To wonder how people find the time and money to cook from scratch

[Mummyof287]

We sometimes have a roast, cooked from scratch or Jacket potatoes with toppings and salad.Everything else tends to involve something from a box/packet/jar.
That's not to say every meal is total 'junk food' and the meals are always balanced (protein, carb, fibre) but usually include something processed.
Here are some examples of what we eat;

-Salmon/smoked basa, rice (microwave packet rice) veg
-Quiche (good quality boxed) new potatoes, veg
-Sausages (butchers or supermarket good quality butchers style)
-Old el Paso Fajita kit using quorn chicken

• Burgers (from butchers) in buns with salad

-Pizza with corn on cob/salad

• Breaded/battered fish portions, homemade chips/wedges and beans
• Lasagne (using jar sauces) & veg
• Tortellini (packet) and sauce (ready made in pot/packet)
• Stit fry using quorn chicken

I find cooking really stressful and am not very good at it 🙈 My DH likes cooking and used to do more recipies from scratch, but since having our two daughters time is stretched especially on the days we both work, and when he has done recipes they don't eat it as they are really picky eaters, so feels like a waste of effort, half of it goes in the bin.

I want to stop using so many processed foods as know its not ideal health wise, but time and especially money are fairly short, and most recipies seem to have so many ingredients, it all gets so expensive!

Any ideas of recipies that are very quick, cheap and easy please??

I cook from scratch most days. I try for quick but healthy.

Homemade burgers - salt, garlic powder, pepper, chopped onions, breadcrumbs, shape and air fry. Takes 10 mins.
Pasta with homemade something - cheese sauce (takes 5 mins to make), or tomato sauce. Minced meat with added onions, garlic, green lentils cooked up with a tomato sauce - 15 mins or so. Chopped up sausages/cheese etc . CHicken and cheese sauce and broccolli, stuff like that.
Roast chicken in the airfryer and chips/mash etc.
Rice and stuff (we have a rice cooker that was about £30 or so but use it all the time, it helps immensely time-wise). Homemade curry - chicken, pre-packed spices, yoghurt/coconut milk, cook up whilst rice is in cooker. Don't have to tend to it much. Etc.

Meant to say I batch cook stewed meat as can use it for stews, pies, roasts etc. Freezing and reheating it and it tastes fine.

We cooked up a whole bag of baby potatoes at the weekend, just olive oil in a tray, roll the potatoes around and put in the oven. Since then they've been used in salad bowls, with chilli and we've just had them fried up with onions, peppers etc and some eggs cracked in.

Meal building blocks prepared in advance like potatoes/pasta, cut up peppers/carrots etc and maybe even cooked and shredded chicken give flex during the week to add different flavourings and serve in different ways without much of the leg work. We just cook a few things on a day of the week that works.

People must have massive freezers with all the batch cooking they do.

It's not "hard". It's not hard to boil water on the stove using a pan either but easier with an electric kettle. With the rice cooker, you don't have to wait for the water boil or do any monitoring whatsoever, leaving you free to cook other stuff/leave the room.

With ingredients like spices, flour for pastry etc, it feels like a lot of outlay at the start but then you've got them for ages.

I agree with those saying make a big batch of tomato sauce for the freezer.

I make quite a lot of things that take a long time but don't need standing over, like roast veg that you can then add fish/sausages/whatever to near the end, or casseroles, or things that simmer on the hob for a while. I do other stuff while they do their thing.

I buy frozen chopped onions, garlic and ginger; more expensive than buying fresh but so much quicker.

Rice: mine always comes out perfect <<touches wood>>
Use a pan with a well-fitting lid, and use the biggest/most powerful ring on your hob. Put the kettle on and put the heat under the pan a little while before it boils. You want the water to start boiling again as soon as possible after as it goes into the pan.
Rice in first (watch it doesn't start to scorch), then add the water. Twice the amount of water to rice.
Clamp the lid on. When it starts to seethe, put on your smallest ring and move the pan, lid still on, to it.
It should take between 25 and 35 mins depending on kind of rice, size of hob etc. If all goes well, the water will all be absorbed but the rice won't stick, it will just be fluffy and moist but not claggy.

