Cooking from scratch - do most families still do it?

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My friend was very surprised to hear that I cook from scratch.

I used to rely 80% on convenience meals until about ten years ago when I decided (aged 40!!!) to learn to cook so I have been on both sides of the fence.

I'm curious as to whether working families mostly cook from scratch still or whether convenience food is the new norm.
It certainly seems to me that the average family is more time pressured than ever before. For me the main reason I didn't cook was firstly lack of skills and also I always had things I would prefer to do with my time than cook.

Depends on your definition of "from scratch." I never use jars or packets, always make my own sauces/soups etc but I don't bake bread or anything like that.

I mostly do but I use lots of frozen chopped veg, like onions and garlic etc, and tinned tomatoes, curry paste, tomato purée, dried herbs etc. So probably some people wouldn't think that was truly from scratch.

I just try to find a balance which allows us to eat fresh, healthy and tasty food, but which also means I don't have to spend hours in the kitchen.

I never used to. It was always a convenience food of some sort shoved in the oven. Then I joined Slimming World to lose weight and I've cooked from scratch ever since and I love it! As well as losing weight, I find the food tastes better (even if I do say so myself LOL!) and my husband is loving the recipes too. We're eating more variety now as well, instead of the same old packet meals.

I used to cook from scratch all the time, but not any more. Dds have left home so it’s just Dh and I. We both work and I just find it more convenient to use high end ready meals. So we eat a lot of Charlie Bighams, and also from M&S Gastro pub range. I serve with a huge amount of fresh veg and it’s lovely.

I do like to cook at the weekends, things like steak pie and dumplings, chicken caserole, roasts on a Sunday.

I do however actually make my own Wholemeal bread, (not in a bread maker) as I don’t like most commercially produced bread.

A mixture.

A lot of the time I cook from scratch. As others have said though what constitutes cooking from scratch. Tonight for example I have just given the DC toad in the hole. Made the batter but I certainly didn't make the sausages.

We usually cook from scratch, unless we are feeling particularly lazy. DH and I take it in turns to cook, and if neither of us can be bothered we'll get a takeaway or dig something out of the freezer.

I use more and more convenience food these days. Used to cook everything from scratch when the kids were little and I was only working a few hours so skint! Nice convenience food is EXPENSIVE.

Now DH and I are both full time, he works away a lot so it all falls to me and I am just too tired to do the shopping, the cooking and the clearing up of it all every single day. I would be happier with quick home cooked stuff like a baked potato or omelette but the kids would moan at such simple stuff!

so they get ready made pizzas or ready meal curries more often that I’d like, about once or twice a week. They don’t taste particularly nice though do they?We always cook properly at weekends though, often doing fancy or complicated stuff.

Yes well, I buy the ingredients and put them together to make a meal most days a week. Call it what you will, it's not completely cooking from scratch though. I'm not going to make my own sausages or pasta, or cheese or baked beans I do grow and dry my own herbs though

The rest of the time, it could be the aforementioned sausages, frozen breaded fish or a nice cheap ready-made pizza tarted up with extra ingredients, or (shock horror) occasional takeaways or microwave ready meals.

50/50 will cook things like bolognaise, lasagne, burgers and cottage pie from scratch. Will make homemade pizzas and Currys but will also have oven chips and fishfingers or pasta bake sauce. I don't make my own pasta or stock cubes and will happily cook a chicken in a bag but will make own roast potatoes.

Depends what you mean
I make soup and wouldn’t buy shop soup, same with lasagne for example
But would buy bread for the children rather than make it

So mostly from scratch

Agree with pop, depends what you call cooking from scratch, I don't make my own pasta or bread, occasionally will have pasta with a jar of ready made pesto, often we just have a 'jacket potato' type meal so is that 'cooking from scratch' ? .

I certainly don't do fresh sea bass with four different types of vegetables and an unusual potato dish seven nights a week !

We very rarely eat 'ready made' food unless a curry from Waitrose or M & S, I just don't like the taste of ready made meals, far too synthetic and the portions are really small. But I do love ready made mashed potato.

After thirty years of cooking for my family I am totally bored with it and would happily eat cheese and biscuits every night. In fact tonight I am on my own and bought myself an individual cheese fondue and french bread, just pouring the wine to go with it .

