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!

Very much considering it

We have had meatballs tonight and I made the balls and sauce but bought the garlic bread, so similar I suppose

Snap!

I agree - the odd short cut never did anyone any harm.

I don't use jars of sauce at all. I make spag bol how you say, onion, garlic, mince, tinned toms/puree think thats pretty standard?

I do use Simply cook boxes for things like curry. Tastes better than a jar. I tried using a jar for quickness and dc were not impressed.

Pasta dishes I cook from scratch (not the actual pasta!)

Wouldnt buy a cooked chicken.

We eat a lot of bbq style food in the summer, and pretty traditional in winter. Cottage pie, curries, pasta.

That’s my instinct and I felt that most people cook this way but I think Mumsnet is more skewed towards the “cooking from scratch” kind of person.

We would have a homemade chilli, done in the slow cooker with all whole ingredients, guacamole from scratch, but tacos from a box. Or pre-roasted chicken with potatoes and veg but bisto gravy. That sort of thing.

Mumsnet is not the real world. Its a very vocal and self righteous minority.

And just going back to meatballs, even though I would never use a jar sauce because of the flavour, life is far too short to make meat balls thanks. Theres nothing in meat balls but the meat, someone else has done all the balling for you.

Personally I wouldn’t buy a jar of sauce or a ready cooked chicken, but I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with buying prepackaged meals. Some people preferred the taste of jarred sauce to homemade, or can’t cook a chicken or make gravy. My brother is vegan and uses the vegan bisto.

Yes that’s the kind of thing. I’m not about to make my own garlic bread. We do have meals where everything is “from scratch”: Baked salmon and a creamy tomato sauce with rice and lemon, or a home cooked curry. Although even then I’m using a jar of red pesto or sun dried tomatoes, or jars of Indian sides and shop bought poppadoms (obviously nowhere near as good as eating out but they’ll do). But most of ours meals have some element of short cut.

I don’t particularly enjoy cooking so the idea of branching out and making more things from scratch holds no interest for me.

No to jars.
No to precooked chicken (because it's always a bit dried up, and it's cheaper and easier to cook my own).
Not usually to premade meatballs (sometimes the odd bag of Ikea ones).
No to Bisto
No to lots of stodgy pasta dishes, or combining premade items.
Yes to tinned tomatoes (Mutti), stock cubes, dried herbs, frozen garlic and ginger puree.

I meal plan well, and we have a good range of freshly cooked dishes.

There’s a fixation on additives but a lot of the short cut foods we use don’t have additives. The meatballs are 3 ingredients. I suppose I could make them myself, but I can’t be bothered. My husband sometimes makes his own burgers and I’m on board with that as I can have a thinner burger which I prefer.

I’ve never found them to be dry. What do you mean by combining pre-made items?

Pasta we love 😋

Except for the processing ingedients.

I could do my very boring usual links to a huge number of ready meals, I save them up for threads like this, which do not have anything in them which are not in my cupboards

I dont personally eat ready meals, simply due to the flavour, I can cook better. Im a fuss pot.

But theres nothing wrong with many ready meals.

What's in them. Mine have beef, and/or pork, or turkey. I add salt and pepper and sometimes some herbs.

And if I were to eat a burger I certainly would not make it. Theres usually nothing in burgers except meat, salt and pepper, sometimes onion herbs whatever.

We had a bread machine for well over a decade. It got well used. Ours also did pizza dough which was good for make your own pizza night.

It says beef, sea salt, and black pepper on the packet.

Shop bought meatballs are never as good as mine. But I'm a big fan of shortcuts. I will never martyr myself on the altar of Cooking From Scratch.

Same here we have home made food with some convenience lol... tonight was chicken &mushroom risotto from scratch but shop bought garlic bread slices 😋

Home made with a side of convenience 🙌🏻

I don't like the taste of stuff from jars so never really use them. Ditto ready meals (although M&S are an exception to this - but I don't live near one). When the kids were little and I was full-on with work etc I would often buy tomato sauce/meatballs from our local italian deli/fresh pasta shop. Not particularly cheap but tasted homemade.

I don't know anyone who doesn't use tinned tomatoes.

I still occasionally buy a rotisserie chicken - usually to have with salad/potatoes and then I make and freeze stock from it after. I never roast a full chicken.

I think it sounds absolutely fine. You are making pragmatic choices in a busy life. I am a very keen cook, but I doubt I did as well as you when I had a young child and a very busy working life.

I use a mix of jar stuff and my own sauces, sometimes Im all up for cooking from scratch, most of the time I can’t be arsed.
I also make a hell of a lot more mess and washing up when I cook properly, so I see using a jar sauce as helping “future” me out a little.

It might be my store, but the rotisserie chickens are always overcooked and dried out. Not to mention the inconvenience of having to use them on the day of purchase.

By combining premade ingredients, I'd mean stuff like store bought pesto on pasta, premade sauces, premade mash or precooked salmon etc. I don't really like to use curry pastes/powders etc either, if I can make them myself.

I have a definite idea of what I consider an ingredient, and what I don't. I'm not sure I could always justify my reasoning, though.
I do use frozen stuff as time savers/food management. Frozen leeks, frozen spinach, frozen edamame, frozen peas, frozen garlic, frozen ginger, frozen lemongrass, frozen keffir lime, and a whole host of othets.