If you don't "cook from scratch", what do you eat?

[Notcontent]

Sorry, this is prompted by another thread, but I am really curious.

I am not a super-woman but I do (mostly) "Cook from scratch" despite being a lone parent who works long hours four days a week. I guess I do this because I am not British (but live in the UK now) and have always cooked. I don't really have time to cook when I get home from work so I batch cook on the weekend or sometimes in the evening. Or I make things that are very quick, like egg dishes, etc.

If you don't really cook, then what do you eat? I guess if you are single you can get away with eating out but that's not an option if you have kids...

I disagree, MerryMarigold. Dried pasta (which I use a lot) is not from scratch for me any more than fish fingers or tinned tomatoes. Those are shortcuts and I am grateful for them. Perhaps salami or cheese are different.

But by the same token, surely making your own pasta isn't from scratch either if you don't grind your own flour?

I don't ever use jars and packets (other than patak's curry paste) because I don't like the taste of them.

Some weeks everything would be from scratch. Some weeks would include things like frozen garlic bread with homemade spaghetti and sauce or a rotisserie chicken with roast potatoes I made myself.

If I lived near a M&S I would probably serve their meals 2 a week as my kids love them (best bit about going to the UK for them) but that would be pretty expensive too.

as it is we get take out - usually quesidillas or burgers from our local restaurant - twice a week.

I know a fair few people who hardly cook. I quite often had children at my house who had never eaten a potato in any form other than a french fry or had a home made casserole. Different strokes and all that.

I tend to mix and match.

I will make the following from Scratch..
Roast Chicken and all the trimmings,
Chicken and mushroom pie,
Asparagus Risotto,
Frittata etc

But I also buy Charlie Bigham ready made meals (his Macaroni cheese is amazing) as well as Waitrose and M&S Cook meals. They have no nasty additives and taste better than I could make without the faff. I do add my own veg and potatoes/rice etc

I have a friend who's reasonably heathy (neither her, her DH or their dcs are overweight) but she never cooks 'from scratch' and says she never would as she doesn't have the time or the desire.

She usually cooks things like,

Curry - fresh chicken, jar of sauce, frozen veg with steam in the bag rice.
Risotto - from a packet, the just add water type, with frozen veg added.
Sausage casserole - sausages, a pack of frozen casserole veg and a jar of sauce.
Pasta - usually just dry pasta, a jar of sauce and meat and frozen veg.
Pizza - frozen
Baked potatoes - pre prepared frozen ones, with tinned beans and cheese, tinned veggie chilli or tuna.
Stir fry - frozen or pre prepared veg, meat, jar of sauce and straight to wok noodles.
Sunday roast - pre prepared roast in the bag/tin meat, frozen roast potatoes, frozen Yorkshire puds, frozen veg and instant gravy.

They eat veg with every meal but it's always tinned or frozen, pretty much everything is tinned, jarred or frozen.
She never chops or peels, she owns no spices or herbs.

I think a lot of it is convenience and lack of confidence.

Like pretty much everyone I know I do a mix.

But even when cooking properly I am happy to use short cuts - tinned tomatoes instead of boiling and skinning my own, bought bread instead of making my own, frozen rice instead of boiling it myself, pre-chopped onions/garlic (often frozen) for ease, grated cheese, etc. I do prepare the above (and others) myself - but after a day at work I don't have the inclination at all. I want something easy to prep and easy to cook, but don't always want a total pre-prepared meal. And tbh sometimes I just want a chip butty made from frozen chips tbh!

Tonight however it is a Thai Green Chilli for dh and dd - but it is a 'scratch' kit so all the ingredients are pre chopped and in the right measurements. I'll cook it accordingly but don't have the hassle of the actual measuring and cutting, or having left overs. Was on offer so figured we'd try it.

I tend to cook most things "from scratch" and by that, I mean that I make the components of a lasagne rather than the ready meal - I make white sauce and bolognaise sauce as I find it easy - I don't make lasagne sheets.