I cook most things from scratch including making my own bread, dehydrating fruit for snacks, etc. But I'm a SAHM - a fairly busy one with 3 under 5 and home educating my eldest, but nevertheless at home so much more than most working parents.

I batch cook (saving time), I have a menu on a rotation so I'm cooking familiar things and gradually introducing new recipes (saving mental effort), and it's a priority that I place higher than having the house as clean as I'd like.

Batch cooking, having lots of vegetarian meals, and planning meals according to a careful budget all save a lot of money. But one of the biggest savers is popping along to the community fridge just before it closes and taking all the fruit and vegetables which would otherwise be binned. I make some into pasta sauces or ice-cream or pie fillings straight away; others I freeze or dehydrate or pickle or make into chutneys. Only really possible because I can walk there with the children in the middle of an afternoon though - not helpful for those who are working at that time.

No. Because what you cook feeds your family this week and maybe a little of next week. It's not masses of tubs, perhaps 6-8 at a time.

For rice I just use a 2:1 ratio for water to rice (have a perfect size cup that does this for me, DH and DD).
Then boil it for 5 mins, turn down low until you can’t see any water, then turn the hob off and leave to steam for 10/20 mins. Works really well for me.

Anyway cooking from scratch, I do it but mainly because I enjoy it and it helps me wind down from work. It gets much easier and quicker as you learn and don’t need to follow recipes etc.
I finish work (at home) at 17:30 and will usually have a meal ready by 18:15. In the week I do simple meals, tonight we had toad in the hole with onion gravy and roast veg. Other options would be pasta dishes, risotto, lasagne (takes a bit longer), salmon with new potatoes etc etc.

I don’t batch cook because I’m terrible at remembering to defrost!

Rice is dead easy ans takes up less space and packaging than the precooked stuff.

Fajita mis is cheaper if mix spices yourself, mix a big batch and put in a pot then spoon it out as you need

Batch cooking, I generally cook double or triple and freeze portions

Get a cheap Gousto or Hellofresh trial and find a few easy recipes you can recreate. Chef Jack Ovens on youtube does some great meal prep videos. I cook from scratch every day and have 15 minute recipes, cook in advance recipes etc that make it super easy and cheap. I can't afford not to cook from scratch.

We do 10 fruits and veggies, tinned tomatoes and some kind of carb, then big packs of frozen chicken breasts. With extra bits like bread milk and butter, oven chips / boxed stuff for quick meals, and then some nice sweet bits it comes to about £45 a week.
For work I bulk cook meals on a Saturday with at least 3 veggies in per meal and freeze them for the week, and I have that with a snack childcare bar, crisps and 5 pieces of fruit.
For dinner we have a homemade sauce (either tinned tomato and seasoning or cheese bechemel) with 5 veggies, a carb and cheese.
Almost everything we cook is 1-2 pots, everything cooked together except the carbs unless we have potato. It’s quick, easy, healthy and so so cheap! it works for us :)

Nothing wrong with using a packet here or a jar there. If the majority of what you eat is plain whole food then ignore all this drama about processed food. It's another flash in the pan, just the latest food craze to make busy people feel even more shit about eating what they can manage.

I'm sure there's plenty of weirdos on here who would make every single thing from complete scratch but they're time rich and probably financially better off too. I agree that a jar of supermarket Bolognese sauce is loads cheaper than buying a load of tomatoes and fresh basil to roast at home.

Let the snobs spend all evening sieving their tomatoes, some of us have got more important stuff to get on with. Sad losers. 😂

@Mamasharp97 But what actual dishes do you cook- or do you literally mean you have tomato sauce every night with a different carb and some veg?

You really eat five pieces of fruit and 3 veg for lunch? And what's a childcare bar?

@Mamasharp97

do you really need to eat five pieces of fruit in one go?

