To wonder who these wonder women are who 'cook from scratch' every day

[MGFM]

Following on from all the threads about supermarket shopping and how to make it cheaper etc, I just can't get me head around all of the families 'cooking from scratch' everyday.

Is it just me that thinks that cooking from scratch everyday is an absolute nightmare? Are people confused about what cooking from scratch actually means? Are all these people who do this SAHM/SAHDs? Are they getting up at 5 am to put the meal together to heat up in the evening. I just dont get it.

I am currently on Mat Leave but when I was working full time and getting home around 1645/1700 every night, the last thing I wanted to start doing was cooking from scratch.

And what does cooking from scratch even mean? I enjoy sausage, mash, peas and gravy. The mash is from scratch...does that count?

I tend to cook from scratch at the weekend....a big pan of chilli which can cook for a few hours, or spag bol and then will freeze the left overs but I dont start cooking this on a thursday night for example.

Anyway, If I am being unreasonable and it is actually pretty easy to be super mum/dad and cook from scratch, can I please have your recipes?

Thanks! -

I don't do it every night but I'm sure I could. I make a few dishes that take about 20 mins to prepare and 15 to cook so that's not too long really. I wouldn't make a roast every night but I wouldn't use a jar of sauce as it's pretty easy to make your own (apart from pesto as I prefer the Sacla one to anything I've ever made!).

It helped me to sign up to Gousto for a while - everything we ate from there was lovely and I cancelled it after a month but was left with recipes for quick and easy stuff that is really really tasty.

But old fashioned but I use Nigella meals in minutes from about 10 years ago. Very tasty and quick. The point is that using a decent Thai curry paste is better than buying a ready meal or getting a takeaway AND more satisfying and you can adjust your flavours. We are huge fans of the spice tailor. It's quicker and more flavoursome than our local takeaway. If I ate curry everyday I'm sure I'd do pastes from scratch but having all those ingredients are not practical for me as we don't eat enough and the really good spices are expensive.

We eat a lot of soup, quick, filling and warming - tomato, carrot and lentil, cauliflower cheese. Cheap cheerful and good for lunch.

Remember though, sometimes you can't be arsed to call on and a ready meal cones in handy :)

Prettybaffled- did you know you can freeze pizza dough? We have pizza most Satrurday nights and I only make dough every fortnight.

I make pizza dough Bertrand but I don't freeze it.

I was thinking about this thread, I make everything we eat from scratch really, mince my own meat, grow veg, keep hens. I do work full time. It I really like nice food and home grown/local food and I find cooking really relaxing, just me and the radio, or DH sat in the kitchen.

Pooh, I buy my spices once a year from an online shop, £25 for absolutely tons, I throw them out after a year- I make three curries a week, because I like a selection when I eat them and DH eats any leftovers for lunch. I use spice tailor when we go camping.

I cook from scratch most days - although every 2nd Friday I buy curries from Lidl (the alternate Fridays I make low carb chicken nuggets).

During the week it's always simple stuff: frittata, or sticky lemon chicken (recipe from MN: takes 5 minutes to prepare and then 40 minutes to cook, serve with rice) or chili (lasts a few nights/freeze portions of it) or pork belly and chorizo casserole (ditto) or turkey steaks (bashed flat, take minutes to griddle) or lamb steaks (lovely with Provençal herbs or balsamic vinegar) or soup and sourdough bread......

I've always cooked from scratch as it's so much cheaper but I don't use recipes, all those ingredients are too expensive.
I cook very simple basic food, spag bog, fish pie, toad in the hole, all that stuff.
It doesn't take long at all.

Cooking from scratch I think is a shortened form of 'scratching up food' from what's left in the cupboards.

I always think of chickens scratching up worms and making a meal of them so don't use the phrase but I do cook every day from basic ingredients. Suspect my children would be chuffed if they were presented with packaged food because they don't get them here.

I slow cook a lot, meal plan and know how to throw together about fifty different (acceptable to children) recipes (and probably that again of adult friendlier recipes).

