We might as well wade right into this one. At the risk of offending many, we ask a simple question. Why buy fry sauce when you can make it? How about tartar sauce? Bread is a bit more troublesome but still doable. Why not make your own beer? Ok, well that last one takes a bit of time, equipment, patience, etc. This will be a kickoff post that examines some of the steps, success and never going to do that again to move to a make-it-ourselves approach.
Back to the Beginning
Going back in time, we ate out a lot. It was fun to try new things. Over time, we started to see patterns. It wasn’t just local food patterns. The more we traveled, the more we saw the same patterns repeated. It wasn’t just the food we ate out. If you stop by a country or farmers market, you see many of the same things as great ideas spread quickly even when those items are artisan-made.
As the internet has spread knowledge and people have moved around the US we assert cooking has become less regional. For example, we have had some great New England Clam Chowder in Newport, Oregon which is, was, and remains absolutely nowhere near New England. If we are going to eat the same everywhere, why not just make it ourselves? Ironically, this consistency was born out of the Fast Food Industry however that is another post.
Fries are Potatoes, That is all they Are.
Fried or baked potatoes are fries. Sure, fries vary by name and process but they are still just cooked potato starches. We jazz them up with names like steak, hand cut, double fried, or crinkle cut. The particular type of fry may or may not have some seasoning and is generally served with ketchup, fry sauce, or other condiments. Regardless of the process, spice, flavoring, or final textures, all fries are just cooked potatoes.
You don’t have to agree and maybe it is a huge generalization to say that. Why say it? Because in the most basic sense, it isn’t the fry itself that is where the flavor is. We started to look at this and recognized we ate a lot of basic fries when eating out. It was rarely the fry itself that stuck out as great. The real flavor of a fry came from how they were seasoned and what they were served with.
The A-Ha Moment
While deep frying can be problematic due to cleanup, crinkle, and steak fries became part of our new at-home cooking repertoire. It was also about calories. To fit our calorie budget and health goals we stuck to baked fries such as crinkle cut and steak. We were walking through our local grocery store and saw certain chicken restaurants’ versions of fry sauce in a bottle. I was about to grab it and then decided there was no way we would use 16 ounces (which is 24 servings) of fry sauce at 160 calories a serving.
This now became a search of what could I make if we had basic ingredients on hand. The basic sauces we bought or wanted were Honey Mustard, Sriracha-Ranch, Fry Sauce, Tartar, and Curry Ketchup. Our pantry had all the raw ingredients on hand because all of these were built out of basics. The basic condiments (Ketchup, Mayonnaise, Mustard), and spices (Onion, Garlic, and Curry Powder) with a couple of other basic items we used all the time (Ranch Dressing, Honey, and Sriracha).
They also took all of 5 minutes to make, didn’t take up any more room in the kitchen, or produce any more waste. Buying them seemed counter-productive when we could make them ourselves in very little time with the ingredients we already had. Let’s shift to the hard ones, which aren’t easy and do take up time.
If We Could Make Some, Could We Make All?
Making your own bread, hot sauce, crackers, pickles, candy, and even beer doesn’t make sense from a financial or time point of view for too many of us at first glance. That is to say, you can buy all of these items at a low price with no time investment other than driving to your local grocer. Why bother then? Most people will say it is to produce a higher quality item with fewer additives. That is part of the reasoning. For us, it was three simple things.
- It was a way to have hobbies that had outcomes that were things we needed.
- We knew exactly what went into what we made.
- We controlled our portion sizes and limited our waste.
The third bullet point is where the economies of scale kicked in for us. First, let’s talk about hobbies and knowing what we made.
We Could But Why?
We wanted some of our hobbies, that we paid money to do, to produce value-added items to our life. It is fine to have hobbies that simply are fun to do. When writing out a budget, we took that into account. We realized we could offset some of our non-disposable income from groceries to fun money if the outcome from our hobbies helped produce the groceries we needed. This helped us justify some of our trips and hobbies such as fishing and gardening.
While we did want to know what went into what we made, it wasn’t as key to us in making things ourselves. The reality for us is reading the back of the package, and the artificial ingredients in store-bought food were not scary. Why? Because to make some of the items we make we had to learn about them by doing our research. This took the fear out of many additives for us though we still did limit as much adulteration of food as we could.
It’s About Both Reuse and Portion Size
The economies of scale are where things kicked off but not in the way we initially think of saving money. While some of the equipment was an investment, over time, it gets cheaper and cheaper to create the same items. You may need to buy a fermenter to make pickles or hot sauce. That is a one-time investment. After that, the same fermenter can be used over and over again. Same with a dehydrator for jerky which is another post.
What we found was that items lasted longer with less waste. By making our own we could tailor the size of the portions to our calorie budget needs. A store-bought item such as sliced bread has a pre-determined portion size. That is the same with bagels, crackers, cookies, candies, etc. If you want that portion size that is great. We didn’t which either led to wasted food and money or over-eating. It is in the customizable size for each item which makes it worth the time to make it ourselves.
Dollars and Sense
In complete honesty, whether or not it is cheaper to create items at home can be debated. Empirically we see a cost savings for us. The reality is that may not be the case for everyone. Just because the ingredients are cheaper, it doesn’t mean there aren’t additional hidden costs. Gas and power for cooking aren’t free. Your time isn’t free. We believe you will feel more rewarded and have better food and lower costs however, it may not be large financial savings. This is exactly why we consider it part of our hobbies and lifestyle choice over cost savings.
Where We Win
We get to eat the things most people can’t keep in their diet because we:
- Have control of the portion size to fit our budgets
- Know the ingredients so we can make it on a smaller budget.
- We re-use all the equipment we bought for multiple purposes.
After reading this post we hope you agree that learning to make many things yourself helps manage finances, waste, and calories. We assert we all buy convenience items that can be made cheaply and be of just as high or better quality. It also helps divert funds from things like eating out to creating better meals through your means. This frees up more budget for other pursuits and hobbies.