Buy or Make: What Food Staples Are Cheaper to Make at Home?

eh. It does make sense to make bread at home: easy, cheap, and doesn’t take a lot of time. But the other things, hot dogs, guacamole, hummus, frosting?? The cost savings are minimal in comparison to all the insults this lady’s kids get when they show up to school with homemade hot dogs.

I make my bread in the winter all the time plus pizza dough, and the like. I also make jam and do some canning. I was surprised that they never mentioned sprouting in this piece. I make salad sprouts, and bean sprouts for stir frying. A container or bag or sprouts costs about $2.79 for tiny 6oz container or nearly $4.00 for a bag of bean sprouts. To make a 12oz container of salad sprouts costs about 12 cents and the cost for a large pound bag of bean sprouts is about 50 cents. These are healthy and nutritious and fun to make at home. They should have been included in your article.

Observation- there are other outlets where one can buy bread and avoid paying $4+ a loaf. It may be cheaper (or better quality) to make your own, but most areas that I have lived feature bakery outlets where you can pay under $2 a loaf for decent (store bought) bread. Other things can be done to keep costs down- use coupons, stocking up when items go on sale, and similar tactics to stretch your budget.

One thing my wife has found is significantly cheaper for our family budget (4 of our own children and occasional foster kids, too) is making laundry soap for the family. Google “laundry detergent recipe” and you will find several ideas.

this is stupid

At Sheila – hot dog BUNS, not hot DOGs…reading FAIL

I make everything from scratch. It isn’t hard. Plan ahead and you won’t have a problem. Wake up earlier and prep for when you come home instead of spending an hour doing your hair. I don’t even have a food processor or a mixer, I hand kneed my breads and pasta/noodle doughs. I make my own mochi from steamed rice, I make my own hamburgers (and when I pick up my mom’s old meat grinder I will also grind it myself and make my own sausages), all dips and sauces including salsas, guacamoles (it literally takes 2 minutes to make), cocktail sauces, honey barbecue sauces, and even hot sauces. Unfortunately store bought ingredients are pretty tasteless but at least the food I prepare is better than anything you could buy pre-made or at a restaurant, and it’s safe. You eat out at a restaurant and you’ll get food poisoning at least once a week. I know exactly what goes into the food I prepare and I know how it has been prepared so I can be confident I won’t wake up with salmonella poisoning. Making your own flour or corn tortillas is also very easy, make your own tortilla chips, cut and fry your own potatoes etc… and you don’t even need a deep fryer. And the best pizzas are the ones you make yourself from scratch — you don’t even need to use yeast. I find that baking soda dough to be easy, quick, and tasty. You can even make your own cheese, ice cream and frozen yogurt by hand without an ice cream machine. I do it all the time — I’ve made coffee, chocolate, and caramel (caramel I made myself) ice cream as well as honey frozen yogurt. There is always time to cook — if a single mother with 2 jobs can cook 3 meals a day for her children, then anyone can. Also, you are less likely to be fat if you cook because kitchen time burns calories. What really confuses me is the fact that people will literally pay for someone to make them a sandwich — you know, the easiest, most basic dish. I broiled a nice cut of steak, cooked up sliced mushrooms and caramelized onions and made a steak and mushroom sandwich with horse radish and mayo. It literally took me 16 minutes, and that was mostly because the steak had to cook for at least 8 minutes a side. In those 16 minutes I had toasted the bread and prepared the mushrooms and onions, checked my email, cleaned up a bit and got the dishes and condiments ready. It takes longer to drive to the closest drive through fast food joint, wait in line during lunch rush hour, place the order, wait for it to be ready, and drive home — and it will still taste like crap.

Boeri said “You eat out at a restaurant and you’ll get food poisoning at least once a week.”

Are you serious? Where are you eating out?

I agree with most of what you said, except that statement. You lost credibility with that ignorance.

How do you make “cream cheese”? I always make my own frosting and hummus and my grandkids love to make our own potato chips. Plus, it’s fun.

@ BJ MORTON – you clearly have never been a ‘stay at home wife’. I have done both; worked a full time job, and now stay at home and RUN my household (which is akin to being a CEO, in my opinion). My job now is FAR more time consuming and demanding than when I drove to a building and sat at a desk/went to meetings, and my job actually had a defined beginning and end (as opposed to now, when I am ‘on duty’ 24/7 with no weekends or vacation time unless I schedule it and physically go away by myself – which is hard to manage). I do make my own bread, and other things. It is not as time consuming as people think, but there is a huge learning curve. There are lots of things that I choose to make rather than buy because the result is better and it is less expensive. Some things, however, are too time consuming for my VERY BUSY life. My time is extremely valuable. I do not spend any of it sitting and watching TV or playing video games, which is probably how you spend your ‘precious free time’. It’s all a matter of priority.

This article could have been a little more comprehensive…someone got paid for this?

“I make everything from scratch.” I cook from it itch!