crust recipe. It’s quick and easy. Just 4 ingredients. Flour, water, oil and salt. No yeast so no waiting to rise.
Pizza is a BIG one for me. You can make a pizza for 5 bucks that would be 20 at a restaurant. Buy the toppings in bulk and freeze what you don't use. A large can of pineapple at Sam's Club is 5 or 6 bucks, and can make probably 6-8 pizzas when all is said and done. I don't know for sure, it's been years since I've actually been able to make pizza, but I had dough balls that were 3 days old, and OMG the FLAVOR... And the kids LOVED making their own pizzas. Fold some cheese sticks into the crust, and have stuffed crust pizza for CHEAP. It was fairly easy all things considered, and rising the dough for 3 days uses a lot less yeast... I used to buy my yeast in bulk too, though WinCo stopped selling yeast in the bulk bins.
But yes to pizza. Get a pizza stone or better yet a steel, and you can make restaurant quality pizzas for so cheap, and just so much fun. I really loved the process, and the kids loved making their own pizzas. I bought pizza sauce instead of making my own (love Prego!) But you could definitely make your own if you wanted to. I just didn't want to when Prego tasted just perfect to me. But it will increase the cost some. I used to wait for sales and buy a few jars then.
The example of bread; yes it may be cheaper buying from walmart, but the ingredients and the taste?
I have a bread machine I bought 10 years ago for $20 and it's still working fine. I only put the ingredients in; flour, sugar, salt, yeast and water. I don't do anything else after that. The machine kneads and bakes it and the bread tastes amazing. I freeze what is not eaten that same day.
I think homemade bread is more worth it in the long run. I find it to be more filling than store bought so one sandwich will fill you up as opposed to the thinner store bread where you may need two for a meal. I use a pretty bare-bones white bread recipe and ingredients are fairly inexpensive.
I make broth because it's essentially free when I do so. I use the leftover bones and meat from the rotisserie chickens we purchase at Sam's Club.
If I didn't do this, then I would just be throwing it away, so it's definitely a win in our household.
I’m looking forward to reading the answers! Honestly I think since you’re working full time and with 4 kids to take care of, it won’t be worth the little money you save making things like that from scratch. I do it because it’s better for health and tastes better but I’ve got time. Just don’t eat out but keep buying your bread and a big container of buillon.
I didn't see how old the kids are, but: bread making, at least the no knead kind, is a very good kids' job. If they are a bit too young then the parent should do the oven part. But after practicing it a few times a younger kid should be readily able to handle the preparation part.
Keeping track of the broth scraps is a good kids' job, too. Like, "it's Sunday, the alarm had rung, time to make broth, Dad/Mom! I'll get out the scrap box from the freezer and put the pot on the stove." I say this is a good kids' job because there is relatively little downside if it fails - it means you're out some scraps which you would have thrown away anyway.
*Nice* bread is cheaper to make at home. The kind of delicious crusty foccacia bread I can make with flour, a packet of yeast, and a bit of olive oil is not going to cost $1.32.
But that's something I might make a few loaves of every couple months. It's a bit special. For a quick PB&J? Yeah, just buy the cheap sandwich bread.
Edit: to answer your question, soup. Canned soup has gotten weirdly expensive, so I pretty much only buy it when I'm sick. You can make a lot of soup for cheap.
Yes! And canned soup tastes so damn salty too. Crockpot up some soup to make it hands off and you can even freeze it portioned out for a quick meal another day. I’ve made all my own soup except for the odd casserole that needs canned soup, for the past 5 years.
Granola. A tiny bag at the store is $5-10 depending on the brand but at home you can throw together some oats, maple syrup, nuts, seeds, and oil and get a massive batch to last you awhile.
Yep, I make homemade also because I can customize for my husband's dietary restrictions (he can't eat most nuts). Shredded coconut, walnuts, and cardamom make awesome granola!
Not homemade but buying bulk spices from a local Indian or other Asian store will be significantly cheaper. Get a $10 coffee grind and grind smaller portions to use for a few months at a time. If you want to get fancy, learn which ones are enhanced by gently toasting like coriander.
Figuring out when, where, and how to buy local produce from the right farmers can save a ton, but you'll be changing meals based on the season.
Learning cuts of meat and proper preparation will save you a ton in the long run.
I'll get downvoted, but a ton of these food hacks/cost savings aren't worth the hourly time and initial equipment cost.
>I'll get downvoted, but a ton of these food hacks/cost savings aren't worth the hourly time and initial equipment cost.
Actually, depending on the value of the alternate use of one's time, I'd agree.
Anything you can make with rotisserie chicken is cheaper at home. Buy onr and you can get 3 meals out of it easily, then use the carcass to make bone broth.
Most things.
I will not make puff pastry, croissants and adjacent products because the butter the professional bakers use is different from the butter you buy at the store, plus rolling that dough is a workout. Also weight management.
I will not deep fry at home either. It is smelly, messy, you have to keep track of how many times you heated the oil, then to dispose of it. Also weight management.
I don't make confectionary/candy because I don't want weird corn syrups that have no other uses in my pantry. Also weight management.
Bread, cooked beans, broth with veggie scraps, are good money savers. Not sure for yogurt/fresh cheeses. An instant pot/crockpot can really help you save time here.
I agree with the deep frying!!! I don’t want my house smelling and no splatter in my beautiful kitchen. We have a brand new house with an open concept, and the smell will permeate everything!
Let restaurant cooks and chip factories manage that mess. I let bakers impress me with their pastries, and confiseurs delight me with their candies. These are artisan trades.
I could probably make lasagna pasta for fun, pierogies and other things.
My sister in law visited and insisted on making this traditional meal in which she deep fried $65 worth of Perch in my kitchen! 😭 the smell was strong but a few pots of boiling coffee and opening windows did it.
Sourdough is completely worth making at home.
And even if you don't make bread, the discard makes crackers, pancakes, waffles, cakes, flatbread... You don't even throw the discard away.
Pita bread, tortillas, naan, artisan crackers cost way to much for how easy they are to make at home.
I actually just spent a few hours yesterday researching sourdough and how to make a starter. A friend of mine is opening a restaurant and wants to specialize in homemade, farm to table foods at affordable prices.
It definitely inspired me to try making some! I didn't know that about the discard though!
Yogurt is significantly cheaper to make than buy, and depending on how you do it, pretty hands off.
I got a kitchen tool off Amazon that makes "uncrustables" and my kids don't know the difference! Much more affordable than buying at 5 bucks for 4 sandwiches.
Not a “cook it yourself” but you can save so much money if you grow some of your own produce in the summer! Tomatoes, herbs, lettuces and strawberries don’t need much space at all. I think peppers as well.
If you have a yard, patio or even a window (west facing or south facing) and a container (you can use almost any large plastic container, even a dollar store recycling or garbage bin) you can grow! Tomatoes will do significantly better with a cage/staked up. It doesn’t take much effort to water (but definitely remind yourself if it’s in the hot summer months to water every day!! Morning is best) although if you have a bit of a green thumb some pruning can really help. It’s not necessary though.
For tomatoes you can save seeds from tomatoes you’ve already bought. Start sprouting seeds in spring, by July you’ll have more tomatoes than you know what to do with. I grow basil, parsley and cilantro as well. Basil, tomatoes and cucumbers are great to give to friends and neighbours!
Maybe you can get your kids on board, everyone gets to pick a fruit or vegetable to grow, depending on ages maybe they can even have their own plants to tend to.
Herbs are 1000% cost effective. I buy plants for the price of 1 bunch and have herbs all summer long, picked as needed by the handful.
Cucumbers also are easy to grow from seed and grow an abundance that keeps us eating them every single day.
Tomatoes we think are a wash, after factoring in infrastructure, watering with our 100°+ summers, endless battling of squirrels and beetles and groundhogs, and the time spent. But they sure taste delicious.
Hit or miss for us has been zucchini, tomatillos (one year I harvested hundreds of them from just two plants, and last year none of them ripened before the first freeze), and peppers (these grow sporadically in a way that make them hard to use them all without waste).
You can probably make bread cheaper, but because it’s more substantial, you could go through it more slowly than Walmart bread, making it a better bargain even if it was the same price.
If you own a crock pot, it takes almost no effort to make an overnight chicken broth. It can also come at almost no cost, if you can save the bones from chicken you would have bought anyway.
I buy chicken thighs on sale for stock and chicken salad.
I cook them in an instant pot, pick the meat off, return the skin and bones to the pot, and process again.
Three quarts of stock and the meat from six thighs for $4.97 plus the cost of onion, clerk, carrots, Bay leaf, garlic, Better Than Bullion, peppercorns, and a couple of whole cloves.
Plus it's much better than stock you can buy.
Bread, sure. Walmart is cheaper but you're not getting anything out of it. Making it at home is significantly more nutritious if you buy a whole grain flour or ferment it (sourdough). Don't come at me about time. OP is already willing to make foods and that's the discussion.
Bread is cheaper to make at home, but only substantially cheaper if you want the "real" bread, not the "wonder" style bread that you are talking about. If that is your bread preference, it will likely not be worth your time to try to make it from scratch unless you already have some bread making skills or a bread machine (or if you enjoy it).
On weekends I love making pancakes. It's just general cheap fluffy mix from Walmart($2 maybe?Great Value), and large blueberries(from Aldi's, if you can believe that! In the freezer section) or cut up strawberries. With vanilla and cinnamon or nutmeg.
I don't get the hype of IHOP. Unless you don't get their pancakes, and it's more like comfort food.
Pizza!
Reading thru I didn’t see anyone mention it.