@LuckySantangelo35 I sure do or I’m starving by the end of the day! I do spread it out to have a few bits at break and the rest at lunch (teacher) and tend to snack on fruit at home too, it’s just what I do when I fancy something sweet and am a bit snackish :) I’ve been eating this way for years and it’s the best way I’ve found to have a healthy and balanced diet with mostly whole foods without being hungry between meals :)

@FancyFanny
so I make homemade sauces - this week is spicy carrot, onion and pepper sauce with pasta for lunch with my packed of crisps and snack sized chocolate* bar, then when I get hungry in between lessons i have my fruit which this week is an apple, peach, orange, plum and banana.

And yeah literally for dinner this week we have had celery, onion, pack choi, Broad beans and peppers chopped up in tinned tomatoes with different seasoning, somethings it’s shepherds pie with mash, others it’s chicken and veg stir fry with rice, we use a lot of spices that we mix up to give variation. Loving cheese bechemel at the moment though with pasta or potatoes 😍

This thread is great. The trick is to have a good store cupboard. We have lots of spices and herbs, buy a big sack of rice and spices a few times a year in the Asian market and always have cheap tins of tomatoes, coconut milk, peas, sweetcorn etc in the house. Although I know it's a luxury to be able to afford to preload the cupboards like that. If you have those things in, you can make lots of meals.

@InterFactual the trick is not to sieve it, the lumps make it more interesting 😂
we just load up our 19p chopped tomatoes from Aldi with spices and you have a sauce in 15 minutes or so!

for red meat, add a square of dark cooking chocolate (literally the cheapest you can find) and some sugar to give it the traditional sweet tomato taste and a richer flavour. We can’t usually afford red meat but the chocolate and sugar give so much extra flavour so it doesn’t usually matter too much :)

for chicken literally any seasoning works I find!

we save so much money doing it like that- proper scrimpers we are 😂

You can make so much by batch cooking your own generic tomato sauce and storing it in fridge/freezer. Spag bol, pizza, curry, fajitas, lasagne, soup, ravioli, chilli. You literally just add different spices/herbs/cream/stock when you add it to the pan and there you go. You have a totally unprocessed sauce for dozens of different meals!

Stews and casseroles are always quite a good shout for inexpensive and unprocessed. Lots of veggies to switch up and change around in them and they either sort of make their own sauce after they’ve been fried a little sweating into the stock, or you can put tinned tomatoes in? Jamie Oliver’s look quite nice

also cous cous is very simple and goes with salad bits or stews

one of my staples used to be sweet potato wedges. They are really really good!

oh, and stuffed peppers. It was literally peppers stuffed with rice and cheese, which sounds plain as anything, but it’s really nice

also stir frys are quite quick and you can make less processed by adding ingredients to make your own sauce as you go? Eg garlic, ginger, soy sauce, lemon, sesame oil, cashew nuts, rice vinegar?

I make a cheap vegan tikka sauce by pureeing tinned sweetcorn and adding it to onions tempered in onion, garlic, spices. It tastes amazing with chicken / prawns

Meal planning is great but pick your battles.

I like quiche and would rather by a naice quiche to put in the oven and then make some nice sides than not have the meal because I had to be a purist and make my own pastry after a day at work.

Microwave packets of rice Vs cooking rice in 10-15 minutes is an expensive way of doing things.

Tend to batch cook at the weekend as much as poss and have a couple of cop out meals a week like beans on toast or dippy eggs. I know it isn’t amazing but we both work FT in really hard jobs. My work doesn’t end when I leave uni either, I’m always responding to emails or marking essays or researching.

It’s just none stop tbh, we collect DC after work and no one is home until 6pm at least. Youngest DC are 3 and 5 so go to bed for 7 otherwise they’ll be knackered the next day so it gives us an hour to cook, eat, bath and get them into bed. There’s just no way we have time or energy to cook from scratch as a result.

Also microwave rice in aldi is like 39p so we get their pilau rice a lot. It has flavour unlike boiled basmati.

Packet meals are more expensive unless you're buying the absolute cheapest options.

Meal planning
Salads + hummus + pitta
Grilled salmon + potatoes + veg
The Green Roasting Tin
Air fryer
Decide how many days from scratch, how many from packets
Don't beat yourself up