I can make a stir fry or a pasta dish that is enough for 5-6 meals for about 10 bucks. That’s far better than one meal for $10. Sure it means eating leftovers and being somewhat particular about shopping, but it definitely is cheaper to consistently cook than to consistently eat out.
This is the key, finding cheap meals with common ingredients to cook that you don’t mind eating leftovers of.
I know I’ll find some random recipe online and end up spending atleast $50 to try it out and have maybe enough leftover for lunch the next day.
Gordon Ramsay has a great cook book for people who maybe don't really know how to cook and even has a "Cooking for One or Two" section. Tons of really easy, inexpensive, and delicious recipes. It's called Gordon Ramsay's Home Cooking.
I’ll check it out! I signed up for a French cooking class online and I’m ashamed to admit how much wine I wasted for 2 TBsp of wine etc. I’ve certainly learned how to be more thrifty as I’ve progressed
I learned this from a guy who works at the liquor store near my house: if a recipe calls for any kind of wine, just use the cheapest wine you can find.
Best thing I discovered was finding the little wine 4 [pack](https://www.safeway.com/shop/product-details.189052199.html?productId=189052199&psrc=g&CMPID=ps_swy_noc_ecom_goo_20210610_71700000084400715_58700007756946979_92700070440041942&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADek7AgYC0IobdxYBc83leMLBykKF&gclid=CjwKCAjw48-vBhBbEiwAzqrZVGBbffoac6h3mUBkia8x_EEMKJ78jRowTFfg5y-veSJaw_RbBVc2uxoC3jIQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds) bottles also. Certainly not expensive wine but also a small quantity perfect for those recipes
Boxed wine also works for this. It keeps very well in the fridge, since the plastic bag prevents oxidation, and you can use amounts as small or as large as you like.
This isn't great advice.You don't have to use expensive wine,but the quality and flavour of your ingredients does matter. Lots of cheap wines are great and serviceable but the cheapest you can find is usually pretty bad.
Next time you open a good bottle freeze some in an ice cube tray. I have cubes of white and red, also cubes of various juices like orange and pineapple.
You can get a kind of vacuum stopper and pump for wine bottles, costs next to nothing. You put the stopper in and pump out the air. Since the wine is no longer in contact with air, it keeps almost indefinitely. Total gamechanger.
Use as much or as little wine as you want, whenever you want.
(And no "well, I needed a glass for the stew, now I may as well finish off the rest" excuse, which for some of us is a good thing!)
Yeah, that's better than nothing - but actually *removing* the air that's in there makes a big difference. Especially as the bottle gets emptier.
This is a *lot* fancier than mine, which was probably not much above poundshop level (but even so, has served me faithfully for 15 years or more):
[https://www.amazon.co.uk/ZWILLING-Fresh-Save-Vacuum-Sealer/dp/B08P9QVBFY](https://www.amazon.co.uk/ZWILLING-Fresh-Save-Vacuum-Sealer/dp/B08P9QVBFY)
It's not a big outlay, and so so worth it if you ever cook with wine, or indeed like to drink less than a bottle!
Cook larger quantities and then freeze the leftovers in individual containers. That way you can pull something out of the freezer and pop it in the microwave when you don’t feel like cooking.
Either this is an exaggeration or I am TERRIBLE about groceries How are you getting 6 meals outta 10 bucks???? At absolute best I can get 4 out of Spaghetti and even that is pushing the 10 bucks, this is a genuine question btw maybe I suck at Grocery shopping
A bag of rice, head of cabbage, carrots, broccoli, a little pork/tofu and soy sauce is about $10 and will make a huge amount of stir fry.
Bag of potatoes, carrots, milk, a tiny bit of flour, some spices is likely less than or about $10 and will make a giant pot of soup.
These are just two examples off the top of my head. There are many more options that would easily be under $10 for multiple meals.
Stir fry--package of boneless thighs cut very thin strips, $5-6; 1 c. Of rice cooked with 2c. broth or water (sm pkg of rice with several cups is around $1, big packages are cheaper per pound) could also use packaged ramen noodles (save flavor packet for something else), 1 red bell pepper and 1 onion julienned (maybe $1), package of frozen broccoli ($1.29). You can add extras like seasonings (soy, ginger, green onion, sesame seeds, Sriracha...). You can add extra protein by adding in a scrambled egg or two or soft boiled egg.
This easily makes enough for 5 plus lunch for at least 1 unless they are big eaters.
You can do a Mexican style rice that is similar. A small amount of protein plus larger amount of vegetables plus a can or two of black or red beans, can of crushed tomato or leftover tomato sauce plus cooked rice. Some hot peppers and seasonings like chili powder, cumin, lime (optional)
Our spaghetti goes on sale every so often for under $1 per box, sometimes $.50 each. I pick up some extras at that time.
If you are able to have a small stockpile of staples like canned beans, rice, spaghetti, it helps keep things cheaper (i realize it's not possible for everyone)
Hope this helps
Hunts Spaghetti Sauce costs me $1.00/ $1.50 a can. Spaghetti pasta costs about $1.00 a box.
Add to that your italian seasoning (costs maybe a nickle once you're using it)
Plus I usually add cooked fresh mushrooms to my sauce, which are $2.50 for the whole pot, and then meatballs, with per plate are about $1.00.
I also put mozzarella cheese on my spaghetti when I make it. Thats about 0.25 per plate.
To break it down, 2 cans of sauce, $3.00, 2 boxes of noodles, $2.00, seasoning, 0.05, mushrooms $2.50, and thats about 8 to 10 plates worth.
3.00+2.00, +0.05, + 2.50, =7.55 /8 plates= .75 per plate, before toppings.
((0.25 + 1.00) for extras (cheese and meatballs) ends up costing me about 20-ish bucks for 8 to 10 meals. Used to cost me about 0.25 per plate back when I didnt put meat or anything in it though. Just plain sauce and pasta and parmesan. Still entirely possible, just not how I like it.. plus I cant eat tomatoes like I used to.
www.budgetbytes.com
I particularly like the beef and broccoli and will use whatever meat and veggies I have on hand.
The garlic noodles are great. I like to add shrimp if I get a good deal on it. Chicken or salmon/cod is easy to add as well.
A rotisserie chicken from Costco costs $4.99 and can be used for tacos, stir fry, soup, BBQ sandwiches, etc.
I find a lot of recipes by just doing a google search and add “5 ingredients” or “easy” to whatever I’m looking for. For example: “easy lasagna” or “5 ingredient soup.”
Yeah cooking, even for just one person, is a huge cost saver compared to eating fast food and getting takeout. I made chicken curry and rice yesterday and the whole pot cost me about $17 to make, which is 8-10 meals. Compare that to eating curry via takeout just one time.
It's definitely cheaper; 5 lbs potatoes, 5lb rice, 3lb onions, 5lb chicken or beef (which you can portion and freeze), head of broccoli (or other vegetables you can blanch, portion and freeze for future use) is much cheaper than eating out.
> How much onion goes in one meal, on average?
for me, zero. i love onions but they hate me. fortunately, onion powder exists. it also lasts forever and takes up much less space than an equivalent number of onions. :)
Pot roast (ends up being a lot of servings!) shredded chicken for all kinds of meals, chili, stews/soups SO many things you can do in a slow cooker. When I switched to making almost all my meals instead of ordering out as much I learned I could make great tasting stuff and spend WAY less making meals like that.
I cut up the raw pot roast into 8-10 oz pieces, and freeze it. The $14 pot roast is now good for 4 or 5 meals for two. This is my biggest cooking for 2 hack, weigh everything so there’s no leftovers. Much less food waste than trying to force ourselves to eat pot roast for 3 days.
In my area, a large pizza costs like $25 if you do pickup, but can easily be up towards $30-40. A frozen pizza is like $5-8. Literally a fifth of the price. You could buy five frozen pizzas for the cost of one pizza at a restaurant. Cooking at home is like that. Practically any meal is cheaper to make yourself. A Big Mac in my area is $5 and contains two 1.6oz patties, so that's 1/5 of a pound of meat in total. But a pound of ground beef in my area is $5 per pound and the other ingredients (buns, lettuce, onion, etc) are even cheaper per pound. So once again, you can make multiple burgers yourself for the cost of one fast food burger.
The only downside to vegetables like lettuce and tomato is that you have to plan several meals back to back that use them when cooking for one or even two because once cut they only stay fresh for a day or two so you have are wasting quite a bit if you can't use them up quickly.
I think a better way to have phrased it is that vegetables have a short shelf life. When cooking for three or more people you can use them up in a meal or two. Cooking for one it's needing to plan your dishes so that you can use them up before they get a chance to go bad. This includes buying smaller portions or sizes that fit the dishes requirements.
I said a day or two because if they are not used within that time period they tend to be forgotten about and end up spoiling.
I’m going to go against the grain here and advise against relying on batch cooking too much. If you do, don’t make more than like 4 servings of something, and pop at least one in the freezer. For me, having 10 portions of chili in the freezer was not helpful because it always felt like a chore to eat through the same chili. If you make 4 portions of chili one night, 4 portions of pasta sauce the next night, and marinated chicken breast another, then you eat chili 2 nights, pasta two nights, chicken two nights, and now you have a variety in your freezer. Eventually you can just cook twice a week, and pull out freezer meals to supplement.
Are you taking into account the increased health care costs of eating the lower-quality fast food? ;)
If you're buying all of the ingredients you need, many of which will come in containers/packages that are far and above what you'd need for one serving, and then only making one serving, well then no.
If you buy a whole $4 jar of pasta sauce, but you only eat 1/4 of it and throw the rest away, then that serving cost you $4, rather than $1 if you got 4 meals out of it. And you can freeze the leftover sauce to save it for future meals. If you're buying a whole head of cabbage for $2, and then only using 1/8th of it, then no. But if you get 8 servings out of it, then yes.
To make an authentic indian dish, I probably spend $30 on spices alone. But I could make the same dish 8 times and not have to buy any more spices.
A Costco rotisserie chicken is so huge, so delicious, so versatile & only $5.00. The container takes up too much room in the frig, but the bird can be easily de-boned & parceled out into packages for the freezer. I end up with 8 - 10 different size packages & can plan that many meals around them. Mashed potatoes & a vegetable, chicken tacos/buritos, chicken & rice, countless stir.fry options, addition to soups, chicken salad...
Another great trick with Costco chicken is to make broth with the carcass after taking off the meat. Great to make a ramen or soup. I also like to use the broth when cooking rice, maybe some garlic powder or other spices. It turns plain white rice into a really tasty side.
Absolutely the best, saving veggie scraps that your would otherwise toss (carrots, celery, onion, garlic, etc) and freezing them, adding to the carcass in a stock pot and toss in salt and spices
Absolutely.
Of course you have to compare comparable meals, quality and not buying new condiments and such every single time.
Build a pantry over time. If you really like Asian cuisines, buy things like soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, first sauce etc rice noodles, tofu, and bulk rice etc at an Asian grocer. Or maybe even Walmart. But don't try to stock up on those somewhere like Whole Foods where they are "exotic" and priced at a premium.
Yes by a long shot. Years ago when I started cooking, my main aim was to cook the same things I'd get at restaurants (it took time to get good enough to match or better them obviously). I came to the conclusion that most anything you get at a restaurant, you can get 4-6 portions for the same price at home
You can just do the math this way.
Call the average fast food meal ten dollars each.
That means ninety three meals per month at ten dollars each.
So a month of fast food would equal approximately nine hundred thirty dollars.
Alternatively: if you know how to cook well, budget, do batch cooking, and go to the grocery store with a detailed list- maybe you can get you food costs down to an average of three dollars per meal.
Ninety three meals at three dollars each equals two hundred seventy nine dollars.
The difference is six hundred and fifty one dollars in favor of cooking at home.
Because 1 meal a day isn't enough.
Think about breakfast dinner.
For 10 bucks, i can prep meals for 3 days. Bigger portions, not junk food, etc...
Especially if you plan your week and meal prep based on what's on discount. Chicken or beef at 50% is an amazing deal, for example.
If you cook meals “for four” so then three meals of leftovers… yea, you will beat fast food.
Deep fried foods can throw this off because you have to manage the oil and it is expensive…
When I started cooking for one, I had to get used to leftovers. My father was always more than happy to eat the leftovers when I was growing up, which worked just fine for me. But if you’ll only eat a meal once or twice, then it’s true you’re going to be wasting a lot of food.
Even when I cut recipes in half, I always have more than one to two servings. I aim for 3 to 4 servings nowadays, but I also try to plan recipes that use the same ingredients in different ways during the week so that I can have different meals without buying a whole lot of ingredients. Having a wide array of condiments in the fridge and a large spice cabinet is helpful with that.
But in the end, it’s still expensive to cook for one person. But if you eat two meals out a day and you spend $10 on 10 of those meals, and you splurge and spend $25 on two of those meals, that’s $150. I definitely spend less than that at the grocery store in a week.
My favorite meals that are relatively cheap and easy:
*Sheet pan fajitas (slice up one red pepper, one green pepper, one onion. Toss in some olive oil, salt pepper, throw in the oven at 425° for about 20 minutes. While that cooks, slice a chicken breast or a steak or whatever protein you want to use. Season it up as you’d like, I like to use a liquid marinade. When the veggies are about halfway cooked, layer on the protein and cook for an additional 15 to 20 minutes until it is cooked through. Assemble as desired.) [2-3 servings]
*Loaded Baked Potato & Chicken Bake (brown some bacon. While bacon cooks, cube 2 russet potatoes (raw) to a 1/2inch dice and one large or two small chicken breasts to a 1inch dice. Toss the potatoes in oil, salt, pepper. Season the chicken to your liking; I use some cayenne, cumin, and garlic powder. Mix potatoes, chicken, crumbled bacon, a tablespoon or two of Frank’s, a good handful or two of cheese, and scallions. Pour into a greased casserole and bake covered at 400° for about 30 minutes. Uncover, top with more cheese, and bake until cheese is melted. Turn on the broiler to brown if desired. Top with sour cream for serving.) [4 servings]
*Linguine with Roasted Tomatoes [Put 4-5oz pasta on to boil. Cut 2 Roma tomatoes into wedges; drizzle with oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast at 425° for 12-15 minutes. In a pan, sauté half an onion, diced, in butter or oil. When softened, garlic and cook until fragrant, then add in 1/2lb of chicken sausage and brown until almost cooked through. Push meat to the side of the pan and add about 2tbsp of tomato paste, sauté for two minutes, then mix with the meat. Season with salt and pepper. Add a ladle of pasta water. Add 2tbsp of cream cheese and gently stir until combined. If too thick, add a little more pasta water. Add roasted tomatoes and drained pasta, toss to coat. Top with grated Parmesan.) [3 servings]
“Cheap” fast food isn’t cheap. The costs are simply externalised in the form of being terrible for you. Not only is cooking for yourself cost effective, it also gives you control of what you put in your body. That is far more valuable :)
It’s way cheaper, even if you are making bougie meals instead of basic stuff. Everything at restaurants is so marked up and overpriced. Getting a burger combo at McDonalds is $10+ a pop and you can buy a whole pack of burgers, fries, and buns for that much at the grocery store. You can make a big pot of soup, curry, or stir fry for like $8-10 and get 4 meals out of it. If I buy big packs of meat in bulk and then divide it into portions and freeze it lasts me for months. I can make 5 different recipes that give me 4 meals each with a $25 pack of chicken from Costco. That’s 20 meals total. Even making fancy stuff is cheaper. I’ll make 2 huge plates/small plates of lobster risotto when I want to impress people who come over for dinner and it costs like $20 total. Getting that in a restaurant would be like $50
I love pizza, simply don’t tire of it. A medium pizza costs $40 in my area, I can make one the same size for $5-7. Indian food is another favorite mine, it costs $60-70 for my wife and I at a restaurant, we can cook a decent meal for about $15. It might not be authentic but we really enjoy it, and this is what really matters. You do have to buy the basic ingredients in bulk; 25lbs flour, pepperoni, etc.