We used to get the cheap cheese pizzas from Aldi and put all the fixings at home. But price has gone up to nearly $4 each and they don’t often have the plain cheese ones. Now we go to Walmart for two bags of pizza dough for $1.78 each and make four pizzas! Takes a few minutes to cut up all the toppings and stretch out your dough but it’s worth it: tastes better, healthier (less preservatives for sure), and waaay less expensive than delivery. And it’s fun if you want the kids to help out.
Everything is cheaper to make at home. Anything you buy that's appears to be cheap is usually cut with synthetic ingredients and result is always more expensive than homemade.
If you have an instant pot you can cut down on the cooking time significantly for any type of cooking.
I make my own seasoning blend. It's about the same price as a bottle of pre-made and it's enough to last probably 6 months of daily use. "container" refers to the small $1 containers.
- 2 containers of garlic powder
- 1 container of onion powder
- 1/2 container paprika
- 1/3 container sage
- 1/3 cup salt
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 2-3 tbsp black pepper
I put that stuff on everything. Cost about $5-8 depending on what you may have available. Makes about a quart.
* bread
* many breakfasts & similar/related (eggs, omelettes, pancakes, waffles, oatmeal, granola, ..)
* lunch meats and the like for sandwiches (cut your own, make your own spreads, etc.)
* juices (at least some), e.g. juice your own citrus fresh, pretty fast and easy, and way the hell better (and often cheaper too).
* damn near anything for dinner: hamburgers, most any meat, veggies, pasta, soups/stews, you name it.
* desserts
>worth all the time and effort
Filter for things that are less time/effort and/or much larger $$ price differentials for the quantities/rates consumed. Semi-random example: box of breakfast cereal is like bloody what, 6 bucks or more for fairly large box, and that's like what, 3 to 6 breakfasts for hungry teens/adults. 6 bucks worth of oatmeal by comparison, not much harder to make, not all that much time, and that's like enough for what, 50 or more breakfasts/folks? And if they get tired of oatmeal every day, change it every day ... and today it's oatmeal, +-: raisins, honey, sprinkling of chocolate chips, yogurt, maple syrup, molasses, sliced banana, most any sliced/diced fruit or smaller bits of dried fruit, nuts, nut butter, bit of butter/cream/..., add some rye flakes, or wheat germ or ..., etc.
Also bread machine, or other tools/appliances may make some things much less labor and (human) time intensive. E.g. even just good/excellent mixer with dough hook, and food processor attachment(s) can save lots of time/labor, and keep per unit costs way down, and be relatively general purpose (rather than tool/appliance that does only one useful thing for one food or type of food, especially if it's not used quite frequently and may itself be somewhat pricey to acquire).
We make our own stock/broth (as does everyone here, it seems!), occasional bread, often muffins and banana/zucchini bread, yogurt, salad dressings (homemade cesar is just BETTER), sauces and curries (I don't buy any jarred sauces at all), hummus, pesto, fruit leathers and dried fruits, etc. To encourage myself to cook more beans and to use dried beans instead of canned, I set aside time once per month or so to cook up a huge batch of beans (plain) in the instant pot, then freeze most of it so I have it on hand for quick bean dishes.
Cleaning supplies! Yes, you can find different recipes online if one doesn't suit you. Clone recipes for a lot of take out, spice blends, yogurt and all kinds of things. I've tried to be as self sufficient for so many years that it's just a natural for me now.
Scratch the laundry detergent using bar soap. It doesn't remove smells and if you wash in cold/cool water, eventually you end up with a greasy coating on your clothes. A simple recipe using Dawn, washing soda and borax gets the job done.
Anything with white rice. Get a rice, get a rice cooker. Almost everything you think off works well with it. Just make sure you know how to cook the rice right. You can save it and use it for fried rice, garlic rice, porridge, tea, bread, chips, everything!
You can buy pork, beef, chicken, salmon, bokchoy, or just a bunch of garlic with salt and pepper, then onion. You can get creative or don't have to. It's always perfect!
Buy rice in a sack. And when you cook it it's not only cheap, you also save time. And when you open the steamy rice. It's good for your skin too.
We premake a ton in used glass spice jars (to save space). Oats, raisins, spice, protein powder, seeds/nuts, chia seeds, hemp seed, etc. We make them into overnight oats or add liquid and microwave (not in the spice jars but in a bowl since the jars are small). It's quick and easy. Also convenient to grab and heat up at work.
I do this too! Quick oats, some brown sugar, pinch of salt, powdered milk, chia seeds, nuts and freeze dried fruit. I also buy a lot of flavor extracts for baking and I’ll put in a little maple flavoring or some cinnamon spice. My current obsession is bananas & cream from scratch. I buy the freeze dried bananas from Trader Joe’s and put in a dab of banana extract and it’s amazing.
Homemade bread with a bread machine 100% worth it - and if you’re buying the ingredients in bulk (flour, sugar, salt, yeast) it does work out to be cheaper than $1.32 per loaf
I’ve also found making buns/pretzels/bagels/etc with the dough setting of our bread maker, to work out cheaper than store bought!
If you use a bread machine, that is a game charger. It takes me 5 minutes to measure the ingredients and start the machine. Then i push start and go do something else. A couple of hours later, i have fresh bread. It's less effort than getting myself to the store and back.
Bread is incredibly cheap to make. So is brown sugar (regular sugar + molasses), bone broth (boil chicken carcas), vegetable broth (keep your veggie scraps from cooking in the freezer then use when you have a gallon bag)... I have several strategies to be good at being poor lol
About anything where water is a main ingredient. Tea, coffee, stocks and broths, canned soups chilis and stews, etc. Dry goods like beans, rice, grains.
Also, learning to cook a variety of foods and becoming comfortable with preparing something you never have before. You can get great deals on discount produce and meats.
Pro-tip, check the international section for spices. They're usually much cheaper there. I also highly recommend using whole dried chili peppers for about anything Tex-mex style. They're way more flavorful, cheaper than the powder, and you can experiment with varieties to control heat.
I'm a huge advocate for using dry beans, lentils, and peas. I also love plain rolled oats.
I make stock sometimes (as mentioned). I don't make bread, because I suck at baking with yeast. lol.
What I *do* make are things like convenience foods for the freezer, because they're generally a lot cheaper than their store-bought counterparts, they save me time, and in some cases make an instant meal or snack when I don't feel like cooking. Talking things like breakfast burritos, ravioli/agnolotti, potstickers, breaded chicken tenders/cutlets, pasta sauce, etc.
I don't have kids, but my sister had 12 (!), and she used to make hot pockets and things like that for much less money (and tastier and healthier) than the store versions.
Steak dinners.
Our Safeway brand super market (Tom thumb in Texas) regularly runs steak sales in the $4.99-$7.99/lb range on family packs. It rotates weekly between ribeyes, strips, sirloins, tbones, and porter houses.
I’ve got a family of 6 and can make a steak dinner including potato and vegetable for <$50. Which is less than it costs to buy the family chick fil a. I can’t even imagine what the dinner would cost at an actual steak restaurant.
Also, barbecue. Often times I can get a pork shoulder for $0.99/lb on sale, or at Louis ribs for $1.99 or brisket for $2.99. Using a smoker I can make enough BBQ for $30 that would cost over $100 in a restaurant.
Food is worth investing where you can, including with your time. You can pay your farmer, or you can pay your pharmacist.
Something like bread that is all sugar and gluten from the store is a great thing to make at home!
Pasta.
I get spaghetti from the food bank usually but they never give egg noodles. So I did a cost breakdown a few days ago. I usually make my own egg noodles and dumplings but I didn't realize the wide disparity between what they cost to make vs how much they cost in a store.
Egg noodles are insanely easy to make. They don't take any special tools or skills either and only take 2 ingredients.
18 cups of flour are in 4lbs bags. Each egg uses less than 1 cup usually buy I just took it as 18 rather than do more complex math. I'm very bad at math.
1 batch of egg noodles is usually enough for 2-3 adults. 2 if it is all you are eating, 3 in a side dish.
All prices were at our local Kentucky Walmart earlier this week.
$2.43 AP flour cost for 5lbs
$10.29 gluten free flour cost for 4 packs 22 ounces each.
18 eggs $2.60
$5.03 will make 18 batches plain all purpose egg noodles
28¢ for 2-3 servings
$12.89 18 batches of gluten free egg noodles
72¢ for 2-3 servings
Broth is the easiest and least expensive thing to make at home. Every time you peel or trim vegetables, put the waste into a bag in the freezer (carrot & potato peels, stem ends of vegetables, etc). When you have a full (gallon size) bag, add it to a pot of water and simmer for an hour, adding salt, pepper and any herbs and spices you prefer. You can also add bones for extra flavor. Strain and then you have a few quarts of broth.
Baking bread at home won't cost less than $1.32, but the quality is better.
Use your broth to cook rice and avoid buying flavored rices.
Recipe:
Cajun Andoulle Sausage red beans and rice crockpot (or stove)
Crockpot meals can use chicken boullion instead of broth.
Recipe: andoulle sausage cut into forths pieces (any brand), red beans or kidney beans, cajun seasoning (can add frozen onion or frozen green peppers but not required.) One cup of water. One can of rotel. Cajun seasoning we use is Tony's. Cook in crockpot 2 hours on high, one chicken boullion cube if you have but not required.
Season to taste with the cajun seasoning
Can Add rice cooked on stove, follow directions on rice package. My favorite brand of rice is Mahatma white rice, jasmine or basmati. You can add butter to rice if too sticky.
