Foods that are cheaper to buy than to make?

April 28, 2009 9:20 AM

What are some foods that are cheaper to buy than to make from scratch (using non-bulk ingredients)? Carrot juice is the only one I can think of at the moment, but my experience is very limited.
posted by archagon to food & drink (38 comments total)

Olive oil, probably.
posted by odinsdream at 9:25 AM on April 28 [1 favorite]

Last week Slate.com had an article on just that subject - see http://www.slate.com/id/2216611/.
posted by dorey_oh at 9:28 AM on April 28

Macaroni and Cheese, probably.

Are you considering the cost of special tools needed to make different foods? For example macaroni pretty tough to make at home without specialized tools. And if you include your time into the cost of making food from scratch then cheese is probably cheaper to buy.
posted by gregr at 9:32 AM on April 28

To clarify: is your time worth anything?

Easy example: gardening takes a little bit of time for maintenance and tending, but many people find it relaxing and meditative and enjoyable.
posted by box at 9:34 AM on April 28

Acutally, carrot juice is expensive and carrots are really cheap, I bet it's cheaper to make than buy (assuming you have a juicer).
posted by robinpME at 9:36 AM on April 28

Most cereals would be difficult to make on your own.
posted by Diskeater at 9:39 AM on April 28

Doesn't partly this depend on quality, too? Because a McDonald's hamburger is probably cheaper than making a burger at home. But the quality of the burger at home would be totally different.
posted by dpx.mfx at 9:51 AM on April 28

Lifehacker linked to that Slate article, but the comments have some interesting bits, too.
posted by notsnot at 9:52 AM on April 28

Oh, and home-made pizza, esp. if you get some good whole-grain dough, is fuckin' *killer*.
posted by notsnot at 9:58 AM on April 28

Sorry, I should have specified that I'm only looking for unprocessed foods, so no boxed mac and cheese.

Odwalla carrot juice costs about $6 for the large bottles, and I need to juice way more than $6 of carrots to get that much juice.
posted by archagon at 10:07 AM on April 28

I think a big variable here is how you value your time. Bread is a classic example of something that people will buy rather than make because it takes a lot of time and a lot of work (especially if you don't have a high-powered stand mixer) to make. Even in low-tech, low-income societies, many villages will have bakers.

Any kind of highly processed food would probably fall in this category. I can't imagine the amount of trouble it would be to make a Fig Newton, for example, even though I have a fig tree in the backyard. Any kind of food involving fermentation—cheese, tofu, beer—requires an even greater time investment and usually some specialized equipment.

Vaguely-related aside: I recall reading an anecdote about East Germany that government-dictated pricing was so out of whack that bread was cheaper than grain, so farmers would feed their pigs loaves of bread.
posted by adamrice at 10:13 AM on April 28

There are a lot of processed vegetables/fruits/etc that are cheaper to buy than to make because making the product preserves it, and it can be made from oddly-looking vegetables. In the case of carrot juice, presumably the reason is that you can juice some damn ugly carrots that nobody would othwise buy (unless they are made into 'baby' carrots).

For example, guacamole can be cheaper than avocadoes, true Pomegranate juice can be cheaper than pomegranates, etc. In my experience, cheesecake has cost more to make than to buy, though if you get ingredients in bulk (Costco cream cheese, etc), it may not be the case.
posted by bsdfish at 10:14 AM on April 28

archagon, what do you mean by processing? To remove juice from carrots you have to process them mechanically.

Do you include things like flour and sugar as foods? It would be more expensive to produce flour and sugar than to buy it.
posted by gregr at 10:15 AM on April 28 [1 favorite]

Lasagna tends to be quite expensive to make from scratch, since you need a lot of rather pricey cheese.
posted by smackfu at 10:30 AM on April 28

Roast chicken, and probably much of the other prepared foods that they sell at the deli counter. Assuming raw chicken is not on sale, the cost of a whole roast chicken from Von's is usually lower than if I were to buy a chicken roast it.
posted by charlesv at 10:34 AM on April 28

Fried chicken, probably.
posted by applemeat at 10:34 AM on April 28

With some caveats it's pretty easy to find foods that are cheaper to buy then to make.

I frequently buy salad from the salad bar at grocery stores instead of buying the ingredients and making it myself. If I was making a gigantic salad for 30 people, it would certainly be cheaper to buy all of the vegetables, etc and make it myself. I like a lot of different things in my salad and by the time I bought the 20 or so different things that I can get at the salad bar my salad would cost me 30 or 40 dollars. I would have a lot more salad left over after making my gigantic salad, but I can only eat so much before it goes bad.

My local pizza shop also has a special where they sell a large cheese pizza for $4.99. I can make it for myself for a bit less, but with the price of cheese going up it's getting closer. Or there is a Cici's near here where I can get all you can eat pizza for $5.49. Not quite the deal it was in my 20s when I could eat 2 or 3 pizzas by myself, but still a good deal.

