Sorry. It’s turtles all the way down, and they only cater for other restaurants. You might have known those sneaky Mexicans would have the game sewn up tight.
Then the answer to your question is, yes, if you don’t want to learn how to cook then it is less expensive to go out for food than to eat at home.
Roasting a chicken takes almost no effort at all and requires very little in the way of cooking skill. It takes less time, in fact, than you spent prepping the taco meal, not considering cooking time, during which you are free to do as you please.
Shopping and cooking really is a skill.
If you are not good at it, it probably does seem cheaper just to eat out (in terms of both time and money), especially for lunch or dinner foods which are ususally more complicated than breakfast food items.
But look at you six dollars worth of grocery store chicken compared to your Taco Bell chicken taco. I don’t know how much your grocery store chicken weighed, but I’m pretty sure your taco didn’t have more than 4 ounces of chicken and probably more like 2-3 ounces. The grocery store chicken will make a whole lot of tacos at that rate.
Although I live alone I cook nearly every night because I like cooking, I am good at it and it is cheaper than buying prepared stuff, with one exception, baked chicken. I can buy a baked, stuffed chicken for less than I can buy one to cook, any day of the week. If I go after 6pm I can buy a cooked one for half the price of the raw ones in the same shop.
If you’ve got the space (in your kitchen, basement, garage, or wherever) and can afford a couple hundred bucks for the capital outlay, buy a chest freezer. You can buy meats, frozen dinners, frozen veggies, etc. when they’re cheap, and freeze them until you need 'em. Not to mention leftover storage: for instance, cook enough chili for an army, then freeze it in meal-for-two-sized freezer bags.
They’re energy-efficient, too: since they open from the top, the cold air doesn’t all fall out into the room the moment you open the lid.
Just one for-instance: I can’t recall the last time I paid more than $2/lb. for boneless, skinless chicken breasts.
Oh no, eat the skin. It’s the best bit. (I’m not the worlds healthiest eater).
OK, I don’t use my microwave nearly enough. How do I boil potatoes in it? In a dish covered in water? Do I cover the dish? Hot or cold water? Salted? I don’t have a baked potato button so how long do you cook them for? You could be about to save me significant amounts of time and effort.
Aye, that’s true here too. Although you’ve got to time it right so they’ve not run out. I’m guessing they make a loss on them tho’.
Some remarks on your shopping which may have a lot of influence on the total price:
Don’t buy the tiny package, buy the big package and freeze whatever you don’t use right now. As others have said, a whole chicken is the cheapest, chopped fillets/breasts are the most expensive. I don’t know much about tacos, but if they contain baked “shredded” meat, you can probably get any meat with bone (drum stick / wings / whole chicken) cook it and tear the meat off with a fork. Really easy.
That seems expensive, but fresh vegetables can be, depending on the time of year - and they don’t get better when they’re expensive either. Depending on what you want did with it, a can of (chopped) tomatoes is probably a lot cheaper alternative.
Don’t buy kits. Read what’s in the kit and buy that separately. Again, if you can store/freeze it, buy larger amounts. If you’re lazy buy a pot of salsa, otherwise, make your own (and you can use half of that can of chopped tomatoes).
How big a block was that? Anyway, I usually have two chunks of plain dutch cheese in the fridge, and unless I need a really special type of cheese (like soft goat cheese or mozzarella) I just shred some of those.
Again, get a large container. If my supermarket prices are anything like yours, you can get a container 3 times the size of the small one for more or less the same price. It’ll keep in the fridge for a few days at least.
In general, get larger amounts of anything that’ll keep, and don’t buy anything that’s pre-mixed or in a kit and your prices will go down significantly. Kits especially are extremely expensive for what you get.
Like anything else, someone can find a way to make it more expensive. If you really want a particular meal your are going to pay, if you want convenience your going to pay, if you want basically a prepared resteraunt style meal at the supermarket you will pay resteraunt prices.
I know many people who have terrible shopping habits, buying way too much, throwing out much as it goes bad. The refrigerator packed and really not much to eat or use for meals. Those people are the ones that should consider unplugging the refrigerator and plan all meals out.
But the way to save money is to buy low - plan your meals around the sales and what you have stocked up. Your freezer and cubbard is where you store food, not your fridge.
As for buying meat peaces and cutting them yourself, it is much less of a chore if you get a really high quality knife and sharpener. You may find that for the price of 2 boneless chicken breasts, you may be able to get a entire chicken (which has those 2 breast pieces).
I think for one person, eating out can be cheaper than buying groceries, unless you make extensive use of bulk purchases and freezing. Unless you’re getting up there in quantity, you’re not going to get much below $5 per person per meal. If you live somewhere where there’s lots of cheap ethnic restaurants, you probably are just as well off eating out for dinner.
