Does cooking at home beat a $1 cheeseburger?

This post comes from partner blog The Simple Dollar.

This is a question I had from a reader (we’ll get to the cheeseburger in a minute):

"My question is about budgeting for food. I’ll be starting my first real job soon so I’m setting up a list of monthly expenses. I haven’t yet lived on my own, so I don’t have a good basis for estimating monthly food expenses. Could you shed some light on the matter?"

My rule of thumb is this: For one month, save the receipts for every food item that you buy, whether it’s at the grocery store, eating out, or anywhere else. Then add 10 percent to that. That should be your food budget for a month.

• Bing: What's really in your Happy Meal?
  

Why add 10 percent?

I find that almost every budget works better with a bit of breathing room in it. Most months, you’re better off coming in under budget so that you can put the excess away for debt repayment or savings. Also, this allows you to easily handle small emergencies within your monthly budget. You already have the slack in place to handle a blown tire, for instance.

"On that note, I’ve read many of your articles about the advantages of preparing food at home. I’ve always been told that this option is less expensive than eating out, but intuitively it seems like the cheapest fast-food options might be less expensive. For example, is there any way I can prepare an item -- even assuming I buy ingredients on sale or in bulk -- and have it cost less per serving than a $1 cheeseburger from McDonald’s? Negative externalities notwithstanding, is it a better option financially? Can you provide a cost-per-serving analysis for some of your recipes to better answer this question?"

OK, let’s break it down. I can get a double cheeseburger from my local McDonald's for $1.07. It weighs 5.8 ounces, has 440 calories, and has 23 grams of fat (here’s more nutrition facts on the item), which is 35 percent of the daily recommended allowance of fat.

I will say that in terms of caloric content, it is a pretty good deal, but the calories you get are pretty unhealthy. I can certainly see why people with limited budgets and growing children might go for such things, even though it’s far from the best choice.

Anyway, there are roughly three ounces of meat on the burger, plus cheese, ketchup and a bun, meaning you can make 16 burgers of equivalent size from three pounds of hamburger meat.

Using the Global Grocery List and other online sources, I obtained some prices for the materials you would need to construct 16 such cheeseburgers.

• 3 pounds hamburger @ $1.99 lb. = $5.97
• 16 slices cheese, store brand = $1.99
• 16 hamburger buns, actually 2 packs of 8 = $3.98
• 1 small bottle ketchup = $1.50

… for a total of $13.44. One doesn’t have to pay sales tax on these products as they’re staple foods. Sixteen McDonald's double cheeseburgers, on the other hand, cost $17.12.

If you want to do this in bulk, just grill all of the burgers, then freeze them, separating them with pieces of wax paper. Pull out however many you want per meal, warm them up, then assemble them with the bun and whatever items you want on it.

There are other benefits here as well. If you make your own burgers, you can grill them yourself, making them taste fantastic and allowing a lot of the fat to drip out of the meat, making for a leaner, healthier burger. You can also choose the exact condiments you want on it -- I like just a hint of mayonnaise on mine. You can also include other items that make it healthier or tastier -- lettuce, tomato -- at your discretion.

In other words, you can make a healthier, tastier version of the McDonald's $1 double cheeseburger at home for less than $1 per sandwich. And if you can beat the lowest common denominator in fast food, you can easily beat the price point of most anything else you would eat out.

Other interesting articles from The Simple Dollar:

• Battling the convenience and costs of fast food
• I hate leftovers: Fighting the battle with recycled food -- and winning
• Eight simple ways to reduce food costs