What a meal actually costs
Most households know roughly what the weekly shop comes to, but far fewer know what any single dinner costs once you break it down to a plate. A bag of rice lasts weeks, a jar of spice lasts months, and none of that gets totted up when you're stood at the hob wondering if tonight's chilli was worth it compared with ordering one in.
The cost per portion estimator takes the ingredients you actually used for a meal and works out what each portion cost.
How the sum gets done
You enter each ingredient, how much of it the recipe used, and what that amount cost. The tool adds those up and divides the total by how many portions the meal makes. That's the whole calculation. It's the same arithmetic you'd do with a receipt and a calculator, just without having to do it by hand every time you want to check a recipe.
What you need to hand
- Each ingredient used in the recipe
- The quantity of that ingredient the recipe calls for
- What that quantity cost, or a reasonable estimate of it
- How many portions the finished dish makes
The closer those prices are to what you actually paid, the closer the result is to what the meal actually cost you. Supermarket prices move around and differ between retailers and regions, so treat the figure as a working estimate.
Why it's worth doing properly
A cost per portion figure does something a total shop never can: it shows you which part of a specific meal is driving the price up. Mince, chicken thighs and cheese tend to dominate a dish's cost far more than the vegetables or store cupboard items sat alongside them. Once you can see that, you can see what a swap would actually save.
Spotting the expensive line
If chicken thighs are carrying most of the cost of a curry, swapping them for canned chickpeas changes the total in a way you can check. The estimator doesn't tell you to make that swap. It just shows you, in pounds and pence, what the ingredient list is costing, so the decision is yours to make with the numbers in front of you.
Where the figure can mislead you
A cost per portion number is only as good as what went into it, and a few things commonly throw it off.
- Prices vary by shop and by region, so a figure built on one set of prices won't match another household's shop exactly
- Store cupboard staples you already own, such as flour, oil or spices, can be hard to price per use, and leaving them out understates the real cost
- Buying a larger pack than the recipe needs means the leftover portion of that pack isn't really free, even though it feels free the next time you cook
- Offers and reduced items on the day you shop can make a single meal look cheaper than it will be most weeks
Because of this, the estimator can give you a figure that's off from what you'll actually pay next time you're in the shop. It's a way of comparing meals against each other and against ordering in, not a guarantee of what Tuesday's dinner will cost to the penny.
Using it alongside the rest of your week
Cost per portion is one piece of a wider picture. Once you know what a meal costs, the Cook vs Order Break-Even Calculator can show how that stacks up against a takeaway for the same night. If you're planning further ahead, the Weekly Meal Budget Planner uses the same kind of per-meal thinking across a full week's cooking. And if the cost is being pushed up by ingredients sat unused in the cupboard, the Pantry Staples Checker is worth a look before you shop again.