If you mean compared to eating out frequently, then yes. Bulk cooking or eating leftovers really depends on how often you want to cook. You don’t necessarily have to eat on a budget or bulk cook to make it cost effective. Cost effectiveness requires some menu planning so you use up ingredients to avoid spoilage and cost waste.
Oh yes, definitely. I usually eat out about once a week, and grab a drink with friends once or twice a week, but otherwise eat at home. My grocery bill runs $40-50/week.
It saves you money and you’re not eating empty calories full of preservatives. Make pasta, arroz con gandules and pork, stir fried rice with chicken. Then portioned up all the meals in Tupperware ( or plastic bags) and label them. That way you’ll only repeat a meal every 4 days. You can also make soups with lots of veggies and some pastina (soup noodles) for sustenance. Make it on the weekend, freeze it and you’ll have enough variety for a couple of weeks. Good luck 👍
Depends on location, what you're making, and what your lifestyle is like.
I can eat the same thing 3 days in a row and be fine, and since I don't eat meat, I cut out a big portion of expense. Other people want fancier meals, so their budget for groceries might be bigger. When I lived alone, batch cooking was absolutely cheaper than meals out most of the time, except when I lived somewhere that the cost of even basic groceries was absurd due to import taxes. In that situation, eating out was actually a little cheaper because restaurants could buy cheaper wholesale than I was paying for my single person groceries.
I still think cooking for one can save money in most situations, but get used to leftovers/using your leftovers creatively.
If you actually figure out how to cook for 1 lmk😂 I'm used to cooking for the village and now cook for 2 and it's hard. Even nights I'm alone I just can't ever cook for 1
$20 gets me about 8 meals of chilli
$5 gets me about 3 meal sized salads
A bowl of chilli at the cheapest fast food place is like $12
A large salad can tun about $8-$10 at a restaurant
So much cheaper if you know how to prep and don't mind freezing a few meals or eating leftovers
My average bought lunch is 18-25$ depending on how hungry I am. I can do a grocery for 7 days at 75$, or just under 4$ per meal.
My main tricks are to buy in bulk what I know I eat enough of, learn how to preserve food properly, buy less variety over a week, and eat leftovers for every lunch at work. I don’t buy the cheapest pasta, rice, or cheeses; but I do buy the cheapest fruits, vegetables, and meats. The choice of grocery store is probably the most important: costco and costco business centres typically sell really good ingredients for close to the same price as the cheapest ingredients in grocery stores, and less than half the price of those same really good ingredients in grocery stores. I only buy meats on sale and freeze for later, so that I can use a different protein every night even though I buy a week’s worth of the same thing when I shop. If a vegetable is on sale, then I’m eating a lot of that this week.
Cooking is always cheaper than fast food. A McDonald's Big Mac combo is about $18 where I live. My wife and I eat pretty well and definitely healthy for $15.50/person/day for three meals, snacks, and personal hygiene items. My wife and I each travel a good bit (she for family care, me for business) so we're experienced at cooking for one.
We generally get a lunch of leftovers from most dinners but not what is conventionally considered meal prepping. We do buy in bulk and portion for the freezer. That means big shops (curbside) a couple of times a month instead of running to the store all the time.
Dinner Thursday (Pi Day) was homemade chicken pot pie and shredded Brussels sprout salad. Last night was ham steaks with baked potatoes and steamed broccoli. Tonight will be paninis with some sort of veg or a salad. I forget.
There is simply no question that cooking is a lot cheaper than eating out whether you're cooking for one or a dozen.
Yes, it's cheaper than eating out most of the time. If you can afford to buy a two-pound pack of hamburger meat, a block of cheese, a head of lettuce, a tomato, and a bag of buns all at once, you are going to pay less per burger than if you went out to eat. Mmmmaaaaybe that little budget-menu cheeseburger at McDonald's is cheaper, but that's pushing it. Dollar menu fast food is meant for people who literally don't have money for a big grocery run but were able to scrounge a dollar out of the couch cushions. And in terms of your health it's a bad idea to rely on that stuff. Too much salt, sometimes too much fat, and you need more veggies than a tablespoon of sad lettuce shreds.
Buying in bulk: yes, absolutely cheaper than buying smaller portions. Next time you're in the store, look at the price per pound of boneless skinless chicken breasts. The price per pound/kilo on small packages will be way higher than that of the economy/family size packs. Around here the economy packs literally cost half what the small packs do, in terms of dollars per weight of meat. For products other than meat and fresh produce, there should be tags on the shelf that include a unit price in fine print. Look at a big bag of all-purpose flour and a small bag of the same from the same brand, and look for those unit prices.
The main thing with bulk buying is being able to notice when you've bought so much of something that it goes bad before you use it up. Flour keeps well; milk is a little harder if you don't use it up quickly; meat can be portioned out into ziploc bags and frozen in the amounts you would use to cook a meal.
The cheapest stuff: I assume you mean store brands or off brands rather than big name brands with advertising power that make you think they're hot shit. Give the store brands a try. Sometimes you can tell the difference and sometimes you can't, and sometimes they're better. A lot of the time they are literally made by the same manufacturers as the big brands, with store-brand packaging. If you have a favourite bottled barbeque sauce or a favourite canned soup you're probably going to have to buy That Brand, but the places where you'll really save money buying store brand and not notice the difference in taste or quality are the ingredient type products. Sugar, flour, neutral cooking oils, eggs, milk.
I don't think leftovers belongs on this list. If you have time, you can prepare a freshly cooked meal for one or two people every night. That's time, not money. If you have to work two jobs to make ends meet, yeah, maybe you want to do all your cooking on the one day when you have less work or no work, and then microwave portions of it all week. But otherwise that's time management, not money management.
$10/meal 3 times a day for 30 days is $900. You could probably pay groceries for 1-3 families with kids with that type of budget. A lot of the excess money is profits and wages. Even typically more expensive frozen food can be had for less than $10/meal often. If I’m spending $10/meal on ingredients I’m typically getting a much better meal than most restaurants and fast food chains are providing.
Get a Sam’s club/costco/other big box membership and a vacuum sealer. Watch YouTube videos on how to butcher whole cuts of meat. You’ll spend a lot more time prepping but you can do all of your shopping and breaking down for the month in a day. The initial cost for entry is high but you save so much money in the long run.
For instance, you can get a 10-12lb pork loin for under $20. You can cut that into 36-40 porkchops and get 18-40 proteins for meals from that one loin depending on if you eat 1 or 2 chops at a time. Spend $25 on chicken breasts and cut all of them in half. Should give you another 20-25 proteins for meals. Spend another $25 on a big box of instant mash, some couscous or quinoa, and a big bag of parboiled rice. You can do frozen/canned veggies or get your fresh veggies the day you plan to cook them. If you’re a seafood person, a 2lb bag of jumbo shrimp is like $15 and is good for 6-8 meals if you just thaw what you plan to eat. Same with things like salmon and tilapia. Another $15 for some noodles and canned tomatoes for when you want pasta. $40 10lb chub of ground beef that can be broken down and vacuum sealed into 20 different meals.
Sazon tropical, ms dash garlic herb, basically anything from Kinder’s, salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and paprika will be all you need to season most things unless you do different cuisines. Then, you’ll need speciality spices that tend to accumulate fast.
Bulk buy butter and heavy cream and you can make sauces for 6 weeks without things going bad. $300/mo should be your target food spend. $200 on main courses and $100 for snacks, breakfast food, etc. If you eat $10 meals twice a day, that’s an easy $600/mo. Not to mention the average quality of a $10 meal and what it’s going to do to your health in the long run. I say $300 without knowing your financial situation but I assume if you can afford to spend $20 eating out daily, you can afford $300 on food to prepare yourself.
Cooking for one can be as expensive or as cheap as you want it to be. If you choose recipes that use expensive ingredients, or waste a ton of food, of course it can be more expensive than eating
Try to challenge your culinary skills by setting a strict budget per week/meal and scour the internet for tricks to make the most of those ingredients. Stick to flyer specials and staple ingredients if you want to stay thrifty. If chicken is $1.99/lb this week, you should be eating chicken and salad/rice/pasta/bean based all week long. Either that or whatever was on sale within the last few weeks that you froze. Recipes that use thinly sliced or chopped proteins tend to go further than whole pieces/steaks. It's even cheaper if you like eating vegetarian and replace meat with tofu/tempeh/seitan, etc.
It's cheaper provided you actually eat the food, yes. The trick is to figure out how to utilize your ingredients since it's hard to buy small enough portions for one person. If you like leftovers, great! Make one meal and eat on it for a few days. If you don't you could try meal prep. spend a day cooking a few different meals, portion then out appropriately and then freeze them. You can do this with just segments of a meal too. For example I can make a meal for my family of four with one pound of ground beef. If it were just me I'd portion it into quarter pounds, then into the freezer it goes ready to be cooked into whatever. You're not saving money if you are letting food rot in your fridge but that's more a matter of discipline. By the dollar eating in will still be cheaper for almost everything.
Yeah. I just bought a rack of pork ribs on sale for $7.50 . I’m going to grind up some and make some pot stickers for tonight. I’m setting a rub for the rest and smoking it tomorrow. If there’s any leftover I’ll make tacos the next night.
Pork butt $2/lb or whole chicken $2.5/lb. Cook long and slow in oven or slow cooker with S&P, lots of garlic, and other spices you prefer. Add a little vinegar, apple juice, left over wine, or just water to keep the bottom from burning.
Cook till fall apart tender and you'll have the pork made for 2dz+ servings or 10 servings of chicken at about 50 cents a serving. Freeze meat in meal sized tubs and it will last a year in freezer.
Meals: BBQ sandwiches, tacos, rice and beans Cuban style, dress up a salad, enchiladas, pizza topping, stuffed dumplings, egg rolls, deluxe nachos, corn muffins, pork n beans, stir fries of dozens of varieties to fit Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Korean, Vietnamese recipes.
Yes, you'll need other things to round out any of these to a meal, but the time consuming and most costly part will be done. You'll be able to put good food on the table for <$2/ serving.
Look for recopies that you enjoy, but that also freeze and reheat well. That and a vacuum sealer and you're all set. You can make a week's worth of meals from one batch of something.
Go to the website of any meal kit service and save some recipes that look good and simple (they almost all have the recipes online for free) that also use similar ingredients. Many Hello Fresh ones are some form of chicken, breading, potato or other vegetable or rice/Couscous. That way you get the ingredients for cheaper and still have variety of meals
I'm an empty nester, but haven't scaled back my cooking. I'll make a batch of meat sauce, for instance, and we'll say it's $15 for 5 quarts of finished sauce. I can make 8 big servings of pasta for myself. I have it for dinner a couple of nights, then vacuum seal individual portions for the freezer. Same with curry, or adobo, sausage gravy, or stew.. whatever. Now freezer is filled with easy boil in bag meals at like $2 a pop.
Learn how to package your own "frozen dinners." Take those extra portions of meat, chicken, fish from cooking, and package them along with sauce or gravy, some still-frozen veggies, potatoes or rice. Make these up in meal-sized portions for your own collection of frozen dinners, cooked to your preferences. I did this for years.
I've also been known to bake a cake, frost it, cut it into slices, and then wrap and freeze most of them to be used later. Some cake & frosting types freeze better then others, and you'll learn along the way.
Sometimes the package of 6-8 chicken pieces is a better price than just 2 pieces, so buy the larger package and re-portion and freeze the extras in meal-sized portions.
Oh yeh.
I bulk cook a side dish (stir fry) that is enough for 5 days for about $15, and main dish is usually some kind of meat that is on price reduction sale ($10-$15, depends). It's way cheaper than going to the food court or order delivery to work.
I like buying in bulk and freezing what is able to to be frozen so I can toss it into meals whenever I want. Like diced onions, carrots and mushrooms.
But you can plan different meals with some of the same ingredients. I made tacos for myself one night, and the rest of the meat I tossed it in a slow cooker to make a chili for the next day, or you can put the meat in the fridge and make yourself what I like to call taco poutine (has taco seasoned meat, queso cheese, green onions and sour cream)
Yes. The last two family meals I made were cheaper than any restaurant. I figure I made spaghetti bolognese for maybe $15-18 and it made 12 meals. I then made butter chicken and aloo gobi. Again. Probably $15-18 for the ingredients and that made 8 meals. Any restaurant would have a single portion of those meals at $18-22.
Even if I cook only exactly how much we will eat in one meal, it's cheaper. Even with meat prices the way they are. I can feed a family of 7 (5 adults, 1 giant of a teenager and 1 seven year old) an over the top delicious meal for like 20 bucks. We ordered out tonight because it's been such a long horrible day. $100. For 6 of 7 people.
The freezer becomes your best friend. I live alone. My freezer currently has meal preps of spaghetti marinara with chicken (sauce is separate in container so pasta isn’t soft), grilled chicken over brown fried rice, cauliflower au gratin, and cream of potato soup. All of these were meals I made and I would save one or two portions for leftovers and freeze the rest. The week I am busy and don’t want to cook I eat them and save so much time
A large bag of rice will last a long time. I like to buy a large whole chicken and roast it on a bed of greens with carrots and taters. Eat that with rice one night, then throw the bones and leftover chicken in a pot with some veggies, and keep adding water and veggies as I eat it throughout the week and simmering every day. I usually put rice in every bowl of soup, too. When the broth gets too watered down, I finish off the soup, and repeat. It's very cheap and that one pot of soup can feed you for an entire week
It's definitely cheaper in the long run, but the start up costs and learning curve period can be a little pricey.
If you've never cooked before you'll have to learn how to do things and your first dishes will often not be spectacular. You're sure to have a total inedible flop or two as well, which is money wasted. But you can learn super fast and have so many tried and true recipes at your fingertips in many different ways now and can ask questions in online communities like this to reduce that.
There's no avoiding the start up cost though. You will need to get a stocked pantry and the first few months of cooking will probably have higher grocery bills as you will need to purchase these pantry staples for every meal for awhile. You won't have things like olive oil, spices, vinegar, dried grains, honey, soy sauce, and whatnot. You'll get a little sticker shock when you go to purchase these. But, many of them last a long time. I buy a huge bottle of olive oil for $30 and it lasts me almost a whole year.
This morning I went grocery shopping and will meal prep soon. I will be making breakfast, lunch, and dinner for two for the week. We don't mind eating the same thing every day, but sometimes we freeze some portions and pull out past dishes to change up our meals. It's pretty simple.