Even with two people, it can be a close call, depending on how much time you have. If you make meals for four and have the leftovers the next day for lunch, it’s perfectly possible to have good home cooked meals with fresh ingredients for around $2 per person per meal.
Last night it was fish & chips at my local pub, a treat.
Tonight it’s a crockpot with split pea soup I’ll cook it all night and eat it for the rest of the week. Yummy and way better than any restaurant soup, trust me.
Stews, roasts, soups, sauces, my advice (since I do not need to add to the excellent tips from Queen Bruin) , get a crockpot.
Great post Queen Bruin, although the OP has a valid point I think. Way back in my apartment living days I felt the same way. If you have to buy a box of pepper because you need a teaspoon of the stuff, the cost of a “meal” goes up fast. I do a lot of cooking and still run across this situation.
Example: I decided to try making hot and sour soup. Took the ingredient list to the store and started buying all the odd items I needed. At the end I had spent something like $25 to get 6-8 servings of less than great soup that the rest of my family wasn’t interested in. For someone not interested in cooking it would be a waste; I call it tuition. I ended up with almost full bottles of black vineger and dark soy sauce, 3 pork chops, 1/3 of a can of bamboo shoots and half a block of tofu that sat around until it turned green. An experienced cook could make something else out of that (we had chops the next day) while someone who rarely cooks would end up pitching it all.
The suggestion to buy whole chickens and cut them up is a little advanced for a beginner. I’ve cut up some animals in my day and generally just buy the cut up stuff at the store now … unless I want some giblets. The pros have already done the major work and I’m willing to pay the difference.
I also wouldn’t call Tacos a beginner meal unless you get one of those kits with the seasonings and already cooked shells and even then the results are not that great. Chili - that’s the place to start.
That’s what I was going to post. Let’s say you build up a repertoire of 10 meals you know how to cook and enjoy. Now let’s assume that when you shop you buy staples, and the necessary ingredients for maybe 5 meals. If a basic such as butter or flour is on sale, you buy it, even if you weren’t planning on using them to cook that night. You learn what ingredients - such as bread - you can buy on sale and toss in the freezer. If you go to the store with a plan to buy the ingredients for 5 specific meals, you are likely to spend considerably more than if you buy the ingredients for whicever 5 of your 10 meals that happen to be on sale.
Another thing, you may find that certain ingredients are much cheaper at different stores. For example, convenience stores often feature cheap milk as a loss leader. Rather than making numerous trips to hit a series of different shops, you simply plan on hitting the various stores when most convenient through the rest of your weekly routine.
If you are cooking for one or two, you will save significant money by buying and preparing larger portions, and saving the extra for later meals. And you can do quite fine buying boneless skinless breasts if you don’t want to deal with a whole chicken.
Planning and flexibility is key. Having said that, I have no question that I can go to the local independant grocery store anytime I wish, buy a couple of nice steaks from their butcher, 10# of potatoes, and a mess of salad fixins for a fraction of what a good steak meal would cost in a steakhouse. Of course, since we cook regularly I already have butter and salad dressing in my fridge, and a cabinet full of spices. Not to mention plates and silverware! 
And I’m still trying to get my mind around what kind of salads you fixed using $24 worth of ingredients! :eek:
I’m still curious as to where these restaurants are that you can get a decent meal for $4.12.
I can’t get an honest-to-God decent dinner in a restaurant for a penny less than $12, once you throw in a juice or a pop and the tax, and that’s restricting myself to the cheaper options on the menu. Note that I don’t count McDonald’s as a decent dinner. Maybe I could get it down to $10 if I ate at a Chinese place.
If you can’t cook for less than $12 a head there’s something wrong with you.
One more thing. I just paid $1.50 for a single small tomato the other day. It seems crazy I know but somebody is buying all those hard tasteless things. I had to have some sliced tomato for sandwiches and nothing else would do.
Out of season produce is very expensive and it is usually so bad that a lot of people never learn what good fruits and veggies tast like.
I sort of have to agree with shiftless: if you’re not that experienced, you can end up with a lot of stuff you don’t know what to do with. On the other hand, some stuff will keep for ages - like the soy sauce and vinegar and dried spices.
Also, BMalion is right in that stews soups sauces etc are excellent if you’re not very experienced or on your own: They’re easy to make, and you can cook them in large amounts (less leftover ingredients that can spoil) and freeze it in portions and you’ll have “ready to heat and eat” food sitting around.
I can make pasta sauce or beef stew for 5 to 10 euros (I only buy stewing beef when it’s on sale) and eat off that for 4 days at least with minimal additions like dried pasta or potatoes and maybe a little salad (chopped cucumber or lettuce).
