Who else cooks like this?

[Anythingyoulike]

I think we eat well as a family and I would say I cook “home made” rather than “from scratch”, as in we don’t do very much freezer food and no ready meals or anything like that, but I do like convenience.

For example, tonight we had meatballs from M&S in their “family hidden veg sauce” with spaghetti and salad. I just use a jar of sauce for things like that and obviously haven’t made my own meatballs. When I make bolognese I used tinned chopped tomatoes and tomato purée and build the flavour with garlic and herbs etc and never use a jar of sauce. If we have a roast chicken I will roast the veg and potatoes or peel and mash potatoes, but I don’t roast a chicken myself I buy one from the rotisserie section in the supermarket ready to go and just add our trimmings.

I’ll use the leftover chicken for making a chicken risotto with onion, garlic, and lemon. Or we’ll have it with a creamy tomato sauce I make myself with sun dried tomato paste, garlic, shallots, herbs, cream and lemon. I use the slow cooker to make curries and chillies where everything is just flung in and left to it.

We also eat a lot of simple tuna pasta dishes, baked potatoes, omelettes, baked salmon, and so on.

Are most people cooking like this? I think it’s a decent balance of kind of home made with convenience. I’m definitely not a natural cook but our family eat fairly healthily I think and we have a good rotation of curries, chilli, pasta dishes, tacos, risotto, fish, as well as the odd night of fish finger sandwiches or pizza!

Nope. I never use jar sauces or ready made meatballs and a chicken goes in the oven.

I think you need to have a look at the additives.

Personally i almost never use jar sauces except if on holiday to cook a very quick dinner if we cba to go out.
I also wouldn't buy a ready roasted chicken... What does it save, the aprox 2 min it takes to shove one in the oven? The precooked chickens always look quite small to me too.

That pretty much sums up the way I cook. Although i tend to use a roast in the bag chicken rather than having to go to a rotisserie on the day and I dont use jars because sauces are pretty quick to knock together.

I use jar sauces when in a hurry. I’ve never bought a cooked chicken. I put chicken breast in slow cooker.

Life is too short not to be using jars and packet mixes, in my humble opinion 🫠

I’m not sure where the additives would be in what we eat. We eat M&S meatballs which have 3 ingredients. Their hidden veg jar of sauce is all standard ingredients too and not many of them. For bolognese it’s just mince with a tin of chopped tomatoes and some tomato purée (plus garlic, onions, herbs etc etc etc)

Everything else I’ve detailed in my OP doesn’t have additives. The chicken has just been roasted for us when we buy it.

I suppose it’s just something I could never be arsed with. There are only 3 of us and the leftovers still do another dinner. Usually risotto

I do love our slow cooker very much. And our rice cooker. A perfect pair!

Completely normal

People get too hung up on all this

I dont like jar sauces because Ive never had one yet that doesnt taste funny but I wouldnt be averse to it if I liked it

I like the packets of ready rice and also the packets of ready beans or lentils that Aldi and Lidl do, there are some branded ones as well. They're nice mixed up in other things or used as a base for things.

I don’t use jars either
I prefer to make my own sauces. We’ve tried some but they just don’t taste as good
I don’t eat meat but don’t buy quorn or veggie sausages etc.
I make all our own too
Ive always done this and it probably harks back to my very poor student days when you couldn’t buy prepaid veggie stuff anyway and jars or anything pre-made was just unaffordable

I’ve been using the Yuka app for the last year and it’s really helpful to decide which shortcuts to use, and which to avoid.

I often buy a rotisserie chicken on the day that I’m grocery shopping, for an easy dinner. It’s usually cheaper than the raw chicken, and saves putting on the oven. Bag of salad and a loaf of good bread (bread shocked me on the Yuka app).

Do you find breast ok for a slow cooker?

I dont eat breast anyway I only eat thigh but always found breast is dried out by long cooking even in a slow cooker

No, not really. I don’t like the taste of sauces from jars etc. I do use things like canned chickpeas (instead of soaking and cooking my own) as I am time poor but it’s so easy to put together really nice simple meals without relying on ready made and UPFs.

Never use jar sauces.

Never buy pre-made meat items such as meatballs, burgers or pre-marinaded chicken breasts (wouldn’t buy pre-made/formed kebabs etc either). Always make my own.

Aways roast my own chicken. Any meat joint.

Do use tinned tomatoes.

Sounds fine to me.
I plump for Unilever's luscious range of Pot Noodles. There's a different flavour to suit all tastes. (Even Grandad who ate sand for a week in the North Africa campaign enjoyed his.)

We eat a lot like this. Some differences - I always roast a chicken for a roast chicken type meal, as I like making the gravy - but I sometimes buy a ready roast one for cooked chicken for sandwiches or salads during the week. We use a few jar sauces, more regularly “fresh” pasta sauces, and more often than that make our own with tin toms and herbs / garlic / onion etc.
Often use curry jar sauces but tend to supplement them.
Will use heinous prepacked stir fry sauce once a week probably.
DH makes own bread, we have crisps and penguin biscuits, kids bake cookies, natural yog or fruit sometimes for pudding, other times snickers ice cream. It’s a right mix!

This is one thing I’d like to change. Debating getting a bread maker. I don’t eat a lot of bread but my son goes through a lot.

I work full time (50 hours) and my children are busy every night of the week and the weekend. I don’t wish to spend my rare free time batch cooking. I cook exactly as you do.

I used to cook like that.

i’m now on a low fodmap diet for ibs abd a lot of the jarred stuff has things in I shouldn’t eat.

at the moment I’m eating a lot of fresh veg and fruit

We do bisto 😅

Thats a good example of what I mean: lots of whole clean food in the meal like chicken, veg, potatoes. But bisto gravy.
I think the majority of what we eat is “clean” and balanced. But “a right mix” sums us up too

I make curries in the slow cooker and only use thigh

I would definitely recommend a bread machine OP

Seriously, it’s all fine. Sometimes I want to make a full homemade roast. Sometimes on a weeknight I want to have a rotisserie chicken, oven chips and a bag of salad. If you’re feeding your family regular meals that include some decent protein and veg, some shortcut cooking isn’t going to hurt anyone.

There’s plenty of jar sauces that aren’t UPFs nowadays! Carry on as you are, OP! I am also partial to Bisto.

I’ve not heard of foodmap. We only buy jarred sauces from M&S and the ingredients lists on the labels seem good to me. I don’t know how they compare to dolmio etc however