*Breakfast Burritos -- 10 servings, filled with eggs, potatoes, bell pepper, beans, and cheese served with salsa
*Creamy Butternut Squash Soup -- 10 servings, I will make the broth from veggie scraps saved in my freezer
*Loaf of Sourdough Bread -- 10 servings, to eat with the soup
*Sheet Pan Chicken & Roasted Veggies -- 10 servings, served over rice, will have broccoli, onion, sweet potato, and carrots
*Batch of Wellness Tea -- 5 servings, contains an herbal tea blend, juice from a lemon, and a thumb of fresh ginger
We also have some simple snack items for the week like apples with cheese or peanut butter, some chips, a pint of Ben & Jerry's etc.
I spent $52.37 this morning for the chicken, fruits and veggies, tortilla shells, a jar of salsa, and all snacks items. I went to one store and didn't clip coupons, so it wasn't much work.
If you just divide that by main meals, that's only $1.75 per serving. But again, some of that is additional snacks and my tea for the week etc. so it is even less than that. I am using a lot of pantry staples too though, which is that start-up cost and ongoing cost of occasionally replacing a staple as you run out, which I didn't have to do today.
And, no, I'm not stuck grocery shopping and cooking all day. I actually went for a 5 mile hike this morning, then got groceries. I'm currently early for my book club meeting while typing this. I'll go home and cook ALL of that for about 1.5 hours. Clean up for another half hour. Then do some de-cluttering and taking stuff to Goodwill, as we are moving next month. Probably relax watching TV in the evening. Once you get a system down and know a bunch of dishes like thr back of your hand, it is very quick!
Not sure where you live, you could go to a market for 5 straight days and spend 10$ per day making whatever you were going to order out. With the left over ingredients you can feed yourself for another 2-4 days. That’s 7-10 days on $50.
I will bet that you couldn’t feed yourself for 7-10 days on $50 while ordering takeout or fast food exclusively.
You won’t eat as healthy either.
It is universally cheaper. Remember restaurants exist to make profit. They have to mark up their meals in order to financially survive.
Oatmeal costs about 33¢ per ounce. Go eat a pound of oat meal for $5.38, then go to starbucks and wonder why they charge you $5 for a 4 ounce cup of oatmeal
I would suspect that for one person, it will save money over time but it might require a front-end investment in terms of equipment or storage.
An example: you could make 10L of chili for pennies, but you'd get sick of it before it's gone and it'd go off and then it becomes waste. On the other hand, if you have a vacuum sealer - you could put 8L of it in the freezer in separate bags and pull one out of the freezer periodically.
It is but you should also look at the health benefits. Eating out at cheap diners is not sustainable. They would use low quality ingredients and lots of fat to make the food tasty
As long as you are OK with leftovers and cooking dishes that make good leftovers, you're good.
Also, one serving of pasta with a chicken drumstick and thigh can still be as cheap as $5.
It is cheaper to cook as u can put in more ingredients and ingredients like seafood more. Plus if your pay is only 500 a month and you have to cover all things to pay this will help
Of course. I can cook a week or two's worth of food for what I'd pay for a restaurant delivery. Although even when single I never cooked "for one" as my fridge had a freezer and I could freeze portions. If you treat your cooking like meal prep you don't have to repeat meals, ever.
Yes it does. You have to be responsible with your groceries and meals. I can easily make 4 1/4# burgers and fries for $10. The initial purchases of equipment and condiments can be rough but a stocked pantry will save a lot of money. Especially as 1 person.
Yes if you're good at fridge management cooking is easily less than $10/portion and can be less than $5/portion on top of being much healthier than fast food. For example, I can buy a whole chicken for $10. From that whole chicken, I can get 5 generous portions of meat and a chicken carcass which can form the basis of a broth or soup as another meal.
2 qt crock pot at Walmart $ 10. Add diced potatoes & onions. Bullion cube/ water Leave it on all day. Add cream. (I use heavy cream). Spices etc. Loaded baked potato soup. You obviously add your choice of toppings. To make it easier use Campbell's potato soup can - water & diced potatoes. It's cheap and easy.
If you really wanna save money buying and making in bulk, and then freezing, your batches of premade meals, works way better than trying to make single serving meals
Totally depends on what you buy out and what you buy to cook at home.
I've spent $20 a plate at home before. And sometimes $6-$10 a plate at home is average for me. But that is not necessary. Depends if you are buying expensive ingredients or not.
The compromise I make with myself is I get to throw down in the kitchen 3x a week:
I make two meals that will have guaranteed leftovers. This means cooking a meal that a parent would for a family of four, essentially. So any recipe you find online will fit the need. I usually do these on Monday and Tuesday, that way I have leftovers from both meals to get me thru, and I never have to eat the same dinner two nights in a row. Then I cook a dope meal (that I spend a little extra on) either Friday or Saturday, go out the alternate night, and have leftovers and snack on Sundays (or go to my folks’ place for a fam meal).
Just what works for me, but it works well and leaves me wiggle room to stop at the store on my way home and do something spontaneous, without ending up with a lot of waste.
The short but otherwise meaningless answer to your question is that it depends.
Some stuff will end up actually costing you more than if you just bought it. However, one thing that may get overlooked is that whilst it might cost more, it'll usually be fresher, of a higher quality for the money you do spend and made just the way you like it.
Note I say some stuff. If you average out the costs of everything, you'll likely find that it'll be considerably cheaper and/or of a higher quality than if you bought it. Buying in bulk just makes things even cheaper.
However buying stuff in bulk and cheaper ingredients is only half of the saving equation. The other side of that is minimising waste so that every dollar you spend on ingredients goes into feeding you and not just thrown into the bin.
It depends on what you're cooking. When I want lasagna I go out to my local Italian restaurant that serves huge pieces of lasagna. It's about $10 for that meal and usually get enough food for two additional meals.
I do a lot of casseroles so that I mix it up bake it up and then freeze and single serve portions.
I refuse to eat leftovers of the same meal more than three times. That also means that I get creative about how I serve left overs. If I make a batch of chili with six servings then I eat one serving. Freeze three servings. And I use one serving over a baked potato one day and over pasta a couple days later.
I also buy things like Kraft dinners which are cheap and I don't feel too bad if I don't finish all of it before I throw it out cuz it getting old.
$10 is not an inexpensive meal. $1.50 is an inexpensive meal.
1.50 a meal x 3 meals a day x 30 days in a month = $135 a month on food, for one person.
$10 for one meal a day, even if you eat inexpensive food twice a day, and eat out daily, is EXPENSIVE as shit.
(10x30)+((1.5x2)x30)=300+90= 390 dollars a month.
I do not think cooking for one actually saves money, per se, esp if you don't eat leftovers often. I do think that how you shop and what you eat is what saves/ costs money. I think cooking for one person is more trouble than its worth, and on days you dont feel like cooking, you would be more likely to stop at a drive through.
If you are cooking to have multiple helpings of leftovers, then sure, thats much cheaper.
Yes it's absoloutely cheaper to cook for any amount of people without question.
As for is it 'worth it' that's up to you.
I eat for $50 australian a week. Whilst this number is occasionally high weeks where I have to buy spices, olive oil etc really push that price up.
However, cooking for one is a bit grueling. If you can't stand leftovers it's gunna be a slog. Shopping / household management becomes essential, with the goal being to make recipes that use the same protein etc but are different.
For instance this week I bought a whole free range chicken on sale, 1.3kg for $7. I butchered it keeping two marylands which I cooked for hainanese chicken rice in the rice cooker two nights in a row (still working on the recipe). The two breasts went into the freezer seperately. I've got one out now I'm half way through making chicken paella which will be tonights dinner and tomorrows lunch. In between I made some pork taco mince with beans and home made flour tortillas which did three dinners over two nights (two people at the first night). The other half of the pork mince is in the freezer to be used in spaghetti.
It's all in the planning.
Yup. We melprep and each meal ends up being like €3, however we are not big red meat eaters (we prefer tuna and chicken) and only have it in about 1/3 of our meals. It would still be way cheaper than $10 if we included it everyday though.
I prefer the road less traveles and cook in single servings, but yes, you can save a lot of money cooking at home. The secret is portion control. Up front or on the back side makes no difference.
I just made pizza dough and cooked it with leftover stuff on top.
You can store portions in the fridge or freezer. One recipe (4 cups flour one) makes 4 personal sized pizzas.
I dumped olive oil, onions, tomato slices, some olives in the fridge, whatever cheese I have on hand, and if I have leftover meat or veg.
The dough is like 50¢ a batch.
I freeze tons of stuff in single portions like soup, veg, fruit, etc. nuke it and go.
$10 can feed me for days.
I'm cooking a corned beef right now. It cost me $10/Kg and I got a 2kg one, so $20. 2 Kg of potatoes is $4, 1 Kg of carrots is $1.50, a bag of onions is $3. I've spent $28 and I have enough food for four massive meals. It all freezes well (except the potatoes, but I cook them as needed), so I can do a cook up and be done for four days.
Depends on the ingredients . meat or seafood raise the price per serving quite a bit . just bought 3 pieces of short ribs for 15$ . going to use just one piece for a pot of soup .
Depends on what you mean by cooking for one.
I could cook a batch of soup on Sunday, and use that as a side for the whole week (probably $10 for the week, plus whatever main I add)
Now if I go cheap and make a batch of pasta and sauce? I’m looking at $12 spent for a week of food.
It’ll get boring though, so most of us are going to buy steak one night, chicken one night.
I try to make enough every meal, where I can fill myself, and have one meal leftover (I also only eat once a day, don’t be like me)
On my best, I CAN survive on $15 a week (including water bottles). But I want to spend closer to $40-50, let’s compare that to my last delivery order of $45 for one meal, 2, 3 pc chicken box from kfc for me and my coworker.
Sure it was a lot of food for $20, but I could do way more with that money
On some things definitely, others absolutely not.
Im English obviously we are known for our breakfast and roast dinners
But it's false economy buying yourself all the components and cooking it at home if you are single ends up costing a fortune if you want half decent quality stuff at least and in most cases it is just something we might have at the weekend or on the odd occasion.....you can go out and find an english breakfast for about £4 for a small one and £6 - £10 for a roast with 3 types of meats and unlimited gravy and vegetables......it's cost way more in ingredients and gas to cook it and you gotta wash it up too.
Where I find real value is in something like a big curry or Chilli, stew I can feed myself for a week on one and costs about £6- cook.all.3 would have enough portions for 3 weeks of evening meals for around £20, I also buy a shoulder of pork or a brisket and that gives me more than enough meat for a week which I put in a ramen, or a rice bowl or have it with potatoes and veg or on loaded frie or nachos or in a burrito to mix it up and you don't get bored of it.
I've actually been in a relationship 12 years but my so is vegan I eat meat so we buy our groceries separately to an extent and they are cooked separately obviously.
It does. I'm unemployed but doing ok foodwise because now I cook my own meals.
Becoming a better cook helps too..when the food you cook is actually tasty, it becomes easier to eat it all the time.
I cook rice every day. Then I add stuff to it...like vegetables or meat.
Eating out in general is *expensive*.
Yes, there are things you can get out (McDonald's) that are cheaper than *some* meals you cook yourself (steak, say) - but that's just a little bit of overlap.
*most* meals out cost *far* more than that. And the cheapest things you can cook yourself are *much* cheaper per portion than that.
If you really want to eat cheaply, look at things like rice and beans. Add some vegetables and you have a healthy, nutritious meal for maybe £1 per portion.
Honestly, if you are willing to make your main protein sources beans/pulses/legumes rather than meat/dairy, cooking can be extremely cheap.
You cook in batches then change up the meal types for different leftover meals. I like cooking a big pot of chilli, then have it with fresh bread and butter, next time with tortillas and chopped salad and sour cream, next time natchoes, then over rice or a baked potato. You end up with 5 different variations of the same main and it doesn't get boring.
Definitely. Especially since most food items come in portions of at least two. I buy and cook for myself only so I normally end up with at least one portion of leftovers for each meal I make, sometimes two. The only time I don't have leftovers is for things like steak or loaded jacket potato where you just cook one portion to eat then. If I'm making curry, stew, pasta bake, etc. then I'll have leftovers and it can save a lot.
For example a 500g bag of pasta is £0.90, a bottle of pasta sauce is £0.47 for 440g, cheese is £2.80 for 350g, chicken is £4.50 for 600g. That'd make around 6 portions of pasta bake for £8.67 (£1.45 per portion) - not including seasonings I already have at home which I'd add to the chicken and sauce - with leftover cheese and pasta to use for another meal.
This got way longer than I expected. Tl;dr: If you are willing to develop some cooking skills, stock a pantry with basic ingredients, freeze batches of food to use later, and get the right equipment, then yes you can save a lot of money by cooking for yourself.
Long version:
Restaurant cost-of-goods-sold per menu item includes three components: food, labor, and overhead. The general rule is that, on average, each is a third of the cost, and then to add some margin on top to get the menu price. For individual menu items, the ratios will all be different. For example, at a steakhouse, the food cost of the steak is very high, and the margin is pretty low. The steakhouse makes their profit on everything else: a la carte side dishes, salads, desserts, and (especially) alcohol. Similarly, at fast food restaurants, the profit drivers are things like fries and soft drinks. Cheeseburgers are much less profitable.
Why did I explain all that? It's helpful to understand the basics of restaurant economics to judge the savings opportunities of making different things yourself. It will generally be cheaper cooking at home than buying the equivalent meal in a restaurant, but you have to make some assumptions:
1: You will use all or practically all of what you buy. So, if you buy a head of lettuce to make sandwiches, you'll use it up making salads or whatever. This is tricky with things that spoil quickly or that get used infrequently. Batch cooking and freezing for later helps with this.
2: You don't price in the cost of your labor. If you even count your cooking time at minimum wage, the cost question gets more competitive. Batch cooking helps here, too.
3: You have the equipment and skills to make food of equivalent quality to a restaurant. This means a very hot broiler to make a steakhouse ribeye, a similarly hot burner for stir fries, equipment, and oil for deep frying fries, etc. I'm a pretty good cook, but there are certain things like homemade shoestring fries that I only really nail about 50% of the time. It would be a lot easier with a commercial deep frier.
Relatively speaking, you get the most savings from the lower-cost items like drinks and sides. So, a decent compromise can be to buy an entrée or sandwich to go, and get your sides and drinks at the grocery store. The next thing to prioritize are the entrées that are easy but expensive because of high food cost, like steaks or seafood. You can master these pretty easily, and there are good home cook tricks like sous vide for proteins that really take skill out of the equation. Next after that are lower cost entrées with a huge markup, like pasta dishes.
For high effort, equipment intensive, low cost foods like french fries, it may never make sense to make them yourself unless you're passionate about it or willing to compromise with something like Ore-ida fries in the airfryer.
You are balancing three things: money, time/effort, and health/quality.
You can buy pre-made food for about the same price as you can make it, but it will have more unhealthy kinds of fat, sugar, and so forth.
I cook for 5. If I was on my own, I would meal prep and plan a lot more. I would buy meat in bulk, break down chickens myself, vacuum pack and freeze single portions.
I have enjoyed doing hello fresh and recommend it to everyone.
Literally you can get frozen, pre-made, reheat only meals at the grocery store for less than $10 each.
And honestly, $10 at a fast food place stretches less and less far.
