Shortcuts Worth Taking

There is no prize for making everything from scratch. Some packaged products are as good as homemade and save you real time. Some are worse and cost more. Here is the honest split.

Buy it, do not make it

Jarred pesto. $4, keeps for months once opened if you top it with oil. Making pesto without a food processor is a chore. A spoon of jarred pesto at the end of a pasta or a sheet pan dinner does a lot of work.

Hummus. Good hummus needs a food processor and patience. Store brand is $3 and fine.

Tortillas. Nobody is making their own on a weeknight. Buy the flour ones, keep them in the freezer, and they last months.

Pizza dough. Most grocery stores sell a ball of raw dough for about $2 in the refrigerated section. It is the same dough and it saves you three hours of rising.

Curry simmer sauces. Tikka masala, korma, and Thai curry pastes in a jar are genuinely good. Brown an onion first, add the jar, add your beans or vegetables. That one extra step of cooking the onion is what makes it taste homemade.

Frozen dumplings and samosas. $6 for a bag, ten minutes, and a real meal with a bag of frozen vegetables alongside.

Rotisserie chicken, if you eat meat. Cheaper than raw chicken in most stores and it is three meals.

Pre-shredded cheese. It has anti-caking starch on it and melts slightly worse. The tradeoff is not owning or washing a grater in a tiny kitchen. Worth it.

Make it, do not buy it

Salad dressing. Bottled dressing is $4 and mostly water and sugar. Three parts oil to one part vinegar plus salt, pepper, and a spoon of mustard, shaken in a jar, takes 45 seconds and is better.

Rice. Microwave pouches cost about four times what dry rice costs. Keep two for emergencies, cook the rest.

Seasoned canned beans. "Seasoned" black beans cost a dollar more than plain ones. Plain beans plus cumin and salt is the same thing.

Coffee. This is the largest single line item in most young adults' food spending and it is not close. A $20 pour-over setup or a $30 drip machine pays for itself in ten days.

Overnight oats cups. $3 each in the store, 60 cents made at home, and they take two minutes.

The meat substitutes worth knowing

Plant-based products range from excellent to bad, and the price range is wide.

Genuinely good: plant-based ground beef in tacos, chili, and pasta sauce, where it is broken up and mixed with seasoning. Plant-based Italian sausage, which is often better than the real thing because it is heavily seasoned. Store brand versions of both are usually two dollars cheaper and roughly as good.

Skip: plant-based deli slices and anything trying to be a whole cut. The texture is not there yet and the price is high.

Cheaper and better than any of it: tofu, tempeh, beans, and lentils. Extra firm tofu is about $2.50 for 14 ounces and 40 grams of protein. Plant-based ground is about $6 for 12 ounces. If you are optimizing for cost per gram of protein, tofu and beans win by a wide margin, and the plant-based products are a convenience purchase.

Frozen aisle wins

• Frozen diced onions and peppers, for the nights you will not chop
• Frozen garlic cubes, which are better than jarred
• Frozen chopped spinach, which costs a third of fresh and is better in anything cooked
• Frozen fruit, for oatmeal and smoothies
• Frozen naan and paratha, which take three minutes in a dry pan and are excellent
• Frozen edamame, the cheapest quick protein in the store