Some of them take ages (curries etc) and some don't (shepherds pie which basically takes twenty minutes of activity and four hours of cooking in the slow cooker).

I also cook double quite often so I always have a few things knocking about in the kitchen.

Pinterest is your friend, when you find something that works. Save it. Make it again. Repeat.

I rarely use jarred sauces, particularly as there was a phase when I couldn't eat dairy, and DS couldn't eat tomatoes which eliminated most options!

One of my quick emergency meals is "Everything I hate sauce", named because DS hates the texture of all the ingredients, but loves them blended into a pasta sauce. Shove a can of coconut milk, onion, mushrooms, peppers, and any other random veg lurking in the fridge like courgettes into a blender while raw. Add seasoning like herbs, Worcester sauce, stock cube while blending. Boil kettle. Cook pasta. Put raw sauce into another pan and cook while the pasta is cooking.

The beauty of it is that there's minimal chopping so prep is less than 5 minutes to skin the onion and chop it into rough chunks that the blender will cope with, and then it heats so quickly.

It's the planning that I find hard, particularly as the DCs have their fads. Milk, soya, eggs and tomatoes have also been off the agenda in recent years. I substitute milk, but can cope with some amount of cheese, so I can make a lasange (now tomatoes are back!) with a dairy-free milk and cheese. The actual cooking is fine.

I think I'd struggle with planning more than a week in advance as things like the weather affect my appetite. In warmer weather, I like things like salad with chops, but in winter I like more starchy foods like stews with mash.

In winter use the slow cooker 2/3 times a week- curry, tagine, bolognaise. Takes 20 minutes tops to put it together in the mornings. Had pork fillet tonight that I'd marinated in soy sauce and ginger since this morning. Put in oven when I got home and it's ready by time I got changed, sorted mail etc. I do have a limited repertoire - think I should look at Gousto as PP suggested.

Really don't like ready meals and I'm a bit suspicious about takeaways. But don' t think cooking from scratch is any more time consuming or expensive than microwave options.

"whomovedmychocolate

Cooking from scratch I think is a shortened form of 'scratching up food' from what's left in the cupboards.

I always think of chickens scratching up worms and making a meal of them so don't use the phrase but I do cook every day from basic ingredients. Suspect my children would be chuffed if they were presented with packaged food because they don't get them here.

I slow cook a lot, meal plan and know how to throw together about fifty different (acceptable to children) recipes (and probably that again of adult friendlier recipes).

Some of them take ages (curries etc) and some don't (shepherds pie which basically takes twenty minutes of activity and four hours of cooking in the slow cooker).

I also cook double quite often so I always have a few things knocking about in the kitchen.

Pinterest is your friend, when you find something that works. Save it. Make it again. Repeat."

That meaning of scratch goes back to the late 18th century. From there it came to apply specifically to the starting point, in a handicap, of a competitor who received no odds: "Mr. Tom Sabin, of the Coventry Bicycle Club, has won, during last week, three races from scratch." (Bicycle Journal, August 18, 1878).26 Aug 2011)

I cook from scratch mostly, but used to end up giving the kids processed food as they are fussy and don't eat a lot of what DH and I like (stews, curries, sauces etc) They love fruit and veg though so that's something. I have now taken to batch preparing breaded fish fingers and chicken fingers to keep in the freezer so that they are getting homemade on the nights they don't have the same as us.

Typical meals we usually have include; chilli, curries, stir-fries, various pasta dishes (spag, turkey meatballs, carbonara, pepperonata, pesto, mac n cheese, bakes), also omelettes, frittatas, fish tacos, soy salmon, traybakes, hearty soups with veg/pasta/meat), in the summer we do more BBQs. salads etc

We tried out a meal service recently (where they deliver the ingredients (local and good quality) and a recipe and then you cook it) I found it great for learning to cook different things and for getting ideas. The meals are usually healthy and quick. Will probably do that on and off over the year to get out of cooking rut.

I think I do - and by cooking from scratch I mean not heating up frozen ready made meals, frozen pizzas, etc.