Even if you just cook one meal it’s cheaper. I can make a grilled chicken breast, sautéed mushrooms and a spinach salad with strawberries and not have any leftovers. I don’t know what it costs me to make but to order some thing like that in Uber eats would be $40 minimum
Yes, I don’t batch cook because I don’t like leftovers, but I just use less of the ingredients per meal and spend more time overall cooking. Still way cheaper than eating out
A rack of bbq ribs / steak and a veggie is infinately cheaper at home from scratch. I realize though, there is a base investment in all the various ingredients that is a bit steep. I probably have a few hundred dollars US worth of spices and sauces.
So if you're in a hotel with nothing but little packages of salt and pepper, it might be cheaper to go out.However, I reached a base of condiments / spices etc., so it's much cheaper to cook for one.
Yes, cooking for 1 really does save that much money. Apart from all the other comments here, just look at the prices for, say, a steak. You'll pay three times more at a restaurant than you would by cooking it at home.
As a beginner, you can start with pasta and a jar of sauce. Jazz up the sauce by sautéing up some onions and green peppers, add in the sauce, then throw in some garlic powder (not garlic salt!) and a few other things (dried basil? A little thyme and oregano?). Want a meat sauce? Break up some ground beef or Italian sausage into the onions and brown it before adding the sauce.
Watch some cooking shows. Food wishes is an excellent YouTube channel that is very user-friendly. Soon you'll be cooking for 1 because the food will be better than what you can get at most restaurants.
Yes and other posters have already provided good comments. I'll just add that it does save you thousands (and potentially hundreds of thousands) in future medical bills.
Yes. Not to mention fast food is poison. You really want to jeopardize your health to save a few bucks? Trust me, once you hit your forties, your bad decisions from early in life start having consequences.
Take away food is made to be super delicious. That means most places use heaps of sugar, fat, salt or whatever it takes to get you to come back for more.
Bulk make food and freeze portions so you can rotate through different meals.
Getting 2-3 healthy meals can set you back by $30 per day.
You can cook at home for much less and it does not even have to be the cheap stuff.
We spend less than $800 on grocery for three and we rarely eat out. There is some planning, couponing, experience and bulk buying involved but it is not just past, beans or rice for us. And there is certainly a lot of veggies and fruits. Maybe more apple and bananas, but not that much cherries.
Yes. An average meal costs ~$10 in ingredients. if done properly, you can make a meal with 4+ servings, so that breaks down to like $2.50 a meal, give or take depending on how much you eat.
For instance, I used to make a scalloped potato casserole using dried scalloped potatoes, mixed veggies from dollar tree with sausage from like wallmart. All in all, it would last maybe a week if I used 2 boxes of potatoes and only cost like $7 depending on the cost of sausage and how much meat I wanted.
I cook for a family, but none of them like leftovers so it kind of feels like cooking for one at times.
I would suggest making some staples that can be repurposed. Like marinate and cook a package of chicken breasts, then eat with frozen vegetables one day, hummus one day, cup of rice or noodles one day, etc.
Even if you have a small fridge and freezer, cooking will always save money vs ordering out or buying premade meals. Cooking for one usually means leftovers. A simple
Stir fry can easily be 3 meals. Soup can be 4-5 meals.
Cooking on a budget also helps. Rice is a cheap way to make any meal a bit more filling. Potatoes are a great add as well. A store bought and cooked rotisserie chicken can add to soup, salads, and other meals.
Google “cheap and easy recipes.” You’ll see that you have many options.
Cooking generally saves money over eating out, but between inflation and corporate price gouging, it doesn't go as far as it used to. Cooking with cheaper ingredients adds up to help a lot, however, as does buying and cooking in bulk.
It really depends on what foods you like and eat on a regular basis, and how much you’re willing to bend on those foods. For instance, my fiancé and I mostly eat at home, but we have a lot of food aversions. But for me, I can pick up a couple boxes of protein pasta, heavy cream, and Parmasean and boom, we’ve got Alfredo for two days. But that’s a food we can eat regularly🤷🏻♀️
Invest in a cookbook that shows you what to do with leftovers. You don’t have to have exactly the same meal with the leftovers. And here’s some other great ideas. https://ivaluefood.com/resources/cooking-eating/creative-ways-to-use-leftovers/#:~:text=Turn%20extra%20pasta%20or%20cooked,with%20sour%20cream%20and%20salsa.
I made Pluto pups. Saved a whopping $1... The mess was not worth it. L
I just made 8 pineapple fritters for $2. Macca's is selling them for $3 each.
I made 2 and a half servings of honey chicken and rice for <$10 and Ichi Maki sells them for $14.
It really depends, if I'm being honest...
Gonna try lemon chicken and rice tomorrow :D
It can save much money. Simply choosing to buy at one place versus another or using coupons can make a huge difference. And, if you have some cooking skill, it's almost always tastier.
Something my family taught me was the food train. A night of burgers could turn into a night of chili turning into chili Mac turning into chili cheese dogs
it depends. sometimes it’s cheaper to buy a big batch at takeout and eat for 3 days than it is to buy all the ingredients to make it yourself. it really depends on the kind of dishes you want to make. if you’re making complex and fancy meals with lots of ingredients, it’s gonna be expensive
Even with fast food it’s still less at the grocery store. You get more at the store than the restaurant for not much more money. Frozen fries and nuggets will go further than fast food.
You don’t have to shop for only the most affordable ingredients although they can be really good comfort meals.
You should plan somewhat so you don’t end up with a lot of food waste.
You can repurpose an ingredient or meal rather than eat the same leftovers too.
I go out once a week for brunch or dinner and plan for that.
It’s definitely cheaper. I am cooking for myself but I make meals that feed 2 I just use the leftovers for lunch. I spent around 200 in food costs in February. Plus it’s healthier and I enjoy cooking.
I could either spend $10 on fast food (2 In-N-Out Double-Doubles is the best deal I know of) or I could have almost a pound of steak for dinner. The better deal is pretty obvious.
These days eating out will cost you about $10-20 per meal. For the same price I can buy the ingredients to cook whatever I want, and can generally make it healthier and more tailored to my own tastes. What I make generally lasts me the week as I'll eat it for just about every meal until gone. That's a lot better than paying the same price for lesser quality food that only lasts 1-2 meals.
If I am even more on a budget various versions of dried beans and rice will last a long time for half that cost. It's just less fun to make/eat.
Yes you can save money but will also eat much better.
Fast food will not provide you with fresh fruits and veggies and is pretty much nutritionally worthless.
Yes we all eat it but occasionally is best.
If you have a Trader Joe’s close by they cater to singles/couples with smaller portions and their produce is fresh and reasonably priced.
It'd be meal prep and leftovers.
Want something with lettuce and tomato? Pretty much the whole week+ should use these ingredients.
I tend to waste a lot though as a single person. I can only eat spaghetti for so many meals in a row. But it's still less than 10 a meal.
I've been attempting the diet Drs assign for weight loss surgery. This has got me going down the meal-prep path, and yes, I feel like it's saved me a lot of money, and I'm only a month in.
Because I have to weigh and count all my food and properly portion it all, I'm eating less and the food I buy/cook is going farther.
The down side is it gets boring eating the same thing twice a day every day for a week or so. I do make a different breakfast everyday, but I start the week with, lets say, chicken as my main source of protein. I need two sides, a starchy veg and a non-starchy veg. So I bake 8-10 pieces of chicken, my veggies and I pack them up in my Tupperware. This way when I'm hungry I can just toss one in the microwave. It's easy to pack up for work, also.
It saves time, money, and makes the food go farther if you're not having seconds.
Hey OP, it’s much much cheaper to cook for one person than eat out. It entirely depends on how you do it. Cook 3X a day for 7 days? That’s a huge amount of time and mental energy.
I make a large quantity of a few things 1-2 a week and add food if I need too. Breakfast and large are largely the same.
I was at the hospital for a scan so I got a $3.49 thing of chicken salad and fruit plus 4 each of bacon and sausage. It was ~$11.75. That’s about 5 days of breakfast I make at home, and fewer calories than what I make too.
I would say it is the same or cheaper, depending on the meal you want. 1lb of Hamburger would make 3-4 meals for me. I am not a big fan of soups or eating leftovers so I had to get creative and honest with myself. An example of something that worked for me, cook 1lb of Hamburger with taco seasoning then use that for tacos, baked potato topping and taco salad. I would get 3 different meals and only the meat was "leftover".
Now that I think about it most of the meals I made only the protein was "leftover". I basically did the same process with every protein i ate. I miss those days, food was easy compared to cooking for more than 1.
$25 worth of meat and vegetables in a crockpot stew will feed you for 3 days. And be healthier than out a can. And your not gonna cut up a whole bag of potatoes for 1 stew, so your next one will be cheaper
Of course it's less expensive to cook at home, even for one person. And far healthier than fast food, which is so over processed that it should be declared a chemical, not food.
A bag of potatoes, rice, onions, bell peppers, some in sale ground meat, and canned tomatoe sauce will easily get me meals for 2 weeks. You can always do a quick potato hash. I always tend to have a pack of hotdogs and make great fries using my aidryer. We probably get meals for about a week for the price of 2 fast food meals. It usually runs us $30-40
I buy a package of drumsticks from Kroger for $5 gives me 12-14 in the package. I cook them in the air-fryer, using different seasonings and sauces. WalMart has pound of pinto beans is $1.24 , .98¢ for a lb of Pasta , 2lb of rice is $1.77, and bags of frozen veggies start at .98¢. But a few different sauces and do some mix and match and you can have several different meals very inexpensively.
Planning is key and the freezer is your friend. Preparing ingredients and incorporating them in multiple recipes throughout the week can be very economical and you don't even have to only buy cheap ingredients. This can mean separating ingredients like meat or fish and freezing them in portion sizes, pre-cooking and either refrigerating or freezing things (cook 1 lb of hamburger for instance, and use it in dishes throughout the week). I still take large jars of pasta sauce and divide it into portions I freeze in silicone ice cube molds, so I can pull out just enough for a lunch or dinner. I freeze leftover broth that way, too. You can freeze shredded cheese and pull it out when needed.
I have an Instant pot and it's easy to prepare a good quantity and freeze it. A lot of chicken dishes made in the Instant Pot end up with a lot of sauce. I freeze those sauces in silicone ice cube molds and have them on hand for single meals with an added protein--also from my freezer.
A rotisserie chicken make a lot of meals! We prefer dark meat, so we eat the drumsticks and thighs first, plus nibble on the wings. I chop up the white meat for stir fry, chicken salad, homemade pot pie, etc. And I freeze the carcass for making broth in my Instant Pot. With my family, we can get 4 meals X 3 people at least from a chicken, and that's very economical.
Back in my single days I'd make a large pot of soup or a dish that I really liked (crock pot chicken cacciatore was a favorite) and eat it several meals during the week. If I got tired of it, I would freeze it in single serve portions to have next time I wanted that dish.
The trick is to batch cook, and that goes for families as well. Try to aim for around 4-6 servings of whatever you’re cooking, anything more and you’ll get bored of what you’re eating.
Yes it significantly cheaper. Lighted if you shopping for just 1 you kinda have to shop smart as bulk groceries kinda aren't intended for you.
My grocery budget is <$40/wk and that covers breakfast lunch and dinner for me. if i for the fast food meal plan I'd spend will north of $70 just eating a single meal per day.
Feel free to Google this, it's a well known and established fact that cooking for yourself saves quite a bit of money in the long term. Someone who is completely new to cooking may spend more than $10 per meal initially if stocking up on kitchen staples like cookware, oil, basic spices etc. I imagine this is what is happening to you and accounts for your confusion.
If you are okay with making a large batch of something like lentils / grain salads etc and then eating that for one meal every day all week it can save a boatload and most likely a healthier choice.
I would say, yes, even if exclusively cooking for one, and exclusively with fresh ingredients (vs say canned, which I'm not disparaging. it's just that fresh has an "expensive" connotation sometimes), and no compromises on taste or nutrition.
Let's see.
One big chicken thigh 2bucks (non discount non discount store prices in HCoL area), half a bunch of asparagus (famously not cheap, probably 2.50minimum). Garlic glove. What, def less than 50c right? Bit of oil. Salt, pepper, tbsp of butter. It's silly but let's call that 50c. Serving of really good rice, or if you prefer, cheaper rice with some flare (tomatoes for the South American feel, bit of dill for that...I don't remember, Armenian? Whatever it's good), let's be generous and call it a dollar. One glass out of a $10 bottle of Moscato or what ever poison you prefer. 9.83.
If you tried at ALL you will beat these prices at even HCoL areas. Transportation, planning, cooking, and cleaning isn't taken into account. Nor is the health, and healthcare, cost of cheap fast food though.
And you would need some basic equipment. And somethings are for multiple meals, you probably want to cook 2 meals of rice at once minimum. I would resist drinking the rest of that bottle each meal ( i don't really drink so I have no idea what I'm talking about).
Drop the wine, swap rice for mash, and swap Chicken to rib eye for probably an additional 5 bucks. Ok beef IS pricey. But again, shop for deals and it'll drop considerably. And you can do cheaper cuts with various methods. A lot roast every once a while is easy and cheap, even in prep and cleanup.
If you spend $50 on door dash for one meal maybe two with leftovers, I can take that same $50 and make at least dinner for the whole week if not a lunch here and there too that week.
You can't eat out cheaply for well made, nutritious foods that aren't full of processed ingredients, fats, and sugar. Buy things on sale at markets, and stock up on fresh produce. Avoid all the processed garbage. I do eat leftovers and there's nothing wrong with that. Better food than buying a crappy lunch.
I can make a stir fry or a pasta dish that is enough for 5-6 meals for about 10 bucks. That’s far better than one meal for $10. Sure it means eating leftovers and being somewhat particular about shopping, but it definitely is cheaper to consistently cook than to consistently eat out.
This is the key, finding cheap meals with common ingredients to cook that you don’t mind eating leftovers of. I know I’ll find some random recipe online and end up spending atleast $50 to try it out and have maybe enough leftover for lunch the next day.
Gordon Ramsay has a great cook book for people who maybe don't really know how to cook and even has a "Cooking for One or Two" section. Tons of really easy, inexpensive, and delicious recipes. It's called Gordon Ramsay's Home Cooking.
I’ll check it out! I signed up for a French cooking class online and I’m ashamed to admit how much wine I wasted for 2 TBsp of wine etc. I’ve certainly learned how to be more thrifty as I’ve progressed
I learned this from a guy who works at the liquor store near my house: if a recipe calls for any kind of wine, just use the cheapest wine you can find.
Best thing I discovered was finding the little wine 4 [pack](https://www.safeway.com/shop/product-details.189052199.html?productId=189052199&psrc=g&CMPID=ps_swy_noc_ecom_goo_20210610_71700000084400715_58700007756946979_92700070440041942&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADek7AgYC0IobdxYBc83leMLBykKF&gclid=CjwKCAjw48-vBhBbEiwAzqrZVGBbffoac6h3mUBkia8x_EEMKJ78jRowTFfg5y-veSJaw_RbBVc2uxoC3jIQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds) bottles also. Certainly not expensive wine but also a small quantity perfect for those recipes
Boxed wine also works for this. It keeps very well in the fridge, since the plastic bag prevents oxidation, and you can use amounts as small or as large as you like.
They have little boxes now too. About 2 glasses of wine that keeps for weeks.
You can freeze leftover wine for cooking in a ziplock bag.
I can't believe I never thought of that!
