Let’s be real, we’ve all been told that cooking at home saves money. That’s the golden rule, right? Your grandmother probably said it, financial gurus preach it, and every budgeting article you’ve ever read hammers it home. Home cooking equals savings. Period.
Here’s the thing though. Sometimes that rule doesn’t hold up. In certain cases, ordering from a restaurant can actually make more financial sense than firing up your stove. I know it sounds crazy, but stick with me. The cost of specialized ingredients, the equipment you’d need to buy, the time investment, and honestly, the risk of messing it up all add up faster than you’d think. There are dishes where restaurants have such massive buying power and efficiency that they can undercut what you’d spend at home. So let’s dive in and explore which meals might actually be smarter to order out.
1. Sushi Rolls
Making sushi at home sounds like a fun weekend project until you start pricing out the ingredients. Sushi is often more economical to eat out when you factor in everything you need. You’ll need sushi-grade fish, which isn’t cheap and can be hard to find depending on where you live. Then there’s the specialized equipment like a bamboo rolling mat, extremely sharp knives, rice vinegar, nori sheets, and short-grain sushi rice.
The real kicker is the fish itself. Modern techniques used to freeze fish involve expensive equipment and higher costs are involved in handling, which restaurants can manage through bulk purchasing. For someone craving sushi once or twice a month, buying all those specialty items doesn’t make sense. You’d spend a small fortune on ingredients that might go bad before you use them again.
Restaurant sushi chefs have spent years perfecting their craft. They know how to slice fish properly, season rice perfectly, and roll everything so it doesn’t fall apart the second you pick it up. Trying to replicate that at home often results in a messy, expensive disaster. When you can grab quality rolls from your local spot without the hassle, sometimes that’s just the smarter play.
2. Vietnamese Pho
Pho is one of those soups that looks deceptively simple but demands serious commitment. A restaurant bowl can cost between ten and twenty-five dollars, whereas homemade pho can cost up to fifty dollars and several hours of your effort. That’s not a typo. The traditional broth requires beef bones, oxtail, brisket, and a whole arsenal of spices like star anise, cinnamon sticks, coriander seeds, and cardamom.
The process itself is brutal. You’re looking at charring ginger and onions, boiling bones for hours to extract every bit of flavor, skimming impurities constantly, and then simmering everything for roughly six to eight hours minimum. That’s nearly a full workday just to make soup. Most people don’t have that kind of time, especially on a weeknight when you just want a comforting bowl of noodles.
In the United States, a normal bowl of pho in a casual Vietnamese restaurant is between ten and fifteen dollars, and it’s ready in minutes. You get generous portions, fresh herbs, bean sprouts, lime, and all the fixings without turning your kitchen into a disaster zone. The convenience factor alone makes ordering out the clear winner here.
3. Rotisserie Chicken
Supermarkets and delis often sell rotisserie chickens for less than it costs to buy and cook a raw chicken. This one blows people’s minds, but it’s absolutely true. Walk into almost any grocery store and you’ll find a perfectly seasoned, golden-brown rotisserie chicken for around five to eight bucks. Now go price out a raw whole chicken, factor in the seasoning, the energy costs to run your oven for over an hour, and suddenly that premade bird looks like a steal.
The seasoning, cooking time, and energy costs involved in roasting a chicken at home add up. Stores utilize large ovens that can cook multiple chickens simultaneously, lowering their production costs. They’re also smart about it. Grocery stores often use rotisserie chickens as loss leaders to get you in the door, knowing you’ll probably grab a few other items while you’re there.
The convenience is unbeatable too. You get a hot, ready-to-eat meal without any prep work, no messy cleanup, and honestly, most store rotisserie chickens taste fantastic. You can shred the leftovers for sandwiches, tacos, or soup. It’s hard to argue with that kind of value and versatility.
4. Chinese Takeout Dishes
Dishes like General Tso’s chicken or beef with broccoli are often cheaper from a takeout place than making them at home. The variety of ingredients needed for Chinese cuisine can be expensive when purchased individually. Think about it: oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, rice wine, sesame oil, fresh ginger, Chinese five-spice powder, cornstarch for velveting meat. The list goes on and on.
Most of these ingredients come in larger bottles or packages than you’d need for a single meal. So you end up spending twenty or thirty dollars on sauces alone, most of which will sit in your pantry or fridge until they expire. Meanwhile, your local Chinese restaurant buys everything in bulk at wholesale prices and has perfected the recipes over years of practice.
Chinese restaurants benefit from bulk purchasing and streamlined cooking processes. They can also offer meal combos that add further value. Thus, Chinese takeout is typically more economical than home-cooked versions. A combo meal with an entree, rice, and an egg roll for under ten bucks? You can’t beat that at home, especially when you factor in the time and potential for culinary disaster.
