Feeling the squeeze? These are 10 of the biggest wastes of money in food shopping today

Shop seasonally. Shop around. Shop the sales. Choose house-brand products. Choose lesser cuts of meat. Choose unwashed potatoes, whole foods, bulk-buy and meal-prep. Choose supermarket rewards programs, meat-free dinners and snap-frozen. Choose DIY curry paste and wondering why you’re elbows deep in galangal on a Sunday morning. Choose a budget.

The internet has always been deep with “how to save on your grocery bill” advice, but with the cost of living going haywire over the past few years, shopping advice is coming thicker and faster. Thanks to ruthless marketing and the carrot of convenience, however, the best-laid grocery plans can easily come undone. My name is Callan, and I’ve dabbled with pre-grated parmesan.

Here are 10 more of the biggest wastes of money in food shopping today, albeit with products spruiking dubious health claims excluded. That stuff belongs on another list altogether (and manuka honey, you’re on notice).

Lemon juice

When god hands you a bottle of reconstituted lemon juice, throw it in the back of the fridge and squeeze some fresh fruit instead. In this instance, the make-your-own cost will be more expensive than anything store-bought, but bottled lemon juice is to the fresh-squeezed stuff what a crayon is to a just-sharpened Staedtler. Avoid.

A second salt grinder

I once lived with a flatmate who would buy a new plastic mill every time we ran out of salt or pepper, and every time I would tell him that cheaper refill bags exist. “But it’s too hard to pour salt through the tiny grinder hole!” Ergh. Brian, if you’re reading this, yes it was me who broke your Red Dwarf mug.

Vanilla sugar

Honestly, how hard is it to scrape vanilla seeds out of a pod and whiz them with a cup of sugar?

Edible flowers

As a rule of thumb, the more edible flowers a cafe uses to garnish its waffles, the more chance the chef is trying to distract from their bog-standard cooking. A punnet of pansies doesn’t come cheap either, and you can expect to pay around $12 for an ingredient that doesn’t taste like much at all.

Marigold, to be fair, has its merits, but if the garnish isn’t adding anything to the dish besides aesthetics, then it’s a waste of money and plate space.

Pre-chopped vegetables

Pre-sliced meat, I get it. Maybe you’re home late from work and only have the energy to throw already-chopped chicken in a wok with broccoli and oyster sauce.

That broccoli, however, should absolutely be purchased whole and cut into florets in less than 20 seconds. See also, cauliflower, potato, celery, carrots and mushrooms. It should go without saying that all this pre-chopped stuff is a massive waste of packaging too.

(NB: Pre-diced onion gets a pass if you’re cooking for a large group, and pre-chopped pumpkin is good to go at all times. There are few better ways to ruin a knife or finger than hacking into a butternut.)

Gold leaf

Speaking of dumb garnishes, here it is folks, the Grand Poobah of pointless ingredients: gold. The noble metal scientifically, tastes like nothing. Zilch. Zero. So why anyone would want to pay a stupid amount of cash to have a steak covered in the stuff is beyond me. There’s a “fool’s gold” joke here somewhere.

Truffle oil

Fresh truffle is a waste of money itself when used stupidly (shaved over steak) instead of smartly (tucked under the skin of a chook and roasted). But at least the fresh tuber is unlikely to taste ghastly. Synthetic truffle oil smells like a teenager’s tennis shoe and eau de armpit. You’ll also be squandering money on the rest of the dish it destroys.

Bottled water

Single-use plastic is bad. You can get perfectly fine water from a tap. No further statements, your honour.

Garlic butter

Let’s do the maths. At the time of writing, Coles is advertising Lurpak garlic butter for $3.50 per 125-gram stick. Or, for $8, you can buy 400 grams of non-garlic Lurpak (or an even cheaper butter) and whip in a few crushed cloves. The end result will taste significantly better, and you can throw in some fresh herbs while you’re at it.

Fancy crackers

Every time I visit the supermarket or a “gourmet” food store for crackers to serve with cheese, there’s another brand of savoury biscuit asking me to splurge. I always bloody do it, too. “Maybe this will be The One! The perfect cracker!” But every new cracker leads to the same conclusion: you just can’t beat a Captain’s Table.