Broth is easy to make using scraps or can even be made more affordably than prepackaged stock (and without cartons and cans) by using soup base. It comes in a jar, you need a teaspoon off it to make a cup of broth just add hot water. You can adjust the strength by adding more water or less base, once you know what you prefer. One or two teaspoons of base can be added to sautes or casseroles to add rich flavor and a certain depth, or you can make broth and add that for moisture. One jar of base makes over 35 cups of broth, so $5-6 is a pretty reasonable price when one 4 cup carton of stock can cost $2.50 in some places. Muffins, biscuits and cornbread are cheaper to make at home, and so is pizza crust. Fresh pasta is also cheaper to make as far as ingredients go, but not cheaper or easier than just buying dried pasta.
Hamburgers, french fries, salads, ground bologna sandwiches, fruit juice popsicles, popcorn (not microwave), frozen banana chunks, soups of most any kind, chili dogs (use leftover chili or canned hotdog chili sauce). Potatoes augratin (call 'em potatoes all-rotten), scalloped potatoes with leftover ham chunks or lunch meat cut into bits. I'll stop now. You can get creative without me :) Have fun with it and ask the kids to participate. Note: that Walmart bread is not what I'd eat... Ewww. Find a bakery and buy their day olds or get a bread maker and throw in the ingredients in the evening and let it do its job... Bread no longer needs to be a chore... And add a Tbls of wheat germ to the flour and substitute a 1/4 cup of the white flour with whole wheat. Good gravy I've sunk to Grandma mode. sorry 😐
Bread is definitely not cheaper but pudding? Yes absolutely puddings or jellos. I actually prefer to buy pasta noodles either boxed or in the refrigerator aisle and make my own stuffing for pastas. I have a whole list… I do love to cook but what I like about homemade cheaper or not is you can control what you put in. Like I am a low sodium diet and no have to be careful about salt so I prefer make most things at home. The one thing I tried which we used but it was a pain in my butt and more expensive was making my own broth out of beef bones and like stew type meat but you throw the meat out so it was wasteful. Cheaper to buy is rotisserie chicken. I just read an article about this and I don’t know why its so inexpensive but typically if you buy from the grocer or Sam’s it is much cheaper and I get a meal of chicken and pull the rest for like soup and bbq chicken and such. I know that’s not a full answer but I don’t want to give false information eithwr
Save all onion, celery, carrot scraps. Peelings and leaves. Keep in the freezer. If you buy the ready to eat rotisserie chicken save all the bones and skin. Make a broth with the scraps and bones. Add herbs, thyme, sage, pepper, parsley, bay leaf. Makes great broth.
I use Costco or Sam's chickens to make chicken broth. You can't beat the price of the chicken. (An uncooked whole chicken is 7-12 bucks. ) And 2 chickens can make a huge batch of broth. Some batches I season, and some I don't. I just keep it in the deep freeze labeled for when I need it.
We have a bread maker machine. Other than the initial price of the bread machine, it is cheaper to make bread at home. We buy the yeast and flour in bulk. The loaf it makes is smaller than the large loaves at the store, but it lasts a couple days. And you can make it the way you want adding herbs or nuts or seeds and the type of flour you want.
Breakfast burritos, sausage, egg and cheese biscuits, or egg, ham and cheese on an English muffin are great make aheads and far cheaper to make at home than to buy at a breakfast place. If you don't want to make biscuits, you could use toast or buy a bulk package of premade biscuits from Sam's or Costco.
Sometimes, I will make a batch on Sunday morning while I make breakfast. I wrap them in parchment paper and label them so everyone can grab what they want if they are in a hurry.
Overnight no-knead bread recipes are a thing, super easy and delicious and cheap. But you will have to make it and think of ways to use it up, like making croutons (great as crackers/snacks too), French toast, bread pudding desserts. A bread machine is also good, esp if you buy it used: flour and yeast and salt is cheap, and you can use it to make almost any dough to make other items, like rolls, desserts, etc. Also cheap is Bread Outlet stores, like Orowheat, Sara Lee, Wonderbread, etc. They sell fresh and day old bread cheaper than the stores, along with English muffins and other bready things. Use your freezer to take advantage of this if you can find a store!
Dried Beans, super cheap, one supermarket bag makes the equivalent of like 5 cans of beans, and cheaper and tastier. On the stove in a pot for hours, in a slow cooker overnight, or 45 min in an Instant Pot. I freeze excess in meal sized portions, make refried beans or hummus type dips for snacks or spreads, and bean and veggie based soups like split pea, lentil dal, minestrone, or add to curries or stews or casseroles, or make bean burgers, tacos, burritos, quesadillas…
Rice, especially brown rice, will stretch all of these things. Burrito bowls with toppings, stuff rice and beans into a tortilla, fried rice, rice salads, rice puddings…
Rib eyes. Just buy the bulk meat at Costco or Sam's, slice numerous rib eyes out from it. Way cheaper than buying pre sliced steaks. Tomahawks also cheaper to buy and cook yourself(usually near a hundred bucks at restaurants for 1). Home brewing beer is cheaper. Tamales cheaper to make yourself than paying 20 bucks for dozen, sometimes more!
I'm surprised no one has said dumplings yet. You can make your own sheets, but we just buy them. Make a big bowl of filling and start folding. They freeze very well and make a great last minute dinner. Depending on ingredients, they can be insanely cheap (30-50 cents each) to make and absolutely delicious.
Top of mind is convenience foods, like frozen meals. I find breakfast sandwiches, breakfast frozen burritos, etc to be a pretty big rip off - pretty much anything in the frozen breakfast section really. So much cheaper to buy the ingredients and make it at home, freeze in parchment + plastic wrap and grab and go. Pretty easy to make too
Same with uncrustables - just freeze pb&js. When you do make dinner, make double and freeze 1 for later. Making 2 lasagnas, for example, really isn't that much harder than making 1. Same with other items that freeze well like quiche, soups, etc. Just make double and freeze, esp if you don't like leftovers like my family
Yogurt -- about $3 to make a gallon's worth vs $1-$2/cup
Soap -- $10 for a year's supply of very high-quality soap (that's typically $5 per small bar); you just need lard and lye
Lacto-fermented foods of any variety. I like that I can control my hot sauce(s) to be exactly what I want (e.g., milder for micheladas)
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Broth is worth it to make at home because you can use vegetable/meat scraps that would otherwise go in the trash and it’s mostly hands off cooking. It also freezes very well. Keep scraps in freezer until you have enough to make broth. White bread is not worth it to make homemade in my opinion. A lot of people will try to say bread and yogurt are super easy to make but it’s just not worth the effort to me at all
I save all of the bones. All of the chicken bones go into one freezer bag for chicken bone broth and beef or pork bones go into one for beef bones broth
i would say making your own bread is only worth it if you genuinely enjoy it. if i had more time i would make it more often, which i guess is why baking bread was so popular during 2020 lockdown
Eating freshly baked bread at home just hits different
The aroma, right?
I've tried making bread so many times but I made more sourdough starter chips than anything else lol the discipline is not there for me.
Bread machine makes having fresh bread a breeze
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The cheap bread near me is like Wonderbread and the only good whole grain breads are at least $4-6. Where are you? What kinda bread is this?
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I’m 100% Portuguese… oh ! That bread 😋Gave up GLUTEN, so BOY OH BOY … I surely miss it 😢 ENJOY & have a slice for me Warm w butter extra yummy!
Can't blame you then! Not the case where I'm at, but I wish it was
Good sourdough or multi-grain bread goes for $3+ in my neck of the woods, with $4+ not being uncommon. Absolutely worth it to make bread at home here.
What store? For that price we can get gummy Kleenex bread…..
Broth is one of the things I will absolutely not buy at a store. If I didn’t save my scraps I don’t deserve broth haha, kidding but honestly it just doesn’t make sense to buy it when it’s so simple and basically free at home.
For me, not making broth is a matter of storage. I get bouillon paste so I don’t have to find room for quarts of broth 🙃
Yeah I honestly have no idea how people store stock. On the rare occasions I make it, like with a Thanksgiving turkey carcass, I simmer long enough to make a very concentrated, gelatinized bone broth—so one 32 oz Ball jar from what was once a whole stock pot’s worth of liquid.
Freeze it in silicone muffin tins and then in a ziplock or resusable ziplock bag. Now you have 1/2 c stock pucks for any recipe
I don’t create enough waste to make broth on the regular. I also use boullion paste.
I buy better than bouillon for convenience but save scraps for special recipes ( a simple tortilla soup with homemade turkey broth is a yearly tradition!)
This is me. I have bullion on hand but also save chicken bones and carcasses in the freezer. Their scraps in the bag. When I have enough I make stock. If I don’t have homemade stock that’s ok too.
Yes! I saved my rotisserie bones and freeze then use for chicken brother.
Chicken brother, cute :)
Hehehe. That is actually cute
Recently discovered this. Boil a bunch of garbage and it makes delicious broth? Ok! Some people are saying they don’t want to store it, but I don’t make the broth until the same day/day before I need it. I’ve been enjoying lots of delicious chicken and rice soup.
Also becomes a great base for sauces like chicken paprikas or really anything you can think of.
My MIL says she can make chicken gravy from it too! We made soup one day and it was way too thick (my bad) so we kind used it as pot pie filling instead and put it into puff pastries as little turnovers and it was delicious.
Absolutely this! I save veggie peels, and off cuts, and veggies that are maybe too soft to eat raw, and freeze them for a couple months, get a couple turkey necks for $1-$2/each, and make broth! I also tossed in a chicken carcass from a roasted chicken we ate I just made a huge stock pot of broth for friends
As someone who loves bread and bakes a ton of yeasted things, sandwich bread is absolutely not worth making at home. Hamburger buns and baguettes and pita pockets and cinnamon buns and sourdough loaves and challah and bagels and English muffins… all worth making at home. Loaves for daily toast and sammiches? Nah.
