To ask what "cooking from scratch" means?

[CruCru]

I keep seeing posters who say that they cook from scratch. What does this mean?

I can cook lots of things, including bread, but there is plenty that I buy (pasta).

At what point does it become cooking from scratch?

I just cook... like most ordinary people...

I use stock cubes, tins, jars, whatever - along with fresh ingredients to make stunning meals for my family.

Trouble is "mum's home made pie, mum's homemade pizza, mum's homemade lasagne, mum's homemade brownies, mum's homemade pepper soup" etc, etc, etc are "best" now, so I can never stop bloody cooking and just grab a ready meal... because it is "not as good as your homemade one"

Home made rather than cooked from scratch here... hides a multitude of ready made ingredients....

I never find it's used in the UK - it's more of an American thing where they use a lot more ready made stuff than most people I know in the UK do.

I have never bought a jar of sauce - I like cooking. But I do buy ready prepared spice mixes and stock.

If I didn't like doing it, I might buy a jar but I think I'd worry that a really nice bit of meat would be worried by a jar of sauce that didn't taste very nice!

Its use in cooking means "from ordinary cooking ingredients that have not been pre-mixed or otherwise specially processed.

I think where I usually see the phrase is on AIBU threads where someone claims that they "cook from scratch" so this is why their toddler isn't fussy / it isn't their fault that their toddler is fussy / the OP is an obvious slattern.

I cook a fair bit for us, but there are "convenience" foods I do like to buy:

1. Dried pasta. It is so cheap, and I certainly couldn't be bothered trying to make my own.
2. Passata. It is pretty cheap too, and makes a nice base for a bolognaise sauce. I add fresh plum tomatoes to it.
3. Tomato puree (in a tube). Very cheap and good for additional flavour.
4. A tube of garlic puree. I just like it, and if you add a teaspoonful of it to a bowl of mayonnaise then you have a cheap and tasty garlic mayo.
5. Fish fingers. Our only takeaway of the week is normally chips on Saturday evening. They go with that.
6. Frozen yorkshire puddings. Yes, I can make my own, but in Tesco I can usually get a bag of nice frozen ones (15 of them for 50p).
7. Pastry cases. Not expensive, and a great fall-back for a cookery cheat like me.
8. Puff and shortcrust pastry. I particularly couldn't be arsed to make puff pastry, and the packs you can buy are pretty good (and not expensive either).
9. Cans of baked beans. A good option if you are running low on time. 10 Frozen vegetables. Not usually expensive, and does save time.

I do buy quality fresh meat from the local butcher and vegetables, fruit and free range eggs (don't like the way caged hens are kept, so won't knowingly buy the others).

I cheat where I can without compromising too much on fresh ingredients, but would still call many of my meals cooked from scratch (my version).

To me it means putting ingredients together to make a dish.

so no ready meals or oven chips and crispy fish cakes

I wouldn't class a jar of this, a tin of that and a bag of the other as cooking from scratch, but if you're chopping veg, dicing meat, adding spices and you also use a jar of some cooking sauce or other, I think you can still count that, although I know the purists don't

Re the pastry...even Mary Berry buys ready made puff and filo. That's good enough for me.
I also buy dried chilli flakes and the ready cut and chilled garlic but that's because I'm sick of wasting it.

I agree with VileStatistyx .

I dont know anyone from our generation that cooks always 'from scrach'.

My mum did and tbh it was boring. I was dreaming of frozen meals and jars. When you insist to only eat homemade stuff you need to invest a lot of time and money in order to have variety imo.
I was dying for strawberry jam but oh no we had to eat the homemade one. The one with oranges because oranges were free and strawberries were expensive. So you had to eat orange marmelade every day for 18 years.
Ditto with the same homemade pasta every single week.

I like the excitement of buying different jars!

Arf@my typo.