5. Fast Food Burgers
Fast-food chains like McDonald’s and Burger King offer burgers at prices that are hard to beat when making them at home. The cost of ground beef, buns, cheese, lettuce, and condiments adds up quickly. These chains purchase ingredients in large quantities at lower prices, which translates directly to cheaper menu items for customers.
Let’s do some quick math. A pound of decent ground beef runs around six dollars these days. Burger buns, cheese slices, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, ketchup, mustard, and mayo all add to the total. Before you know it, you’ve spent fifteen to twenty dollars and you haven’t even turned on the grill yet. Compare that to a value menu burger for two bucks, and the numbers speak for themselves.
They often include fries and drinks in meal deals, increasing the overall value. Consequently, eating burgers out is often cheaper than preparing them at home. Sure, homemade burgers might taste better if you’re a grill master, but for a quick, cheap meal? Fast food wins on price almost every time.
6. Breakfast Sandwiches
Popular fast-food chains often have breakfast sandwich deals that are more economical than making them at home. The cost of eggs, bacon, cheese, and bread can quickly add up. When you factor in the time and effort to cook these items, the convenience and price of buying them ready-made becomes apparent. A breakfast sandwich from a chain can cost as little as two to four dollars.
Now think about making one yourself. You need to buy a package of bacon, a dozen eggs, cheese slices, and English muffins or bagels. Even buying store-brand items, you’re looking at roughly fifteen to twenty dollars minimum. Many fast-food restaurants use economies of scale to keep their prices low, something you simply can’t replicate in a home kitchen.
The time factor matters too. During a hectic morning rush, do you really want to fry bacon, scramble eggs, and toast bread? Or would you rather grab a hot sandwich through a drive-through in under five minutes? For most people juggling work and family, the answer is pretty obvious.
7. Pizza (Depending on the Type)
Pizza is tricky because it depends on what kind you’re making. Pizza orders from restaurants can easily reach twenty to twenty-five dollars for two people, while the cost of ingredients like oil, flour, yeast, cheese and tomato sauce can come in at under six dollars for a basic homemade pizza. That makes it sound like homemade wins every time, right?
Not exactly. Here’s where it gets interesting. If you want specialty pizzas with premium toppings like prosciutto, arugula, fresh mozzarella, or fancy sauces, the ingredient costs skyrocket. You’d need to buy entire packages of expensive toppings when you only need a small amount. Even with cheese and toppings, the cost per pizza tops out around five dollars for basic options, but fancy variations change the equation entirely.
Factor in delivery fees, but also consider pizza deals and specials. Many chains offer two-for-one deals or large pizzas for under ten dollars during promotional periods. When you can feed a family for twelve bucks with zero effort, that convenience sometimes outweighs the savings of homemade. Especially if you lack a pizza stone, proper oven, or the skill to stretch dough without tearing it.
8. Pho (Yes, It Deserves Another Mention)
Honestly, pho is such a perfect example that it bears repeating from a different angle. The ingredient list alone is intimidating. The brisket cost will be around thirty dollars. The bones under twenty dollars from an Asian butcher. The noodles cost under four dollars. Five dollars for a bag each of beansprouts, basil and coriander. That is definitely cheaper than the one hundred eight dollars for six medium bowls of pho noodles.
Wait, let’s break that down. If you’re making pho for six people, yes, homemade might save you money. What if you’re just one or two people craving a bowl? Now you’re stuck with massive quantities of leftover ingredients, many of which have short shelf lives. Fresh herbs wilt, noodles get soggy, and that brisket isn’t going to last forever in your fridge.
The time commitment is absurd too. We’re talking about nearly a full day of cooking for a single meal. Unless you’re meal prepping for the entire week or feeding a crowd, ordering a bowl for twelve dollars and getting it in fifteen minutes makes infinitely more sense than devoting your entire Saturday to soup.
9. Specialty Coffee Drinks
This might be controversial, but hear me out. Making a basic cup of coffee at home is obviously cheaper. What about those fancy lattes, cappuccinos, or seasonal specialty drinks? The upfront equipment costs are staggering. A decent espresso machine runs anywhere from two hundred to several thousand dollars. You’d need a milk frother, a quality grinder, espresso beans, various syrups, and the knowledge to pull a proper shot.
Professional baristas train for months to get the technique right. The pressure, temperature, grind size, and timing all have to be perfect, or you end up with bitter, undrinkable espresso. Meanwhile, your local coffee shop has already made the investment in commercial-grade equipment and trained staff. They buy beans and syrups in bulk at wholesale prices.
