Rustlers burgers

They. Are.Vile

They are my dirty pleasure. I love them when I am hung over.

However they are vile things.

My boys love them.

Yes, I am a terrible mother, feeding my kids absolute cr@p.

Nope, we cook from scratch most nights. Tonight I have cooked roast new potatoes, stuffed tomatoes and baked Cornish Sole.

Now I just need the electric man to go so I can eat it!

Ready meals as in one stop jobs (e.g. chicken, rice, veg in a tray)? No.

Or processed food that comes in tubs and is oven-baked to be served alongside some other stuff you've actually cooked (e.g. veggie lasagne)? Yes.

I'm impressed they are 40% beef

Occasionally I do - but very rare we cook from scratch but there is one hidden in the freezer

95% of our meals are from scratch, but for a lazy night we'll get a meal deal, so a big tray of pasta, salad, garlic bread to eat on the sofa in front of a movie

If I am too poor to buy ingredients to cook from scratch (like I was this week!) I do buy ready meals. They don't taste as bad as that rib thing though. And I just can't get over the fact my cat turned his nose up to it.

Never. Ever would I try anything like that...

I just don't get how my cat eats the garbage that comes out of the sachets I buy him but he refused the Rustlers BBQ rib! I don't understand! ?

Lots of people say this but I don't get it. For me it's always cheaper to cook from scratch than to buy a ready meal. I'll plan my meals for the week, portion everything out and it always works out cheaper.

The only "ready meals" I buy are things like pizza or veggie burgers and that is once a week tops.

On offer at Tesco you say?

*rushes off before they sell out*

I would bloomin love to but as they all seem to include wheat, dairy or tomatoes it means we have to cook nearly everything from scratch☹️

Although I do batch cook as much as possible so have our own ready meals to access soemtimes!

I can get a lasagne for £1 as a ready meal. If I make it myself for OH and me I have to buy mince which is £4 alone, white sauce, cheese, pasta, tomato passata, herbs etc list goes on. So it works out cheaper for me in that sense. Less effort as well and saves me putting the oven on.

I don't mind ready meals for when we are working mad hours or going out or I'm baking (kitchen is tiny!)

when we were renovating the house we didn't have a kitchen we lived on those big family ready meals as all we had was a microwave in the living room. I wouldn't be past living on them if we were short of money though.

H eats those burgers from time to time (mostly when we were working at a bar) but I can't even stand the smell.

I get it that they are cheap for a one off meal and are convenient but you aren't necessarily getting the best bang for your buck. The asda smart price lasagne only contains 300 calories and wouldn't fill my back teeth so I'd need to spend more money on other food throughout the day. Whereas a homemade lasagne is probably pushing 800 calories per portion and we usually have enough left over to feed us the next day too. Really my point was that over the course of a week/month it generally works out cheaper to cook and freeze extra portions than to buy ready meals every night. Though I enjoy cooking and that probably makes a big difference.

Never had one of those burgers but I do practically live off M&S and Waitrose ready meals which is pretty shocking considering I am a qualified chef and could pretty much cook anything I wanted from scratch, Its just my OH is sooooo fussy and we work different times so I cant be arsed for just me.

The burgery things are ok, but I have never fancied the rib thingy.

I do know what you mean about not being bothered to cook just for yourself. I enjoy cooking for other people but jsut for myself seems too much effort!

I don't eat ready meals every day of the week and don't eat much anyway so a 300 calorie meal is fine for me

I tend to cook from scratch but sometimes I do love a good dirty burger! My guilty pleasure used to be those microwave kebabs where there's 2 in a box for a quid but then I had a really rank one so haven't touched one since. If I put them in the basket at the supermarket Boy would say "you dirty ***" ?

I was censored!! The *** should read "b@st@rd"

I came home from work yesterday to find a Rustlers burger in the fridge.

OH had also bought several bottles of cider too, so I wasn't too hard on him.

He maintains that they are good post-pub food.

But then, I've been known to come home from the pub and rustle up pasta with homemade pesto before. If I get cravings, I MUST have what I'm craving or I'll never be satisfied, and they seem to be magnified when I'm drunk. Like, recently, I've been craving these coconut macaroons we had at the Gaffers festival a couple of years ago (yes, they were THAT good; warm, soft, fresh from the oven). You can't buy them or order them online so I'm making my own. But, you need shredded coconut (not dessicated) to make them...which isn't too widely available here. So, I've spent £8 ordering in coconut from a specialist American food shop so I can make them!

Food snob? Moi?

I have the cheeseburger one every couple of months. Also shamefully pot noodles... When I am on site and its cold and wet I need something hot to eat which is easily cooked and will warm me up.

Rustlers ?

I regularly buy those box takeaway meal thingies, but never ever ever buy pasta ready meals. It's just sooooo ridiculously easy to make yourself, why would you?

It's always cheaper to cool from scratch than get a ready meal? I don't understand this.

We eat things that can be shoved in the oven for when we have late shifts. I don't think I've eaten a microwave ready mean since I was at uni though. They just taste so bland? My ultimate poor/ lazy dinner is pasta and pesto. Bag of pasta is 30p from tesco and jar of pesto 99p. There's a couple of servings there so much cheaper than one of those microwave jobs.

Depends what you're after, and how many people you're cooking for, and how much time you've got. Meat's expensive. I could buy a lasagne for one much cheaper than I could make a lasagne for one.

Well of course. But when you live alone you don't tend to rustle up a huge roast dinner or a lasagne for one would you? I used to split a packet of mince up into 3, make the white sauce- job done.

Lets not forget you can buy value mince for £1.50 a packet, if that was to be split then you are looking at about 50p per serving for it.

i can hear the cries of 'but I don't want value meat' however as the op is happy to spend £1 on a lasagne I'm guessing the meat content quality is not that high on the agenda.

I think 'meat' is the key. I'm guessing the quality of meat in a home made meal will be significantly better than that of a £1 meal. I hate chicken in ready meals, just tastes so processed and ***. I am partial to the odd ready made lasagne or sausage and mash though ? and agree cooking from scratch can be expensive.

I don't think cooking from scratch is expensive, especially now I'm living alone. I get mince from the butcher, it's good quality and doesnt shrink. 300g is about £2 and with that I can make a big spag bol or mini lasagnes and freeze them. Ready meals are tiny and normally £1 on their own which soon mounts up when you're doing your shopping.

ETA: Trust me - I take a calculator around Asda with me.

Agree on the chicken ready meals, it tastes like in-flight pap!

I bought a whole chicken from M&S the other week for a fiver. It fed me and OH and my parents for sunday roast, 3 of us at a rissotto on monday (meat and stock) and 2 of us on Tuesday having the legs. now that is good value. Yes i needed to do other things with it but without costing it all out I dont think it was that much. I know the veggies with the roast were £1.50!

However this weekend OH is craving a Kebab, sober.