Do you eat ready meals regularly?

[RedRosette2023]

Following from another thread - I heard a statistic the other day that said up to 90% of people regularly consume ready meals. As in, in a plastic container and from the microwave or oven.

I sense that MN is quite middle class so likely not representative of the whole of the country. But I was surprised by that statistic.

I genuinely can’t remember the last time I ate a ready meal. I occasionally gave eldest DC an Ella tray when they were weaning, a meal I could keep in my changing bag and have handy in case we were out over tea time. My youngest refused any pouches etc so he has never had one. He’s always just eaten what we’ve eaten and taught me baby food is totally unnecessary, albeit convenient at times.

I am coeliac so it’s possible my habits have been formed due to necessity - I would struggle to pick up a ready meal I can eat with ease. M&S do some and I think GF ones slightly more available now but I just don’t buy them.

I’m also not a SAHM Mum, I work a pressured job four days, my DH works away mostly during the week, I use hello fresh etc 3-4 days. But I always find time for a meal. My ready meal is something batch cooked out the freezer.

No judgment - just genuinely interested.

Because people usually saw “oh, lasagnes, curries, chilli etc” - but are you making those every bastard night?! 😳😳

Ha, that made me laugh. Those emoji are me 🤣
If I absolutely have to cook from scratch-ish. Then I have a few set meals...chicken thighs with curry lentils that just just get thrown in a casserole pan (but are dried lentils, stock cube and tinned tom's acceptable🤷‍♀️).

Salmon buckwheat pancakes, cook pancakes add raw salmon, fennel finely chopped, Philidephia (processed?) mixed with a little milk to make sauce, lemon zest on top, dried coriander and black pepper, fold pancake over, bit more Phili sprinkle of cheese, oven cook.

Chicken fillets, can of tomatoes, chilies, sweetcorn, garlic, black olives, season in oven proof dish , sprinkle of cheese or not. Whack in oven.

I also cook veggies in baking paper pouches in the oven with a spot of butter. This means I can cook the veg at the same time as the main if it's oven cooked, no farting around with pans and timings. It works with carrot, beetroot, corn - not squishy things like courgette so much.

Oven baked omelette (which is sort of a pastryless quiche)

This is all fine if you are all eating the same thing. But DH would either whine or eat the portion that I'd set aside for tomorrow. Or we'd be back at 8pm and it's too late to cook anything that takes more than 10mins, or I'd buy ingredients and they wouldn't get used as people had eaten elsewhere or not fancied it etc.

@SeemsPointless I do have things like tomato sauce, bolognaise and chilli in the freezer.
We also have things like omelet and wedges, haloumi peppers and couscous, chicken chow mein, Mexican rice and chicken, macaroni cheese, burgers/veggie burgers, gnocchi. I get spice packs from an speciality shop to make curries (they freeze). If we have an easy dinner night I might prep the next nights dinner whilst it cooks, like soup, or sausage casserole. If we have a roast chicken, I make DH take off the chicken and make quesadillas or a pasta dish.

The dc’s have pizza once a week. Dh and I don’t really ever eat ready meals.

this week’s meals:

chicken traybake
toad in the hole
home made burgers and wedges
omelette and salad
linguine with prawns and courgettes
roast chicken
schnitzel, Katsu sauce, rice, veg

Id be interested in that too

@Ginmonkeyagain oh wow, your meal plan looks lovely!

Not ready meals as such but I do like the Fish Said Fred fish meals and the Tesco sea bass fillets with lemon and herb butter.

I feel like they’re more like ready to cook meals rather than ready meals.

No, very occasionally

I'll do mine.

Sunday: Roast chicken
Monday: Pesto pasta with leftover chicken and tenderstem broccoli
Tuesday: Jacket potatoes with whatever is in the fridge. This week we had tuna with leftover pesto and loads of salad.
Wednesday: Homemade paella with peas and chorizo.
Thursday: Homemade pizzas
Friday: Lentil Dhal and fresh Homemade bread (baking bread is my hobby!)
Saturday: Chilli con Carne (leftovers will be frozen and reheated for jacket potatoes next week!)