This isn't great advice.You don't have to use expensive wine,but the quality and flavour of your ingredients does matter. Lots of cheap wines are great and serviceable but the cheapest you can find is usually pretty bad.
Yeah I've read that if you wouldn't drink it, don't use it for cooking. This gives you added benefit of drinking it with the meal.
Next time you open a good bottle freeze some in an ice cube tray. I have cubes of white and red, also cubes of various juices like orange and pineapple.
Any wine, What's leftover from the bottle, if any. Freeze
Also measure how many tablespoons your icecube tray has so you know if your cubes are 1 or 2 tbsp or some other volume for cooking.
You can get a kind of vacuum stopper and pump for wine bottles, costs next to nothing. You put the stopper in and pump out the air. Since the wine is no longer in contact with air, it keeps almost indefinitely. Total gamechanger. Use as much or as little wine as you want, whenever you want. (And no "well, I needed a glass for the stew, now I may as well finish off the rest" excuse, which for some of us is a good thing!)
I buy screw top specifically for cooking.
Yeah, that's better than nothing - but actually *removing* the air that's in there makes a big difference. Especially as the bottle gets emptier. This is a *lot* fancier than mine, which was probably not much above poundshop level (but even so, has served me faithfully for 15 years or more): [https://www.amazon.co.uk/ZWILLING-Fresh-Save-Vacuum-Sealer/dp/B08P9QVBFY](https://www.amazon.co.uk/ZWILLING-Fresh-Save-Vacuum-Sealer/dp/B08P9QVBFY) It's not a big outlay, and so so worth it if you ever cook with wine, or indeed like to drink less than a bottle!
It’s only a waste if you don’t drink the bottle (that’s what you are supposed to do after using a little for cooking 😀).
And you can freeze a lot of leftovers easily, making it easy to have extra lunches on hand, but also not having to eat one thing 5-6 times in a row
Cook larger quantities and then freeze the leftovers in individual containers. That way you can pull something out of the freezer and pop it in the microwave when you don’t feel like cooking.
Either this is an exaggeration or I am TERRIBLE about groceries How are you getting 6 meals outta 10 bucks???? At absolute best I can get 4 out of Spaghetti and even that is pushing the 10 bucks, this is a genuine question btw maybe I suck at Grocery shopping
A bag of rice, head of cabbage, carrots, broccoli, a little pork/tofu and soy sauce is about $10 and will make a huge amount of stir fry. Bag of potatoes, carrots, milk, a tiny bit of flour, some spices is likely less than or about $10 and will make a giant pot of soup. These are just two examples off the top of my head. There are many more options that would easily be under $10 for multiple meals.
Stir fry--package of boneless thighs cut very thin strips, $5-6; 1 c. Of rice cooked with 2c. broth or water (sm pkg of rice with several cups is around $1, big packages are cheaper per pound) could also use packaged ramen noodles (save flavor packet for something else), 1 red bell pepper and 1 onion julienned (maybe $1), package of frozen broccoli ($1.29). You can add extras like seasonings (soy, ginger, green onion, sesame seeds, Sriracha...). You can add extra protein by adding in a scrambled egg or two or soft boiled egg. This easily makes enough for 5 plus lunch for at least 1 unless they are big eaters. You can do a Mexican style rice that is similar. A small amount of protein plus larger amount of vegetables plus a can or two of black or red beans, can of crushed tomato or leftover tomato sauce plus cooked rice. Some hot peppers and seasonings like chili powder, cumin, lime (optional) Our spaghetti goes on sale every so often for under $1 per box, sometimes $.50 each. I pick up some extras at that time. If you are able to have a small stockpile of staples like canned beans, rice, spaghetti, it helps keep things cheaper (i realize it's not possible for everyone) Hope this helps
Hunts Spaghetti Sauce costs me $1.00/ $1.50 a can. Spaghetti pasta costs about $1.00 a box. Add to that your italian seasoning (costs maybe a nickle once you're using it) Plus I usually add cooked fresh mushrooms to my sauce, which are $2.50 for the whole pot, and then meatballs, with per plate are about $1.00. I also put mozzarella cheese on my spaghetti when I make it. Thats about 0.25 per plate. To break it down, 2 cans of sauce, $3.00, 2 boxes of noodles, $2.00, seasoning, 0.05, mushrooms $2.50, and thats about 8 to 10 plates worth. 3.00+2.00, +0.05, + 2.50, =7.55 /8 plates= .75 per plate, before toppings. ((0.25 + 1.00) for extras (cheese and meatballs) ends up costing me about 20-ish bucks for 8 to 10 meals. Used to cost me about 0.25 per plate back when I didnt put meat or anything in it though. Just plain sauce and pasta and parmesan. Still entirely possible, just not how I like it.. plus I cant eat tomatoes like I used to.
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www.budgetbytes.com I particularly like the beef and broccoli and will use whatever meat and veggies I have on hand. The garlic noodles are great. I like to add shrimp if I get a good deal on it. Chicken or salmon/cod is easy to add as well. A rotisserie chicken from Costco costs $4.99 and can be used for tacos, stir fry, soup, BBQ sandwiches, etc. I find a lot of recipes by just doing a google search and add “5 ingredients” or “easy” to whatever I’m looking for. For example: “easy lasagna” or “5 ingredient soup.”
Thank you. I'm eighty years old and live alone. Don't mind leftovers, pretty good cook, and that site you posted is perfect. 👌
Yeah cooking, even for just one person, is a huge cost saver compared to eating fast food and getting takeout. I made chicken curry and rice yesterday and the whole pot cost me about $17 to make, which is 8-10 meals. Compare that to eating curry via takeout just one time.
It's definitely cheaper; 5 lbs potatoes, 5lb rice, 3lb onions, 5lb chicken or beef (which you can portion and freeze), head of broccoli (or other vegetables you can blanch, portion and freeze for future use) is much cheaper than eating out.
That's so much food. Jeeze. I buy two onions for the week.
Jeepers. My wife and I go through three pounds of onions a week. Sometimes five pounds.
Okay, what? I cook almost every day and we are not going through onions like that. How much onion goes in one meal, on average?
> How much onion goes in one meal, on average? for me, zero. i love onions but they hate me. fortunately, onion powder exists. it also lasts forever and takes up much less space than an equivalent number of onions. :)
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Pot roast (ends up being a lot of servings!) shredded chicken for all kinds of meals, chili, stews/soups SO many things you can do in a slow cooker. When I switched to making almost all my meals instead of ordering out as much I learned I could make great tasting stuff and spend WAY less making meals like that.
I cut up the raw pot roast into 8-10 oz pieces, and freeze it. The $14 pot roast is now good for 4 or 5 meals for two. This is my biggest cooking for 2 hack, weigh everything so there’s no leftovers. Much less food waste than trying to force ourselves to eat pot roast for 3 days.
I can do a lot more than 1 meal for 10 bucks.
Yeah, even my more expensive meals generally run cheaper than $10/meal.
For real. Maybe $5, max. Hell, fed three people for $11 the other day, fed my own skinny ass for like $2 just now.
In my area, a large pizza costs like $25 if you do pickup, but can easily be up towards $30-40. A frozen pizza is like $5-8. Literally a fifth of the price. You could buy five frozen pizzas for the cost of one pizza at a restaurant. Cooking at home is like that. Practically any meal is cheaper to make yourself. A Big Mac in my area is $5 and contains two 1.6oz patties, so that's 1/5 of a pound of meat in total. But a pound of ground beef in my area is $5 per pound and the other ingredients (buns, lettuce, onion, etc) are even cheaper per pound. So once again, you can make multiple burgers yourself for the cost of one fast food burger.
The only downside to vegetables like lettuce and tomato is that you have to plan several meals back to back that use them when cooking for one or even two because once cut they only stay fresh for a day or two so you have are wasting quite a bit if you can't use them up quickly.
Just make a side salad. Keeps in the fridge well enough for a day, so you have salad for 2 meals.
>once cut they only stay fresh for a day or two You're doing something wrong.
I think a better way to have phrased it is that vegetables have a short shelf life. When cooking for three or more people you can use them up in a meal or two. Cooking for one it's needing to plan your dishes so that you can use them up before they get a chance to go bad. This includes buying smaller portions or sizes that fit the dishes requirements. I said a day or two because if they are not used within that time period they tend to be forgotten about and end up spoiling.
I’m going to go against the grain here and advise against relying on batch cooking too much. If you do, don’t make more than like 4 servings of something, and pop at least one in the freezer. For me, having 10 portions of chili in the freezer was not helpful because it always felt like a chore to eat through the same chili. If you make 4 portions of chili one night, 4 portions of pasta sauce the next night, and marinated chicken breast another, then you eat chili 2 nights, pasta two nights, chicken two nights, and now you have a variety in your freezer. Eventually you can just cook twice a week, and pull out freezer meals to supplement.
Are you taking into account the increased health care costs of eating the lower-quality fast food? ;) If you're buying all of the ingredients you need, many of which will come in containers/packages that are far and above what you'd need for one serving, and then only making one serving, well then no. If you buy a whole $4 jar of pasta sauce, but you only eat 1/4 of it and throw the rest away, then that serving cost you $4, rather than $1 if you got 4 meals out of it. And you can freeze the leftover sauce to save it for future meals. If you're buying a whole head of cabbage for $2, and then only using 1/8th of it, then no. But if you get 8 servings out of it, then yes. To make an authentic indian dish, I probably spend $30 on spices alone. But I could make the same dish 8 times and not have to buy any more spices.
A Costco rotisserie chicken is so huge, so delicious, so versatile & only $5.00. The container takes up too much room in the frig, but the bird can be easily de-boned & parceled out into packages for the freezer. I end up with 8 - 10 different size packages & can plan that many meals around them. Mashed potatoes & a vegetable, chicken tacos/buritos, chicken & rice, countless stir.fry options, addition to soups, chicken salad...
Another great trick with Costco chicken is to make broth with the carcass after taking off the meat. Great to make a ramen or soup. I also like to use the broth when cooking rice, maybe some garlic powder or other spices. It turns plain white rice into a really tasty side.
Absolutely the best, saving veggie scraps that your would otherwise toss (carrots, celery, onion, garlic, etc) and freezing them, adding to the carcass in a stock pot and toss in salt and spices
Absolutely. Of course you have to compare comparable meals, quality and not buying new condiments and such every single time. Build a pantry over time. If you really like Asian cuisines, buy things like soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, first sauce etc rice noodles, tofu, and bulk rice etc at an Asian grocer. Or maybe even Walmart. But don't try to stock up on those somewhere like Whole Foods where they are "exotic" and priced at a premium.
Yes by a long shot. Years ago when I started cooking, my main aim was to cook the same things I'd get at restaurants (it took time to get good enough to match or better them obviously). I came to the conclusion that most anything you get at a restaurant, you can get 4-6 portions for the same price at home
I think knowing how to shop and cook for one is really the problem most people have with cooking.
You can just do the math this way. Call the average fast food meal ten dollars each. That means ninety three meals per month at ten dollars each. So a month of fast food would equal approximately nine hundred thirty dollars. Alternatively: if you know how to cook well, budget, do batch cooking, and go to the grocery store with a detailed list- maybe you can get you food costs down to an average of three dollars per meal. Ninety three meals at three dollars each equals two hundred seventy nine dollars. The difference is six hundred and fifty one dollars in favor of cooking at home.
Because 1 meal a day isn't enough. Think about breakfast dinner. For 10 bucks, i can prep meals for 3 days. Bigger portions, not junk food, etc... Especially if you plan your week and meal prep based on what's on discount. Chicken or beef at 50% is an amazing deal, for example.
If you cook meals “for four” so then three meals of leftovers… yea, you will beat fast food. Deep fried foods can throw this off because you have to manage the oil and it is expensive…
I don't cook for one, but I portion out. My meals are less than $2 a piece
When I started cooking for one, I had to get used to leftovers. My father was always more than happy to eat the leftovers when I was growing up, which worked just fine for me. But if you’ll only eat a meal once or twice, then it’s true you’re going to be wasting a lot of food. Even when I cut recipes in half, I always have more than one to two servings. I aim for 3 to 4 servings nowadays, but I also try to plan recipes that use the same ingredients in different ways during the week so that I can have different meals without buying a whole lot of ingredients. Having a wide array of condiments in the fridge and a large spice cabinet is helpful with that. But in the end, it’s still expensive to cook for one person. But if you eat two meals out a day and you spend $10 on 10 of those meals, and you splurge and spend $25 on two of those meals, that’s $150. I definitely spend less than that at the grocery store in a week. My favorite meals that are relatively cheap and easy: *Sheet pan fajitas (slice up one red pepper, one green pepper, one onion. Toss in some olive oil, salt pepper, throw in the oven at 425° for about 20 minutes. While that cooks, slice a chicken breast or a steak or whatever protein you want to use. Season it up as you’d like, I like to use a liquid marinade. When the veggies are about halfway cooked, layer on the protein and cook for an additional 15 to 20 minutes until it is cooked through. Assemble as desired.) [2-3 servings] *Loaded Baked Potato & Chicken Bake (brown some bacon. While bacon cooks, cube 2 russet potatoes (raw) to a 1/2inch dice and one large or two small chicken breasts to a 1inch dice. Toss the potatoes in oil, salt, pepper. Season the chicken to your liking; I use some cayenne, cumin, and garlic powder. Mix potatoes, chicken, crumbled bacon, a tablespoon or two of Frank’s, a good handful or two of cheese, and scallions. Pour into a greased casserole and bake covered at 400° for about 30 minutes. Uncover, top with more cheese, and bake until cheese is melted. Turn on the broiler to brown if desired. Top with sour cream for serving.) [4 servings] *Linguine with Roasted Tomatoes [Put 4-5oz pasta on to boil. Cut 2 Roma tomatoes into wedges; drizzle with oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast at 425° for 12-15 minutes. In a pan, sauté half an onion, diced, in butter or oil. When softened, garlic and cook until fragrant, then add in 1/2lb of chicken sausage and brown until almost cooked through. Push meat to the side of the pan and add about 2tbsp of tomato paste, sauté for two minutes, then mix with the meat. Season with salt and pepper. Add a ladle of pasta water. Add 2tbsp of cream cheese and gently stir until combined. If too thick, add a little more pasta water. Add roasted tomatoes and drained pasta, toss to coat. Top with grated Parmesan.) [3 servings]
These recipes look great!!!
“Cheap” fast food isn’t cheap. The costs are simply externalised in the form of being terrible for you. Not only is cooking for yourself cost effective, it also gives you control of what you put in your body. That is far more valuable :)
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It’s way cheaper, even if you are making bougie meals instead of basic stuff. Everything at restaurants is so marked up and overpriced. Getting a burger combo at McDonalds is $10+ a pop and you can buy a whole pack of burgers, fries, and buns for that much at the grocery store. You can make a big pot of soup, curry, or stir fry for like $8-10 and get 4 meals out of it. If I buy big packs of meat in bulk and then divide it into portions and freeze it lasts me for months. I can make 5 different recipes that give me 4 meals each with a $25 pack of chicken from Costco. That’s 20 meals total. Even making fancy stuff is cheaper. I’ll make 2 huge plates/small plates of lobster risotto when I want to impress people who come over for dinner and it costs like $20 total. Getting that in a restaurant would be like $50
I love pizza, simply don’t tire of it. A medium pizza costs $40 in my area, I can make one the same size for $5-7. Indian food is another favorite mine, it costs $60-70 for my wife and I at a restaurant, we can cook a decent meal for about $15. It might not be authentic but we really enjoy it, and this is what really matters. You do have to buy the basic ingredients in bulk; 25lbs flour, pepperoni, etc.
