Costing out the curry

Looking at the curry base recipe I made successfully last night, I have estimated it cost me about 16p a portion.  Here's how I worked that out:

2lb onions [bought a 5kg bag from Lidl for £1.99] - 40p

4cm piece of ginger - 9p [Tesco]

6 cloves of garlic - 22p  [Lidl]

3 green chillis - 27p  [Lidl]

1 tin chopped tomatoes - 31p [Lidl]

25ml oil - 3p [Lidl]

1/2 cup chopped coriander - 35p [used half of a live plant from Tesco]

1 tsp salt - 2p [App Foods]

Spices: ground coriander, ground cumin, turneric, garam masala - bought large bags and used small amounts so I am allowing 31p for spices, but this is probably an over-estimate - but it rounds the total nicely!

The original recipes suggests that it will make 20 portions, so that would be an excellent 10p a portion, but I have packaged it in existing tubs I had, and it has provided me with 4 tubs.  I know that 3 people will eat each tub, so that makes 12 basic portions at this stage.  I don't know whether there would be leftovers so I am not going to bank on those just yet, but that would increase the number of portions.

The other benefit of this is that I know exactly what is in the sauce; no hydrogenated anything, no fancy preservatives, only honest basic foods and spices.  

The FH tasted it last night and his comment was, "That tastes Good!" so I take that as a positive sign.  I think that curry will be on the menu this weekend so that the guys can test it out.

Costing this out proves that in the long run it compares very favourably with any bought sauce - the cheapest jar in Tesco is their own "discount" brand at 79p a jar.

I have enough of everything else bar chillis to make another batch or even two, so I will be picking up more chillis somewhere today, and then I will be making more over the weekend.  It makes sense, whilst I have the fresh garlic and coriander and ginger.  I love the way that this base can be used to make different kinds of curries just by varying the ingredients that are added when the final dish is cooked - take a look at the original blog entries to see some of the variations.