Another reason I hate cooking, is I'm the one stuck in the kitchen by myself. Our previous house was open plan and we ate better as it was so much more sociable.

I use frozen oven chips & fish fingers if that counts, & pouches for the baby when out and about where I don't have access to a fridge/kitchen. Otherwise I cook from scratch - its usually both cheaper, tastier and probably healthier. I'll cook some meals from scratch, portion them up and put them in the freezer (e.g. a chilli) which I might microwave but pre prepared microwave meals no.

I've been cooking for my family for 30 odd years and can honestly say we've had ready meals, as in a microwaveable or oven-able pre cooked thing on maybe 10 - 15 occasions? All aligned with building work/death/illness. Each time I've hoped, really REALLY hoped they'd be great and mean I didn't have to cook so much but they're all so incredibly sweet, to my taste anyway, that they've stayed off the menu.
I do buy pizza these days, Sainsbos do a pretty nice sourdough and we keep oven chips in the freezer, but these tend to be for 'emergency' use.

We're going through an awkward period of change here though now, as my girls have finally flown the nest leaving me and DH. It seems harder to cook as well for the two of us. For example, I've always roasted and ground spices, made my own ginger/garlic pastes.... But when I've only to feed the two of us I get left with huge quantities I can't use and whilst I can fill the freezer up that too seems a bit sad somehow.
Lots of scrambled eggs in my future I suspect.

@Taperjeanwoman Thank you 😊

It's less a meal plan and a "waht I have in the fridge plan!"

I try and use the "tumble down" method by buying a few key items things that are cheaper/plentiful that week and use them in different ways - hence the dominance of courgettes, tomaotes and broccoli this week.

We have a lot of fish as we like it and our local Sainsbury's seems to stuggle to get their fish ordering right so there is always a lot of it marked down on yellow stickets, so I buy loads and fling it in the freezer.

I've been away (and had a frozen ready meal -Mindful Chef) but this week:

Sunday: salmon steamed with brown rice, red curry (paste shop bought) sauce and asparagus.

Monday: individual spiced shepherds pies (batch cooked in Charlie Bighams individual pie dishes some time ago, languishing in the freezer) with veg

Tuesday: Tofu and chinese veg stir fry noodles in a Teryaki sauce

Weds: Chana Chaat (sort of chickpea and roasted cauliflower salad with leftovers for lunch)

Thurs: curry cauliflower cheese and salad (might make a Kachumber salad if I'm not busy)

Friday: pork tenderloin with (shop bought) frozen mushroom sauce, spuds and whatever veg I can find in the cupboard freezer

Saturday: prawn ramen noodles and perhaps a shop bought pizza

Sunday: probably roast chicken that will then go on to become:
Chicken and black bean enchiladas
Paella
Some sort of noodle soup

DD is GCSEing so enjoys helping to prep/cook

Strangely a lasagne ready meal is a no from me even though I eat ready meals . I've never found a lasagne that comes close to mine.
When I lived in Spain a decade or so ago ready meals were non existent so I cooked everything from scratch every night. Now you can buy a very limited range but they are incredibly salty so I wouldn't eat them.
I always cook chilli, pasta bakes or any mince based dish from scratch but I'll eat m&s or Waitrose marinated chicken dishes, breaded fish, sometimes curry and Crosta and Mollica pizza bases which I top at home. Use oven chips, microwave rice and grain pouches, burgers, bacon, and occasionally processed meats like ham or chorizo.
So not necessarily a ready meal but definitely some processed foods most, if not, every day.