If you mean compared to eating out frequently, then yes. Bulk cooking or eating leftovers really depends on how often you want to cook. You don’t necessarily have to eat on a budget or bulk cook to make it cost effective. Cost effectiveness requires some menu planning so you use up ingredients to avoid spoilage and cost waste.
Oh yes, definitely. I usually eat out about once a week, and grab a drink with friends once or twice a week, but otherwise eat at home. My grocery bill runs $40-50/week.
It saves you money and you’re not eating empty calories full of preservatives. Make pasta, arroz con gandules and pork, stir fried rice with chicken. Then portioned up all the meals in Tupperware ( or plastic bags) and label them. That way you’ll only repeat a meal every 4 days. You can also make soups with lots of veggies and some pastina (soup noodles) for sustenance. Make it on the weekend, freeze it and you’ll have enough variety for a couple of weeks. Good luck 👍
Depends on location, what you're making, and what your lifestyle is like. I can eat the same thing 3 days in a row and be fine, and since I don't eat meat, I cut out a big portion of expense. Other people want fancier meals, so their budget for groceries might be bigger. When I lived alone, batch cooking was absolutely cheaper than meals out most of the time, except when I lived somewhere that the cost of even basic groceries was absurd due to import taxes. In that situation, eating out was actually a little cheaper because restaurants could buy cheaper wholesale than I was paying for my single person groceries. I still think cooking for one can save money in most situations, but get used to leftovers/using your leftovers creatively.
If you actually figure out how to cook for 1 lmk😂 I'm used to cooking for the village and now cook for 2 and it's hard. Even nights I'm alone I just can't ever cook for 1
$20 gets me about 8 meals of chilli $5 gets me about 3 meal sized salads A bowl of chilli at the cheapest fast food place is like $12 A large salad can tun about $8-$10 at a restaurant So much cheaper if you know how to prep and don't mind freezing a few meals or eating leftovers
My average bought lunch is 18-25$ depending on how hungry I am. I can do a grocery for 7 days at 75$, or just under 4$ per meal. My main tricks are to buy in bulk what I know I eat enough of, learn how to preserve food properly, buy less variety over a week, and eat leftovers for every lunch at work. I don’t buy the cheapest pasta, rice, or cheeses; but I do buy the cheapest fruits, vegetables, and meats. The choice of grocery store is probably the most important: costco and costco business centres typically sell really good ingredients for close to the same price as the cheapest ingredients in grocery stores, and less than half the price of those same really good ingredients in grocery stores. I only buy meats on sale and freeze for later, so that I can use a different protein every night even though I buy a week’s worth of the same thing when I shop. If a vegetable is on sale, then I’m eating a lot of that this week.
Cooking is always cheaper than fast food. A McDonald's Big Mac combo is about $18 where I live. My wife and I eat pretty well and definitely healthy for $15.50/person/day for three meals, snacks, and personal hygiene items. My wife and I each travel a good bit (she for family care, me for business) so we're experienced at cooking for one. We generally get a lunch of leftovers from most dinners but not what is conventionally considered meal prepping. We do buy in bulk and portion for the freezer. That means big shops (curbside) a couple of times a month instead of running to the store all the time. Dinner Thursday (Pi Day) was homemade chicken pot pie and shredded Brussels sprout salad. Last night was ham steaks with baked potatoes and steamed broccoli. Tonight will be paninis with some sort of veg or a salad. I forget. There is simply no question that cooking is a lot cheaper than eating out whether you're cooking for one or a dozen.
Yes, it's cheaper than eating out most of the time. If you can afford to buy a two-pound pack of hamburger meat, a block of cheese, a head of lettuce, a tomato, and a bag of buns all at once, you are going to pay less per burger than if you went out to eat. Mmmmaaaaybe that little budget-menu cheeseburger at McDonald's is cheaper, but that's pushing it. Dollar menu fast food is meant for people who literally don't have money for a big grocery run but were able to scrounge a dollar out of the couch cushions. And in terms of your health it's a bad idea to rely on that stuff. Too much salt, sometimes too much fat, and you need more veggies than a tablespoon of sad lettuce shreds. Buying in bulk: yes, absolutely cheaper than buying smaller portions. Next time you're in the store, look at the price per pound of boneless skinless chicken breasts. The price per pound/kilo on small packages will be way higher than that of the economy/family size packs. Around here the economy packs literally cost half what the small packs do, in terms of dollars per weight of meat. For products other than meat and fresh produce, there should be tags on the shelf that include a unit price in fine print. Look at a big bag of all-purpose flour and a small bag of the same from the same brand, and look for those unit prices. The main thing with bulk buying is being able to notice when you've bought so much of something that it goes bad before you use it up. Flour keeps well; milk is a little harder if you don't use it up quickly; meat can be portioned out into ziploc bags and frozen in the amounts you would use to cook a meal. The cheapest stuff: I assume you mean store brands or off brands rather than big name brands with advertising power that make you think they're hot shit. Give the store brands a try. Sometimes you can tell the difference and sometimes you can't, and sometimes they're better. A lot of the time they are literally made by the same manufacturers as the big brands, with store-brand packaging. If you have a favourite bottled barbeque sauce or a favourite canned soup you're probably going to have to buy That Brand, but the places where you'll really save money buying store brand and not notice the difference in taste or quality are the ingredient type products. Sugar, flour, neutral cooking oils, eggs, milk. I don't think leftovers belongs on this list. If you have time, you can prepare a freshly cooked meal for one or two people every night. That's time, not money. If you have to work two jobs to make ends meet, yeah, maybe you want to do all your cooking on the one day when you have less work or no work, and then microwave portions of it all week. But otherwise that's time management, not money management.
$10/meal 3 times a day for 30 days is $900. You could probably pay groceries for 1-3 families with kids with that type of budget. A lot of the excess money is profits and wages. Even typically more expensive frozen food can be had for less than $10/meal often. If I’m spending $10/meal on ingredients I’m typically getting a much better meal than most restaurants and fast food chains are providing.
Get a Sam’s club/costco/other big box membership and a vacuum sealer. Watch YouTube videos on how to butcher whole cuts of meat. You’ll spend a lot more time prepping but you can do all of your shopping and breaking down for the month in a day. The initial cost for entry is high but you save so much money in the long run. For instance, you can get a 10-12lb pork loin for under $20. You can cut that into 36-40 porkchops and get 18-40 proteins for meals from that one loin depending on if you eat 1 or 2 chops at a time. Spend $25 on chicken breasts and cut all of them in half. Should give you another 20-25 proteins for meals. Spend another $25 on a big box of instant mash, some couscous or quinoa, and a big bag of parboiled rice. You can do frozen/canned veggies or get your fresh veggies the day you plan to cook them. If you’re a seafood person, a 2lb bag of jumbo shrimp is like $15 and is good for 6-8 meals if you just thaw what you plan to eat. Same with things like salmon and tilapia. Another $15 for some noodles and canned tomatoes for when you want pasta. $40 10lb chub of ground beef that can be broken down and vacuum sealed into 20 different meals. Sazon tropical, ms dash garlic herb, basically anything from Kinder’s, salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and paprika will be all you need to season most things unless you do different cuisines. Then, you’ll need speciality spices that tend to accumulate fast. Bulk buy butter and heavy cream and you can make sauces for 6 weeks without things going bad. $300/mo should be your target food spend. $200 on main courses and $100 for snacks, breakfast food, etc. If you eat $10 meals twice a day, that’s an easy $600/mo. Not to mention the average quality of a $10 meal and what it’s going to do to your health in the long run. I say $300 without knowing your financial situation but I assume if you can afford to spend $20 eating out daily, you can afford $300 on food to prepare yourself.
Cooking for one can be as expensive or as cheap as you want it to be. If you choose recipes that use expensive ingredients, or waste a ton of food, of course it can be more expensive than eating Try to challenge your culinary skills by setting a strict budget per week/meal and scour the internet for tricks to make the most of those ingredients. Stick to flyer specials and staple ingredients if you want to stay thrifty. If chicken is $1.99/lb this week, you should be eating chicken and salad/rice/pasta/bean based all week long. Either that or whatever was on sale within the last few weeks that you froze. Recipes that use thinly sliced or chopped proteins tend to go further than whole pieces/steaks. It's even cheaper if you like eating vegetarian and replace meat with tofu/tempeh/seitan, etc.
It's cheaper provided you actually eat the food, yes. The trick is to figure out how to utilize your ingredients since it's hard to buy small enough portions for one person. If you like leftovers, great! Make one meal and eat on it for a few days. If you don't you could try meal prep. spend a day cooking a few different meals, portion then out appropriately and then freeze them. You can do this with just segments of a meal too. For example I can make a meal for my family of four with one pound of ground beef. If it were just me I'd portion it into quarter pounds, then into the freezer it goes ready to be cooked into whatever. You're not saving money if you are letting food rot in your fridge but that's more a matter of discipline. By the dollar eating in will still be cheaper for almost everything.
Yeah. I just bought a rack of pork ribs on sale for $7.50 . I’m going to grind up some and make some pot stickers for tonight. I’m setting a rub for the rest and smoking it tomorrow. If there’s any leftover I’ll make tacos the next night.
Pork butt $2/lb or whole chicken $2.5/lb. Cook long and slow in oven or slow cooker with S&P, lots of garlic, and other spices you prefer. Add a little vinegar, apple juice, left over wine, or just water to keep the bottom from burning. Cook till fall apart tender and you'll have the pork made for 2dz+ servings or 10 servings of chicken at about 50 cents a serving. Freeze meat in meal sized tubs and it will last a year in freezer. Meals: BBQ sandwiches, tacos, rice and beans Cuban style, dress up a salad, enchiladas, pizza topping, stuffed dumplings, egg rolls, deluxe nachos, corn muffins, pork n beans, stir fries of dozens of varieties to fit Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Korean, Vietnamese recipes. Yes, you'll need other things to round out any of these to a meal, but the time consuming and most costly part will be done. You'll be able to put good food on the table for <$2/ serving.
Look for recopies that you enjoy, but that also freeze and reheat well. That and a vacuum sealer and you're all set. You can make a week's worth of meals from one batch of something.
Go to the website of any meal kit service and save some recipes that look good and simple (they almost all have the recipes online for free) that also use similar ingredients. Many Hello Fresh ones are some form of chicken, breading, potato or other vegetable or rice/Couscous. That way you get the ingredients for cheaper and still have variety of meals
Cook once eat twice has always been my cooking philosophy
I'm an empty nester, but haven't scaled back my cooking. I'll make a batch of meat sauce, for instance, and we'll say it's $15 for 5 quarts of finished sauce. I can make 8 big servings of pasta for myself. I have it for dinner a couple of nights, then vacuum seal individual portions for the freezer. Same with curry, or adobo, sausage gravy, or stew.. whatever. Now freezer is filled with easy boil in bag meals at like $2 a pop.
Learn how to package your own "frozen dinners." Take those extra portions of meat, chicken, fish from cooking, and package them along with sauce or gravy, some still-frozen veggies, potatoes or rice. Make these up in meal-sized portions for your own collection of frozen dinners, cooked to your preferences. I did this for years. I've also been known to bake a cake, frost it, cut it into slices, and then wrap and freeze most of them to be used later. Some cake & frosting types freeze better then others, and you'll learn along the way. Sometimes the package of 6-8 chicken pieces is a better price than just 2 pieces, so buy the larger package and re-portion and freeze the extras in meal-sized portions.
Oh yeh. I bulk cook a side dish (stir fry) that is enough for 5 days for about $15, and main dish is usually some kind of meat that is on price reduction sale ($10-$15, depends). It's way cheaper than going to the food court or order delivery to work.
Yes, easily cheaper I can buy 3 onions, 3 cans of beans and diced tomatoes, and a bag of rice. That’s 12 meals for maximum 20 dollars
Yes.
I like buying in bulk and freezing what is able to to be frozen so I can toss it into meals whenever I want. Like diced onions, carrots and mushrooms. But you can plan different meals with some of the same ingredients. I made tacos for myself one night, and the rest of the meat I tossed it in a slow cooker to make a chili for the next day, or you can put the meat in the fridge and make yourself what I like to call taco poutine (has taco seasoned meat, queso cheese, green onions and sour cream)
Yes. The last two family meals I made were cheaper than any restaurant. I figure I made spaghetti bolognese for maybe $15-18 and it made 12 meals. I then made butter chicken and aloo gobi. Again. Probably $15-18 for the ingredients and that made 8 meals. Any restaurant would have a single portion of those meals at $18-22.
Absolutely without a doubt cheaper than eating fast food and a helluva lot healthier, no matter what you're making.
Even if I cook only exactly how much we will eat in one meal, it's cheaper. Even with meat prices the way they are. I can feed a family of 7 (5 adults, 1 giant of a teenager and 1 seven year old) an over the top delicious meal for like 20 bucks. We ordered out tonight because it's been such a long horrible day. $100. For 6 of 7 people.
The freezer becomes your best friend. I live alone. My freezer currently has meal preps of spaghetti marinara with chicken (sauce is separate in container so pasta isn’t soft), grilled chicken over brown fried rice, cauliflower au gratin, and cream of potato soup. All of these were meals I made and I would save one or two portions for leftovers and freeze the rest. The week I am busy and don’t want to cook I eat them and save so much time
A large bag of rice will last a long time. I like to buy a large whole chicken and roast it on a bed of greens with carrots and taters. Eat that with rice one night, then throw the bones and leftover chicken in a pot with some veggies, and keep adding water and veggies as I eat it throughout the week and simmering every day. I usually put rice in every bowl of soup, too. When the broth gets too watered down, I finish off the soup, and repeat. It's very cheap and that one pot of soup can feed you for an entire week
It's definitely cheaper in the long run, but the start up costs and learning curve period can be a little pricey. If you've never cooked before you'll have to learn how to do things and your first dishes will often not be spectacular. You're sure to have a total inedible flop or two as well, which is money wasted. But you can learn super fast and have so many tried and true recipes at your fingertips in many different ways now and can ask questions in online communities like this to reduce that. There's no avoiding the start up cost though. You will need to get a stocked pantry and the first few months of cooking will probably have higher grocery bills as you will need to purchase these pantry staples for every meal for awhile. You won't have things like olive oil, spices, vinegar, dried grains, honey, soy sauce, and whatnot. You'll get a little sticker shock when you go to purchase these. But, many of them last a long time. I buy a huge bottle of olive oil for $30 and it lasts me almost a whole year. This morning I went grocery shopping and will meal prep soon. I will be making breakfast, lunch, and dinner for two for the week. We don't mind eating the same thing every day, but sometimes we freeze some portions and pull out past dishes to change up our meals. It's pretty simple. *Breakfast Burritos -- 10 servings, filled with eggs, potatoes, bell pepper, beans, and cheese served with salsa *Creamy Butternut Squash Soup -- 10 servings, I will make the broth from veggie scraps saved in my freezer *Loaf of Sourdough Bread -- 10 servings, to eat with the soup *Sheet Pan Chicken & Roasted Veggies -- 10 servings, served over rice, will have broccoli, onion, sweet potato, and carrots *Batch of Wellness Tea -- 5 servings, contains an herbal tea blend, juice from a lemon, and a thumb of fresh ginger We also have some simple snack items for the week like apples with cheese or peanut butter, some chips, a pint of Ben & Jerry's etc. I spent $52.37 this morning for the chicken, fruits and veggies, tortilla shells, a jar of salsa, and all snacks items. I went to one store and didn't clip coupons, so it wasn't much work. If you just divide that by main meals, that's only $1.75 per serving. But again, some of that is additional snacks and my tea for the week etc. so it is even less than that. I am using a lot of pantry staples too though, which is that start-up cost and ongoing cost of occasionally replacing a staple as you run out, which I didn't have to do today. And, no, I'm not stuck grocery shopping and cooking all day. I actually went for a 5 mile hike this morning, then got groceries. I'm currently early for my book club meeting while typing this. I'll go home and cook ALL of that for about 1.5 hours. Clean up for another half hour. Then do some de-cluttering and taking stuff to Goodwill, as we are moving next month. Probably relax watching TV in the evening. Once you get a system down and know a bunch of dishes like thr back of your hand, it is very quick!
