The £1 meals cooked up by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver are being panned… because they aren’t all quite as pocket-friendly as advertised.
Viewers of Jamie’s £1 Wonders on Channel 4 claim there is “no way” it’s possible to reproduce his money-saving dishes for less than £1 per portion.
Home cooks making the Naked Chef’s sweet potato chickpea curry will need to shell out £2.65 a head for all the ingredients at Tesco.
Jamie’s veggie toad in the hole costs £2.12 to create, and a single serving of his signature mushroom risotto will set shoppers back a hard-to-swallow £2.33.
A number of the chef’s budget-friendly dishes also need up to three hours’ cooking time in the oven, costing cash-strapped families precious electricity and gas. A standard 2,000 watt oven currently costs around 68p an hour to run, plus daily standing charges, which average out at 46p.
This means Jamie’s 50/50 Bolognese, which takes 2hrs 40mins to cook, will end up costing consumers more than £2.27 in energy alone.
One fed-up viewer wrote online: “No way that ‘Jamie Oliver’s £1 Wonders’ meals cost under a pound.”
Another complained: “Homemade barbecue sauce, four chicken legs, 100g natural yoghurt and tons of veg – sorry Jamie that’s over a quid mate, should be called Jamie’s £6 Wonders.” A statement on the chef’s website reads: “With the cost of food and energy on the rise, Jamie’s £1 Wonders is all about delicious recipes that won’t blow the budget, coming in at less than £1 a portion.
“We’ve calculated the cost per portion by the amount used, rather than the whole ingredient cost, as we believe you already have many of the ingredients in your store cupboard/fridge/ freezer.”
On Thursday, dad-of-five Jamie, 47, published his first children’s book, Billy and the Giant Adventure.
Its release comes days after the chef – worth a reported £240million – flew to the Maldives to renew his wedding vows to wife Jules, 48.
Jamie’s £1 Wonders was first broadcast in March. According to the Food Foundation, one in five households skipped meals to save money in January.