This week we've had/are having:

Monday: veg soup (made on Sunday) and bread
Tuesday: salmon, mash, broccoli
Wednesday: veg curry and rice
Thursday: Spanish omelette, salad
Friday: prawn tagliatelle

N.b. Yesterday's curry was obviously nowhere near what it would be if I made it at the weekend (or batch cooked one etc) but it's fine. I can knock up a very basic curry in 30 mins. But I do use tinned tomatoes 😱 I also use stock pots in the soup.

To speed up the Spanish omelette, I cooked extra potatoes when I did the mash on Tuesday (just took out of pan a bit earlier) and they're in the fridge waiting to go.

On Saturday we'll likely go out and then Sunday will probably be a roast dinner as no major plans this weekend.

It does take a bit of planning, and like other PPs I definitely have some frozen pizza/fish finger butty/freezer tapas days too.

As I said earlier, I love a ready meal but also enjoy cooking, but this is mainly now due to the fact I wfh every day so I don't have a commute, but it's rarely anything complicated:

Mon - veggie chilli - peppers, leeks, mushrooms, tin of kidney beans/chick peas/cherry tomatoes/passata ... spices, with rice.

Tues - veggie pasta (veggie DD home from uni) - veggie sausages cut up and fried with leeks/mushrooms/garlic .. chucked in a tub of philadelphia, mixed in some pasta.

Wed - Shep pie - lamb mince, peas, carrots, onions, stock cube, seasoning. Mash, veg.

Thurs - chicken curry - chicken breasts, mushrooms, peppers, pataks madras paste, tinned toms, rice.

Fri - haddock risotto - smoked haddock, poach in splash of milk on hob. Fry off some leeks, mushrooms, garlic, add some creme fraiche and parmesan, wilt some spinach into it. Flake cooked haddock into it then add cooked rice ... cheats risotto.

I used to eat them all the time. My mum eats them every evening. I moved to Germany ten years ago and the culture here surrounding processed foods is so different. I don't eat them anymore. If I need a quick dinner, we have bread (Abendbrot in German) or I make a big pot of spaghetti and we add a pesto sauce. I used to wonder why I had loose stools and tummy problems as a teenager, now I know.

No, we don't have them. I have eaten some in the past and don't like them plus they are often full of salt, sugar and additives.

Me and DH love cooking and are lucky enough to have 2 freezers as well as a fridge freezer so batch cook and freeze lots of meals.

I only work part time at home so have plenty of time to cook but even when I did work full time and didn't get home until 7.30/8pm I would cook a meal.

Our meal plan for the last week was:

Sweet potato and black bean chilli with rice
Home made pizza and jacket potato (did 2 nights meal)
Shakshuka (tomato, spinach, onion and eggs) with home made bread
Lentil bolognaise
Mushroom omelette and salad
Egg and lentil curry

We never use ready made pasta sauces as we don't like them and it's quick, easy and cheap to make your own. Always have frozen sauces in the freezer.

We eat an oven pizza usually once a week, but other than that not really. I did when I was single but find it rarely suits a family
dinner. Definitely eat freezer food like fish fingers and chicken nuggets though

What did you have for dinner last night?

Spag bol, why?

I was wondering that too. 😁 Perhaps we're all coming to yours for left overs? See you at six.

We don't eat ready meals in a tray although we'll occasionally have a frozen pizza in an emergency.

However, last year we had our kitchen done and all we had to cook on while the work took place was a microwave and kettle. We pretty much lived on microwave meals for three weeks and it was enough to put me off for life. 😂

@riotlady I'm curious as to what people consider fresh

Meals:

chickpea and veg tagine with couscous
sweet potato and black bean chilli, sour cream, grated cheese, brown rice
fish pie
broccoli, cavolo Nero and anchovy linguine
spiced salmon fillets with brown rice and veg
risotto (kale, lemon, Parmesan I usually top with pumpkin seeds too)

toad in the hole, onion gravy , veg
bbq - peppers, halloumi, new potato salad, green salad
dal, rice, Bombay / sag potatoes