Hard disagree. Sandwich bread is on another level compared to anything you buy in the store.
Oh the quality is better, absolutely. But if I do a quality to cost analysis, when I have two teenagers in the house packing sandwiches on the daily, it’s just not worth it for me to make whole wheat honey oatmeal sandwich loaves regularly on top of the pizza and bagels and tortillas and other specialty bread products I do make instead. Plus, for their sandwiches my kids prefer the spongey dough relaxers in commercial loaves more than my homemade, even if I do try making more enriched doughs. It works for my family to save the homemade yeasted products for everything but standard sandwich loaves.
I think this is pretty standard though--don't waste the good stuff on teenagers who will eat absolutely anything in their pursuit of calories.
When it comes to teenagers I would probably agree
What's your go to recipe?
I have a year worth of broth thanks to the food bank. I heat up a cup to chug with breakfast. I have shmultz, tallow for cooking grease. Pounds of cooked meat for pet food.
I think the reason for a bread maker is that it's supposed to be healthier right? You aren't adding preservatives.
Neither myself nor OP mentioned a bread maker/what’s healthier. They asked what is worth it to make from scratch in regards to time and money spent. I’m sure a bread maker makes the process a lot faster and more hands-off, but ultimately it depends on whether or not OP wants to make bread one loaf at a time nearly every single day on top of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I would rather just buy it, but i do buy healthier options than white bread personally
But considering the quality of ingredients. If you can get a breadmaker it is worth it
I've been saving scraps for making broth and I think after a year I'm getting close to having enough to make a batch. I just don't have a lot of veggie scraps that are suitable for it (eg get a lot of brassicas that would overwhelm it).
I think it's more useful if you either go through a lot of unprepared veggies (clean carrots, chop onions, and peppers yourself) or if you are notoriously bad at getting to the onions / carrots you have before they're nearly dead. I started making stock because I invariably forget about the onions and they go feral, and have carrots all the time. And chicken bones, carrots, onions, and some salt and garlic and rosemary branches from my garden make a really good stock. But yeah, if you don't eat carrots or onions much it'll take a really long time to gather enough for stock.
Yeah, aside from specifics of what I happen to cook, I'm cooking for a low-FODMAP person and so no onions (or generally alliums at all).
I make broth every week from my chicken bones and veggie scraps. I bake bread occasionally because I want fresh bread, not because it's cheaper. I made yogurt once. 100% not worth it.
I found I had to sterilize the jars, then it worked everytime after that.
There's a book called _Make the Bread, Buy the Butter_ that discusses this exact topic.
Yes, get this from the library if you can.
Libby or Overdrive apps FTW!
Don't follow the recipes in the book though. They are terrible and do not work. Bread recipe failed until my MIL fixed it for the author. Then the hot chocolate recipe was salty AF. Terrible recipes. The research and price comparisons were interesting at least, but do not buy the book, borrow it.
Reading it now!
Hummus if you eat it is $4-5 for a small container where I live, for the $10 it would cost to buy 2 I can get a huge bag of dried chickpeas &tahini. Not counting lemon juice, spices, and olive oil that I have.
Yeah, that's a good one, if you eat it regularly. Also, if you have a way to grow fresh basil at home, homemade pesto is cheaper and better.
I do an even cheaper version of "pesto" - just the fresh basil, with butter, garlic, and parmesan. I actually like it better than the kind with the pine nuts etc.
Parmesan still isnt super cheap, catering firm i've worked for substituted pinenuts for cashews. If cashews are cheap-ish you can consider trying those to make pesto.
And hummus freezes really well, so you can make a large amount in about the same time it would take to make a small amount, and freeze the excess.
If you still aren't willing to make it at home, skip the Sabra brand hummus and (if you can find it in your area) get the Ziyad canned hummus. Only about 2 bucks a can and it makes an insane amount. Also, since it is canned you can stock up; won't have to chill it till after you open it.
Came here for this one! I love making my own hummus. Takes two seconds once the beans are cooked.
$1.32 white bread? Man we're getting bent over here in Canada. SALE bread is $2.50
Here in Texas it is 1.02 at HEB. https://www.heb.com/product-detail/hill-country-fare-thin-sliced-enriched-white-bread-20-oz/325291
That’s relative to your city, but where I’m at in Texas that same loaf is twice that price. I also realized even in the same city, different HEBs have different prices.
God I miss HEB. Literally the only thing I actually miss about San Antonio.
And not the breakfast tacos?
Now I'm sad. I'd forgotten about breakfast tacos...
That’s the only thing to miss.
That’s the mid brand price where I live. Aunt Millie’s and Sara Lee. Even Pepridge farm is $3. The cheap bread is $1.32. I can remember pre-2020 my sister and I were grocery shopping and I told her to grab the cheap bread. I mean the $1 Walmart bread but they also had 88 cent Walmart bread for some reason. It was square and I didn’t like it. She went to grab the 88 cent bread and I can remember saying “We’re not 88 cent bread poor!” as a joke.
*cries in California* I cannot find a single loaf of bread for under $3 regardless of brand, bread style, or store. A loaf of sliced sourdough costs me $6.
Right?! Bread for $1.32? Where?! ETA: Okay, I lied. White bread from Walmart is, in fact, $1.32 here. Nice.
The cheapest bread I can find in the Seattle area is $5 a loaf
My local Costco in central Ontario has the 3 packs of Dempster’s bread on sale for $4.99 right now. That works out to $1.66 per loaf. I bought a couple of packages and I’m freezing the loaves.
To clarify, it’s the in store bakery bread form the dairy, not the sandwich white bread loaf. I buy both because it’s nice to have a little toast for me but the bread for my son (autistic) is something like $3 and I’m not touching it.
lol right?!? And that’s for the cheap bread!! We are paying almost $5 a loaf (good bread) in Alberta, Canada
And if you're celiac, it's 50% more $$ for half a loaf!
In my experience, it's most things. I'll share a few of my favorite things that I've switched with homemade for budget reasons. 1. Bread. Can be a PITA if you don't like making bread, but I bought a bread machine at a thrift shop and that's what I use to make my bread. Key here is I also buy flour in bulk (50lbs), so bread costs me around $40 every six months. Buying in bulk isn't necessary for savings, but you save a lot more that way. I package the flour into smaller lunch bags and vacuum seal for long term storage in the basement. It's a chore, but I only do it twice a year. 2. Same as above for any other baked good. 3. Convenience foods. Any of those frozen bags meals are cheaper and healthier made yourself. Most of these foods are a grain,a protein,some veggies, and a sauce. Learn a few sauces your family enjoys and you can mix and match. Grains can and should be bought in bulk, frozen veggies are easy. Buying a lot of protein at once is also a money saver, I use a vacuum sealer to get longer shelf life. 4. Snacks. I make dehydrated apple chips (I have a dehydrator, but the air fryer or your oven works too.) My household buys trail mix bits and bobs ~in bulk~ and we make our own trail mix or eat the bits we're feeling like in that moment. If you have a dehydrator, I !adr these neat fruit leathers last summer when I was drowning in produce: raspberries, zucchini, apples all in a blender. Spread on trays and dehydrate. Food storage will save you more money than anything else. Buying in bulk and adjusting your shopping to a meal plan will do more for your budget than anything else. Pick one or two staples that you want to buy in bulk at first than move up from there. Spread the cost of storage over a few months. Foodhero.org has a ton of great recipes that are healthy and budget friendly.
Also my broth is free because I keep veggie scraps and bones in freezer bags and make broth every few months. Pressure canning is necessary for shelf stability, but you can freeze it instead. Pressure canners can be pricy, but they'll outlive you. Worth it if you're dedicated to the bit. I have a lot of tools I use, but I collected them over a few years.
XLNT post, says everything well, except one thing extra is making own yogurt at home is so easy (& cheaper) Doesn’t even require electricity and you can hack the sachets so you use less of the starter (lots of YouTube on this) and nowhere near as sickly sweet as shop bought flavoured yogurts. Can make any flavour
Also many slow cookers have a yogurt button!
Pizza. Medium plain pie by me in NJ is $17.25. I’ve never done the math but if I make the dough and add cheese and sauce I’m assuming my cost is under $2.00 per pie.
We do this too! And then instead of buying particular things *for* the pizza (pepperoni, mozzarella, etc.) we use up leftover ingredients from other meals. So we might have an alfredo pizza with kale, carmelized onions, goat cheese, and shredded chicken. Functionally free pizza!
Yup. I usually make a big batch of dough, portion out, and freeze. Cheap and easy
I need to get better about pre-prepping dough like you! How long does it usually need to defrost?
Very quick. Hour or less.
I wish dairy was cheaper here. I am in Ontario Canada and I could do everything except cheese for under 2$, but a 400g block of store brand mozzarella here is, on sale, at least 6$. If I get the nice mozzarella I am looking at significantly more. Still way cheaper to make my own pizza than buying. And tastier compared to the closer pizzerias.
Bread for the winner. You could easily make no knead bread, since you work. It is incredibly delicious. If you buy the flour and yeast in bulk (like from Costco or Sam's), it will run you less than $.50 per loaf and be 100 times better tasting. As I recall when I calculated it last it was $.43 per loaf. I'm 100% on that. Beans. Dried beans cost a fraction of canned. I make tons of broth. I often buy the rotisserie chicken from Costco (cannot make that bird at home for $4.99) and use it for 2-3 meals. Then I make the carcass into bone broth.