I don't really care what anyone else does, but sometimes the assumption from friends/acquaintances that I have oodles of time on my hands grates. Cooking is easier for some than others, personally I can fit it around my FT job and six horses without an issue, others don't want to spend 30-1hr cooking, fair enough.

Ready meals have such a stigma - there are SO many healthy ready meals available. And personally if someone wants to judge me for getting a cook in the tin waitrose chicken - go ahead.

I live by myself. I get a hot freshly cooked meal at work for lunch every day (not by me! ha) and in the evenings I eat porridge / cereal / boiled egg and soldiers / sometimes makes an omelette. I also eat out once or twice a week with friends and usually try to have something healthy-ish then with lots of veg. I hate cooking

"And where are you from? This marvellous place where ready meals do not exist??"
I think if you go to a hypermarket in say Spain (or at least this was the case a few years back when we lived there) you'll find a much, much smaller range of ready meals than in the UK. So I think there is a country by country difference.
Having said that eating out is (was?) much cheaper there, so maybe it's swings and roundabouts.

Another Brit (mostly...) wot cooks: roasts, Bolognese, stews, curries, flans.

I'm about to go and make mulligatawny soup, from scratch. Though admittedly I won't have knocked the coconuts off the tree myself.

And a couple of nights a week we'll have something like supermarket meatballs in a homemade sauce, or fishfingers and oven chips

I cook from scratch Ish

Tonight for the family (not me, am working & a veggie) belly pork, fried potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, cooked whole tom's sweet corn ( only thing convenience is frozen corn)

Yesterday Tuna steaks, veg stir fry & noodles

Tomorrow. Roast veg, chicken (portioned) roast pots.
Rest of week there will be a pasta dish, a veg curry with a sauce I make that is nice.
Might do some prawn fajitas. Not sure from there on. Will see what's in freezer.

I also do a mixture though I'd say we cook from scratch more often than not. By from scratch I mean fresh ingredients, no packets, jars, etc.

If I'm not cooking from scratch I will mix and match e.g. A pie will have home made filling, shop bought pastry.

I do have the occasional ready meal (usually from M&S) if it's just me eating and I CBA to cook just for myself.

I probably cook 'from scratch' 5 out of 7 days, most definitely British & I'd quite like the OP to come back & explain why she thinks British people don't do this...

Stuff out of packets
Yogurt etc
Sandwiches
Other cold stuff

I not only 'don't cook from scratch' I don't even cook ready meals.

I don't really now I'm on a meal plan, I pay someone else to do it for me

Not sure why it's so confusing to get your head round the fact that not everyone eats out or cooks from scratch

Your British comment made me laugh too.

Most nights we cook home made food but one night a week we will do a family sized ready meal, like lasagne or a pie. The type of thing that take some preperation but is comfort food.

We often have what I call Hot Sandwich night. Using whatever is appropriate, wraps, baguette, rolls, pita. We may have homemade falafel burgers or meatballs in the freezer but I am happy to use shop brought burgers, meatballs, sausages, fish fingers. Or the night before I marinade meat, whole chicken breast or meat cut to strips. Some times I will make the marinade and others reach for the half jar of jerk, piri etc in the fridge. It all cooks quickly or shoved in the oven whilst we get on with other jobs, then chuck it in the bread. We always have a bowl of chopped salad on the go in the fridge , so that's the veg part sorted out.

If we cook mash or homemade oven wedges then we often cook double. The mash can easily be turned into some sort of potato cake. Or used to make a potato topped pie, with that portion of stew, creamy chicken, chilli, spagbol lurking in the freezer. Wedges can be used with eggs and other veg to make a frittata. Or fried up to make some kind of hash.

