30 Foods That Are Better Bought Than Made From Scratch, As Experienced By Folks In This Online Group

“Why would I order delivery pad thai when I can spend $45 on ingredients to make a worse pad thai?”

Maybe a hot take, but in my part of the world, grocery store rotisserie chicken will always be easier and cheaper than making chicken by roasting, boiling, etc. for any recipe calling for shredded or diced chicken, plus you can save the carcass for soup or stock.
Edited for clarity.

Deep fried anything. You'll spend far more time cleaning up than you will cooking or eating whatever you've deep fried. There are but a few notable exceptions to this.

Baklava. I mean home made baklava is the best. Just get it from someone else.

My mother walked in on me struggling with Dutch croquettes one time as a teenager and I tearfully asked her what her secret was and she said “oh I buy them pre-made downtown.” So there you go.

One of my biggest accomplishments in the kitchen was home made tater tots. You do a quick fry of the potatoes, shred them once they cool, mix in any herbs or spices you’d like, then form them into tots and fry a second time. They turn out well and are super tasty, but I’ll be damned if they aren’t 99% identical to the frozen ones you get at the store.

Donuts. I live in SoCal where we have a ton of mom & pop donut shops (fun fact if you're into food history, look up Ted Ngoy. TL;DR he's the reason a lot of Cambodian refugees here were able to make a living by opening donut shops, and is the inventor of the iconic pink box). Donuts are like $1 a pop, it's so much work to proof the dough and then fry it at home when you can get a much better and cheaper one at any donut place in my area.

Puff pastry.

It really is better, but unless you have a walk in refrigerator it's a huge pain.

Pho and Ramen. For the quality and price I grab some down the road, the time and effort is just not worth it for me.

EDIT: I should say I don't mean this to discourage anyone from giving both a go. I just happen to live adjacent to a "Chinatown" (really a mix of Chinese, Cambodian, Vietnamese, et cetera). It's as good as it is easy on the wallet so I prefer to leave it to the pros. I obviously consider myself lucky.

Another. Canned coconut milk. I tried making it from scratch to make an authentic Indonesian dish and all the indo cooks in the family laughed at me. They all use canned coconut milk.

Just buy flour. With the vagaries of the weather at the moment it's an absolute c**t to grow wheat.

French fries. The cost of the potatoes, oil, the time to double fry, the mess and cleanup.. no way.

I mean, I roast my own coffee, make my own yogurt and granola, grow and can my own vegetables and tomato sauce, bake my own bread.. you name it. But if I want them, I'll buy a sack of frozen fries and call it a day.

Honestly? Sushi. I think it's a pain in the a*s, to properly cook and season the rice, to obtaining all the ingredients (avocados here are notoriously expensive), the fish is pricey.. I'd rather pay the $50 to go to a decent place. And I'm of the mind that I don't ever want to pay for anything that I can make better at home and I love discovering new sushi and Japanese joints, so we trust the guy who spent 2 years of his sushiprenticeship just washing and seasoning rice to be our master.

Okonomiyaki on the other hand, that I make like a boss at home on the regular.

Curry paste. A number of my legit Thai cookbooks have the recipes for them and straight up tell you it's not worth it, and that store bought is just as good.

I regularly make a sour soup called Sinigang. For years I tried to make it as much from scratch as possible, with frozen whole tamarind pods, with tamarind pulp, with tamarind concentrate. You know what? The knorr sour soup flavor packet is way better than anything I can make from scratch. It was very humbling when I admitted defeat and stocked up on the mix, but my soups have never tasted better!

It's mostly going to depend on what you have available near you.

For example I have several good bakeries around me that make very high quality bread fresh everyday in their industrial steam ovens for a couple of bucks. Doesn't make any sense for me to make the same thing for the same price from scratch. But some people have trouble buying good bread for any price and definitely benefit from making it themselves.

Vietnamese pho. You could spend 2 full days and about $100 dollars making your own bowl at home, or just go get a bowl made for you for $10-15 at a pho restaurant. Not worth it to make yourself.

Ketchup. Heinz is magic.

Apparently crackers are never made from scratch because I have never in my life encountered a home-made cracker, or even come across one in a cookbook.

My mom who was great at a lot of things but was a terrible cook. Had a few passable recipes but not a great execution. Used to make "Mexican lasagna" basically chips, cheese, ranch style beans, canned chilli, all layered like lasagna then baked. I always thought it was a pretty low rent meal but it was a hit with my brothers. Easy enough to feed a bunch of people and reheats well I can see the appeal. I was feeling nostalgic so I decided to see what it would be like if I made it from scratch with high end ingredients. Pulled out all the stops, made my own chips, beans, chilli with 3 different kinds of meat high end cheeses the whole 9 yards. Spent an inordinate amount of time and money only to find out it basically tastes the exact same regardless of the quality of the ingredients I put in. I expected so much more quality improvement, but it was negligible at best. Now if I ever decide to do it again it's cheap and easy all the way.