Sometimes the homemade version costs more or the same as the commercial convenience food. Why is that?

We'll first rule out poor shopping (paying more) for ingredients, as I know we all shop carefully for the foods we buy, even if we're not buying super large sizes of everything.

There's also the thought that commercial products are manufactured in bulk, working with bulk-priced ingredients. But I don't think that's the whole story.

The real answer, I believe, is we tend to use better ingredients and more of the good part of the ingredient list than the manufacturers do. 

Take the cream of celery soup I made the other day. You can see my ingredients. If I were to make a label for what's in mine, the first ingredient (the most by volume) would be celery, followed by milk, then onion, then stock, flour, butter, oil, and seasonings.

Let's compare the homemade ingredient list to that of a commercial cream of celery soup.

Here's an image of the label from a can of Great Value Cream of Celery Soup:

What? The first ingredient is water. Shocking, huh? It doesn't say dehydrated celery, just celery. Cream is listed as less than 2%, following salt. So there's less cream in the commercial "cream" of celery soup than there is salt. And there's no butter at all! The fat used is entirely soybean oil. If this isn't enough to make me want to always make my own, there are several ingredients on the list that I'm not interested in consuming.

So, when you make your version of a commercial product from scratch at home, and it doesn't seem like it's saving you much money, think about the nutrients that you're getting in your homemade product. Think about the whole food ingredients that went into your version. Think about the ingredients that you didn't include in your scratch version. 

Like I said yesterday, with my cream of celery soup, I use 1/2 that recipe for a tuna casserole to feed the 4 of us. With the celery and onion that each of us are getting in our portion of the soup alone, it amounts to about a half-serving of vegetables. That's before I add the other vegetables that make my dish a casserole. 

So, as I said, I did save money by making my own cream of celery soup. So what about other examples of convenience items where it may cost a bit more to make your own? How about boxed mac and cheese? Walmart's Great Value Original Macaroni and Cheese sells for 58 cents. That's pretty cheap. It serves 3 people. If I were to make a scratch version to feed three, I estimate my batch would cost about $1.00 to $1.10. 

My ingredient list would read as follow, from greatest amount to least: pasta, milk, cheddar cheese, butter, salt, ground mustard powder, pepper. Pretty basic and pretty simple.

Here's the ingredient list for the Great Value mac and cheese taken from Walmart's website:

There are cheese-like ingredients and derivatives, but no plain old cheese on the list. The "cheddar cheese seasoning" first ingredient is whey. Whey is a by-product of the cheese-making process. Now I know that whey is sometimes added to "health food" products, like protein shakes. But do we really think Walmart is adding whey to their mac and cheese because of its health value? I'm sure that the recipes for these products are made with profit in mind as a co-op between the kitchen and the financial wings of the company.

Anyway, I'm glad that my homemade versions contain real food ingredients that not only am I familiar with, but my great grandmother would be as well.

So my answer to why a homemade version isn't always abundantly cheaper than its commercial counterpart I believe has to do with the quality of the ingredients. Better quality simply costs more. But it's also tastier and most of the time it's better for us.

Condensed Cream of Celery Soup for Casseroles (Freezable)

Here's another recipe featuring one of the budget fall vegetables that I wrote about last week, celery. 

This isn't one of those "must follow this recipe exactly" sort of recipes. Play around with the seasonings. Add just a bit of what's recommended then adjust according to what you have on hand and what you prefer.

This recipe makes about 2 10.5-ounce cans worth of condensed cream of celery soup. This is so good in tuna casserole. In my household of 4 adults, it's double what I need for a single tuna casserole using 2 cans of tuna and about 1  1/4 cups of dried macaroni noodles plus a cup or two of vegetables. I freeze the leftover half of the batch to use in a future casserole. 

Condensed Cream of Celery Soup

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup diced onion
2 1/2 cups diced celery and leaves (if you like a "whiter" soup, use only the ribs, no leaves)
1 clove garlic, minced
1/3 cup flour
1 1/2 cups rich milk or milk substitute
1/2 cup stock (vegetable or chicken) or water
1 to 1  1/4 teaspoons salt (add the lesser amount and adjust according to taste)
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
3-4 quick dashes nutmeg
a pinch sugar
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/8 teaspoon celery seed
1 tablespoon butter, optional

Melt the butter in the oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Saute the onion in the melted butter/oil until translucent. Add the diced celery and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add garlic.

Stir in 1/3 cup flour. While stirring, slowly pour in the liquids (milk and stock). Cook, while continuing to stir, until the sauce thickens. 

Stir in seasonings. Remove from heat. Allow to cool for a few minutes. Blend in a pitcher blender, or with an immersion blender, or in a food processor.

For additional richness, especially if using a dairy alternative milk, swirl in 1 additional tablespoon butter. Taste for seasonings and add more if desired.

If you don't have all of the herbs and spices, this will still turn out tasty for use in a casserole.

Yields 3 cups of condensed soup or the equivalent of two 10.5 ounce cans of cream of celery soup.

This soup can be frozen to use in casseroles in the future. Stir well upon thawing. 

As for cost . . .

If I were to buy all of the above ingredients, the cost for this recipe would be about $1.30 or less for two cans worth, or 65 cents per can! Walmart's Great Value brand Cream of Celery Soup sells for 92 cents per can. Campbell's Cream of Celery sells for a whopping $1.72 per can. That's $1.30 for 2 cans homemade vs $1.82 for 2 cans Great Value or $3.44 for 2 cans Campbells. 

What if you don't love or don't have celery? You can make a thick white sauce for binding casseroles, or make a cream of whatever-vegetable-you-have condensed soup following the above recipe using said vegetable in place of celery. For the most part, the flavor of the binding condensed soup is significantly muted by the other casserole ingredients.

So there's the recipe for the condensed soup to use in casseroles. Stay tuned for tomorrow's post as a continuation of this one.