I come from a family who never added salt to their home cooking so I find jars and ready meals just too salty for me. I have problems with over seasoning in some restaurants too. That means I cook from scratch for most meals but it is simple stuff like a chop with carrots and cabbage or steak (thank you Aldi) /mixed grill with mushrooms and tomatoes. I am a bit traditional too in that I'll do a roast on Sunday and then use the leftovers for about 2 other meals in the week. None of my meat and 2 veg meals take more than 20 minutes to cook.

I rarely cook from scratch, and when I do it tends to be easy, one-pot dishes like chilli, or sausage & paprika casserole, and even then I'll use sauces from a jar.

On a day to day basis, we eat a lot of the following:

Ready meals from 'Cook' served with ready prepped veg.

Crispy chicken chilli wraps - made with ready-made breaded goujons, a bottle of Blue Dragon Sweet Chilli Sauce, a bag of ready-to-eat salad, tortillas.

Penne pasta served with tinned tuna, tinned sweetcorn, petit pois (frozen)and a sauce that I actually do make (double cream mixed with a splash of wine and lazy garlic), and garlic bread.

Ready made Tortellini pasta and a ready-made sauce, served with ready-to-eat salad.

Chicken curry, made using a Sharwood's sauce, chicken breasts, and plenty of frozen veg bunged in. Served with Uncle Ben's 'microwave in the bag' 2 minute rice.

The distinction is...

Not cooking at all - ready meals and take aways.

Not cooking from scratch - using premade sauces, pre prepared ingredients.

Cooking from scratch - using raw ingredients and preparing them yourself, using spices/herbs and making sauces/marinades yourself.

Having too much time on your hands - milling the flour for your own bread and pasta. Pressing olives to make your own olive oil..... you get the idea.

I rarely cook from scratch tbh, I just found it wasn't worth the time and money with fussy kids and not much time. TBH I serve lot of Iceland stuff with pre-prepared veg, pizzas, garlic bread, pasta with ready made pesto that sort of thing. Tonight we have Oomi noodles (which I got free through my work), with frozen scampi and Iceland king prawns in soy sauce which can be done in the microwave. I would have usually got a bag of stir fry veg to go with it but failed today. I do try to limit take aways due to cost, but I do get tempted especially on the way home from football training with two hungry boys. That said, Chicken World or similar doesn't really break the bank.

Actually not cooking at all isn't necessarily ready meals - they require some cooking/heating.

There is a level of not cooking that includes not heating stuff up or preparing stuff

I cook mostly from scratch but I have some cheats. Always buy ready meal potato dauphinoise (when I've made home made they're always utter shite) and I do buy boil in the bag rice because I can never get the consistency right with mine and it ends up like rice pudding. 😁

I do make all sauces and marinades etc from scratch though as I don't like the amount of additives in jars.

Lol at the person who thinks that using dried pasta means a meal is not "from scratch"

We use tinned tomatoes and dried pasta. We do use dried beans and then rehydrate them but that is more for cost than anything.

DH cooks pretty much from scratch every day - that's what his mum did. last night was lamb shanks in the pressure cooker, mash and spring greens. I, on the other hand, revel in a tin of M&C chunky chicken, rice and beans as the ultimate comfort food.

Mostly I cook from scratch but things that I don't include: oven chips, fish fingers, steak pies and (occasionally) pizza. I'll also buy nacho or fajitas kits and carton soups sometimes.

Oh and I don't make my own bread or pasta!

I mostly cook from 'scratch' and by that i mean anything that isn't a prepared meal, but we do have fishfingers, chicken kiev's and oven chips at least once a week or more in shit weeks. Most of the time, my cooking from scratch during the week involves pasta dishes that take not more than 15 mins to prepare. During the weekend I make dishes that take a bit more time and DH cooks mostly at weekends.

I'm not pedantic about 'cooking from scratch' but remember when i bought my flat and had no kitchen so lived off microwave meals for a month that I felt really rough by the end and was craving green stuff, so can't understand how people can permantly live off that food.
My DH on the other hand is a pain in the backside and insists on everything from scratch including gravy/custard etc. He's often disappointed with me!!