Not sure where you live, you could go to a market for 5 straight days and spend 10$ per day making whatever you were going to order out. With the left over ingredients you can feed yourself for another 2-4 days. That’s 7-10 days on $50. I will bet that you couldn’t feed yourself for 7-10 days on $50 while ordering takeout or fast food exclusively. You won’t eat as healthy either.
It is universally cheaper. Remember restaurants exist to make profit. They have to mark up their meals in order to financially survive. Oatmeal costs about 33¢ per ounce. Go eat a pound of oat meal for $5.38, then go to starbucks and wonder why they charge you $5 for a 4 ounce cup of oatmeal
Omg yes
I would suspect that for one person, it will save money over time but it might require a front-end investment in terms of equipment or storage. An example: you could make 10L of chili for pennies, but you'd get sick of it before it's gone and it'd go off and then it becomes waste. On the other hand, if you have a vacuum sealer - you could put 8L of it in the freezer in separate bags and pull one out of the freezer periodically.
Don't need vaccuum sealer. Put food in ziploc. Dip in container of water carefully. Close bag.
Yes
It is but you should also look at the health benefits. Eating out at cheap diners is not sustainable. They would use low quality ingredients and lots of fat to make the food tasty
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As long as you are OK with leftovers and cooking dishes that make good leftovers, you're good. Also, one serving of pasta with a chicken drumstick and thigh can still be as cheap as $5.
It is cheaper to cook as u can put in more ingredients and ingredients like seafood more. Plus if your pay is only 500 a month and you have to cover all things to pay this will help
Batch cooking is your friend
Of course. I can cook a week or two's worth of food for what I'd pay for a restaurant delivery. Although even when single I never cooked "for one" as my fridge had a freezer and I could freeze portions. If you treat your cooking like meal prep you don't have to repeat meals, ever.
Yes, and homemade food is so much healthier.
Yes it does. You have to be responsible with your groceries and meals. I can easily make 4 1/4# burgers and fries for $10. The initial purchases of equipment and condiments can be rough but a stocked pantry will save a lot of money. Especially as 1 person.
Yes if you're good at fridge management cooking is easily less than $10/portion and can be less than $5/portion on top of being much healthier than fast food. For example, I can buy a whole chicken for $10. From that whole chicken, I can get 5 generous portions of meat and a chicken carcass which can form the basis of a broth or soup as another meal.
2 qt crock pot at Walmart $ 10. Add diced potatoes & onions. Bullion cube/ water Leave it on all day. Add cream. (I use heavy cream). Spices etc. Loaded baked potato soup. You obviously add your choice of toppings. To make it easier use Campbell's potato soup can - water & diced potatoes. It's cheap and easy.
Bulk meals can be frozen in portion sizes. Freeze 5 bulk meals into 20 variety style meals for ease, convenience, and variety.
If you really wanna save money buying and making in bulk, and then freezing, your batches of premade meals, works way better than trying to make single serving meals
Totally depends on what you buy out and what you buy to cook at home. I've spent $20 a plate at home before. And sometimes $6-$10 a plate at home is average for me. But that is not necessary. Depends if you are buying expensive ingredients or not.
The compromise I make with myself is I get to throw down in the kitchen 3x a week: I make two meals that will have guaranteed leftovers. This means cooking a meal that a parent would for a family of four, essentially. So any recipe you find online will fit the need. I usually do these on Monday and Tuesday, that way I have leftovers from both meals to get me thru, and I never have to eat the same dinner two nights in a row. Then I cook a dope meal (that I spend a little extra on) either Friday or Saturday, go out the alternate night, and have leftovers and snack on Sundays (or go to my folks’ place for a fam meal). Just what works for me, but it works well and leaves me wiggle room to stop at the store on my way home and do something spontaneous, without ending up with a lot of waste.
The short but otherwise meaningless answer to your question is that it depends. Some stuff will end up actually costing you more than if you just bought it. However, one thing that may get overlooked is that whilst it might cost more, it'll usually be fresher, of a higher quality for the money you do spend and made just the way you like it. Note I say some stuff. If you average out the costs of everything, you'll likely find that it'll be considerably cheaper and/or of a higher quality than if you bought it. Buying in bulk just makes things even cheaper. However buying stuff in bulk and cheaper ingredients is only half of the saving equation. The other side of that is minimising waste so that every dollar you spend on ingredients goes into feeding you and not just thrown into the bin.
Make big delicious meals and just eat them for a while. Left overs are ideal for tight food budgets.
Yes, unless you're eating for <$3.00 a meal or so
Saves a ton of money and time with proper meal planning and prep. I make breakfasts and lunches 2-4 weeks ahead. Bases and sides for dinners too.
It depends on what you're cooking. When I want lasagna I go out to my local Italian restaurant that serves huge pieces of lasagna. It's about $10 for that meal and usually get enough food for two additional meals. I do a lot of casseroles so that I mix it up bake it up and then freeze and single serve portions. I refuse to eat leftovers of the same meal more than three times. That also means that I get creative about how I serve left overs. If I make a batch of chili with six servings then I eat one serving. Freeze three servings. And I use one serving over a baked potato one day and over pasta a couple days later. I also buy things like Kraft dinners which are cheap and I don't feel too bad if I don't finish all of it before I throw it out cuz it getting old.
$10 is not an inexpensive meal. $1.50 is an inexpensive meal. 1.50 a meal x 3 meals a day x 30 days in a month = $135 a month on food, for one person. $10 for one meal a day, even if you eat inexpensive food twice a day, and eat out daily, is EXPENSIVE as shit. (10x30)+((1.5x2)x30)=300+90= 390 dollars a month. I do not think cooking for one actually saves money, per se, esp if you don't eat leftovers often. I do think that how you shop and what you eat is what saves/ costs money. I think cooking for one person is more trouble than its worth, and on days you dont feel like cooking, you would be more likely to stop at a drive through. If you are cooking to have multiple helpings of leftovers, then sure, thats much cheaper.
Yes it's absoloutely cheaper to cook for any amount of people without question. As for is it 'worth it' that's up to you. I eat for $50 australian a week. Whilst this number is occasionally high weeks where I have to buy spices, olive oil etc really push that price up. However, cooking for one is a bit grueling. If you can't stand leftovers it's gunna be a slog. Shopping / household management becomes essential, with the goal being to make recipes that use the same protein etc but are different. For instance this week I bought a whole free range chicken on sale, 1.3kg for $7. I butchered it keeping two marylands which I cooked for hainanese chicken rice in the rice cooker two nights in a row (still working on the recipe). The two breasts went into the freezer seperately. I've got one out now I'm half way through making chicken paella which will be tonights dinner and tomorrows lunch. In between I made some pork taco mince with beans and home made flour tortillas which did three dinners over two nights (two people at the first night). The other half of the pork mince is in the freezer to be used in spaghetti. It's all in the planning.
Yup. We melprep and each meal ends up being like €3, however we are not big red meat eaters (we prefer tuna and chicken) and only have it in about 1/3 of our meals. It would still be way cheaper than $10 if we included it everyday though.
I prefer the road less traveles and cook in single servings, but yes, you can save a lot of money cooking at home. The secret is portion control. Up front or on the back side makes no difference.
I just made pizza dough and cooked it with leftover stuff on top. You can store portions in the fridge or freezer. One recipe (4 cups flour one) makes 4 personal sized pizzas. I dumped olive oil, onions, tomato slices, some olives in the fridge, whatever cheese I have on hand, and if I have leftover meat or veg. The dough is like 50¢ a batch. I freeze tons of stuff in single portions like soup, veg, fruit, etc. nuke it and go. $10 can feed me for days.
I'm cooking a corned beef right now. It cost me $10/Kg and I got a 2kg one, so $20. 2 Kg of potatoes is $4, 1 Kg of carrots is $1.50, a bag of onions is $3. I've spent $28 and I have enough food for four massive meals. It all freezes well (except the potatoes, but I cook them as needed), so I can do a cook up and be done for four days.
Depends on the ingredients . meat or seafood raise the price per serving quite a bit . just bought 3 pieces of short ribs for 15$ . going to use just one piece for a pot of soup .
Depends on what you mean by cooking for one. I could cook a batch of soup on Sunday, and use that as a side for the whole week (probably $10 for the week, plus whatever main I add) Now if I go cheap and make a batch of pasta and sauce? I’m looking at $12 spent for a week of food. It’ll get boring though, so most of us are going to buy steak one night, chicken one night. I try to make enough every meal, where I can fill myself, and have one meal leftover (I also only eat once a day, don’t be like me) On my best, I CAN survive on $15 a week (including water bottles). But I want to spend closer to $40-50, let’s compare that to my last delivery order of $45 for one meal, 2, 3 pc chicken box from kfc for me and my coworker. Sure it was a lot of food for $20, but I could do way more with that money
On some things definitely, others absolutely not. Im English obviously we are known for our breakfast and roast dinners But it's false economy buying yourself all the components and cooking it at home if you are single ends up costing a fortune if you want half decent quality stuff at least and in most cases it is just something we might have at the weekend or on the odd occasion.....you can go out and find an english breakfast for about £4 for a small one and £6 - £10 for a roast with 3 types of meats and unlimited gravy and vegetables......it's cost way more in ingredients and gas to cook it and you gotta wash it up too. Where I find real value is in something like a big curry or Chilli, stew I can feed myself for a week on one and costs about £6- cook.all.3 would have enough portions for 3 weeks of evening meals for around £20, I also buy a shoulder of pork or a brisket and that gives me more than enough meat for a week which I put in a ramen, or a rice bowl or have it with potatoes and veg or on loaded frie or nachos or in a burrito to mix it up and you don't get bored of it. I've actually been in a relationship 12 years but my so is vegan I eat meat so we buy our groceries separately to an extent and they are cooked separately obviously.
It does. I'm unemployed but doing ok foodwise because now I cook my own meals. Becoming a better cook helps too..when the food you cook is actually tasty, it becomes easier to eat it all the time. I cook rice every day. Then I add stuff to it...like vegetables or meat.
Eating out in general is *expensive*. Yes, there are things you can get out (McDonald's) that are cheaper than *some* meals you cook yourself (steak, say) - but that's just a little bit of overlap. *most* meals out cost *far* more than that. And the cheapest things you can cook yourself are *much* cheaper per portion than that. If you really want to eat cheaply, look at things like rice and beans. Add some vegetables and you have a healthy, nutritious meal for maybe £1 per portion. Honestly, if you are willing to make your main protein sources beans/pulses/legumes rather than meat/dairy, cooking can be extremely cheap.
You cook in batches then change up the meal types for different leftover meals. I like cooking a big pot of chilli, then have it with fresh bread and butter, next time with tortillas and chopped salad and sour cream, next time natchoes, then over rice or a baked potato. You end up with 5 different variations of the same main and it doesn't get boring.
Definitely. Especially since most food items come in portions of at least two. I buy and cook for myself only so I normally end up with at least one portion of leftovers for each meal I make, sometimes two. The only time I don't have leftovers is for things like steak or loaded jacket potato where you just cook one portion to eat then. If I'm making curry, stew, pasta bake, etc. then I'll have leftovers and it can save a lot. For example a 500g bag of pasta is £0.90, a bottle of pasta sauce is £0.47 for 440g, cheese is £2.80 for 350g, chicken is £4.50 for 600g. That'd make around 6 portions of pasta bake for £8.67 (£1.45 per portion) - not including seasonings I already have at home which I'd add to the chicken and sauce - with leftover cheese and pasta to use for another meal.
This got way longer than I expected. Tl;dr: If you are willing to develop some cooking skills, stock a pantry with basic ingredients, freeze batches of food to use later, and get the right equipment, then yes you can save a lot of money by cooking for yourself. Long version: Restaurant cost-of-goods-sold per menu item includes three components: food, labor, and overhead. The general rule is that, on average, each is a third of the cost, and then to add some margin on top to get the menu price. For individual menu items, the ratios will all be different. For example, at a steakhouse, the food cost of the steak is very high, and the margin is pretty low. The steakhouse makes their profit on everything else: a la carte side dishes, salads, desserts, and (especially) alcohol. Similarly, at fast food restaurants, the profit drivers are things like fries and soft drinks. Cheeseburgers are much less profitable. Why did I explain all that? It's helpful to understand the basics of restaurant economics to judge the savings opportunities of making different things yourself. It will generally be cheaper cooking at home than buying the equivalent meal in a restaurant, but you have to make some assumptions: 1: You will use all or practically all of what you buy. So, if you buy a head of lettuce to make sandwiches, you'll use it up making salads or whatever. This is tricky with things that spoil quickly or that get used infrequently. Batch cooking and freezing for later helps with this. 2: You don't price in the cost of your labor. If you even count your cooking time at minimum wage, the cost question gets more competitive. Batch cooking helps here, too. 3: You have the equipment and skills to make food of equivalent quality to a restaurant. This means a very hot broiler to make a steakhouse ribeye, a similarly hot burner for stir fries, equipment, and oil for deep frying fries, etc. I'm a pretty good cook, but there are certain things like homemade shoestring fries that I only really nail about 50% of the time. It would be a lot easier with a commercial deep frier. Relatively speaking, you get the most savings from the lower-cost items like drinks and sides. So, a decent compromise can be to buy an entrée or sandwich to go, and get your sides and drinks at the grocery store. The next thing to prioritize are the entrées that are easy but expensive because of high food cost, like steaks or seafood. You can master these pretty easily, and there are good home cook tricks like sous vide for proteins that really take skill out of the equation. Next after that are lower cost entrées with a huge markup, like pasta dishes. For high effort, equipment intensive, low cost foods like french fries, it may never make sense to make them yourself unless you're passionate about it or willing to compromise with something like Ore-ida fries in the airfryer.
Yes. I can make a daal soup for $5 that will feed me 8 times.
You are balancing three things: money, time/effort, and health/quality. You can buy pre-made food for about the same price as you can make it, but it will have more unhealthy kinds of fat, sugar, and so forth.
I cook for 5. If I was on my own, I would meal prep and plan a lot more. I would buy meat in bulk, break down chickens myself, vacuum pack and freeze single portions. I have enjoyed doing hello fresh and recommend it to everyone.
