The key to enjoying it is (1) really caring about eating good food and (2) deeply feeling how absolutely horseshit the cost of good pre-prepared food is. After a while the cooking part just becomes instinct and muscle memory, and repetition/practice is the key to that
Amen. A single $15 restaurant serving of Thai curry, for example, is enough to pay for a whole pot with 5-6 servings at home using the exact same curry paste and coconut milk that the restaurants use. For the price of a $10 McDonalds meal, you can buy a pound of USDA Prime top sirloin steak at Costco, or a pound of t-bone or ribeye if you’ve got low cost ethnic markets in your area. Costco chicken breasts are consistently $3 per pound and sous vide makes it foolproof. Shrimp is $5 per pound on sale (make sure to check weekly ads!). If you want to splurge, get a big tenderloin, salmon, or some jumbo shrimp for $10 per pound. Entire meals can be had for less than the delivery fee and tip on a single entree. You can even make entire meals just from the vegetable and meat scraps!
If you’re like me and eat nothing but whole foods prepared at home and shop around at bargain/ethnic markets, the costs are down right ridiculous. Most weekly vegetable and fruit stock ups are under $30/week. When I was unemployed I was eating like a king for less than $300 a month with at least a half pound serving of meat each day. Most of the budget went to meat and avocados.
It takes a lot of experience to balance that with time though. It took me many years to discover techniques like sous vide that are fire and forget, and build up a stable of recipes like the Thai curry where the ingredients can be prepped while cooking to cut down on prep time. It used to be very time consuming but the rewards are worth it.
> For the price of a $10 McDonalds meal, you can buy a pound of USDA Prime top sirloin steak at Costco, or a pound of t-bone or ribeye if you’ve got low cost ethnic markets in your area.
Uh what? Top sirloin is $15ish per pound where I live, with ribeye more like $20/pound. You are getting some insanely cheap steak if you can get it at favorable prices compared to McDonald's.
Check the USDA retail beef price survey; you might be overpaying for beef. It does break things down by region. Vacuum sealed USDA Choice or other graded beef doesn't care if you buy it from Aldi or from a high end grocer.
I can't remember the last time I saw USDA Prime top sirloin and have no idea what it would cost. $10/lb for USDA Prime anything seems low to me too, but beef prices may have gone up since OP remembers.
> $10/lb for USDA Prime anything seems low to me too, but beef prices may have gone up since OP remembers.
Nope, that's from a Southern California Costco in a high cost of living area and I last bought Prime top sirloin steaks two weeks ago. They're sometimes even cheaper with the USDA Select going for $7-8/lb and Prime for $8-9/lb. The Costco USDA Prime ribeyes are more expensive ($20/lb for steaks, $25/lb for rounds) so I only buy them for special occasions.
The cheaper (and lower quality) ribeyes I usually buy are from a halal market that's in the next city over. They're not USDA graded but you can look at the current weekly ad [1], which has ribeye roasts for $4.49/lb. They usually have steaks for $5-6/lb so you don't have to cut up the roast yourself. They even had $6-7/lb t-bone steaks a few weeks ago
For that $10 McDonalds meal you can even upgrade to their $9.99/lb beef tenderloin, which gives you eazy 8oz fillet mignons for $10 a piece (plus 8oz of leftover scraps for a braise or soup).
I don't prefer top sirloin, and I don't usually buy the packs of individual steaks at Costco - I'll break down a rib or strip roast instead - so it's kind of invisible to me, but you're right - right now here USDA Prime top sirloin is $11/lb at Costco and choice is $9/lb. A USDA Choice top butt subprimal at a restaurant supply is a little under $6/lb for comparison. The same restaurant supply has utility grade Halal ribeyes for $7/lb in 10lb boxes.
I see a lot of ethnic stores selling meats and vegetables at essentially wholesale prices - or lower! - too. I sometimes wonder about how that works. It's not economy of scale.
> I sometimes wonder about how that works. It's not economy of scale.
I asked the owner of the Halal market and they explained that there are several factors going on:
When they buy meat, they write long-ish term contracts with small meat suppliers, who then give them deals on the high demand stuff if they take the low demand stuff off their hands. It allows the suppliers to plan in advanced much better since most of a cow will be sold to one place and gives them consistent revenue for years at a time. Since these supermarkets serve demographics that are used to buying organ meats, tripe, and other cuts undesirable to Americans, they get much better deals on everything else. Some other cuts that are in high demand like oxtail aren't that much cheaper at the Halal market because there's only so much oxtail on a cow.
He also said that the turnover in the store is much faster than in bigger markets like Ranch 99 or HMart, so they can afford to keep prices low by avoiding spoilage. They are also much more seasonal which aligns with their customer expectations so unlike Ralphs or Costco, they don't waste money on expensive meat or produce just so that they can have it consistently year round.
