What is cooking from scratch?

[ChockysChimichanga]

I see this phrase a lot on MN, but what do you actually consider ‘cooking from scratch’?

Are tinned tomatoes cheating and you crush your own tomatoes? Fresh herbs instead of dried? Dried beans/pulses instead of tinned?

Personally, I think life is too short to crush a tomato and tinned beans save a lot of time.

It's not using jars or packets.

You don't HAVE to make your own pasta, bread or ice cream unless you are a Come Dine With Me contestant

If you start making dinner by chopping an onion, you’re cooking from scratch IMO.

And have it come out looking like a crime scene 😂

This. In the summer I have fresh herbs in the garden, in the winter I use dried. I freeze my own veg, bottle my own fruit and use them during the winter, but use shop frozen veg when I run out.

But basically, raw, fresh or dried ingredients. No preservatives. No colourings, no emulsifiers.

Depends what for. Using dried beans, the texture tends to be better - unless you're using old beans. I'll use tinned if I quickly throw together some veggies and beans for myself. Dried if it's a more substantial pre-planned meal so there's time to soak overnight. Kidney beans are fine as long as you discard the soaking water. Chickpeas are great from scratch if you use a pressure cooker. I wouldn't bother with tinned lentils at all as they're so quick to cook except for the lovely green ones, and I don't think those come in tins.

Don't know but much cheaper!

When I want some chips, I used to plan ahead and plant some seed potatoes and wait about three months. Of course I wasn't standing around twiddling my thumbs waiting. I'd source some iron ore in order to produce iron for the chip-pan. It was building the rudimentry smelting oven and getting that up to temperature that was most time consuming. Anyway you get the idea.

I don't do this 'cooking from scratch' malarkey anymore, now I get some of those McCain Oven Chips and stick them in the smelting oven that I no longer use for pan manufacture.

I actually think making Thai curry from shop bought paste and tin of coconut is homemade !!
life is busy enough

I once spent ages making a curry paste from a recipe I saw online. It tasted exactly the same as the Pataks one I usually use!

Agreed, I took a cooking class in Asia where you go to the market and make your own paste, tasted like any normal yellow curry.

This is my understanding as well.

I think it means using ingredients.

That's ingredients according to a conversation between two 6 year olds that went along the lines of:

X: we have food at out house.
Y: We're poor so we just buy ingredients.

Fresh meat and veg.

Also preserved food like pickled onions, jam, chutney, frozen and tinned when they are used as an ingredient.

Things that are not commonly made in the home any more but in the past would have been.

So heating a frozen lasagne is not cooking. But making my own using dried pasta, fresh meat, and sauce made using tinned tomatoes I would count as cooking from scratch.

So meat bolognaise

From scratch-
Mince
Onions
Carrot
Stock
Tomatoes
Oregano
Basil

Pre prepared -
Mince
Dolmio sauce

Pre made-
Ready meal

I wouldn't expect to be served dolmio if someone told me they had made it from scratch. Using the jars is just putting a lasagne together imo.

I mostly cook from scratch for reasons of health and because I like cooking, but I do have a couple of jar sauces in the cupboard and we use frozen chips and supermarket bread.
It's about doing the best you can with the time and resources you have. There's no badge of honour either way.

@GrumpyPanda tinned green lentils are brilliant and so convenient. I use them 50/50 in mince dishes and my family have never noticed.

I just asked my brother who's a chef and his response is

"If you have to poke holes in the plastic with a knife or pour the sauce from a jar, it's not from scratch, anything else goes in a home kitchen"

The literal definition of "from scratch" means from nothing, so yes you'd have to make your own pasta and crush your own tomatoes with your elbows. In reality even chefs use tinned shit and dried pasta to make life easier, so I think in a more modern sense "from scratch" just means something where the majority of the work hasn't been done prior to it even reaching your kitchen.

We do what I'd call mainly cooking from scratch, organic fruit, veg and meat, wild fish, nuts/seeds, oats, brown rice.

But we also buy tinned tomatoes, pulses and coconut milk, dried herbs and spices, wholewhat pasta and wholegrain sourdough bread (one without unnecessary added ingredients).

And we buy things like cheese, natural kefir and yoghurt, raw sauerkraut, pesto, hummus, chocolate, oat cakes, oat biscuits and a few freezer standbys for occasional use like small pizzas and vegeburgers.

DH and DS eat shop bought cakes and biscuits sometimes, I don't. But since I don't eat them I don't want to make them. They don't want to make them but sometimes want to eat them. It's a compromise.

DH and I work full time with one DS still at home who has a packed lunch. There is a limit to how much I can or am willing to do, but I do my best.

What about if your pasta sauce came from a jar but you canned it yourself?

Do you gain brownie points by making the sauce but then lose them when you use the sauce?

We did once 'grow' a cake on our allotment. We grew wheat, sugar beet, blackberries. Processed them, burning out the coffee grinder in the process. The eggs came from another plot holder.

I made a jam Swiss roll.

As a challenge it was really interesting but for some probably not 'scratch' enough as we bought the seed and didn't source it from hedgerows.

I was short on time and pressure cooked chickpeas without soaking for 90 minutes hands off, so 2 minutes of my time.
Far tastier than soaked or tinned!

I really am struggling to see the point of soaking and cooking dried pulses when you could just buy a tin. What a waste of time. Is it much better nutritionally?

I would say just cooking at home- not a readymade or microwave meal or a takeaway.

They taste better, have a much better texture and you know what's there- tins often have salt, firming agents and sugar, as well as processing agents that don't have to be disclosed on the label. Tins themselves can have harmful chemicals.

I do mine in a slow cooker so I don't have to keep an eye on them, and do use tins if I need them immediately.

Nutritionally as far as I know there's very little difference (although as a PP mentioned you have to be careful with dried kidney beans, they can actually be poisonous if not prepared correctly). Nutrition isn't the only, or possibly even the best reason to cook from scratch though - cost is a big factor for many and in general (although not always) you can save money by cooking from scratch at home rather than buying pre-prepared versions and arguably bulk dried beans and pulses are as cheap a protein as you can get (although you do have to offset the cooking time/fuel usage). Also eco-friendliness, the zero waste shop sells dried pulses by the scoop and you can bring your own container so pretty good there (although again, tin cans are pretty good for recycling purposes so not bad).

Finally taste, a lot of people prefer the taste of their own cooking to shop-bought equivalent and you can adjust to your own preferences, some people prefer the more firm texture of a dried pulse, personally I don't and find them too hard unless boiled to mush but that's a preference...

it means you have to go out very early, hunt and kill your meat of choice, you then need to forage for your vegetables and herbs, then head home to your mud hut and slave for many hours to put a plate of food infront of a family who will simply turn up their noses and say 'i'd rather have pizza'.

or.. its those people so full of their own importance and have to make you feel less superior because instead of doing all the above you did infact put a pizza infront of the hungry family!

i absolutely do not care if i am classed as one who cooks from scratch.. i use whats available to me, i have way better things in my life to be getting on with than to make fresh pasta