However, I serve oven fries and oven chicken patties and fish fingers. I use tins of beans in chili and other dishes, and I sometimes use jars of curry sauce. I do not use jars of tomato sauce or alfredo sauce, etc.

I make my own pizza dough and bread of all sorts. For varieties of beans that have a high turnover in my local shops I use dried beans - black beans, chick peas, green split peas.

I batch cook, but I have owned a George Foreman grill since Christmas that I love to bits. I also got a very nice Dutch oven at Christmas and I love it too. I use my slow cooker also.

I cook about three times a week at this point, and we eat leftovers either as is or transformed into something else. I have been cheerfully reheating rice since 1988.

lol I know! I can make tom sauce, but it isn't quick and I follow a recipe

Stop reading poncey recipe books.

Chop and fry a clove of garlic and an onion. Whack in a tin of tomatoes with some dried basil and simmer. Voila, tomato sauce.

Yes, you can make tomato sauce from scratch in the time it takes dried pasta to cook. If you are feeling poncy add a splash of balsamic vinegar.

Basic tomato sauce-2 minutes prep-10/15 cooking time. Get the chopped onion in the pan before you put the pasta on and they'll both be ready at the same time.

Nigel Slater's Real Fast Food is brilliant and Poppy Fraser's 10 minute suppers for children. Not doing a lot at the min as have small twins as well as school age child but looking forward to when they're weaned so can do again.

Bill, I hadn't heard of that Poppy Fraser book, thanks!

This is a brilliant thread.

Someone asked upthread if any FT WOHM cook fully from scratch.

Well, I mostly do, in that I batch cook (do double or triple batch of spag bol or a curry or something on Sundays, for Monday dinner and freezer) frequently, I prep the night before many nights, I have a good few very fast dinners and "throw into the oven" dinners to ignore, etc.

But I do use the odd jar of sauce (although I am fussy about them) for the nights when things have gone to pot, if I know ahead of time, I may get an M&S meal or resort to a takeaway, and there are nights when "dinner" is an M&S welsh rarebit and some freshly baked par baked bread rolls, with a glass of wine. Or some fresh pasta, fried bacon lardons, and egg, cream and parmesan to make the fastest carbonara going (bacon is longest to cook in about 6 minutes).

That said, I make things like crab cakes or chicken kievs from scratch (the whole dipping in flour, egg, breadcrumbs type), I bake a reasonable amount, I make tomato sauces as often as not from an onion, garlic and tin of tomatoes. And I have learned recently about putting chicken breasts, covered in passata, well seasoned, with some grated cheese on top, along with diced veggies and small sized potatoes into the oven for a dinner that is pretty fast cooking but also ignored until its ready after 5 minutes prep.

Overall, I work 40 hrs per week and have an hour commute each way on top, DD is hard work (11 but ADHD and aspie), and DH also works 50+hrs and travels overseas as part of that. So we plan ahead, and I probably manage to having meals cooked from scratch for 25 dinners out of 30 in a month on average.

The cooking triple the amount of anything and whacking in the freezer has been my lifelong magic weapon.

Also great for unexpected guests, leaving time to pop on my brinylon hostess gown and enjoy a babycham.

BUT if you're feeding teens, whack the bolognese/child/curry STRAIGHT into the freezing containers and HIDE immediately.

I've lost count of the the 'sorry, I thought that was just for us kids' as I'm doing echoing sobs into the vast empty recesses of my cauldron.

Yep, me too on both counts, prettybotanicals. And taking full advantage of the days, few and far between, when I feel earth motherish. Nothing says earth mother like a full freezer.........

Never EVER say to a teen "help yourself" if you've made flap jacks...

Ha ha.

I said help yourself to a packet of part baked rolls and cake back to find he'd eaten them all for lunch.

Nothing says earth mother like a full freezer.........

I've got a down-pat faux modest Nigella-lite smirk I do as I roll in with a steaming tureen.

Some of my friends say they'd like to wipe it off.