True, but you need to strategize about leftovers. With something like that, you make some sandwiches for lunch and then you turn the rest of the roast beef into shepherd’s pie the next day, and then freeze those leftovers for a future lunch or dinner. The leftover window is more like a few months, not 4 or 5 days if you have freezer space. I personally don’t like eating the same meal two days in a row, so it’s either freezing for later (like you could freeze the roast beef here for a future chili, for instance), or turning the leftovers into something new the next day. Like I said, it takes some planning, but it’s not really that difficult to avoid wasting food for one-off meals. (Once again, if you have freezer space. If not, then you really need to plan well or eat the same dish many times in a row.)
I’m not entirely sure why someone would ignore the cost of time or the cost of waste in determining which is more cost efficient. Those are indeed costs, just not costs you are paying the cashier. One CAN come out ahead if they make a big dish on Sunday and then eat leftovers for a few days that week, but it tends to be a bit dull (eating the same thing a few times a week) or require some strategizing which takes a bit too much time for my tastes (no pun intended).
I buy a package of freshly made sushi for $8. I suppose I could buy all the ingredients, chop the vegetables up into tiny tiny matchsticks, cook and prepare the right kind of rice, roll it up in seaweed, etc. etc. and it might be cheaper per serving. Not being a sushi chef, and tired at the end of the day, I will pay the $8 instead of producing a jumble of stuff on a plate.
I buy a pizza for $15 from a local pizza place, with the most delicious chewy crust, piquant sauce, loads of cheese, hot sausage/green pepper/fresh mushrooms. Theoretically I could buy a pre-made crust, jar of sauce, packet of cheese, etc. and set to work and make a pizza a little cheaper per serving. The family would be polite and eat it, but be grossly disappointed it wasn’t the pizza from the local restaurant.
They want fried chicken. They don’t want MY fried chicken, healthier, cheaper, and tastier (even if I drag out the deep fryer and fill it up with the $10 bottle of peanut oil that I used and strained last month). They want the bucket of slime from KFC which costs $20 and up, not including ‘sides’.
Waste should definitely be factored in. ABut, if you have a freezer, there really shouldn’t be much waste. This is not to say that I don’t waste food. I do forget about food and I have to be a bit better about labeling and dating that which I put in the freezer to make sure it gets used up in a reasonable amount of time.
As for time, depends on your lifestyle. I have plenty of idle time and I like cooking, so personally, it’s not a cost–it’s not taking away money I would otherwise be making doing something else if I weren’t cooking. Of course I eat out sometimes when I just don’t feel like cooking or making a sandwich or am on the road and just need a quick 5-minute meal. But, the clear majority of the time, it’s going to be significantly more expensive than making at home (except for the dollar menu items, which is what I end up grabbing most of the time if I’m out and about and just need something to nosh on.)
But, overall, the point is it should be cheaper, and I’d say significantly so. But, like you said, if you’re not into strategizing and putting some thought and time into it, it may not be worth it to you.
I agree with this. When I eat out, it’s generally because I have a taste for a particular rendition of a particular food. I can make a pizza, but I can’t make a Neapolitan wood-fired pizza, or a pizza that tastes like the thin crust from my favorite local pizza joint. Of course, it would be cheaper to make a pizza at home, but it won’t be the same pizza. I like my pizza, but sometimes (often) I want someone else’s pizza.
The main reason I would exclude waste is that it varies from one person to another. While it may be a useful fact in the decision-making for you personally, it is probably useless as a comparison for someone else. In fact, even for a single person, it likely varies from one instance to another - this month, you cooked a whole chicken and eat all of it, but last month, half of it went bad before you used the leftovers. Same meal, two different prices. You could come up with a statistical analysis of your waste over time, but that’s a little overkill for meal planning.
What was in the soup? The only way I can imagine spending that much on meat Is if it was a seafood bisque, in which case I would be surprised if you could get soup at a restaurant including the same quality of ingredients with that quantity without paying an arm and a leg.
If you are a good shopper (buy things on sale) and a creative cook (make a dish out of what ever you have on hand rather than buying everything new for each recipe, so you don’t waste left over ingredients), you can pretty much always feed yourself cheaper than going out, for a meal of the same quality. Comparing a dollar menu hamburger to one you make at home isn’t fair because the quality at home is so much better.
There are obviously some individual things that you can’t beat due to economy of scale (you aren’t going to make a Krispy Kream jelly doughnut for less than $1.00). And if you don’t like to cook than it may not be worth your time, but in terms of raw dollars cooking can certainly be cheaper.
To give a specific example, I can have half of a roast chicken, Salad, Soup, vegetable, Potato and a roll delivered to me for $12, $15 with tip. I eat that over two nights. There is no way buying and preparing all that stuff can compare.
I used to eat out every day, and it was cost effective. Now the 22 mile commute to get to restaurants makes it expensive. Also, restaurants are counter-indicated with a low-sodium diet!
Sure it can, but for $15 and nothing to clean up, that is an attractive option.
I don’t know about where you live, but where I live the fresh vegetables are in bins, and I can easily buy just enough for one or two servings. No one is making you buy two pounds of green beans. Frozen vegetables in resealable bags aren’t as good, but pretty much always better than what I can get out. Especially at cheap places.