A sachet of sauce thickener costs 83 złoty per kilogram of starch

A sachet of cream-fix weighs 9 grams and costs 75 groszy. Worked out, that's 83 złoty per kilogram. Inside it is glucose and modified starch. A spoon of plain flour, at 1.79 zł per kilogram, thickens a sauce just the same, over 46 times cheaper.

It's another convenience markup in the same line as the oatmeal sachet and the jar of sauce from earlier posts. This time in a sachet of powder. And again, it isn't that the fix is bad. It's what it takes for a raw ingredient already sitting in your cupboard.

Read the first ingredient

Cream-fix is almost pure starch, so you pay a fortune for something you have on hand. But not every sachet is the same, and that's the whole trick. Take Knorr fix 4 cheeses with broccoli, 39 grams for 4.99 zł, that's 127.95 zł per kilogram, dearer still. Except its first ingredient is processed cheese, 26.1%, not starch. With that fix you're also paying for real cheese, so its price isn't pure markup.

Hence today's rule, as simple as with the protein bill: read the first ingredient and divide the price by the kilogram. If starch or maltodextrin comes first, you're paying for the sachet. If something of value, like cheese, part of the price goes to food.

How to thicken a sauce without a sachet

Thickening a sauce is one of two things, both take a moment.

Cold: mix a spoon of flour smooth in a little cold water, pour it into the simmering sauce and cook about 2 minutes, stirring, until it thickens. The cold water keeps it lump-free.

Roux: heat a spoon of butter or oil, stir in a spoon of flour and fry about 1 minute, stirring, until it turns golden, then pour it into the sauce and bring to a boil.

You season with what's already in the cupboard: a pinch of granulated garlic, black pepper and sweet paprika. A spoon of flour with those spices is about 0.38 zł a sauce, counting the part actually used. You buy flour and spices once and they last for many sauces.

What it adds up to in a year

Let's be honest about the amount. Thickening with a spoon of flour costs about 0.02 zł, the sachet 0.75 zł. At one sachet a week, over a year that's about 38 zł of difference. A trifle, not a fortune.

The point is elsewhere. Every time, you pay dozens of times more for an ingredient you already have in the cupboard, and the same rule works across the whole shelf of sachets. Checking the first ingredient and converting to a kilogram takes ten seconds and tells you what you're really paying for. The cheese fix is the exception precisely because it has cheese in it, and you can see that in the first ingredient.

What you're really paying for

Snugmeal builds a week of meals from sums like these, around your budget and real prices from Polish stores, with a total that matches at the till. Not to ban you from sachets, but so you know when you're paying for food and when for foil.

It launches this autumn. Leave your address in the form just below this post, and at launch you'll get a one-time 20% discount code for your first subscription.

Data: zakupy.biedronka.pl, prices and ingredient lists checked live in August 2026. Cream-fix and Knorr fix figured from the package price, ingredients from the product-page labels. Flour price checked live. Our own calculations.