Morning. Just to say she was in fact on twitter yesterday, because she 'liked' this comment about That Man's show.
View attachment 1708290
Let me speak on this for a minute because I have FEELINGS (not really lol, just a relevant anecdote). The other day my mum bought a small amount of mince for me along with her own. I was like 'oh great I'll make a bolognese'. I was going to bulk it out with a tin of lentils a la Jamie's suggestion on his programme. However, after some deep thought and soul-searching (again not really) I decided to give my mum back the mince because it's just not worth the cost of gas for me to be making one, maybe two, portions of bolognese. That's the whole point of the programme - how to reduce energy costs while making family meals which will last for more than a day. If you can't afford more than 250g of meat, I suggest mince and tatties or something which isn't going to be on the hob for an hour or more. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk etc.
I think the problem is, most hearty/flavoursome, meat dishes do require long slow cooks to give them that depth and richness (especially if they are tomato based ), mince obviously takes a lot less time to cook compared to chunks of say stewing steak/cheap cuts but really anything that’s got a lot of liquid from stock/tomatoes needs the cooking time for reduction and infusion to really give it that depth of flavour. Lots of folk turn to those type of meals in the winter for comfort/nutrition. No stew based foods are going to be cheap on energy, it’s really quite a scary thought that even people who know how to budget and bulk out these traditional peasant type meals, with pulses and veggies, to stretch it out and reduce the cost per portion, have to consider the extortionate cost of cooking it. I don’t think any chef has the answer on those type of meals because you just can’t reduce cooking time if you want authentic taste. I was raised on this type of cooking because we were poor, mince,onions, carrots and potato was recycled daily from potato hash, cottage pie, mince and tatties, potato hash with pastry top (we’d literally have that combination every day), but there was a lot of us and it’s what we had plus bread and marge (we couldn’t afford butter Jack!) but the cost of cooking it was never the issue, the issue was if my mum could afford to buy those ingredients and make them last out the week until my dad was paid.
I’m traditionally a big bulk cooker, I make lots of soups/bolognaise/stews and freeze them, I’m not a poor and even I’m watching my smart me spinning around like a Jack Monroe on snow and crapping myself. The reality is that most will have to weigh up the cheaper shop (so mince, tinned tomatoes, root veg etc) and the energy cost v ready meals/more expensive food and the cost to store and heat it. No chef including our smol pixie has the specific answer to this yet because there’s no universal formula for everyone. It’s going to be a matter of taking the relevant tips from all sources and working out what works best for you/your family.
What I do know for sure is I’d rather put my faith in a trained chef with decades of experience who has provided some absolute winners for my family than some charlatan with zero experience.
ETA - I see many ninnies have made similar points already