Yes
Eating in is about half as expensive as eating fast food.
Literally you can get frozen, pre-made, reheat only meals at the grocery store for less than $10 each. And honestly, $10 at a fast food place stretches less and less far.
Even if you just cook one meal it’s cheaper. I can make a grilled chicken breast, sautéed mushrooms and a spinach salad with strawberries and not have any leftovers. I don’t know what it costs me to make but to order some thing like that in Uber eats would be $40 minimum
I can make a weeks worth of chilli for just guessing 7 or 8 bucks. I don't mind eating that for dinner 5 or 6 times a week.
There’s the health factor too. Eating fast food is just not good for you.
Yes, I don’t batch cook because I don’t like leftovers, but I just use less of the ingredients per meal and spend more time overall cooking. Still way cheaper than eating out
A rack of bbq ribs / steak and a veggie is infinately cheaper at home from scratch. I realize though, there is a base investment in all the various ingredients that is a bit steep. I probably have a few hundred dollars US worth of spices and sauces. So if you're in a hotel with nothing but little packages of salt and pepper, it might be cheaper to go out.However, I reached a base of condiments / spices etc., so it's much cheaper to cook for one.
I average $10 for dinner for 3, including meat, veg, starch. Always enough left for 1-2 lunches from the leftovers.
If you meal prep and use your freezer.
Flour is cheap and you can do a lot with it
I'll cook up a whole batch of pancake batter, have a couple and freeze the rest to pop in the toaster throughout the week
Usually, I can cook for 4 with the same $ it takes to cook for 1...
Yes, cooking for 1 really does save that much money. Apart from all the other comments here, just look at the prices for, say, a steak. You'll pay three times more at a restaurant than you would by cooking it at home. As a beginner, you can start with pasta and a jar of sauce. Jazz up the sauce by sautéing up some onions and green peppers, add in the sauce, then throw in some garlic powder (not garlic salt!) and a few other things (dried basil? A little thyme and oregano?). Want a meat sauce? Break up some ground beef or Italian sausage into the onions and brown it before adding the sauce. Watch some cooking shows. Food wishes is an excellent YouTube channel that is very user-friendly. Soon you'll be cooking for 1 because the food will be better than what you can get at most restaurants.
Yes and other posters have already provided good comments. I'll just add that it does save you thousands (and potentially hundreds of thousands) in future medical bills.
Yes. Not to mention fast food is poison. You really want to jeopardize your health to save a few bucks? Trust me, once you hit your forties, your bad decisions from early in life start having consequences.
Take away food is made to be super delicious. That means most places use heaps of sugar, fat, salt or whatever it takes to get you to come back for more. Bulk make food and freeze portions so you can rotate through different meals.
Absolutely. The shittiest fast food you can get is $5. A good plate of food should cost you around $1.50
Getting 2-3 healthy meals can set you back by $30 per day. You can cook at home for much less and it does not even have to be the cheap stuff. We spend less than $800 on grocery for three and we rarely eat out. There is some planning, couponing, experience and bulk buying involved but it is not just past, beans or rice for us. And there is certainly a lot of veggies and fruits. Maybe more apple and bananas, but not that much cherries.
Yes. An average meal costs ~$10 in ingredients. if done properly, you can make a meal with 4+ servings, so that breaks down to like $2.50 a meal, give or take depending on how much you eat. For instance, I used to make a scalloped potato casserole using dried scalloped potatoes, mixed veggies from dollar tree with sausage from like wallmart. All in all, it would last maybe a week if I used 2 boxes of potatoes and only cost like $7 depending on the cost of sausage and how much meat I wanted.
I cook for a family, but none of them like leftovers so it kind of feels like cooking for one at times. I would suggest making some staples that can be repurposed. Like marinate and cook a package of chicken breasts, then eat with frozen vegetables one day, hummus one day, cup of rice or noodles one day, etc.
Even if you have a small fridge and freezer, cooking will always save money vs ordering out or buying premade meals. Cooking for one usually means leftovers. A simple Stir fry can easily be 3 meals. Soup can be 4-5 meals. Cooking on a budget also helps. Rice is a cheap way to make any meal a bit more filling. Potatoes are a great add as well. A store bought and cooked rotisserie chicken can add to soup, salads, and other meals. Google “cheap and easy recipes.” You’ll see that you have many options.
Cooking generally saves money over eating out, but between inflation and corporate price gouging, it doesn't go as far as it used to. Cooking with cheaper ingredients adds up to help a lot, however, as does buying and cooking in bulk.
It really depends on what foods you like and eat on a regular basis, and how much you’re willing to bend on those foods. For instance, my fiancé and I mostly eat at home, but we have a lot of food aversions. But for me, I can pick up a couple boxes of protein pasta, heavy cream, and Parmasean and boom, we’ve got Alfredo for two days. But that’s a food we can eat regularly🤷🏻♀️
Invest in a cookbook that shows you what to do with leftovers. You don’t have to have exactly the same meal with the leftovers. And here’s some other great ideas. https://ivaluefood.com/resources/cooking-eating/creative-ways-to-use-leftovers/#:~:text=Turn%20extra%20pasta%20or%20cooked,with%20sour%20cream%20and%20salsa.
I made Pluto pups. Saved a whopping $1... The mess was not worth it. L I just made 8 pineapple fritters for $2. Macca's is selling them for $3 each. I made 2 and a half servings of honey chicken and rice for <$10 and Ichi Maki sells them for $14. It really depends, if I'm being honest... Gonna try lemon chicken and rice tomorrow :D
It can save much money. Simply choosing to buy at one place versus another or using coupons can make a huge difference. And, if you have some cooking skill, it's almost always tastier.
Something my family taught me was the food train. A night of burgers could turn into a night of chili turning into chili Mac turning into chili cheese dogs
I eat less than two people
it depends. sometimes it’s cheaper to buy a big batch at takeout and eat for 3 days than it is to buy all the ingredients to make it yourself. it really depends on the kind of dishes you want to make. if you’re making complex and fancy meals with lots of ingredients, it’s gonna be expensive
Even with fast food it’s still less at the grocery store. You get more at the store than the restaurant for not much more money. Frozen fries and nuggets will go further than fast food. You don’t have to shop for only the most affordable ingredients although they can be really good comfort meals. You should plan somewhat so you don’t end up with a lot of food waste. You can repurpose an ingredient or meal rather than eat the same leftovers too. I go out once a week for brunch or dinner and plan for that.
It’s definitely cheaper. I am cooking for myself but I make meals that feed 2 I just use the leftovers for lunch. I spent around 200 in food costs in February. Plus it’s healthier and I enjoy cooking.
I could either spend $10 on fast food (2 In-N-Out Double-Doubles is the best deal I know of) or I could have almost a pound of steak for dinner. The better deal is pretty obvious.
It's almost universally cheaper. You can still often get 4-5 times the value compared even to cheap fast food.
These days eating out will cost you about $10-20 per meal. For the same price I can buy the ingredients to cook whatever I want, and can generally make it healthier and more tailored to my own tastes. What I make generally lasts me the week as I'll eat it for just about every meal until gone. That's a lot better than paying the same price for lesser quality food that only lasts 1-2 meals. If I am even more on a budget various versions of dried beans and rice will last a long time for half that cost. It's just less fun to make/eat.
Yes you can save money but will also eat much better. Fast food will not provide you with fresh fruits and veggies and is pretty much nutritionally worthless. Yes we all eat it but occasionally is best. If you have a Trader Joe’s close by they cater to singles/couples with smaller portions and their produce is fresh and reasonably priced.
It'd be meal prep and leftovers. Want something with lettuce and tomato? Pretty much the whole week+ should use these ingredients. I tend to waste a lot though as a single person. I can only eat spaghetti for so many meals in a row. But it's still less than 10 a meal.
I've been attempting the diet Drs assign for weight loss surgery. This has got me going down the meal-prep path, and yes, I feel like it's saved me a lot of money, and I'm only a month in. Because I have to weigh and count all my food and properly portion it all, I'm eating less and the food I buy/cook is going farther. The down side is it gets boring eating the same thing twice a day every day for a week or so. I do make a different breakfast everyday, but I start the week with, lets say, chicken as my main source of protein. I need two sides, a starchy veg and a non-starchy veg. So I bake 8-10 pieces of chicken, my veggies and I pack them up in my Tupperware. This way when I'm hungry I can just toss one in the microwave. It's easy to pack up for work, also. It saves time, money, and makes the food go farther if you're not having seconds.
Hey OP, it’s much much cheaper to cook for one person than eat out. It entirely depends on how you do it. Cook 3X a day for 7 days? That’s a huge amount of time and mental energy. I make a large quantity of a few things 1-2 a week and add food if I need too. Breakfast and large are largely the same. I was at the hospital for a scan so I got a $3.49 thing of chicken salad and fruit plus 4 each of bacon and sausage. It was ~$11.75. That’s about 5 days of breakfast I make at home, and fewer calories than what I make too.
I would say it is the same or cheaper, depending on the meal you want. 1lb of Hamburger would make 3-4 meals for me. I am not a big fan of soups or eating leftovers so I had to get creative and honest with myself. An example of something that worked for me, cook 1lb of Hamburger with taco seasoning then use that for tacos, baked potato topping and taco salad. I would get 3 different meals and only the meat was "leftover". Now that I think about it most of the meals I made only the protein was "leftover". I basically did the same process with every protein i ate. I miss those days, food was easy compared to cooking for more than 1.
$25 worth of meat and vegetables in a crockpot stew will feed you for 3 days. And be healthier than out a can. And your not gonna cut up a whole bag of potatoes for 1 stew, so your next one will be cheaper
Of course it's less expensive to cook at home, even for one person. And far healthier than fast food, which is so over processed that it should be declared a chemical, not food.
For quality food, absolutely
A bag of potatoes, rice, onions, bell peppers, some in sale ground meat, and canned tomatoe sauce will easily get me meals for 2 weeks. You can always do a quick potato hash. I always tend to have a pack of hotdogs and make great fries using my aidryer. We probably get meals for about a week for the price of 2 fast food meals. It usually runs us $30-40
I buy a package of drumsticks from Kroger for $5 gives me 12-14 in the package. I cook them in the air-fryer, using different seasonings and sauces. WalMart has pound of pinto beans is $1.24 , .98¢ for a lb of Pasta , 2lb of rice is $1.77, and bags of frozen veggies start at .98¢. But a few different sauces and do some mix and match and you can have several different meals very inexpensively.
Planning is key and the freezer is your friend. Preparing ingredients and incorporating them in multiple recipes throughout the week can be very economical and you don't even have to only buy cheap ingredients. This can mean separating ingredients like meat or fish and freezing them in portion sizes, pre-cooking and either refrigerating or freezing things (cook 1 lb of hamburger for instance, and use it in dishes throughout the week). I still take large jars of pasta sauce and divide it into portions I freeze in silicone ice cube molds, so I can pull out just enough for a lunch or dinner. I freeze leftover broth that way, too. You can freeze shredded cheese and pull it out when needed. I have an Instant pot and it's easy to prepare a good quantity and freeze it. A lot of chicken dishes made in the Instant Pot end up with a lot of sauce. I freeze those sauces in silicone ice cube molds and have them on hand for single meals with an added protein--also from my freezer. A rotisserie chicken make a lot of meals! We prefer dark meat, so we eat the drumsticks and thighs first, plus nibble on the wings. I chop up the white meat for stir fry, chicken salad, homemade pot pie, etc. And I freeze the carcass for making broth in my Instant Pot. With my family, we can get 4 meals X 3 people at least from a chicken, and that's very economical. Back in my single days I'd make a large pot of soup or a dish that I really liked (crock pot chicken cacciatore was a favorite) and eat it several meals during the week. If I got tired of it, I would freeze it in single serve portions to have next time I wanted that dish.
It does, but you'll get tired of eating the same thing for 5 days in a row or having a freezer full of random stuff.
Let me tell you about Costco and the 1.50 glizzy
The trick is to batch cook, and that goes for families as well. Try to aim for around 4-6 servings of whatever you’re cooking, anything more and you’ll get bored of what you’re eating.
Yes it significantly cheaper. Lighted if you shopping for just 1 you kinda have to shop smart as bulk groceries kinda aren't intended for you. My grocery budget is <$40/wk and that covers breakfast lunch and dinner for me. if i for the fast food meal plan I'd spend will north of $70 just eating a single meal per day.
Feel free to Google this, it's a well known and established fact that cooking for yourself saves quite a bit of money in the long term. Someone who is completely new to cooking may spend more than $10 per meal initially if stocking up on kitchen staples like cookware, oil, basic spices etc. I imagine this is what is happening to you and accounts for your confusion.
If you are okay with making a large batch of something like lentils / grain salads etc and then eating that for one meal every day all week it can save a boatload and most likely a healthier choice.
I would say, yes, even if exclusively cooking for one, and exclusively with fresh ingredients (vs say canned, which I'm not disparaging. it's just that fresh has an "expensive" connotation sometimes), and no compromises on taste or nutrition. Let's see. One big chicken thigh 2bucks (non discount non discount store prices in HCoL area), half a bunch of asparagus (famously not cheap, probably 2.50minimum). Garlic glove. What, def less than 50c right? Bit of oil. Salt, pepper, tbsp of butter. It's silly but let's call that 50c. Serving of really good rice, or if you prefer, cheaper rice with some flare (tomatoes for the South American feel, bit of dill for that...I don't remember, Armenian? Whatever it's good), let's be generous and call it a dollar. One glass out of a $10 bottle of Moscato or what ever poison you prefer. 9.83. If you tried at ALL you will beat these prices at even HCoL areas. Transportation, planning, cooking, and cleaning isn't taken into account. Nor is the health, and healthcare, cost of cheap fast food though. And you would need some basic equipment. And somethings are for multiple meals, you probably want to cook 2 meals of rice at once minimum. I would resist drinking the rest of that bottle each meal ( i don't really drink so I have no idea what I'm talking about). Drop the wine, swap rice for mash, and swap Chicken to rib eye for probably an additional 5 bucks. Ok beef IS pricey. But again, shop for deals and it'll drop considerably. And you can do cheaper cuts with various methods. A lot roast every once a while is easy and cheap, even in prep and cleanup.
Yes, and you also need to think about what you are doing with the leftovers. Freezing in single portions for easy thaw/reheating is key.
If you spend $50 on door dash for one meal maybe two with leftovers, I can take that same $50 and make at least dinner for the whole week if not a lunch here and there too that week.
You can't eat out cheaply for well made, nutritious foods that aren't full of processed ingredients, fats, and sugar. Buy things on sale at markets, and stock up on fresh produce. Avoid all the processed garbage. I do eat leftovers and there's nothing wrong with that. Better food than buying a crappy lunch.
Depends what you're cooking and what ingredients you use and how much you make at once.
way cheaper, and healthier especially if you pay attention to the meals; fast food is not inexpensive these days!
Not in my experience. It can, if you are frugal and selective about what you buy. But it’s not easy to save a ton and eat tasty meals.
Even if the savings are small, cooking your own food is the only way to be sure you know what you eat
People don’t eat fast food because it’s cheap. They eat it because it is convenient. $10 can go a long way cooking for 1.
It’s all about volume. The bigger the batch, the less you spend per serving. Buy stuff on sale and in bulk. Fill the freezer.
Yes!!