To think that cooking from scratch is becoming more and more unsustainable?

[AlternativePerspective]

I have always cooked from scratch, and I will be the first to admit that cooking from scratch has always been more expensive than buying e.g. jar sauces etc. However as things currently stand food prices are going up so much that cooking from scratch is becoming more and more unsustainable for many people who are struggling to make ends meet.

And in an era where we’re being told to live healthily, to cut out additives where possible, and to use the healthiest ingredients, while this has always been hard to sustain, right now for many it’s unsustainable from a financial perspective, and people are going to be forced to eat jar sauces, ready meals and various other foods with additives they didn’t want or need.

I’ve just cancelled my milkman because I can no longer justify spending the money, and it’s going to take a lot before I will ever eat ready meals or cook from a jar. But compromises are going to have to be made, and in many instances for some people, it’s not going to be possible to compromise.

Although that MP's comment about cooking for 30p a meal was bullshit, he did have a point in that a great deal of people seem unable to make what I call simple meals such as spaghetti bolognaise or cottage pie from scratch without buying packets or jars.
If you do buy those, what is the reason I wonder - do you prefer the taste or lack confidence in cooking?

Your homemade chocolate brownies made with four large eggs and 275 grams of butter (plus cocoa etc) will have yielded a decent size traybake, which be could cut into at least 16 fudgy squares.
These are far more delicious and satisfying than Cadbury mini rolls which are oddly airy, contain palm oil and are coated in a very thin layer of not very good chocolate. And you don't get 16 of them in a pack.

I used jar sauces for years. It was only in lockdown with time on my hands that I started to cook from scratch and I'm in my 50s. The reason? I was taught basic cooking as a child, so would do shepherds pie, roasts etc from scratch, but curries, pasta sauces, i didn't know how. If you look up a recipe they tend to be quite elaborate, involving spices and herbs I didn't have in, and after buying them plus the effort, it never seemed worth it.
I cook everything from scratch now, and it's quick and cheap, as I've build up my stock of ingredients and am familiar enough to cook with constantly referring to the recipe, but that's taken time, and I can understand why the start up investment in time and money is off-putting.

It's a lot faster, less washing up and removes the risk of me burning myself or chopping bits of my fingers off (I'm genetically clumsy, runs down both sides of my family). It's patronising to assume it's because I don't know how.

So I use jarred sauces - Dolmio stir-in, passata, maybe jarred bruschetta
or (more often) sun dried tomatoes and a bit of puree. The ingredients in the Dolmio are basically the same as homemade but with more variety of veg in and some preservatives.

Even my grandmother, who was an expert home cook, never made cottage pie from scratch - she used condensed vegetable soup as the base! Shortcuts aren't new, and often they do make sense.

Assuming I wanted to make a bolognaise from scratch I'd buy pre made soffito, premade passata, premade puree, preminced beef. Why on earth would I not? How far back do we have to go for it to qualify as "from scratch"... growing our own tomatoes and slaughtering our own cow?

If you want to use jarred pasta sauces then do it but the ingredients aren't the same and they're full of sugar.

No judgement. I would reach for a jar or tin of something if I was exhausted and the kids needed a quick fix.

Full of sugar? These are the ingredients from the one I use - Dolmio make:

Tomatoes (62%), Onions (8.7%), Sunflower Oil, Sun Dried Tomatoes (4.9%), Tomato Paste (4.4%), Lemon Juice, Olive Oil, Cornflour, Sugar, Basil, Salt, Garlic, Spices

Yes, it's got sugar in (6.3g grams per 100g) - but only a little of it is added sugar. Most is from the tomatoes.

Dolmio is not Italian pasta sauce. It is gloopy and 🤑
My DC would literally starve rather than eat it.
The quality of tinned tomatoes available in the UK supermarkets is generally poor but real Italian cans are available if you look a bit harder. They are more expensive but worth every penny.

If it was as simple as being the sum total of those ingredients then where does the weird texture come from? No homemade sauce has it.

What make of tinned tomatoes would you recommend

Thanks

Mutti

You might have to explain the weird texture - it just seems oily to me.

Are you talking about the big jars? Those are a different type of sauce.

I think that's the cornflour. I just cook my sauce down until it's as thick as I want it but obviously that's time and money so not as appealing to manufacturers.

Admittedly, I have not had it for a few years (my parents would have them in for the grandkids and I would end up with the leftovers). It may have improved and I am aware that the range expanded at some point. However, I find it hard to believe that it is a good alternative to fresh at that price point. Wouldn't it be cheaper to buy bags of frozen soffritto, good canned tomatoes and bung in some dried herbs?