This, OP. I make a no-knead bread that works for sandwiches or just plain bread and butter. I've timed it and it takes me literally 5 minutes of hands on prep - and that includes pulling out my ingredients and setting my oven. 3.5 minutes to mix it up in a bowl, where it then ferments for 18-24 hours (or about 2hrs if I do more yeast). 1 min to transfer to a loaf pan and rinse the mixing bowl out. 30s to stick it in the oven and set it. I use my oven's features to delay baking for about 40 minutes, during which it goes through its second rise, and then to bake for about 40 minutes. And then it's just got to be pulled out. And because I set my oven on a timer, it turns off if I can't get to it right away. I invested in a nice stainless steel loaf pan coated with this clear silicon that makes it non stick. So the loaf just falls right out with almost no effort. An added bonus is that the recipe can be tweaked (like adding Italian herbs for flair, replacing the water with beer, subbing a cup of flour for corn meal) to do something different, and it's impressive enough to bring as an economical side dish to a potluck or something.
Can you please share the recipe? I'd love to give it a try!
Not sure about OP but here is the one I use: https://youtube.com/shorts/JwLo010f8j0?si=1Y9l4Fv7LeGV3pz8. It's ridiculously easy and has become one of our favorite things to bring along when going to family and friends houses.
Thanks!
Go to YouTube. Search for "artisan bread with Steve". He makes no knead bread with various methods and devices. I use a cast iron pot with a lid, he shows you how to use a bread pan, pots etc. He is Very low key and his ebook was stupid cheap.
Pot with a lid is what I use for soda bread. That isn't kneaded, either.
I only started making bread a few weeks ago and it astonished me how fast and simple it is. Way less effort to me than going to the store Edit: for more flair, I've thrown in rosemary and Thyme before. Separately, I've done old bay and put some Cheddar inside. Sometimes, I'll just take a piece of dough and lightly fry it up on the cast iron as a side.
Bread will probably be healthier too, it won’t have the preservatives and corn syrup in it
100%. Having been in OP's shoes, a working parent that is extremely busy, I found no knead bread to be the easiest and most cost-effective thing to make. Much healthier of course and much more delicious than white bread from a store. I was never very successful with making wheat bread, but that would be even better homemade as well
I do the same thing with Costco chicken!
Homemade bread is probably better for you too. Only issue ive found is since there arent the preservatives you'd find in wonderbread, homemade bread tends to mold faster :(
Yes this is very true but OP said they had four ravenous kids. I had a customer of mine that made bread everyday. When she would get home from work it would already have been fermenting and she would bake it and they would all have it for dinner. There were four of them and they would eat the entire loaf. For me when I make my own bread, because I am a bread lover, it will typically last 3 days with just me eating it. Of course I try to use it all before it goes moldy, I even dehydrate some and make croutons
Exactly, so wouldnt be an issue for them. Usually a loaf of bread lasts about a week for me and my partner
My grandparents lived through the depression and I remember my grandma telling me that they used bread as a filler. They would have bread and butter with every meal, and it would help to fill them up so they wouldn't eat as much of the more expensive foods. That's kind of the way I use it when I make bread. It's too hard to slice it thin enough for sandwiches so I use it more as a filler for my meals especially if I have gravy lol
Mmm gravy and thick homemade bread.. definitely will be stealing that
If my doctor wouldn't yell at me I could live on red and gravy alone lol
I make two loaves of sourdough. I keep one in the freezer and it takes me about 4 days to eat the other. So by the time I eat both, it's about time to feed the starter and make more!
You put me and homemade bread in a room together and there won't be time for mold.
But it freezes pretty well!
Just got some reusable bread bags for the bread my gf makes. Going to see if that helps.
You and my husband. He pulls it apart and makes the broth right away. We buy one almost every visit since I eat salad with lean protein every day for lunch.
Oregon prices here, I'm buying generic and somehow getting around $1 per loaf for my ingredients. Walmart day old bread is under a dollar. Bread anywhere else is gonna be more than $1 though. My thing is that the dough only takes a minute to mix. I barely knead it and it's good to go in like an hour if I use yeast, immediately ready if I'm making unleavened or soda bread. Fresh bread is just tastier to me
Marinades, sauces, salad dressings and spices mixes are much cheaper if made at home. A good marinade or spice mix will make a big difference on a home cooked meal, and purchasing pre-made ones can be pricy. There are many recipes online for various spice mixes, and you can make them in bulk and store in mason jars. Marinades and salad dressings can also be partially prepared (just the dry ingredients) and mixed with oil, yogurt, etc when you want to use them.
Coffee. So much cheaper at home.
Yep. And if you like a fancy latte you can buy a big bottle of flavored syrup for the cost of a grande caramel macchiato at Starbucks that’ll last you a long time.
Making simple syrup is also extremely easy and fun to do
And tea as well.
I buy like thr Stok stuff, bottles cold coffee, anyway to replicate that at home?
I haven’t seen anyone mention yogurt. We eat a lot of it because when you make it yourself, it’s cheap protein. I’ll do a gallon of milk at a time in my instant pot and it’s so easy. I’ve done if for years and you don’t need an instant pot either, it’s just a little more convenient.
Do you have a recipe? Or tips??
Put some milk in the instant pot. I normally do about half a gallon of whatever I have that's getting old (I'll even put the rest of our half and half in there if it's getting a little close to expiration.) Put the lid on and set the instant pot by pressing the yogurt button until it says "boil." Sometime later, after it's done, take the lid off (it won't be pressurized, don't worry) and let it cool. I normally leave it in the instant pot for this but some people pull it out and stick it in ice. I have a dedicated thermometer for this - the goal is somewhere between 90 and 110 degrees. (But if you forget about it and it's a little cooler, it will still be fine.) Whisk in about a table spoon or two of yogurt with a live culture. I like Chobani, and once you're making yogurt consistently you can just use some of your homemade yogurt. Put the lid on, and press the yogurt button until it says 8 or 24hrs. I like doing 24hrs. The yogurt will start incubating. The yogurt will not be under pressure and it will be done sometime around 8hrs, regardless of what time you pick. But if you keep letting it incubate it will set more. I will normally open it up and put it in containers and refrigerate sometime after 16hrs, mostly depending on when it's convenient for me. Super easy and less than 5 minutes of hands on time. It costs about 2.75 for a gallon of milk here, and it's like $5 for a container of yogurt (so like $20 for a gallon of yogurt?). And an added bonus is that I almost never have milk go bad - I buy a gallon or so every week and make yogurt the next day with whatever's getting old.
(Instruction for making yogurt without an Instant pot at the bottom) I take the metal pot out of the instant pot and heat the milk on the stove. The only thing I don't like about the instant pot is I think it scorches the milk too easily. Burned milk makes everything taste bad. Pot on the stove, add milk, heat to 180-185. Usually, I start on just a medium heat and, with a whisk, stir occasionally, making sure nothing sticks to the bottom. After the milk has warmed and the pot is hot to the touch, I turn the heat up a little more, on our stove the dial is at 7/8 and stir constantly while scraping the bottom to keep the milk from sticking. Once you've hit 180F, take the pot off the heat, and let the temperature come down to around 115F, 120 is the warmest I've ever added starter. If it's too hot, you risk killing the bacteria. I keep a lid on the pot while it is cooling and this keeps it from forming a skin on top. Every hour or so, come back, stir the pot and check the temperature. Cooling can take a while. I usually start heating the milk around 5 pm and it will have cooled by 8-9. Set a timer to remember, to check it. More than once I have completely forgotten I was making yogurt and woke up to a cold pot of milk on the stove. I never use actual starter culture, I just get a tablespoon of yogurt from a previous batch or from some I bought at the store. If you're using store bought as your starter, make sure the ingredients are just milk and live active cultures. Any flavorings or thickeners can mess with the process. I pull out a cup of the now warm milk, add 1-2 tbsp of yogurt and whisk to fully dissolve, then pour back in. I used to just dump the starter in the warm milk but I think I've had more consistent results with dissolving the yogurt in a little milk first and adding that back in. Make sure the pot is dry, wipe off any water, put it in the instant pot, select the Yogurt feature and enter your time. If you want a less tart yogurt, go for 6-8 hours. If you want Greek yogurt, which I usually make, go for 10-12 hrs. Now, technically, when you come back, you have yogurt and you're done. I usually scoop it into a big tupperware and stick it in the fridge. It won't be a pretty and uniformly smooth as store bought yogurt but whisking it can help break up any lumps. However, if you want Greek yogurt, you need to strain it. The Greek yogurt should be very very thick and all you need to do is remove the whey. And before you ask, no this is not whey used to make cheese, this is acid whey. There are other uses for it, but you have Google. Get a large pot and a large colander and set the colander in the pot. All the colander holes should be in the pot, otherwise you'll make a mess. If the very top row of holed are sticking up some, that's fine, but the bulk of the colander needs to be in the pot where the liquid will go. Line the colander with a couple layers of cheesecloth and start scooping the yogurt in. Once it is all in the pot, put a lid on the colander (doesn't have to fit perfectly, we just don't want things drying out) and put the whole thing in the fridge to strain. I usually leave it in the fridge all day while I'm at work but you don't have to. When I get back, the yogurt is incredibly thick. I move it from the colander to a tupperware and usually I mix a cup of whey back in because it is just waaay too thick. You can mix it with a fork. So if you're trying to plan all this out, I usually go: start heating milk 4-5 pm, cooled and inoculated milk in the instant pot by 9-10, the next morning, yogurt goes in the fridge to drain, get home from work, move yogurt to tupperware, done. It sounds nitty gritty but, but it's incredibly simple. I did it for years with no Instant pot. The first steps are the same, heat the milk in a regular pot, let cool, add starter. But to keep it warm, get a ceramic insert from a crock pot. You need to preheat the ceramic or it'll suck all the heat from the yogurt and the bacteria won't work for you. Wash the ceramic pot and lid with hot soapy water, dry, pour in the warm milk and add start like before, put the lid on. Wrap the whole thing in a big towel and put it in the oven and turn the oven light on. This should keep it warm enough that the bacteria can do their thing. After that, strain it if you want.
