Food you prefer to make at home instead of getting ready made?

[itsraining2024]

Pasta sauce. Cannot believe how nice it tastes with a can of plum tomatoes, a clove of garlic and a few herbs.

Pretty much everything is better homemade if you can cook well imo.

But there are things that I consider to be too much faff to make myself. So I eat those things at restaurants (eg lasagna, sesame prawn toast, chicken nuggets), cook them very rarely (eg gnocchi, onion bhajis), or buy (eg jam).

Eggs Benedict/Florentine. I can do an easy Hollandaise in the microwave and I’m not stingy with it like most places seem to be.

Soup, I like tinned soup, and while I can make my own, I prefer the taste and texture of the shop bought generally. I do enjoy some restaurant soups so maybe I'm just not making it right.

I also can't match a chocolate hobnob with anything homemade.

Love a good veggie lasagne, mine are rubbish though

All of it. Bread, pasta sauces, biscuits, Yorkshire puddings, cakes, custard... I make just about everything from scratch.

I'm going on holiday shortly and it's the eating out I'm not looking forward to.

I wouldn’t make dimsum at home (I have tried but not really worth the faff). Sourdough bread at home is nice but a performance.

Pretty much everything else is better made at home. Eg a pub roast - pretty much £20 a head round by me, not enough of it, soggy veg, plus the fact that I could make a slap up dinner for 4 plus leftovers for £20 or less. It’s a rip off and it’s not even very good.

Everything. I like to know where my food comes from and what is in it.

Tea. Don't use teabags, mix my own loose leaf tea and I never drink tea out

Soup. Have a soupmaker, that stuff in cartons is gloopy and tasteless. I experiment with lots of different soup recipes. Just haven't mastered french onion and a french restaurant we go to on holiday does the most divine french onion soup. I asked the ower if he put in white wine, brandy, or red wine... and he said all of that!

With the exception of pastry, which I am not good at making, just about everything tastes better home made, and is healthier too.

Roast dinner, bit more effort at home but everytime I have one out it’s overpriced, tasteless, and well….rubbish. Restaurants can never produce decent gravy either.

The secret to a good veggie lasagne is to roast the veg first. It reduces the water content and concentrates the flavours. I roast a big tray (or two depending on the size of the lasagne) of aubergine, courgettes, red onion, butternut, peppers. Then make a tomato based sauce with a few chilli flakes, reduce to a decent thick consistency before tipping the veg in along with some spinach and mushrooms. Layer up, add cheese sauce and ready to bake!

Do you use betty crocker mix? Have you tried making your own?

lasagna, unless it is vegatarian
roast potatoes
broccoli

cauliflower/macaroni cheese
mine is so much more flavourful

How can you have ready-made broccoli?

@LillyPJ
when cooked, as part of the vegetable offerings in a restaurant, it is not to my liking

I have a thing about broccoli that is on the turn, yuk. This dates from when we went round to a neighbours house for a meal. She had an electric warming thing and had pre-prepared her vegetables. The broccoli had been sitting in this for hours I imagine, it was sloppy and beginning to go brown.

Pasta sauce is the main one really. So easy to do yourself and so much cheaper.

Pasta sauce with onion carrot veg stock tomatoes ( just discovered the mutti tinned tomatoes, lovely)

Pizza, the greek yoghurt and flour recipe. Tastes so much better than shop bought which are all awful, even the premium

Soup, onion, carrot, potato, leek and, red lentils is my go to, shop bought soup is just awful

Cauliflower cheese & macaroni cheese, again just rank from the shops

Cheese/white sauce. It's just garlic, milk, cheese, pepper, salted butter and flour.

whats everyone’s pasta sauce recipes please?! You’ve inspired me!

Almost everything except: bread, crackers, puff pastry.

shop bought cakes are not a patch on my home made ones

That's not really 'ready made' though - it's just cooked by someone else in a way you don't like. (I don't like it either because it's usually done more than I like.)