Do you feel that being a good cook and knowing how to properly preserve foods really saves money?

I wouldn't know. LOL

that's hard to quantify i would think. It also depends on how much you were spending "before" because then you aren't really saving, you're just shopping normally, right?

but if you're asking if knowing how to cook, prepare, and budget accordingly vs. going in each week or two and just blowing money on foods you think you're going to eat, i think the answers pretty obvious.

idreamskinny85 wrote: »

TimBerkmann wrote: »

Absolutely! Buying local produce in season & preserving by blanching & vacuum sealing in the freezer saves a ton of money. Same thing with meat when it's on sale. By knowing how to cook well you can do more things with the ingredients you have & there's less temptation to buy unhealthy chemically laden junk.

Yes I was thinking it would save a ton and be healthier. I love cooking. Soon I want to be an exceptional cook with more practice. I don't yet know how to correctly preserve some foods but I assumed it would save a ton to invest in a vacuum sealer. Do you garden , by chance? Can you grow enough food to save on fruits and veggies? I really want to garden, but is it worth the work???

Regarding the gardening: start small. Years ago I made the mistake of starting a big garden in my back yard. Way too much work and way too much produce all at once. I was giving away squash by the bags full to everyone I could think of. Now we built an area with containers and I plant ONE plant of each thing I'm growing, such as grape tomatoes, scallions (a handful of those), bell peppers, jalapenos, etc. Growing fresh produce in manageable quantities means less food waste and it's not as time consuming to either cook or preserve when it's time to harvest.

I've never used a vacuum sealer but I freeze a lot of food, mainly in the big ziploc freezer bags. Learning to can is a good idea, too, but I don't do that personally.

Overall I agree that yes, learning to cook is cheaper and healthier than restaurant or processed food. Strictly my opinion; not stating it as fact.

It depends on what you are making.

No way a home baker can make cookies or breads cheaper than the factory-made. Besides, the home-baked goods tend to "disappear" much faster.

Ready-made meals however, can be done much more cheaply at home. I just bought a family pack of chicken breasts and baked them all at once in the oven. Guaranteed cheaper than the pre-cooked chicken tenders people are tempted to buy.

The leftover bones from a roast can be simmered in a crock pot to make soup practically for free.

Leftovers and repurposed leftovers (for instance, chopping up last night's roast with a little mayo and sriracha and spreading it on a tortilla) for lunch are also practically free.

And you can control the ingredients. Home cooking is pretty well a life-saver for anyone who has to control their salt intake.

jgnatca wrote: »

It depends on what you are making.

No way a home baker can make cookies or breads cheaper than the factory-made. Besides, the home-baked goods tend to "disappear" much faster.

??

I can make a bit more than 5 loaves of bread from a 5 pound bag of flour, which costs me about $4 (sometimes less if I hit a sale or buy a store brand). So that's at most 80 cents worth of flour per loaf, something less than 40 cents worth of yeast (I buy what are supposed to be single-use packs for 40 cents each, but I don't need an entire pack for a one-pound loaf), and let's be ridiculously generous and call it 50 cents for water, electricity, and small amounts of salt, oil, and possibly a little sugar or honey depending on the recipe--heck, for 50 cents I can probably toss in a little of something interesting for texture, like oats, bran, or even a small handful of diced apricots... So at a very liberal estimate, $1.70 for a loaf of homemade bread. I very seldom find factory-made loaves on sale for less than $2 at my local grocery store -- these days $2.50 is generally the sale price for anything I would want to eat, and none of it tastes as good as a homemade loaf (unless I pay $5 for a loaf of in-store "artisanal" bakery bread).

But you're right about the home-baked goods disappearing faster.



More generally, I would say I can easily feed myself tasty, healthy food for several days cooking from scratch for the cost of one carryout or fast-casual meal. It's harder to do a comparison with at-home convenience foods, since there's a huge price differential between, for instance, canned store-brand soup or chili on the one hand and fresh salads and sides from the prepared-food section of the store (generally next to the deli in the grocery stores around here).

I don't do any canning or preserving. I do sometimes freeze things, which can help you take advantage of sales that only apply to larger packages of meats and fresh produce, and also saves time and energy when you're short on both because you can pull something out of the freezer.

You can save money even without having to preserve (in the general sense) in-season food for later use. Just eat and buy whatever is currently in season, and if you're not fortunate enough to live in a climate where there's always some fresh produce in season, you can rely more on frozen, canned, or dried, as well as whatever fresh produce is cheap in your area in winter. Here, the price of tropical fruit doesn't really vary with the seasons, so in addition to massive amounts of apples that I buy at farm stands in late fall and store in the refrigerator for most of the winter, I rely on fresh bananas and citrus to tide me over until berries come back in the spring. And for veggies, winter squashes and most root and cruciferous veggies are generally reasonably priced during the winter here.

One important thing to keep in mind if you switch to more cooking from scratch is to keep track of your perishables and use or freeze them before they have a chance to ... perish.