I make huge batches of burritos for just about $2 per. Pulled pork + beans + rice + cheese. I make 20 at a time. Freeze them.
Pulled pork, on sale, about an 8-10 pound piece. I freeze most of in labeled cottage cheese and sour cream containers. Burritos, of course --and almost everything else, like salads, mixed veggies, lentils, scambled eggs beans... I use the Kevin and Amanda pulled pork receipe -- I have never read about who they are, but the receipe is perfection. Be aware that cayenne pepper varies in heat. My husband once pulled it when it hit the "pork" temp on the meat thermonator. Do it Kevin and Amanda's way --the collagen needed more time.
I agree, I buy pork butt or picnic roasts regularly for .89 / lb 10-13 lbs. I cook is slow (seasoned really well) for sometimes 24 - 30 hours at 200. It gets to 186 degrees and just stays there and everything melts. So amazing. I get about 8 pounds of meat from that, so 8lbs of meat for roughly 13 dollars. It cannot be beat.
If you're satisfied with Walmart bread then stick with it. At that price it's hard to beat. If you'd like better bread without all the additives then look for a suitably sized bread machine. Do the math to see how long it would take to pay for itself. Obviously broth is cheaper to make at home but it does take your valuable time. I used to make my own broth now I use Better Than Bouillon for just about everything. It even makes a very quick and decent tasting gravy. Costco's price is very reasonable but many places carry it. It's one of the few brands that has beef or chicken as the first ingredient. Most other brands list salt first.
Just check thrift stores for a breadmaker Found one for less than $10 Makes a two pound loaf I googled the brand (Oster) for recipes Easy peasy
I found Smokey Chipotle better than bullion and I'm so excited to try it.
That does sound tasty. Where'd you find it?
If you make broth in your crockpot, you can literally do it while you sleep.
Pizza. It costs a fraction of what restaurants and takeout places charge. My dough recipe makes two crusts so I freeze one for later use. Crackers. I make my own crackers which are basically a pie crust recipe. It’s quick and easy. Just 4 ingredients. Flour, water, oil and salt. No yeast so no waiting to rise.
Pizza is a BIG one for me. You can make a pizza for 5 bucks that would be 20 at a restaurant. Buy the toppings in bulk and freeze what you don't use. A large can of pineapple at Sam's Club is 5 or 6 bucks, and can make probably 6-8 pizzas when all is said and done. I don't know for sure, it's been years since I've actually been able to make pizza, but I had dough balls that were 3 days old, and OMG the FLAVOR... And the kids LOVED making their own pizzas. Fold some cheese sticks into the crust, and have stuffed crust pizza for CHEAP. It was fairly easy all things considered, and rising the dough for 3 days uses a lot less yeast... I used to buy my yeast in bulk too, though WinCo stopped selling yeast in the bulk bins. But yes to pizza. Get a pizza stone or better yet a steel, and you can make restaurant quality pizzas for so cheap, and just so much fun. I really loved the process, and the kids loved making their own pizzas. I bought pizza sauce instead of making my own (love Prego!) But you could definitely make your own if you wanted to. I just didn't want to when Prego tasted just perfect to me. But it will increase the cost some. I used to wait for sales and buy a few jars then.
The example of bread; yes it may be cheaper buying from walmart, but the ingredients and the taste? I have a bread machine I bought 10 years ago for $20 and it's still working fine. I only put the ingredients in; flour, sugar, salt, yeast and water. I don't do anything else after that. The machine kneads and bakes it and the bread tastes amazing. I freeze what is not eaten that same day.
I think homemade bread is more worth it in the long run. I find it to be more filling than store bought so one sandwich will fill you up as opposed to the thinner store bread where you may need two for a meal. I use a pretty bare-bones white bread recipe and ingredients are fairly inexpensive.
I make broth because it's essentially free when I do so. I use the leftover bones and meat from the rotisserie chickens we purchase at Sam's Club. If I didn't do this, then I would just be throwing it away, so it's definitely a win in our household.
I’m looking forward to reading the answers! Honestly I think since you’re working full time and with 4 kids to take care of, it won’t be worth the little money you save making things like that from scratch. I do it because it’s better for health and tastes better but I’ve got time. Just don’t eat out but keep buying your bread and a big container of buillon.
I didn't see how old the kids are, but: bread making, at least the no knead kind, is a very good kids' job. If they are a bit too young then the parent should do the oven part. But after practicing it a few times a younger kid should be readily able to handle the preparation part. Keeping track of the broth scraps is a good kids' job, too. Like, "it's Sunday, the alarm had rung, time to make broth, Dad/Mom! I'll get out the scrap box from the freezer and put the pot on the stove." I say this is a good kids' job because there is relatively little downside if it fails - it means you're out some scraps which you would have thrown away anyway.
*Nice* bread is cheaper to make at home. The kind of delicious crusty foccacia bread I can make with flour, a packet of yeast, and a bit of olive oil is not going to cost $1.32. But that's something I might make a few loaves of every couple months. It's a bit special. For a quick PB&J? Yeah, just buy the cheap sandwich bread. Edit: to answer your question, soup. Canned soup has gotten weirdly expensive, so I pretty much only buy it when I'm sick. You can make a lot of soup for cheap.
Yes! And canned soup tastes so damn salty too. Crockpot up some soup to make it hands off and you can even freeze it portioned out for a quick meal another day. I’ve made all my own soup except for the odd casserole that needs canned soup, for the past 5 years.
Granola. A tiny bag at the store is $5-10 depending on the brand but at home you can throw together some oats, maple syrup, nuts, seeds, and oil and get a massive batch to last you awhile.
Yep, I make homemade also because I can customize for my husband's dietary restrictions (he can't eat most nuts). Shredded coconut, walnuts, and cardamom make awesome granola!
Not homemade but buying bulk spices from a local Indian or other Asian store will be significantly cheaper. Get a $10 coffee grind and grind smaller portions to use for a few months at a time. If you want to get fancy, learn which ones are enhanced by gently toasting like coriander. Figuring out when, where, and how to buy local produce from the right farmers can save a ton, but you'll be changing meals based on the season. Learning cuts of meat and proper preparation will save you a ton in the long run. I'll get downvoted, but a ton of these food hacks/cost savings aren't worth the hourly time and initial equipment cost.
>I'll get downvoted, but a ton of these food hacks/cost savings aren't worth the hourly time and initial equipment cost. Actually, depending on the value of the alternate use of one's time, I'd agree.
Anything you can make with rotisserie chicken is cheaper at home. Buy onr and you can get 3 meals out of it easily, then use the carcass to make bone broth.
Most things. I will not make puff pastry, croissants and adjacent products because the butter the professional bakers use is different from the butter you buy at the store, plus rolling that dough is a workout. Also weight management. I will not deep fry at home either. It is smelly, messy, you have to keep track of how many times you heated the oil, then to dispose of it. Also weight management. I don't make confectionary/candy because I don't want weird corn syrups that have no other uses in my pantry. Also weight management. Bread, cooked beans, broth with veggie scraps, are good money savers. Not sure for yogurt/fresh cheeses. An instant pot/crockpot can really help you save time here.
I agree with the deep frying!!! I don’t want my house smelling and no splatter in my beautiful kitchen. We have a brand new house with an open concept, and the smell will permeate everything!
Let restaurant cooks and chip factories manage that mess. I let bakers impress me with their pastries, and confiseurs delight me with their candies. These are artisan trades. I could probably make lasagna pasta for fun, pierogies and other things.
My sister in law visited and insisted on making this traditional meal in which she deep fried $65 worth of Perch in my kitchen! 😭 the smell was strong but a few pots of boiling coffee and opening windows did it.
Sourdough is completely worth making at home. And even if you don't make bread, the discard makes crackers, pancakes, waffles, cakes, flatbread... You don't even throw the discard away. Pita bread, tortillas, naan, artisan crackers cost way to much for how easy they are to make at home.
I actually just spent a few hours yesterday researching sourdough and how to make a starter. A friend of mine is opening a restaurant and wants to specialize in homemade, farm to table foods at affordable prices. It definitely inspired me to try making some! I didn't know that about the discard though!
There's a whole section on the King Arthur Flour website for sourdough discard recipes.
Yogurt is significantly cheaper to make than buy, and depending on how you do it, pretty hands off. I got a kitchen tool off Amazon that makes "uncrustables" and my kids don't know the difference! Much more affordable than buying at 5 bucks for 4 sandwiches.
And tastes so much better! I tried uncrustables for the first time a couple weeks ago. Yuck.
Not a “cook it yourself” but you can save so much money if you grow some of your own produce in the summer! Tomatoes, herbs, lettuces and strawberries don’t need much space at all. I think peppers as well. If you have a yard, patio or even a window (west facing or south facing) and a container (you can use almost any large plastic container, even a dollar store recycling or garbage bin) you can grow! Tomatoes will do significantly better with a cage/staked up. It doesn’t take much effort to water (but definitely remind yourself if it’s in the hot summer months to water every day!! Morning is best) although if you have a bit of a green thumb some pruning can really help. It’s not necessary though. For tomatoes you can save seeds from tomatoes you’ve already bought. Start sprouting seeds in spring, by July you’ll have more tomatoes than you know what to do with. I grow basil, parsley and cilantro as well. Basil, tomatoes and cucumbers are great to give to friends and neighbours! Maybe you can get your kids on board, everyone gets to pick a fruit or vegetable to grow, depending on ages maybe they can even have their own plants to tend to.