I think people tend to mention 'from scratch' because alot of the time it's healthier than buying ready meals - for instance I'd much prefer my DDs to have a meal made 'from scratch' ie. not processed (as far as is reasonable). I've never really given my DDs ready meals though I've eaten a fair few in my time. Last year though on hols OH persuaded me to buy ready meals for everyone in the local Sainsburys and DD1 loved them so much she now sees them as a massive treat on the rare occasion we have them, as opposed to my (probably bland) cooking!

Really laquitar? I'm mid 30s, I think most of my friends cook from scratch most of the time. Health reasons as well as just wanting to know whats in it/cook properly. I think its partly assumed. None of us are particular heath freaks as far as I know.

I never brought potato faces type food for my children as it didn't really occur to me to give them anything other than what I cook. My meals are fairly run of hte mill unless we have people over, but they are real!

I make my own pastry and pasta but I never bother making my own puff pastry. DH does find frozen Yorkshire potatoes dreadful but I usually use a packet mix as all the dry ingredients are weighed out for me, saving a bit of time and faff. I think as a family cook you need an arsenal of shortcuts to get by and very few people have the time to cook totally from scratch in it's literal definition. I also can't be bothered to mince my own garlic and ginger so I buy those in jars these days

We still always have dried pasta in the house though as well as Dolmio sauces because sometimes you just need to put a meal together in 10 minutes.

I think on MN threads it's usually used as a way of being judgemental and smug, rather than having any specific culinary meaning.

It translates as "I make the effort, while you obviously don't care as much about your family as I do."

I think most people do a mix - unless they absolutely love cooking, most people aren't going to grind every spice and make their own pasta for every meal. Equally, most people don't live on ready-meals for every single mealtime. Exactly which shortcuts we use varies.

Me, I do buy batter mix. Because you just have to pour the milk into the bottle and shake it, and I cba to get my liquidiser out from the back of the cupboard where it lives, then wash all the bits after... But I make mashed potato by peeling, chopping, boiling, mashing... we all just pick different things we want to bother doing from scratch.

Not something I've ever thought about.

If it was made in my home then it's home made

Arabell - "
Its use in cooking means "from ordinary cooking ingredients that have not been pre-mixed or otherwise specially processed."

That would rule out lots of things then. Like Worcestershire sauce ot ketchup or preserved lemons,tofu, or cheese, or ketchup, or soy sauce, shrimp paste, fush sauce, or any of the wonderful jars of exotically flavoured chinese fermented bean curds.

I wouldn't fancy having to make fermented fish sauce although I do use it in cooking.

What mumofthemoos said.

Doesn't it mean that you have no idea what to cook, so you scratch your arse until inspiration takes you?

Weekend meals I cook more or less from scratch, midweek I get a little 'help' from maybe a jar or packet but like to add bits to it to make it feel like mine ha

You have to grow your own and make a meal from it.

I don't think anybody can say they cook from scratch.

I don't give a shit. Everyone i know knows i am a great cook so i don't feel i have to prove anything to anybody by weaving my own cottage cheese muslin :D

From scratch is meaningless. I actually really enjoy trying to do as much as possible as I can, my garden is full of vegetables, I'm out every autumn picking berries and nuts, I make wine/bread/jam/chutneys etc., I've been known to churn butter and I did once look up how much land you would need to grow wheat to mill my own flour... BUT, I do that because its my hobby, I find it challenging and fun. It's like a game I can play with myself to see how much I can personally do. And I still hit limits all the time (I have never met anyone who buys sugar cane/sugar beet and processes it themselves instead of ever buying a packet of sugar, I don't live near enough the sea to collect my own salt, I couldn't even start on baking powder, I don't have room for a dairy cow or the desire to kill my own livestock, etc, etc...)

And, I actually I hate it when people are sniffy about preserved foods (i.e. frozen, canned), because frankly I think its better than having veggies flown in fresh from the other side of the world.

I don't like driving, and I have no problem in paying a bus driver/taxi driver/train company etc to do that work for me. If I didn't enjoy cooking I would have no problem in paying someone else to do most of the work of food preparing for me.