Quite a few ethnic places in Chicago. Tacos average around $1.25-$1.50; burritos as big as your head (too big for one meal even with my appetite!) $4 or so.
Most Thai places have a meal special (lunches, but “lunch” goes to 4 or 5) for $5.79. I don’t know why it’s always $5.79, but it’s eerily uniform. I don’t have leftovers from those, though some people might.
Indian lunch buffets are around $6 or $7; dinner buffets $7 to $12, depending on the restaurant. That’s some real good eatin’ there! Silverware and cloth napkins and everything.
I can get Papa John’s pizza specials for $20 to feed four of us with leftovers, so that’s $5 a person. You might not consider that “a decent meal”, but my family and I like them quite a bit, although we also like “real” pizzerias.
BTW, in Chicago, I can find frozen trimmed boneless skinless breasts in the major grocery stores for about $14 a 5 pound box. I can find overinflated with salt-water (I’m telling you, these suckers weigh over half a pound each, but most of it cooks out!) untrimmed (lots of fat and fascia I have to cut off myself) boneless skinless breasts for about $8 a 3 pound bag at Aldi. $1.99 a pound is a GREAT price on chicken here; usually it’s more around $2.39 a pound for the fresh stuff. On the rare times I see it on sale at the ethnic supermarkets for 99¢ a pound (once or twice a year), I buy 20 pounds or more, if they let me.
I curse the industry that taught my husband that only white meat is edible, lemmetellyou!
Note to RickJay first…he didn’t say $8.25 total, he said $8.25 per person. You can easily get a decent taco lunch at a “real” Mexican place here for that. I think the place I go to has tacos for $1.25 apiece.
What are you disagreeing with? That the payoff is worth it? Well, it may not be, but you have to decide where you want your time allocated vs. where you want your money allocated. I know you have said in the past that you only work at a paying job as many hours as you have to in order to get by, because you have things to do that you consider to be more important or enjoyable. Which I can appreciate, but one way or the other you have to feed yourself. If you would rather play in your band than cut up chicken, then you may have to spend a little more money for boneless chicken. And if you want to spend a little more money for boneless chicken, then you may have to work an extra hour or two at your regular job. Either way, you are taking time away from playing in your band. It’s all just resource allocation.
Some of these tips have already been covered, but here are my rules-of-thumb for eating at home on the cheap:
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Stick to actual groceries vs. convenience foods. Never EVER buy a “kit” like that taco kit you bought (WhyNot is right…that’s just fast food in sheep’s clothing. Not a coincidence that some of those kits are actually branded Taco Bell). You probably bought less than $1 worth of stuff for $3.50. It’s deceptive, because what’s in the box probably was only enough for one meal. If you bought all the ingredients separately, you might spend more initially, because you would be buying more than you need for just that meal. But most of it will keep long enough to have another couple of meals from it. That’s where your savings comes in. Which leads me to…
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Buy large sizes of things, never just enough to eat for one meal, unless it’s perishable and can’t be refrigerated or frozen. Salsa, for example, is relatively expensive, and you are really better off buying the biggest jug you can find because you can keep it in the fridge for a long time. Always look at the per-ounce or per-pound price, not the overall price.
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Buy the least “processed” food there is. Chicken cut up and seasoned… :eek: Sure, you only have to cook it, but you are paying for someone else to do all the work. Boneless full breasts, a bit more expensive, but reasonable if there is a good reason to need it boneless. Chicken parts…a really good deal. You don’t have to cut up a whole chicken, and you can easily cut the meat off the bone for something like tacos. Or even easier, eat it off the bone once it’s cooked. A whole roaster chicken…super cheap. But, as you say, that might be more work than it’s worth to you. But you have to compare prices vs. workload and figure out if it’s worth it to you to pay for it.
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Plan meals & be willing to eat leftovers. Won’t give details on how to do this, because folks like Queen Bruin have already explained it better than I ever could. But I will say this…my husband and I get at least 2 meals out of virtually everything we cook.
Be careful about such discount places, usually that’s 15-25% added weight of salt water (will state on package), plus the fat you are trimming the cost is most like a bit over 2 lbs of actual meat for $8. A lot of these places sell food that appears cheap but through one trick or another stick it to the people who really need the lower prices. That’s not to say that great discounts can’t be found there, but I’ve found that those high salt water chicken parts is not really a great deal.
Actually it benefits me, It keeps the flavorful and healthy meat at a low cost, while most go for the dry, flavorless meat that the natural healthy oils have been bred out of, and needs excessive flavoring to make it palatable (or at the very least very precise cooking not to super overdry the already overdry meat).
Is it common to buy chicken for 99c per lb?
I buy chicken legs for that price fairly frequently. $1.29/lb is probably more typical, though.