I do most days but we have some frozen convenient staples like chips, pies, pizza and fish fingers. Some meals I make don't take any longer than sticking a pie and chips in the oven (say something like fried salmon, boiled potatoes, boiled broccoli and a lemon butter sauce). But I do use some short cuts like curry pastes (not sauces), pre made burgers/meatballs and filo pastry.

I agree 'from scratch' can be quite widely defined. A friend of mine seems to eat from the freezer a lot (she is weirdly obsessed about how much fresh veg/fruit and meat we buy so I know about her habits) and she would consider frying an onion, mince and using dolmio bolognaise sauce as cooking from scratch - I wouldn't, I'd use passata, veg and herbs and make my own sauce.

I cook most days and never buy ready meals as such but we do have ‘frozen chips’ meals maybe once a week on busy days and the occasional takeaway. I do use ready made sauces for things like stir fry though. I’ll usually do a bit of baking at the weekend and have a bread maker that I use quite a lot.

When my DCs were little and I wasn’t working I had a large veg garden and lots of chickens. There were some days when I could honestly say I had grown/ raised the entire meal which was very satisfying. Still grow some veg and make my own jam etc but only have two elderly hens who don’t lay now!

We cook from scratch every day unless it's pizza night.
DH occasionally succumbs to a Kiev but other than that.
(And we don't make bread or fresh pasta. I'm not patient enough and don't have energy time.)

I cook the majority of food from separate ingredients, as in I don’t use jars or packets of sauce. I make bread and cakes etc although I do sometimes buy sliced bread. I’ve never made pasta from scratch, I make pizza dough, the tomato sauce etc but wouldn’t bother with trying to make pepperoni to put on the top.
The amount of ready meals in a supermarket tell a different tale to Mumsnet though

Before I had children I cooked from scratch every night. After I had my dd and returned to work part time I found that on the days I worked we tended to eat more convenience food than before she was born because by the time I'd picked her up from childcare, got home and started preparing food it was getting late and she needed to get to bed. So on work days (2 days) we were eating a lot of pasta and pesto, processed foods etc. I'm now a SAHP and back to cooking from scratch again- usually 5-6 nights a week. It's definitely easier for me to cook from scratch when there aren't time constraints and I can see why people who live very busy lives struggle to fit it in.

Breaded freezer shit once a fortnight
Takeaway once a fortnight/month
Otherwise cook and bake from scratch

Predominantly.

I grew up on freezer to oven foods - fish in breadcrumbs, oven chips etc.

I'm currently on a strict nutrition plan which involves me preparing 5 meals a day. No packets/jars/unknown extra calories basically.

I make great curries - no jars or pastes. Dh is the king of pizza dough, so much nicer than stodgy shop bought bases.

I don't like to eat out much or get takeaways as prefer my own cooking.

I grew up on feeezer to oven foods too. It makes me laugh when people harp back to cooking from scratch in the good old days- my gran and mum both enthusiastically embraced the microwave and freezer, a huge step in freeing women from the chain of the kitchen

Yep everything from scratch for evening meals. We do use stock cubes, ready made garlic bread, frozen chips and an occasional bought pie. Friday's are takeaway and wine night

God I'm a fat slattern! ' Cook from scratch ' hate that expression 3-4 days per week, no jars or packets, freezery type stuff (chips and ... ) 2-3 days and a takeaway or meal out once per week.

I cook from scratch pretty much every day, very occasionally I’ll have a fish in sauce type pre-prepped meal. I haven’t had a takeaway in probably 6 months. This is purely for diet reasons though, I do occasionally fancy junk food/feeezer food but I’m trying to lose weight so I’m being very disciplined!

I think it's pretty clear what most people mean by 'from scratch'. Cooking meals which might involve using convenient forms of individual ingredients, but mostly not entire pre-made components like sauces.

I cook largely from scratch, but do use bought pizzas once every few weeks. I also make bread in my breadmaker. Aside from the pizzas I don't use ready meals ever. Takeaway once a month if that.

Never do takeaway but go out once a week for lunch

Cooking from scratch is easy and quick. Grill a chop, pop a sweet potato in the microwave, steam some greens. Or, stir fry some chopped veg. and fry some fish. Nothing wrong with eggs - fried, scrambled or poached on toast. Omelettes are quick and easy too. Make a stew and freeze half for a quick meal another night. Roast a chicken on a bed of veg. - onions, carrots, swede, turnip, potatoes. I don’t like cooking so quick and easy is my moto.