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Is it actually cheaper to cook at home compared to ordering out?

Recipe for the beef: https://www.cookwell.com/recipe/braised-beef-tacos

40 Comments

  1. I see a lot of people asking if I kept track of the time needed to make the homemade ones, and I did:

    It took 13 minutes and 27 seconds per quesadilla.

    Here is how that was calculated in the full video on my channel:

    Total time needed was 1 hour and 20 minutes which was made up of:

    41 minutes -> driving to store, shopping, driving back

    39 minutes active cooking time -> prepping beef, making guac, assembling quesadilla.

    So yes you still spend more time upfront than ordering once, but if you go out to eat 5 times you’ll need to spend more time in the long run.

    There are a lot of hidden costs to both ordering out and cooking at home!

  2. I go out to get a burrito. Price doesnt matter, because I don't make burritos at home. Burritos suck asshole at home. At home i make dreadfully simple food, because i can't be bothered to put the effort into trying harder to make better food. Id rather treat myself to a restaurant meal once in a while.

  3. Possibly the dumbest video I’ve ever watched. How do you ignore “upfront cost of groceries” from cooking at home??? That’s literally the cost 😂😂

  4. I dont get why this is a question at all, because when you buy meals you're also paying for someone else's labour… (And rent and energy) So of course, doing the labour yourself will cost less.

  5. If you’re single sometimes it’s cheaper to buy food outside than cooking it in batches that you’ll end up not eating cause it’s been days

  6. Wow america is such a shit hole. No wonder you have so many homeless. Who can afford a home when a single meals costs almost an hour of minimum wage.

  7. A butcher shop sells two ribeye steaks for the same price of one at a restaurant. Good quality meat and I find I’m getting better at cooking them over time.

  8. Here’s something to note. You don’t need that much food every meal. The kids meals are the way to go. Cheaper an gives you the good enough fill and honestly nutrition

  9. Why does no one ever account for the labor time? At least give it a estimate using minimum wage or something. You're time isn't free

  10. With the current prices you need to factor in the gas price every time you go to pick up your food

  11. It also depends on the monetary value of his time. If he could be working and earning in that time, it could be cheaper to order out.

  12. Like everything else it’s always cheaper to do it yourself. It’s cheaper to work on your own car, cheaper to replace your own roof, fix your own burst pipes, mow your own yard, yank out your own teeth etc etc. It doesn’t change that you still need to balance the cost vs the effort. No one should feel bad for eating out if it’s saving your sanity at the end of a long day filled with kids, meetings, school etc.

  13. The time spent cooking should be a factor, as well as the time ordering, buying, picking up, etc. At some income-level cooking makes sense, and at some not so much.

  14. If you’re smart in what you make you can eat for days for less than one meal eating out. I feed my family for half a week with a 5 dollar rotisserie chicken from Costco with barely any extra cost in sides

  15. i used to work at chipotle, and honestly it felt too expensive. way too expensive. plus the places management is way worse. so id honestly just make my own out of sheer spite

  16. Poor people can't afford to "bulk" buy food so they can't obtain the savings a more wallet filled person can. I had to teach my girlfriend this. Yes seasoning cost a lot when you have zero yes the ingredients is a lot but your splitting it into multiple meals and some like again seasoning, condiments etc. her entire family just age how all the time and still do but we don't they keep asking how we can afford it and it's simple grociare expensive if you allow yourself to fully run out but once you have the tools to cook, condiments, seasoning and so on you start to realize as long as your consistently cooking this day 47 or whatever it was meal drops to 15 because he already had the condiments he had leftovers and can make even more meals or other meals with those left over condiments/seasonings

  17. Yes it takes effort. If you can doom scroll and bed rot you can make time to cook

  18. I agree. I only buy from Costco and meal prep for the week. I was able to save money to put a big down payment on a place by myself.

  19. I'm gonna blow your mind. instead of ordering normal Chipotle, make a catering order. For about $50 you'll get like 20 meals worth of all the ingredients. Then you just have to assemble it at home.

  20. Now think, they exactly do the same and they are definetely buying things much cheaper than you because obviously they are buying tons of it. It's cost might even be like 3 dollars.

  21. The problem is that no one ever does this math for if you're only cooking for 1-2 people, which is a massive amount of people. I don't want 6 quesadillas, that's going to go to waste.

  22. why do influencers who make these home vs fast food comparisons keep buying from expensive supermarkets?

    ever tried costco? foodco, trader joes, or even a walmart?

  23. I got a better one for ya
    1. One pound of barbacoa already made $12
    2.sour cream $4
    3. Salsa verde or roja from HEB $5
    4. Butter flour tortillas from HEB $5
    5. 5lb bag of cheese for $8
    6. Lettuce $2
    Total: $36
    And can make 10 barbacoa quesadillas and regular quesadillas once the barbacoa is finished.

  24. The other issue is health and food quality. Nutrition and quality is explictely lower with eating out at anything less than a sit down restaurant, they pump it full of significantly more fats and sugars that are generally not even particularly high quality ones which spikes the calorie count, and they may have preservatives and whatnot that you'd dislike knowing you were eating, though the problems cause by those, if any, vary.
    Eating at home is almost certainly going to mean using Whole Foods which will be better for how your body digests the sugars it takes in as well as nutrient content, and means looking at what you're going to be eating more closely which will load likely lead to eating better.
    The food itself may not taste as plainly delicious as food made primarily out of fat, sugar, and more fat mixed together, but your life will feel much better when you're not as fat so literally every breath and every movement hurts less, you've got more energy, and you have more life to live.
    All of this for way less money seems like an easy sell until you tell someone the for: you have to actually do something yourself… at all, and at least pretend to give a shit for even a moment.
    That part is where we see the most drop-off in people wanting to cook their own food.

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