So long, single-girl dinner. I spent a week re-creating takeout meals to see if cooking for one gets any easier (or cheaper).
Back in 2016, a lifetime and multiple jobs ago, I publicly lamented that the worst thing about being single is all the soup. It was the end of a long winter, and I had grown sick of soup serving sizes that left me, the lone occupant of my studio apartment, with a freezer full of bygone broccoli cheddar, forgotten French onion ... you get the idea.
Don't get me wrong; I love to cook and I love to eat, and I do plenty of both. But the production, the leftovers, the mess — it sometimes seems like more trouble than it's worth for one person.
And yet, at the same time, I'm not much interested in takeout either. I rarely order in, and when I think about doing it, I often find myself filling a cart, experiencing sticker shock over the service fees charged by third-party delivery apps and promptly jumping ship. Plus, in my experience, half the fun of ordering delivery is getting a bunch of things to share. Doing that on my own feels indulgent and wasteful.
Most evenings, I can be found dousing pieces of tinned fish in hot sauce over crackers or eating cold Costco rotisserie chicken with my hands over the sink. Delicacies, in my humble opinion.
According to 2020 census data, over a quarter of American homes are one-person households like mine — a figure that has tripled since 1940. And I'm not exactly alone in my denial of delivery. Among my fellow millennials, 48.5% of married couples order takeout once per week; for singles, it's 31.8%.
Still, I wondered: Is there a better way to do dinner for one? Was I depriving myself of takeout that might actually save me time, money and freezer space? Or is cooking actual meals (vs. my version of 'girl dinner') the cheaper, more practical option? I decided to find out by re-creating classic takeout dishes at home.
The challenge
First, I picked a menu. After consulting this list of Grubhub's most-ordered dishes of 2022, I went through and picked four favorites: a burrito, pizza, Caesar salad and a cheeseburger. Then I went rogue and added orange chicken to the mix, since on the rare occasions that I do order delivery, it's usually Chinese food.
Next, I mock-ordered my five chosen dishes online from national chains to see how much they would set me back. I noticed something immediately: On almost every website, I was asked — even encouraged — to upgrade my order to a bigger portion or tack on an add-on for a slightly higher cost. Hello, don't they realize I'm trying to end up with less food, not more?
Instead of submitting these online orders, I whipped up a grocery list to DIY these dishes at home over the next few days. Here's how my cooking skills and cents stacked up to these mainstays of American takeout.
Day 1: Domino's pepperoni pizza
I was so excited to get started on this culinary experiment. So excited, in fact, that I left my keys at home when I left for work. I was locked out of my house (with no partner or roommate around to save the day) before I even had a chance to get to the supermarket. By the time I did get to my local Wegmans, it was 9 p.m. Nothing says 'I'm single' like being alone, at a Wegmans, at 9 p.m.
I had some pizza decisions to make. Should I make my own dough, or buy it premade? Should I go out and buy a pizza oven, or was I already overthinking this assignment?
As the clock ticked onward, I made the executive decision to go with a full block of mozzarella over the pre-shredded stuff and save time elsewhere with a premade dough. The only kind left was whole wheat, but I thought, How different could it be?
Reader, let me tell you. It's pretty different.
The first joke was on me when I got home and noticed the note on the bag: 'Bring dough to room temperature, one to two hours.' Great. It was already late at this point; I probably wouldn't have been able to order a pizza even if I wanted to. So, I let the dough rest for about an hour before I lost patience and started trying to soften it up with my hands. Because I don't own a pizza stone, I had to make myself a square pie.
It was ... fine? Not great. The crust was too thick, too sweet. The cheese, sauce and pepperoni were good, but I was left with — what do you know! — a ton of leftovers I wasn't particularly in the mood to bring for lunch with me all week. The pizza is still in my fridge, waiting to get thrown out.
Time spent: 3 hours
What a delivery app would charge (including fees, tax and tip): $20.12
Money spent on ingredients: $14.60, roughly $1.80 per serving
Score: -10,000/10
Days 2-3: McDonald's burger and fries
I'll be honest, after the midnight pizza debacle, I didn't have high hopes for day two. And I was right not to. After reading through the copycat McDonald's french fries recipe I'd found by Googling, erm, 'copycat McDonald's fries recipe,' I found out that you're supposed to slice your potatoes into fry shapes, then soak them in a sugar/vinegar brine for anywhere from two to 24 hours. The drive-through already had the edge in the time department.
In any event, I had the burger meat ready to go, and so I forged on, knowing that at the very least, I'd have three extra patties ready to eat tomorrow alongside my fries.
I followed this copycat cheeseburger recipe, which didn't call for pre-seasoning. After tasting one, I realized that was a bad move; it needed some oomph. I also didn't think the rehydrated minced onion the recipe did recommend was worth $5.99. But overall, the burgers were fun to make, pretty tasty and not super time-consuming.
And once I did get to make the fries, they were the star of the show. They were delicious, and definitely close enough to the real thing. I guess the brine time paid off.
