Next Time You Feel Guilty Eating At A Restaurant Instead Of Cooking, Read This

Cooking your own food takes skill and time. The skills to cook can’t often be taught from a cookbook or TV program alone. For so many, we really need to shadow somebody in the kitchen. Cooking also requires careful planning so ingredients don’t go to waste. But many people prefer to cook over restaurant food because we’ve all heard that cooking saves money. But does it? Read on for an investigation.

Say you’d like a Taco Tuesday dinner. To cook it you’ll need the ground beef, which is about $7 for a pound. The taco shells cost about $4 for 12 tacos. Tomatoes cost about $2 for 12 tacos’ worth, and onions also cost about $2. A bag of shredded cheese costs about $6. Shredded lettuce costs about $3. Taco seasoning costs about $2. Sour cream costs about $3. Let’s say you already have the cooking oil. Let’s say you already have the pans. Let’s say your gas or electric bill doesn’t go up by much from the taco cooking. Let’s say you didn’t use too much gasoline to get to the supermarket. That is $29 for 12 tacos or $2.42 per taco. At Taco Bell you can get a taco for $1.97.

If you’re living alone, do you really want to eat 12 tacos? The cost of making 12 tacos and the cost of making, say, two tacos, is about the same, about $29 or $15 a taco. Yes, you can eat more tacos on Wednesday. But if you want to use up all of the ingredients you made, you will have to eat tacos for dinner six nights in a row. 

Let’s say you buy ground beef again to make hamburgers for another $7 a pound to make cheeseburgers. You could make about six cheeseburgers with that amount of ground beef. You’ll need about $2 of tomatoes and about $2 of onions again. American cheese costs about $5. Shredded lettuce costs about $3, because the rest of your taco lettuce probably went bad in the fridge. You’ll also need hamburger buns, which are $4. Pickles cost $5. Let’s say you already have the ketchup, mayo, and mustard in your fridge ($4, $4, and $4). Overall, these 6 cheeseburgers cost about $28, or about $4.67 a cheeseburger. At McDonald’s, you can get a cheeseburger for about $2.50.

Finally, let’s get away from the ground beef for a second and go to pizza. How much does it cost to make your own pizza versus buying a slice at a pizzeria? Pizza dough or a ready made pizza crust both cost about $4. Tomato sauce costs about $5, and shredded mozzarella costs about $7. Without any toppings, your pizza costs $16. The first 16” pizza I looked up was $15.25.

The pros and cons of cooking versus restaurant food are multitudinous. Yes, cooking is a fun craft. Yes, it can be romantic to cook for a significant other. Maybe cooking food yourself is healthier than restaurant food. Yes, restaurant food can be very tasty. Yes, restaurants get the spices just right. Yes, restaurant food can be more filling. And yes, you are supporting the economy either way.

I encourage readers to do their own math. Find out if your favorite meal costs more or less being cooked by you or being outsourced to a professional.