I don't actually mind the cornflour gloop in the jars of Chinese sweet and sour sauces. I would serve that once a week loaded with stir fry veg and a protein if my DCs were accepting of it (which they are not!)
It vaguely resembles what it claims to be on the jar.

For me if I keep a stock of spices and things like tins of tomatoes (supermarket brand) then it’s much easier to cook from scratch. They don’t have to be expensive - I just bought a tube of garlic paste for about 54p in Aldi which I’ll put in the fridge and last me quite a while (I don’t bother looking at its best before or use by date as long as it looks and smells ok then I use) I also have tubes of ginger paste and chilli paste at the same/similar price. I buy them instead of fresh as they last longer. I buy sliced frozen peppers for about £1.00 as they last longer too. For me I find if I have those ingredients I can make a lot of different dishes using either some chicken or veg, potatoes, pasta or rice etc, and cheaper supermarket brands. I am on a very tight budget.

Co op does bags of frozen soffritto for £1 (unless they’ve gone up recently). I have two bags in my freezer and find they are invaluable and nice and cheap. I know Waitrose do them but don’t shop there anymore and no idea of their pricing.

I also freeze things i didn't before to help reduce wastage. I buy grated cheese (I really don’t like grating hunks of cheese) but I put it in my freezer. It started as an accident (absent minded) but it worked well as I use it for cooking and it doesn’t go mouldy if I don’t use for a while (not a big cheese eater).

Or Cirio (pronounced cheerio). Sadly it's quite a bit more expensive than supermakret own-brand and a lot more than 'value' brands.
Of the supermarket brands i've found Tesco whole or chopped tomatoes in their own juice to be ok. Not too thin or sharp tasting. 45p a tin at the moment.

😂Dolmio is the same as home cooking.
How can something that takes all day to make be the same as a highly processed manufactured gloop?

I think this argument is strange, and I suppose it's based on how much exposure the genuine foods and cooking processes have been.

But it's made in mama's kitchen from a secret family recipe

Exactly what goes into Dolmio, in what quantities, that makes it UPF?
Allowing that the ingredients are listed by descending mass:

What's in Dolmio sauce?

Ingredients. Tomatoes (78%) Tomato Paste (10%) Onion Sugar Modified Maize Starch Salt Sunflower Oil Basil (0.3%) Garlic Acidity Regulator (Citric Acid) Parsley Herbs Spices

88% is tomatoes & tomato paste. If the Basil & later ingredients only add up to 0.4% of weight, & that onions & citric acid aren't the problem... Is pureeing itself is the problem?

I assume that the oil, salt, sugar & corn starch are the problem UPF ingredients. I'm guessing unstated relative contributions by weight, these numbers work:

Onion 3.6%
Sugar 3.4%
Starch 3.3%
Salt 0.7%
Oil .5%

So by weight, you must keep your own additions of any oil, salt, sugar or thickener in your home-made sauce below those %s (all of them?), to declare you didn't make your own gloop / UPF. max. 7.9% by weight combined.

Who here steadfastedly keeps below all of those % thresholds when making a home-made sauce?

I know a person who worked at Mars-Pet foods.
People would be shocked at how there favourite foods are made.
The concept of food as a source of nutrition and enjoyment isn't the same as what manufacturers see, a vehicle to make money.
Fugazi, all of it.

She’s talking twaddle

I've visited lots of food factories and watched far too much How it's Made and I don't think there's anything particularly shocking, unless you never read ingredients labels and imagine a food factory to be a load of grannies chopping carrots and stirring big pans.

Fun fact. If you phone a Mars site and get put on hold, their hold music is that used on the Dolmio advert.

My friends own a food manufacturing company meat processing to be precise and there is literally the Aldi shelf, the Tesco shel, the Tescos finest shelf, the Marks And Spencers shelf and the quality does deteriorate as it goes quite literally down the food chain.

Who here steadfastedly keeps below all of those % thresholds when making a home-made sauce?

Well I don't need to add sugar to my sauce if it's made with Mutti tomatoes (feel free to eye roll). I also don't need to add starch as I cook it down for a long time. But it will be a cold day in hell before I keep the salt to a minimum!

For anyone using cheaper more acidic tomatoes I learned a trick from an American friend. A half teaspoon of baking soda will neutralise acid more effectively than sugar.