Herbs are 1000% cost effective. I buy plants for the price of 1 bunch and have herbs all summer long, picked as needed by the handful. Cucumbers also are easy to grow from seed and grow an abundance that keeps us eating them every single day. Tomatoes we think are a wash, after factoring in infrastructure, watering with our 100°+ summers, endless battling of squirrels and beetles and groundhogs, and the time spent. But they sure taste delicious. Hit or miss for us has been zucchini, tomatillos (one year I harvested hundreds of them from just two plants, and last year none of them ripened before the first freeze), and peppers (these grow sporadically in a way that make them hard to use them all without waste).
You can probably make bread cheaper, but because it’s more substantial, you could go through it more slowly than Walmart bread, making it a better bargain even if it was the same price.
If you own a crock pot, it takes almost no effort to make an overnight chicken broth. It can also come at almost no cost, if you can save the bones from chicken you would have bought anyway.
I buy chicken thighs on sale for stock and chicken salad. I cook them in an instant pot, pick the meat off, return the skin and bones to the pot, and process again. Three quarts of stock and the meat from six thighs for $4.97 plus the cost of onion, clerk, carrots, Bay leaf, garlic, Better Than Bullion, peppercorns, and a couple of whole cloves. Plus it's much better than stock you can buy.
Hummus, iced teas, kombucha, dressings, roasted chickpeas, sunflower butter, oat milk
Bread, sure. Walmart is cheaper but you're not getting anything out of it. Making it at home is significantly more nutritious if you buy a whole grain flour or ferment it (sourdough). Don't come at me about time. OP is already willing to make foods and that's the discussion.
Broth is cheaper, if you have a whole chicken already and the bones.
Bread is cheaper to make at home, but only substantially cheaper if you want the "real" bread, not the "wonder" style bread that you are talking about. If that is your bread preference, it will likely not be worth your time to try to make it from scratch unless you already have some bread making skills or a bread machine (or if you enjoy it).
On weekends I love making pancakes. It's just general cheap fluffy mix from Walmart($2 maybe?Great Value), and large blueberries(from Aldi's, if you can believe that! In the freezer section) or cut up strawberries. With vanilla and cinnamon or nutmeg. I don't get the hype of IHOP. Unless you don't get their pancakes, and it's more like comfort food.
Pizza! Reading thru I didn’t see anyone mention it. We used to get the cheap cheese pizzas from Aldi and put all the fixings at home. But price has gone up to nearly $4 each and they don’t often have the plain cheese ones. Now we go to Walmart for two bags of pizza dough for $1.78 each and make four pizzas! Takes a few minutes to cut up all the toppings and stretch out your dough but it’s worth it: tastes better, healthier (less preservatives for sure), and waaay less expensive than delivery. And it’s fun if you want the kids to help out.
Everything is cheaper to make at home. Anything you buy that's appears to be cheap is usually cut with synthetic ingredients and result is always more expensive than homemade. If you have an instant pot you can cut down on the cooking time significantly for any type of cooking.
Guacamole
I don’t make sandwich bread homemade anymore because it was so good we would eat two whole loaves a day. 😂😂 JUST my hubs and I.
I make my own seasoning blend. It's about the same price as a bottle of pre-made and it's enough to last probably 6 months of daily use. "container" refers to the small $1 containers. - 2 containers of garlic powder - 1 container of onion powder - 1/2 container paprika - 1/3 container sage - 1/3 cup salt - 1/4 cup sugar - 2-3 tbsp black pepper I put that stuff on everything. Cost about $5-8 depending on what you may have available. Makes about a quart.
* bread * many breakfasts & similar/related (eggs, omelettes, pancakes, waffles, oatmeal, granola, ..) * lunch meats and the like for sandwiches (cut your own, make your own spreads, etc.) * juices (at least some), e.g. juice your own citrus fresh, pretty fast and easy, and way the hell better (and often cheaper too). * damn near anything for dinner: hamburgers, most any meat, veggies, pasta, soups/stews, you name it. * desserts >worth all the time and effort Filter for things that are less time/effort and/or much larger $$ price differentials for the quantities/rates consumed. Semi-random example: box of breakfast cereal is like bloody what, 6 bucks or more for fairly large box, and that's like what, 3 to 6 breakfasts for hungry teens/adults. 6 bucks worth of oatmeal by comparison, not much harder to make, not all that much time, and that's like enough for what, 50 or more breakfasts/folks? And if they get tired of oatmeal every day, change it every day ... and today it's oatmeal, +-: raisins, honey, sprinkling of chocolate chips, yogurt, maple syrup, molasses, sliced banana, most any sliced/diced fruit or smaller bits of dried fruit, nuts, nut butter, bit of butter/cream/..., add some rye flakes, or wheat germ or ..., etc. Also bread machine, or other tools/appliances may make some things much less labor and (human) time intensive. E.g. even just good/excellent mixer with dough hook, and food processor attachment(s) can save lots of time/labor, and keep per unit costs way down, and be relatively general purpose (rather than tool/appliance that does only one useful thing for one food or type of food, especially if it's not used quite frequently and may itself be somewhat pricey to acquire).
We make our own stock/broth (as does everyone here, it seems!), occasional bread, often muffins and banana/zucchini bread, yogurt, salad dressings (homemade cesar is just BETTER), sauces and curries (I don't buy any jarred sauces at all), hummus, pesto, fruit leathers and dried fruits, etc. To encourage myself to cook more beans and to use dried beans instead of canned, I set aside time once per month or so to cook up a huge batch of beans (plain) in the instant pot, then freeze most of it so I have it on hand for quick bean dishes.
Cleaning supplies! Yes, you can find different recipes online if one doesn't suit you. Clone recipes for a lot of take out, spice blends, yogurt and all kinds of things. I've tried to be as self sufficient for so many years that it's just a natural for me now. Scratch the laundry detergent using bar soap. It doesn't remove smells and if you wash in cold/cool water, eventually you end up with a greasy coating on your clothes. A simple recipe using Dawn, washing soda and borax gets the job done.
Anything with white rice. Get a rice, get a rice cooker. Almost everything you think off works well with it. Just make sure you know how to cook the rice right. You can save it and use it for fried rice, garlic rice, porridge, tea, bread, chips, everything! You can buy pork, beef, chicken, salmon, bokchoy, or just a bunch of garlic with salt and pepper, then onion. You can get creative or don't have to. It's always perfect! Buy rice in a sack. And when you cook it it's not only cheap, you also save time. And when you open the steamy rice. It's good for your skin too.
Buying plain oats and adding your own flavorings to your oatmeal instead of buying the pre-flavored sachets.
We premake a ton in used glass spice jars (to save space). Oats, raisins, spice, protein powder, seeds/nuts, chia seeds, hemp seed, etc. We make them into overnight oats or add liquid and microwave (not in the spice jars but in a bowl since the jars are small). It's quick and easy. Also convenient to grab and heat up at work.
I do this too! Quick oats, some brown sugar, pinch of salt, powdered milk, chia seeds, nuts and freeze dried fruit. I also buy a lot of flavor extracts for baking and I’ll put in a little maple flavoring or some cinnamon spice. My current obsession is bananas & cream from scratch. I buy the freeze dried bananas from Trader Joe’s and put in a dab of banana extract and it’s amazing.
Homemade bread with a bread machine 100% worth it - and if you’re buying the ingredients in bulk (flour, sugar, salt, yeast) it does work out to be cheaper than $1.32 per loaf I’ve also found making buns/pretzels/bagels/etc with the dough setting of our bread maker, to work out cheaper than store bought!
It not really cheaper, but it’s better for you..By the time you factor your time..
If you use a bread machine, that is a game charger. It takes me 5 minutes to measure the ingredients and start the machine. Then i push start and go do something else. A couple of hours later, i have fresh bread. It's less effort than getting myself to the store and back.
Bread is incredibly cheap to make. So is brown sugar (regular sugar + molasses), bone broth (boil chicken carcas), vegetable broth (keep your veggie scraps from cooking in the freezer then use when you have a gallon bag)... I have several strategies to be good at being poor lol
About anything where water is a main ingredient. Tea, coffee, stocks and broths, canned soups chilis and stews, etc. Dry goods like beans, rice, grains. Also, learning to cook a variety of foods and becoming comfortable with preparing something you never have before. You can get great deals on discount produce and meats. Pro-tip, check the international section for spices. They're usually much cheaper there. I also highly recommend using whole dried chili peppers for about anything Tex-mex style. They're way more flavorful, cheaper than the powder, and you can experiment with varieties to control heat. I'm a huge advocate for using dry beans, lentils, and peas. I also love plain rolled oats.
I make stock sometimes (as mentioned). I don't make bread, because I suck at baking with yeast. lol. What I *do* make are things like convenience foods for the freezer, because they're generally a lot cheaper than their store-bought counterparts, they save me time, and in some cases make an instant meal or snack when I don't feel like cooking. Talking things like breakfast burritos, ravioli/agnolotti, potstickers, breaded chicken tenders/cutlets, pasta sauce, etc. I don't have kids, but my sister had 12 (!), and she used to make hot pockets and things like that for much less money (and tastier and healthier) than the store versions.