A specialty latte might cost five or six dollars, which sounds expensive until you calculate how many drinks you’d need to make at home just to break even on the equipment. For occasional coffee enthusiasts who want a treat a few times a week, ordering out remains the economical choice. Save your money and counter space.
10. Fried Chicken
Fried chicken seems simple enough, but the reality is messy and expensive. You need a whole chicken or chicken pieces, buttermilk for marinating, flour, a dozen different spices for the coating, and enough oil to deep fry everything. A gallon of frying oil alone costs eight to twelve dollars, and you’ll burn through it after just a couple of uses.
Then there’s the equipment. Unless you own a deep fryer or a heavy-duty pot, you’re risking oil splatters all over your stove and kitchen. The cleanup is nightmarish. Oil disposal is another hassle entirely since you can’t just pour it down the drain. You need to let it cool, strain it, and properly dispose of it, which many people forget about until they’re standing there with a pot full of greasy oil.
Meanwhile, restaurants and fast food chains have industrial fryers and buy chicken in massive bulk. They’ve perfected the seasoning blend and cooking time. A bucket of fried chicken from a chain costs roughly fifteen to twenty dollars and feeds multiple people with zero cleanup. When you factor in convenience, mess, and the risk of burning yourself with hot oil, ordering out is often the smarter move.
11. Ramen (The Real Kind, Not Instant)
Authentic ramen, not the cheap packets in the grocery store, is a labor of love that few home cooks can afford to undertake regularly. The broth alone requires pork bones, chicken carcasses, aromatics, and a minimum of twelve to twenty-four hours of simmering. Then you need to source proper ramen noodles, which aren’t typically available at regular supermarkets. You’d need chashu pork, marinated soft-boiled eggs, nori, bamboo shoots, and scallions.
The ingredient costs add up fast. Pork belly for chashu runs around eight to ten dollars per pound. You need specialized ingredients like miso paste, mirin, sake, and dashi, most of which come in larger quantities than a single recipe requires. By the time you’ve gathered everything, you’ve easily dropped forty to fifty dollars.
Compare that to a bowl of authentic ramen at a restaurant for twelve to fifteen dollars. It arrives in minutes, tastes incredible because it was made by someone who’s perfected the recipe, and you don’t have to clean up a kitchen that looks like a disaster zone. The math is simple. Unless you’re planning to make ramen every single week, ordering it out is far more economical.
12. Dim Sum
Dim sum is one of those dining experiences where the variety and skill level required make home cooking almost pointless from a cost perspective. Each dumpling type requires different fillings, wrappers, and folding techniques. Shrimp dumplings, pork buns, spring rolls, turnip cakes – each one demands unique ingredients and expertise. You’d need to buy shrimp, ground pork, bamboo shoots, shiitake mushrooms, Chinese chives, and a dozen different sauces and seasonings.
Making the wrappers from scratch is incredibly time-consuming and requires specific types of flour and technique. Even buying premade wrappers, you’re looking at hours of prep work to fill, fold, and steam dozens of dumplings. A bamboo steamer costs money, and you’d need multiple tiers to cook everything efficiently. The learning curve is steep, and your first attempts will probably be ugly and fall apart during cooking.
Dim sum restaurants serve small portions of many different items, letting you sample a variety without committing to making massive batches of each. A dim sum meal for two typically costs twenty-five to forty dollars and includes eight to ten different dishes. Trying to replicate that variety at home would cost significantly more in ingredients and time, with far less impressive results.
13. Seafood Boils
Seafood boils look fun and festive on social media, but the reality is they’re expensive and wasteful for small households. You need pounds of shrimp, crab legs, crawfish, or lobster, plus corn, potatoes, sausage, and a massive pot to boil everything in. Seafood prices fluctuate wildly, and unless you live near the coast, you’re paying premium prices for quality shellfish.
The seasoning alone is specialized. You need Old Bay or Cajun spice blends, lemons, garlic, butter, and hot sauce. A proper seafood boil pot can cost fifty dollars or more, and most people don’t have one lying around. Then there’s the sheer quantity issue. Seafood boils are designed for groups. Recipes typically serve six to eight people minimum because you can’t really scale them down effectively.
If you’re craving a seafood boil but only feeding two or three people, restaurants make way more sense. Many places offer seafood boil specials where you get a pound or two of mixed seafood with all the fixings for around thirty to forty dollars. No massive pot to clean, no leftover corn and potatoes rotting in your fridge, and no wrestling with crab shells in your kitchen sink. Sometimes letting the professionals handle it is just the right call.