Time spent: 24 hours
What a delivery app would charge: $19
Money spent on ingredients: $35.80, roughly $8.95 per serving
Score: 9/10
Day 4: Sweetgreen kale Caesar salad with grilled chicken
I was excited about this dish, mostly because I already had a kale Caesar salad recipe in my arsenal that I use all the time. But my excitement was deflated when I realized the chicken I wanted to use for this recipe wasn't defrosted — because I, the only person who lives in my house, hadn't taken it out of the freezer. I used an extra, already-cooked piece of chicken I found in the fridge, and took out the rest of the chicken to defrost for the next day.
In the meantime, I got out my ingredients to make a mayo-based dressing, during which time I promptly found out my Worcestershire sauce expired in 2023. For the record, I used it and it was fine. But it got me thinking that a single person likely never really goes through an entire bottle of Worcestershire sauce.
I also did not have Parm crisps, as the recipe demands, but I was able to improvise with some Parmesan cheese and stale sourdough bread. I cut up the bread, sprinkled some Parm on the cubes and air fried them to create a cheesy crouton crunch vibe. It worked (mostly).
I also realized midway through that my food processor was broken, which meant I had to use an immersion blender to get the dressing together. It also only kind of worked, and I ended up having to mash up a bunch of the anchovies in with a fork. It was not the most time-efficient endeavor, and it made me late for work.
Honestly, though: I think this salad was better than Sweetgreen.
Time spent: 1.5 hours
What a delivery app would charge: $21.99
Money spent on ingredients: $31.23, roughly $7.80 per serving
Score: 9/10
Day 5: Panda Express orange chicken
I make a lot of Asian-inspired meals for myself, and while orange chicken isn't necessarily my first choice, it sounded like more of a challenge than my standard go-tos.
I quickly realized I was missing an orange, a pretty crucial ingredient for this dish. But I figured orange juice would do the heavy lifting. I zested a lemon and got to work. The recipe itself wasn't that hard, though it was a little messy. After cutting my chicken breast into bite-size pieces and dredging them in egg and flour, it was time to fry them up. I normally probably would use my air fryer in lieu of actual frying, but I wanted to stay true to the recipe I'd found.
The frying took the longest, while the sauce actually came together quickly and easily. I'm not sure if I had just gotten into a cooking groove, but making these meals started to feel simpler.
I made rice, tossed the golden pieces of chicken in the sauce and dinner was served. I feel like of all the dishes I made, this one was definitely the closest to the real thing. It tasted like fast food in a way that made me feel a little happy, and a little sick.
Time spent: 2 hours
What a delivery app would charge: $17.81
Money spent on ingredients: $23.81, roughly $5.95 per serving
Score: 9/10
Day 6: Chipotle burrito
I'll be honest with you, I was about ready to be done with this challenge by this point. By the time I was able to make the final meal, the guacamole I bought had gone bad. I'd run out of chicken and had to buy more. I was second-guessing the shredded Mexican cheese blend I had. I was tired of cooking. My refrigerator was bursting at the seams with leftovers. And I was pretty much convinced that I had no idea how to roll a burrito.
Still, I trudged on. I seasoned the chicken thighs with a sazón spice blend, along with a few other seasonings, and set them to air fry. Then, I cooked the rice and stirred in black beans. In a last-minute Hail Mary, I cooked down some tomatoes and onions, then blended them up to be salsa-esque, but the flavor was pretty off.
It was also really ... not much to look at. And it didn't taste that good either. My homemade version definitely did not hold a candle to burritos I've eaten out in the world.
Time spent: 2 hours
What a delivery app would charge: $16.06
Money spent on ingredients: $32.13, roughly $8 per serving
Score: 4/10
The verdict
Buying groceries to replicate takeout meals can add up, but when you factor in how many servings you're getting (yep — leftovers again), it comes out to being cheaper. But cooking requires time, something most people don't have. Getting dinner delivered is undoubtedly more convenient — making pizza late at night is not sustainable — but that convenience comes at a cost.
I also have some big concerns about our food delivery system, and the culture around delivery in general. We are conditioned to believe that we can get whatever our hearts desire, delivered directly to our doorstep, in record time. In New York, where I live, this puts intense pressure on the people hired to deliver that food, often putting them in precarious situations as they zip around trying to make quotas for third-party delivery apps. It might be 'cheaper,' but not once you start accounting for the human cost. There are also, of course, environmental implications.
After a week of eating homemade takeout dupes, I was not inspired to order delivery. If anything, I realized that if and when I do want to eat something I haven't cooked for myself, it makes more sense to get out into the world, pop into a local business, bypass the interference (and fees) of third-party apps and pick something up myself. Not only will it be easier on my wallet, it will also be easier on my mind.
For now, I most likely will maintain my standing-over-the-sink-eating-cold-rotisserie-chicken and tinned fish lifestyle — and sprinkle in some homemade McDonald's-style french fries when the mood strikes.
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