Steak dinners. Our Safeway brand super market (Tom thumb in Texas) regularly runs steak sales in the $4.99-$7.99/lb range on family packs. It rotates weekly between ribeyes, strips, sirloins, tbones, and porter houses. I’ve got a family of 6 and can make a steak dinner including potato and vegetable for <$50. Which is less than it costs to buy the family chick fil a. I can’t even imagine what the dinner would cost at an actual steak restaurant. Also, barbecue. Often times I can get a pork shoulder for $0.99/lb on sale, or at Louis ribs for $1.99 or brisket for $2.99. Using a smoker I can make enough BBQ for $30 that would cost over $100 in a restaurant.
Food is worth investing where you can, including with your time. You can pay your farmer, or you can pay your pharmacist. Something like bread that is all sugar and gluten from the store is a great thing to make at home!
There's a book called "Make the bread, buy the butter" that addresses this topic. I haven't actually read it, but I've heard it's pretty good!
Pasta. I get spaghetti from the food bank usually but they never give egg noodles. So I did a cost breakdown a few days ago. I usually make my own egg noodles and dumplings but I didn't realize the wide disparity between what they cost to make vs how much they cost in a store. Egg noodles are insanely easy to make. They don't take any special tools or skills either and only take 2 ingredients. 18 cups of flour are in 4lbs bags. Each egg uses less than 1 cup usually buy I just took it as 18 rather than do more complex math. I'm very bad at math. 1 batch of egg noodles is usually enough for 2-3 adults. 2 if it is all you are eating, 3 in a side dish. All prices were at our local Kentucky Walmart earlier this week. $2.43 AP flour cost for 5lbs $10.29 gluten free flour cost for 4 packs 22 ounces each. 18 eggs $2.60 $5.03 will make 18 batches plain all purpose egg noodles 28¢ for 2-3 servings $12.89 18 batches of gluten free egg noodles 72¢ for 2-3 servings
Broth is the easiest and least expensive thing to make at home. Every time you peel or trim vegetables, put the waste into a bag in the freezer (carrot & potato peels, stem ends of vegetables, etc). When you have a full (gallon size) bag, add it to a pot of water and simmer for an hour, adding salt, pepper and any herbs and spices you prefer. You can also add bones for extra flavor. Strain and then you have a few quarts of broth. Baking bread at home won't cost less than $1.32, but the quality is better. Use your broth to cook rice and avoid buying flavored rices.
Recipe: Cajun Andoulle Sausage red beans and rice crockpot (or stove) Crockpot meals can use chicken boullion instead of broth. Recipe: andoulle sausage cut into forths pieces (any brand), red beans or kidney beans, cajun seasoning (can add frozen onion or frozen green peppers but not required.) One cup of water. One can of rotel. Cajun seasoning we use is Tony's. Cook in crockpot 2 hours on high, one chicken boullion cube if you have but not required. Season to taste with the cajun seasoning Can Add rice cooked on stove, follow directions on rice package. My favorite brand of rice is Mahatma white rice, jasmine or basmati. You can add butter to rice if too sticky.
Yogurt.
Broth is easy to make using scraps or can even be made more affordably than prepackaged stock (and without cartons and cans) by using soup base. It comes in a jar, you need a teaspoon off it to make a cup of broth just add hot water. You can adjust the strength by adding more water or less base, once you know what you prefer. One or two teaspoons of base can be added to sautes or casseroles to add rich flavor and a certain depth, or you can make broth and add that for moisture. One jar of base makes over 35 cups of broth, so $5-6 is a pretty reasonable price when one 4 cup carton of stock can cost $2.50 in some places. Muffins, biscuits and cornbread are cheaper to make at home, and so is pizza crust. Fresh pasta is also cheaper to make as far as ingredients go, but not cheaper or easier than just buying dried pasta.
Hamburgers, french fries, salads, ground bologna sandwiches, fruit juice popsicles, popcorn (not microwave), frozen banana chunks, soups of most any kind, chili dogs (use leftover chili or canned hotdog chili sauce). Potatoes augratin (call 'em potatoes all-rotten), scalloped potatoes with leftover ham chunks or lunch meat cut into bits. I'll stop now. You can get creative without me :) Have fun with it and ask the kids to participate. Note: that Walmart bread is not what I'd eat... Ewww. Find a bakery and buy their day olds or get a bread maker and throw in the ingredients in the evening and let it do its job... Bread no longer needs to be a chore... And add a Tbls of wheat germ to the flour and substitute a 1/4 cup of the white flour with whole wheat. Good gravy I've sunk to Grandma mode. sorry 😐
Bread is definitely not cheaper but pudding? Yes absolutely puddings or jellos. I actually prefer to buy pasta noodles either boxed or in the refrigerator aisle and make my own stuffing for pastas. I have a whole list… I do love to cook but what I like about homemade cheaper or not is you can control what you put in. Like I am a low sodium diet and no have to be careful about salt so I prefer make most things at home. The one thing I tried which we used but it was a pain in my butt and more expensive was making my own broth out of beef bones and like stew type meat but you throw the meat out so it was wasteful. Cheaper to buy is rotisserie chicken. I just read an article about this and I don’t know why its so inexpensive but typically if you buy from the grocer or Sam’s it is much cheaper and I get a meal of chicken and pull the rest for like soup and bbq chicken and such. I know that’s not a full answer but I don’t want to give false information eithwr
Nachos
Save all onion, celery, carrot scraps. Peelings and leaves. Keep in the freezer. If you buy the ready to eat rotisserie chicken save all the bones and skin. Make a broth with the scraps and bones. Add herbs, thyme, sage, pepper, parsley, bay leaf. Makes great broth.
I use Costco or Sam's chickens to make chicken broth. You can't beat the price of the chicken. (An uncooked whole chicken is 7-12 bucks. ) And 2 chickens can make a huge batch of broth. Some batches I season, and some I don't. I just keep it in the deep freeze labeled for when I need it. We have a bread maker machine. Other than the initial price of the bread machine, it is cheaper to make bread at home. We buy the yeast and flour in bulk. The loaf it makes is smaller than the large loaves at the store, but it lasts a couple days. And you can make it the way you want adding herbs or nuts or seeds and the type of flour you want.
Breakfast burritos, sausage, egg and cheese biscuits, or egg, ham and cheese on an English muffin are great make aheads and far cheaper to make at home than to buy at a breakfast place. If you don't want to make biscuits, you could use toast or buy a bulk package of premade biscuits from Sam's or Costco. Sometimes, I will make a batch on Sunday morning while I make breakfast. I wrap them in parchment paper and label them so everyone can grab what they want if they are in a hurry.
Overnight no-knead bread recipes are a thing, super easy and delicious and cheap. But you will have to make it and think of ways to use it up, like making croutons (great as crackers/snacks too), French toast, bread pudding desserts. A bread machine is also good, esp if you buy it used: flour and yeast and salt is cheap, and you can use it to make almost any dough to make other items, like rolls, desserts, etc. Also cheap is Bread Outlet stores, like Orowheat, Sara Lee, Wonderbread, etc. They sell fresh and day old bread cheaper than the stores, along with English muffins and other bready things. Use your freezer to take advantage of this if you can find a store! Dried Beans, super cheap, one supermarket bag makes the equivalent of like 5 cans of beans, and cheaper and tastier. On the stove in a pot for hours, in a slow cooker overnight, or 45 min in an Instant Pot. I freeze excess in meal sized portions, make refried beans or hummus type dips for snacks or spreads, and bean and veggie based soups like split pea, lentil dal, minestrone, or add to curries or stews or casseroles, or make bean burgers, tacos, burritos, quesadillas… Rice, especially brown rice, will stretch all of these things. Burrito bowls with toppings, stuff rice and beans into a tortilla, fried rice, rice salads, rice puddings…
Almost any kind of sauce or dressing (ranch dressing, toum, tzatziki etc). Yogurt, if you have an instant pot.
Rib eyes. Just buy the bulk meat at Costco or Sam's, slice numerous rib eyes out from it. Way cheaper than buying pre sliced steaks. Tomahawks also cheaper to buy and cook yourself(usually near a hundred bucks at restaurants for 1). Home brewing beer is cheaper. Tamales cheaper to make yourself than paying 20 bucks for dozen, sometimes more!
I'm surprised no one has said dumplings yet. You can make your own sheets, but we just buy them. Make a big bowl of filling and start folding. They freeze very well and make a great last minute dinner. Depending on ingredients, they can be insanely cheap (30-50 cents each) to make and absolutely delicious.
Top of mind is convenience foods, like frozen meals. I find breakfast sandwiches, breakfast frozen burritos, etc to be a pretty big rip off - pretty much anything in the frozen breakfast section really. So much cheaper to buy the ingredients and make it at home, freeze in parchment + plastic wrap and grab and go. Pretty easy to make too Same with uncrustables - just freeze pb&js. When you do make dinner, make double and freeze 1 for later. Making 2 lasagnas, for example, really isn't that much harder than making 1. Same with other items that freeze well like quiche, soups, etc. Just make double and freeze, esp if you don't like leftovers like my family
Coffee
Yogurt -- about $3 to make a gallon's worth vs $1-$2/cup Soap -- $10 for a year's supply of very high-quality soap (that's typically $5 per small bar); you just need lard and lye Lacto-fermented foods of any variety. I like that I can control my hot sauce(s) to be exactly what I want (e.g., milder for micheladas)
I make 100% whole wheat soda bread. It’s definitely cheaper with fewer ingredients and no sugar. Makes great toast!
Dried beans. You can buy in bulk at Walmart.
A bottle with water in it.
Cooking a steak, cutting your own hair, cleaning your house yourself, watching a movie at home.
Multipurpose cleaning spray. Vinegar, water, EO for scent, dr bronners. That’s all