The cheapness of making food at home frequently relies on the scale of making a good amount and either having more people eat or having leftovers. Making a single serving of anything is typically not that much cheaper then eating in a reasonably priced restaurant.
posted by jefeweiss at 10:50 AM on April 28

Ricotta cheese. It's easy enough to make at home, but you need like 50 million gallons of milk to make enough ricotta for a decent lasagna.
posted by bink at 10:52 AM on April 28

Granola but only because I tend to pack mine with organic dried fruits and good honey.
posted by spec80 at 10:53 AM on April 28

By "processed", I guess I mostly mean stuff with lots of preservatives. The main reason I'm asking this question is to determine what's worth buying at restaurants, bakeries, etc. and what's worth learning to make by yourself. (Bread, alcohol, and cheese are a given for buying, since it takes years of experience to make them well.)
posted by archagon at 11:06 AM on April 28

(Bread, alcohol, and cheese are a given for buying, since it takes years of experience to make them well.)

Au contraire, brother! I was first tipped off to this recipe for apfelwein on metafilter, and I've made it a couple times with great success! The final price ends up being like 25 cents per twelve-ounce bottle, and you can ferment it in one of those big plastic 5-gallon home depot buckets, which is only a few bucks. So it's like two bucks for the equivalent of a six-pack, it's easy as hell, and it's a super-refreshing summer brew.
posted by Greg Nog at 11:18 AM on April 28 [6 favorites]

Quality of ingredients needs to be factored in, big time. I'm sure I could find some no-frills version of a lot of prepared foods that are dirt cheap, but they're probably using crappy raw materials and a lot of preservatives/sugar/salt/etc.

smackfu: Lasagna tends to be quite expensive to make from scratch, since you need a lot of rather pricey cheese.

Well, the cheese you require generally is used to make a full pan of lasagna, which delivers a lot of portions.
posted by mkultra at 11:30 AM on April 28

If you have a breadmaker, you can make bread more cheaply at home, and well, but it's a nuisance, so I would think convenience really is weighing in this conversation.

Cupcakes (or just cake) and cookies are definitely cheaper to make than to buy in the store.
posted by misha at 11:31 AM on April 28

Oh, and home-made pizza, esp. if you get some good whole-grain dough, is fuckin' *killer*.

For me, it's much cheaper to make the kinds of pizza I like best, because I like lots and lots of (mostly vegetable) toppings, and most pizza joints charge so much per topping that it's very expensive to get anything more than the usual couple of toppings. Plus, I don't skimp on quantity of toppings when I make pizza myself.
posted by musicinmybrain at 11:47 AM on April 28

archagon, you should try making everything you eat at least one or two times to see if the homemade result is better than the packaged or restaurant option. (Think of better as cost, flavor, or ability to customize.)

(I just made marshmallows a few weeks ago that were wonderful. Next I'm going to try corn tortillas then tortilla chips.)
posted by gregr at 11:48 AM on April 28

I had the thought of making rice cakes, since my wife eats them and I think they cost a lot, but they're made with an industrial steam/pressure process that would be nearly impossible to do at home.
posted by O9scar at 12:05 PM on April 28

Odwalla carrot juice costs about $6 for the large bottles, and I need to juice way more than $6 of carrots to get that much juice.

I can buy a 10 lb bag of carrots for about $5. I can make a large glass of juice with about 8 carrots. That's about 3 glasses of juice for $5 compared to a glass and a half for Odwalla at $6.

If it's taking you 20 carrots to make a glass of juice, your juicer sucks. You can tell if your juicer sucks by feeling the pulp. If it's wet, well, there's the rest of your juice.

Incidentally, I don't know about their carrot juice but Odwalla's other juices are pasteurized, which defeats the purpose and, in my book, certainly counts as processed.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 12:06 PM on April 28

I'm still a little confused by your "unprocessed" criterion but pretty much everything is cheaper bought that made yourself. I'm also not sure what your position is on making (growing) vs. buying fruit and vegetables or, for example, making (raising) vs. buying chickens.

Just looking down my short shopping list from today, pretty much everything was cheaper to buy than to make: houmous, pesto, tagliatelle, sausages, ice cream, crisps, cheesecake, pizza, muesli, chutney, cheese, chorizo, chocolate, butter. Obviously there are some things that can't be bought at a satisfactory quality but I find it a lot harder to think of foods that are more expensive to buy.
posted by turkeyphant at 12:33 PM on April 28

If we want to talk time investment, anything slow cooked at a restaurant would be a good choice. Especially anything involving a large grocery list ($). The pinnacle of this train of thought being cassoulet but there are several things that would qualify. Also, making recipes that ask for a lot of ingredients you never use. It would be cheaper to get your every two month green curry fix at a Thai restaurant than to buy ingredients that will only spoil before they are used again.
posted by Foam Pants at 12:44 PM on April 28

