To think that sauces from jars are much nicer than homemade?

[Satine5]

Or am I just a rubbish cook? I don't buy ready meals, but I can't get over my love of ready made sauces. As hard as I try, a can of chopped tomatoes and herbs are never as nice as a jar of good old loyd grossman bolognese sauce. What am I doing wrong? Same with hummus- I tried making my own and it was vile!

YABU.

Shopbought sauce had a tendency to evacuate painfully and at speed from my bowel within minutes of eating. DH had the same experience. We haven't eaten a shopbought sauce for probably ten years and it hasn't happened since.

YABVVVVU

Nothing beats fresh home cooking.

It's all the salt and sugar in the shop bought sauces that make them taste like that.

Yonwhalefish quite often I dont have the money to go and get these ingredients in the first place and I dont have the space to store stuff in my kitchen, its very small. I dont drink wine either so that would have to be bought especially.

Ive been thinking about this today and ive realised that I do cook a few things from scratch and I do have certain things. My cottage pie is done fresh with onions and oxos, pepper, brown sauce instead of Worcester. Flour to thicken but not often.

Its tomato based sauces and curries I have trouble with

I'm with the OP. I can cook a tomato sauce from scratch and it taste alright but really - who can be bothered?! All that chopping and cooking.

Use a jar and you can have dinner on the table in 15 minutes with minimal time in the kitchen. How can that be bad?

We use Lloyd Grosman precisely because it isn't full of crap nor is it processed to within an inch of its life like the Dolmio and Ragu stuff. (I imagine they are made of from passata - no texture whatsoever).

I do make a spag bol from scratch but that is easy because the meat gives it a nice flavour. I don't like it too tomatoey. DS1 won't touch it with a barge pole so I buy him a shop bought version and everybody is happy.

Easiest salmon or prawn curry in the world; sweat half red onion til see-thru not brown. Add 2tbs patak's tikka massaka paste; stir for 2 mins. Add salmon or prawns, cook 1min & turn over. Tip in can of coconut milk (light version tastes same). Sqeeze in juice of half a lime; chuck in chopped coriander if you like it, stir round a bit & voilà.
Have to say that one of ex-husb favourite meals was Ragu chicken. Chicken thighs, jar of Ragu sauce with bit extra garlic. He had 2 stars so jar food can't be all bad.

I have a sweet tooth, can't stand more than a hint of garlic and see anything remotely bitter as the work of the devil, plus my rule is that a meal should no longer to cook than it does to eat... hence my reliance on jar or packet bases and sauces. I tend to live on stir fries so it's just a matter of a chicken breast fillet or a small piece of rump steak, a heap of sliced carrots and snow peas, plenty of frozen sweetcorn and baby peas, a few bits of broccoli and cauliflower plus a decent splash of a base or sauce and within 10 to 15 minutes we're good to go!

Here in Australia TV has been taken over by cooking shows with pretentious celebrity cooks and wannabe foodies vying to outdo each other to win the right to publish a cookbook no one but other wannabe foodies would buy at the end of it, carefully "plating up" by drizzling some revolting sauce artfully over a morsel of food that wouldn't feed a 3 year old child, let alone an adult.

Have you actually read the ingredients on a jar of Lloyd Grosman's - no crap. Nothing different to what anybody is suggesting to make a their own sauce - the proportions may be different but thats all. The difference is I don't have to spend ages bored stupid in the kitchen nor do I have to remember to fish anything out of the freezer. Things from the freezer are never as good as the fresh either.

Life is just too short to make your own sauces.

I make a far better sweet and sour sauce than Uncle Ben. My bolognaise is nice but I struggle with a plain tomato one.

Always found LG sauces bleurgh! May look natural but wonder how myth salt, oil, and sugar etc goes in compared to homemade sauces. Would truly love to know. As a cheat I use the fresh pasta sauces, hoping they are a bit better and healthier than the jarred ones but have no idea if I'm kidding myself or not.

Oh and children are adaptable alright. You make you own sauces for ages because they are little and you think it is the right thing to do. They eat what you put in front of them with gusto so you get all smug about it. Then they grow up a bit and they go off it.

Bloody children. Yet more evidence if evidence be needed that it isn't worth spending time in the kitchen.

I love spending time in the kitchen.
I'd be bereft if I was told I wasn't allowed to cook.

YABU. A lot of ready made sauces have lot of salt in them. They also have mono sodium glutamate which is a flavour enhancer but actually not very good for you. I can make a good sauce in less then 30 minutes.

''Life is just too short to make your own sauces.''

When I'm lying on my death bed, I'm p.sure I won't look back on the past and think to myself ''alas, I wasted all that time in the kitchen preparing nice food that I enjoyed, if only I had fed my family jarred/packaged crap instead''.

op i think your maybe not a good cook the jars especially the cheap store brand are sickly sweet or vile tasting

my sister invited me for chinese once served up uncle Ben's sweet and sour well lets just say we have never be over their for dinner again

it was a thick gloopy sauce that was so sweet with what look like pineapple chunks

I can make a very nice sauce when I have the time but if you want something quick and cheap you can't beat ready made.

Thanks for so many requests for my tomato sauce recipe, hope it goes well for all of you. Have a version for "veg shy" kids as well - no lumps! Just let me know.

Have to say though, some jars are nice and very convenient. It's personal preference I think.

Seriously Mrbojangles1 - you've not gone over your sisters again because she served up Uncle Ben's?

If she'd served up arsenic, fair enough, but a jar of Uncle Ben's?

Yes just not for dinner

have you explained why?

I couldn't eat sweet or sour homemade or out of a jar.

sorry you must be a rubbish cook

Great thread. I'm feeling inspired as I've got lazy with my cooking and been using too many jar sauces.

Has anyone got a good carbonara sauce recipe?