Seb's Speghetti Bolognese - Part II

Part II - The Ingredients Analysis

So I said yesterday I would go through each ingredient and show how little everything costs.

I keep my word.

So I will go through each individual ingredient, get the package price, get the ingredient price (if they aren't the same) and finally total them to get an average price per serving.

Here's the list in case you have forgotten:

Ingredients:

400g of Beef Mince

White onion – chopped

2 Tbsp. Tomato Puree

400g Chopped Tomatoes

1 Apricot (Or 3 dried apricots) chopped

3 Cloves of Garlic (Or 1 Tbsp. of “Seb’s Garlic Paste”)

For Seasoning:

Salt, pepper, sugar, fresh basil, sage, oregano

So first up is the mince and meat is generally going to be the most expensive ingredient in any meal unless you have something really extravagant to go with it. A 900g pack from Aldi (which is much better than Sainsbury's for quality!) is a mere £2.49 (£1.11 for 400g). You can get a 500g pack for £1.99 as well (£1.60 for 400g). This is compared to Sainsbury's mince packs of 500g cost between £3.60 and £4.00.

Next up is the onion. 9p per 100g at ASDA and a measured average of 140g-150g for a medium onion makes it about 14p for an onion. 

If you buy in bulk from ASDA you can get 2kg of onions for as little as £1.17 making each onion 8.8p!

 The third ingredient is the tomato puree. Be aware that if you are using "Seb's Tomato Sauce" then you won't use this and you can go by how much of the sauce you use and how much per 100g it costs. (Recipe coming soon!) 

You can buy tomato puree from almost any supermarket, usually in a tube or jar. At ASDA one 200g tube is 48p. 2 Tbsp. is around 30g so this equals 7.2p of tomato puree. 

You can store tomato puree for long while in the fridge as long as you screw the cap back on the tube so this is a good thing to have around!

The next ingredient is the tin of chopped tomatoes. As long as you don't cut yourself opening the tin and incur massive medical costs these are very cheap.

Pick a 4 pack up by Napolina for £2.44 (61p a can) at ASDA or Tesco or get 1 can for just 31p at ASDA.

Fresh or dried apricots are next up, these are totally optional but I think it adds an exciting twist on an old classic, but of course if you don't like them, leave it out.

Get a box of 6 fresh apricots for £1.00 at ASDA, although you're only using one in the recipe, possibly less. So get this if you REALLY like apricots!

You can also get a bag of dried apricot (ASDA) for just 32p for 40g (plenty for the recipe). Or even a tin of apricots in syrup, again from ASDA for 68p. You wouldn't use the whole can so lets say 34p (half) worth of this can in the recipe.

 The last ingredient is the garlic. This should be an ingredient that is always stocked. I always get a few cloves when I do my weekly shop, just because it can go in anything. A lot of people think 

"Eugh all your food will just taste of garlic!"

Well they're wrong. Garlic is very similar to onion, it is used to draw flavours out of the other ingredients. A clove or two in an entire dish, you wouldn't really taste the distinctive garlic taste, however it makes a hell of a difference to the flavours you would be able to taste.

Take a curry for instance, do you taste that distinctive garlic taste in a tikka masala or a korma? No but i promise you there will be garlic in every curry you have had from a restaurant.

Now in an Italian dish like spaghetti bolognese, you would use maybe 2, 3 or even 4 cloves and get a good hint of garlic.

A garlic clove weighs on average about 5g. Also each garlic bulb hold between 6 and 14 cloves. You can get a bulb for between 23p and 47p (the 47p bulb has bigger cloves) or you can get a string of garlic (500g) for £3.00. All these prices are from ASDA.

So on average I have calculated it to be between 3p and 6p per clove. This does depend on size and remember the larger the clove the easier it will be to peel and chop so if you are a beginner cook, use the large ones!

Ok so that's a total of maximum 30p for garlic. Let's total up all the main ingredients, I'll come to the herbs later

Mince	£1.11 - £1.60
Onion	£0.08 - £0.14
Tomato Puree	£0.08
Tin of chopped Tomatoes	£0.31 - £0.61
Apricot	£0.17 - £0.34
Garlic	£0.30
Total	£2.05 - £3.24
Spaghetti	£0.21 - £0.39

 I added a portion of spaghetti for one in the bottom row. This is based on buying either the 1kg pack (£1.34) or the 500g pack by Napolina (£1.28) from ASDA.

The recipe should serve at least 4 people so dividing the total by 4 you get the price per head of this recipe. £0.52 - £0.81. Plus the spaghetti:

£0.73 - £1.20

Now this is a meal that can be cooked in under 15 minutes with a bit of practice so compare it to a packet meal that is not only significantly worse for you in terms of your health (and ego) but also more expensive!

My recipe even pips Tesco to the post on cheapest. 

(And let's take a guess at which will taste nicer?)

Picture courtesy of shitefood.co.uk

74p!

So remember to leave a comment ...

...and visit the YouTube Channel and Subscribe!