My guess that a common characteristic of things that are cheaper to buy than to make is that they are items require a large capital investment. Some require specialized machinery, such as rice cakes, pop tarts and cheerios, which costs are justified only with large amounts of sales. Some require a large investment (both time and money) in the foodstuff itself. Beef and oranges would fall in this category.
Others are the offshoots of large-scale capital-rich production. I'm assuming your carrot juice is in this category and that it is made from the residue of "baby" carrot manufacture. Lot of juice in those scraps and peeling that would be garbage otherwise. I know that apple cider fits into this category. Its made from the ugly, non-saleable apples -- the misshapen, the fallen and bruised, and maybe the bug-ridden[?]. Ditto with sausage. Maybe you could make these things cheaper at home, but you don't have access to the raw materials.
Items that require specialized skill might also be cheaper to buy than to make if you look at the all-in costs. You can make beer and bread cheaper at home, but the cost of your first good bottle or loaf will likely be quite costly.
posted by rtimmel at 1:07 PM on April 28

Time is definitely a factor. I'm thinking more along the lines of buying a cheesecake vs. learning to bake a really kick-ass cheesecake over a period of several months.

For bread, alcohol, and cheese, the area of production is very important, so it's not possible to make them at home if you're a connoisseur. (I guess that applies to all foods, though to a lesser extent.)

"I can buy a 10 lb bag of carrots for about $5. I can make a large glass of juice with about 8 carrots. That's about 3 glasses of juice for $5 compared to a glass and a half for Odwalla at $6."

A glass and a half for the 2L bottles?! I can get at least 4 glasses of juice out of those things, if not more.
posted by archagon at 1:10 PM on April 28

(But I'm not factoring in the time and cost of the ingredients during the time it takes to learn the recipe.)
posted by archagon at 1:13 PM on April 28

Chicken stock/broth. Definitely cheaper to buy.
posted by sickinthehead at 3:13 PM on April 28

Eh... I would think it would be nearly impossible to answer this question because it's nearly impossible to compare equivalent goods. Furthermore, economies of scale are involved, so if you want one curry, it's cheaper at the restaurant, but if you want twenty, the unit price is lower at home. Chicken stock is another interesting case in point: If you have a chicken carcass handy as a waste product from another meal, it's cheap. If you don't, it's not.

And how does one value preservatives? I like that the food I cook at home doesn't have them; then again, that food won't last nearly as long. Whether or not preservatives add value depends on the situation.

The whole concept of equipment raises another point similar to but distinct from the issue of economies of scale.

If I were looking for "cheaper to buy" items, I would look for items where having processing done closer to the source saves transportation costs. Carrot juice, actually, is a great example, although whether or not it's actually cheaper I can't say. Having it juiced at the plant means that you're not paying to transport the pulp, and I bet it's cheaper the refrigerate, package, and handle bottles of juice instead of fresh carrots. Similarly, I'd wager raisins are cheaper to buy than the equivalent amount of grapes--not transporting the water, they can ship using slower and cheaper routes, and you don't have to worry about them spoiling or bruising.
posted by kprincehouse at 5:06 PM on April 28

I used to make tzatziki at home until I realized I could buy it at the Greek restaurant down the road for $1.50 a pint--which is way cheaper than the equivalent amount of greek yogurt and cucumbers.
posted by Jemstar at 7:05 PM on April 28

For bread, alcohol, and cheese, the area of production is very important, so it's not possible to make them at home if you're a connoisseur. (I guess that applies to all foods, though to a lesser extent.)

This is a bit of an odd statement to me [who makes all these at home]. Obviously you can't make different regional varietals yourself. On the other hand, you can make your own varietals that can't be bought for any price.

Ricotta cheese. It's easy enough to make at home, but you need like 50 million gallons of milk to make enough ricotta for a decent lasagna.

If you're already making cheese, making ricotta is worthwhile as it's almost no extra effort and is made from stuff you'd otherwise discard. Plus you can freeze it if you can't use it right away.
posted by HiroProtagonist at 7:09 PM on April 28

Chicken stock/broth. Definitely cheaper to buy.

That is laughably wrong. Either you make it from the carcass of a roast you made anyway, or you buy a bag of backs and necks from your butcher for $2. Free, if they like you.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 12:07 AM on April 29

The main reason I'm asking this question is to determine what's worth buying at restaurants, bakeries, etc. and what's worth learning to make by yourself.

Ahh, then this becomes a much more interesting askMe question, albeit more open-ended. I spend a lot of time thinking about this, as I love the idea (and reality) of making stuff that one would otherwise buy. What I think it comes down to is both price and quality - if I make X myself, will it be better/cheaper than if I buy it? For some stuff this is obvious:

Bread - Cheaper, most of the time, and much better (and not at all difficult to make - for an absolute beginner, your first loaf might not be better than one from the supermarket, but I bet your third or fourth loaf will easily be better.)
Jam / chutney - much much cheaper and better
Dry cured bacon - cheaper and much better

Then there are things that I have made/considered making, but that don't quite fit the bill:

Beer - would be much cheaper, but my homebrew attempts have frankly not been up to commercial standards. (But I have tasted homebrews that are, so this is probably a skill thing)
Cheese - actually quite expensive to buy all the milk, doesn't turn out as nice as bought cheese - again, probably a question of skill.
posted by primer_dimer at 2:50 AM on April 29