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!

I don't know a single person IRL who cooks the way people on MN claim to cook, lol.

Girl you got me thinking lol. I suppose it really depends on how lazy I'm being. I'd say we're a from scratch family mostly because we eat like the Black Death is still spreading through Europe.

I don't use jar sauces or packet mixes, but my kids do eat cereal for breakfast and enjoy a packet of crisps and occasional pot noodle so I'm not purist and can appreciate balance, however you achieve that.

because we eat like the Black Death is still spreading through Europe.

I genuinely don't know what this means.

Very sadly I struggle with tomatoes these days due to the acid but when I used to use tinned toms for a huge variety of dishes, I always added some sugar. Same with a curry, either honey, sugar or jaggery when I can afford it. The balance of savoury and sweet is important to me. I like a lot of salt as well.

I’m howling at it 😂 Meat, bread and ale I guess 😂😂😂

We eat a lot of things people would consider 'peasant food' pottage, bone broth, stews if we do eat meat it's offal or something we can use across several meals. We stodge it up legumes and grains. It's healthy and keeps the grocery costs down.

I agree, it’s important to balance out the acid in tomatoes - I always add a touch of sweetness to sauces. They do say the difference between home cooking and restaurant food is that chefs will use far more salt, sugar and butter than the average cook. Savoury food needs a balance, and sometimes that means adding sweetness to a savoury dish.

This might have been the case with the sort of barely ripe tomatoes that we used to have in the UK but modern tomatoes are incredibly sweet as it is, and tinned plum tomatoes even more so. I can't imagine adding sugar - they are quite sweet enough, they are a fruit after all!

We are mostly homemade with some conveniences.

We don't buy jar sauces apart from pesto and wouldn't buy a rotisserie chicken.

We do buy ready made meatballs but would make a sauce. We make a curry using meat and spices etc but often use pouches of rice to microwave.

For a quick dinner in the hot weather we were buying kofte type kebabs which we cooked in airfryer and having with bought hummus and tzatziki and flatbread and making a salad.

I sometimes buy the lightly dusted fish from M&S and will do new pots and green veg with it. Other times it is fresh salmon

Other meals will be fully homemade such as risotto or cauli rice dishes, carbonara, bean stew, pork with romesco sauce.
Roasts are homemade by DH inc gravy except he hates making yorkies so buys them

I do some of my own baking so would never buy cake but do buy snacks type bars

I cook from scratch most nights, following a recipe, with the odd bit of convenience thrown in.

In this heat I'm doing a bit less actual cooking and making more salads or frittata's, with dressings - made from scratch. The last salad I made used ham hock and I did buy the ham, not roast it myself, but the dressing was made by me etc. Shoot me now! ;-)

I always make my tomato sauces but 9 times out of 10 I would buy pesto in a jar.

I would never in a month of Sundays buy white sauce of any description but I do buy a packet of the breadcrumb stuff to make bread sauce with.

I make my own Yorkshire puddings but don't make my custard from scratch.

We've been known to have oven chips but I'd never buy those premade jacket potatoes.

I've never bought a ready cooked chicken but now and then buy a pre-marinated chicken breast.

I have made my own pizzas but actually - stuff that, I buy then for kids (and sorry, but I buy the crostfeckingmollica ones!) :-)

Jars I use - pesto, gymkhana butter chicken sauce, Island Something jerk marinade. occasionally a Mr Organics tomato and basil pasta sauce.

Meat wise - tend to buy a whole raw chicken, beef mince, turkey mince...

UFP stuff we eat is bread and crips. I love crisps.

@Anythingyoulike 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.

Apparently bread is the most common source of UPFs. If you get a bread maker then you can slice and freeze the bread, just taking out a slice as you need and then just keep using the same freezer bag (washing it in-between, obvs) so it's cheap, good for you and good for the environment!

Thats why my home cooking is far superior to ready made. I dont choose home made over ready made because of some hyperfocus on UPFs but simply my flavours are better. I like salt, fat and sugar.

The sugar in very hot foods also balances out the heat from something like a scotch bonnet, so you get the heat but its more tolerable due to the sweetness, also brings the sweetness out.

The other thing is being aware of different flavours, upthread somewhere someone referred to another poster cooking fresh tomatoes down, thats fine for some dishes because the flavour of that, will be completely different to the flavour of tinned tomatoes, it depends on what you're aiming for. Similarly watered down tinned tomatoes are sometimes what you need, other times you need very concentrated tinned tomatoes.

Im very picky with my flavours and how I want things to be. I can taste what herbs or spices or what type of things have been used in a dish.

I took your post to mean this, plus "meat and two veg" type meals, which I do a lot of. I do like stews etc too.

Proper butter, nicely seasoned meat, steamed veg and new potatoes.

Cooked from scratch in less than 20m, and most of that passive (I leave skins on veg for better fibre and vitamins too).

My son will happily eat curry, Thai, pasta, whatever we cook really, but on MN it's a crime if your from scratch cooking doesn't involve a wide range of international cuisine preplanned each week 😂

I don't use jar sauces because they are usually sweet and gloopy. I don't like passata either. I've never had to hide veg and I just use ingredients, herbs and spices to build flavour. Never bought a rotisserie chicken or auntie Bessie's

I think it’s relative on time. Before I had kids I would cook from scratch every night. Now I’m at work for ten hours and spend all evenings and weekends taking dc to clubs. My time of cooking from scratch will come again. The gift of time allows you to cook properly.

You’re supposed to cook down tinned tomatoes as well, though. They aren’t watery if you do. Most Italian cooks consider tinned tomatoes superior for a lot of pasta dishes.

Cook from scratch 95% of the time

cook from scratch camp here:
(always a pinch of sugar in a tomato sauce)
I feel guilty for buying tinned beans, instead of buying dried and cooking them.

I don't feel guilty for buying stock cubes, bread, noodles etc.

This is exactly how we eat. DH cooks elaborate meals at the weekend but, during the week, when the DC have clashing activities they need to be at and totally different tastes, various jars and packets mean we eat a fairly varied & healthy diet,
Perhaps counterintuitively, I’d say that using jarred sauces got DD into cooking. From about Yr7, I’d brown off the chicken and then she’d do the rest of the construction of a meal using a Pataks curry pot. And then she wanted to do it without the pot and off she went. She still likes to use a pot for convenience but will also cook from scratch when she has the time.

I don’t cook tomatoes down for a tomato based sauce, I used tinned and while tomatoes have some natural sweetness, they also have a natural acidity which isn’t good in some dishes, a curry doesn’t need the acid which fights with the other spices used to flavour.

I think the evangelical fight against sugar in all its forms doesn’t do us good in terms of flavourful food. A spoonful of sugar in a sauce for 8 people isn’t going to do any harm but improves the flavour of the dish immeasurably.

I never buy jars or ready made things. Ever. It doesn't take much longer to make them myself and the flavours are better and fewer additives

I’d say the same for my kids. It’s much easier to learn the basics of browning meat, adding vegetables etc without worrying about balancing spices for flavour. They started with packets for taco seasoning or chilli and are slowly learning how to balance flavour profiles, the difference a touch of sugar or a squeeze of lemon can make to a dish.

OMG it's so nice to find someone else who keeps the skin on! I've literally had people refuse my food because I don't peel carrots.

Even my 'international' foods seem kind of peasanty. I make a lot of polish food given I'm half polish so golumpki, perogi and a lot of kopytka usually with my own little twist. Luxury for us is Italian or my husband's native Cajun cuisine.