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 like the Mexican rice and grains microwave rice. I'm not cooking for children though. We have a tiny kitchen and if I didn't take some shortcuts we wouldn't eat as well. We don't eat plain or white rice. I've just got another fridge/freezer which can go in the dining room and this will give me extra space for food storage.

White sauce and tomatoe sauces are pretty easy to make from scratch and not very expensive. I would swap to cooking those from scratch.

Instead of chicken quorn just use chicken or beef in your stir fry.

I get those green stay-fresh longer bags from Lakeland and pre-prep my veggies once a week.
Onions can be chopped and kept in a bag as can carrots, peppers and chillies. This makes food prep much simpler in the week when I’m working.
Washing celery and keeping it in a jug of water in the fridge means you can grab a couple of sticks and chop it easily.
Making bolognese, cottage pies and chilli is easy from there: just fry your onion and other veg before adding mince, garlic, tin of chopped tomatoes and tin of drained and washed kidney beans with a tablespoon of tomato purée before adding herbs and spices to taste - takes 10 minutes using the ready-prepped veg, then all you have to do is let it simmer to absorb the flavours.
Also - a rice cooker is a lifesaver - it can be set off before you start cooking and will keep the rice hot until you are ready to eat it up to 2 hours later

How are people fucking up rice - it is as easy to cook as pasta.

I fuck up rice every single time!! so i either buy boil in the bag, or the frozen steam bags.

I HATE cooking. i hate being in the kitchen. MY idea of cooking is something from the freezer and it has to be ready in 30 mins from freezer to plate 😂

I'm not home till gone 8:30pm every eve and I'm rarely around at weekends to "batch cook" which would be my idea of hell anyway.

I did order the quick cook Gusto meals for a couple of weeks but it works out too expensive and time consuming

I don’t get why people buy microwave rice

Because they want to. The end.

Where are you buying cheap legs of lamb from?

I don’t get why people buy microwave rice

Reheated rice can have botulism if it is not cooled properly (rare but still). If I have pre-prepared a chilli (as an example) and we're all eating at different times then it is far easier for each person to microwave some rice from a packet and add this to their dish rather than them all doing rice on the hob when they need it.

We are a family of 6. Both DH and I work full-time and we all do activities outside of the home. I am very organised when it comes to food - we eat very little UPF. It's very important to me.

This week's meals as follows:
Sunday - roast beef dinner with all trimmings. Made double so leftovers on Monday
Mon - Roast
Tuesday - spiced butter nut squash soup with cheese on toast
Wednesday - pasta, homemade pesto, broccoli
Thursday - sausage pasta bake
Friday - homemade chips, peas, fish fingers and sweetcorn

I used the base of meals for packed lunches so
Roast butternut squash and lentil salad, pasta pesto salad, roast beef sandwiches.

We use a bread maker for bread which is super easy. I also try and make double of most meals for the freezer. It can be a bind sometimes and we do have some UPf but I made a real effort this year.

I don't batch cook as I don't have space but quiches though being really easy to make at home and better are sadly way more expensive because of the price of eggs.
I tend to plan ahead and use my leftovers all leftover mince, chili, bolognese go into freezer for lasagne or cottage pie another time, pulled pork in slow cooker is easy then freeze surplus for enchiladas. That way I often have meals half prepped from the start.
I buy frozen fillets as fish is really quick to cook in lots of different ways. Also if I buy several types I defrost a fillet from each to make a fish pie.
If you get the hang of a basic white sauce and then add things you can make loads of things yourself: mac cheese, cauliflower cheese, sauces for steak, fish, lasagne.
I also do a massive italian tomato sauce batch every now and then and use it in everything or on its own on pasta and pizza.
Use time savers like empty pizza bases, ready made pastry cases, etc

Buy a rice cooker. Seriously. It means you can put the rice on and forget it. (Check before buying as some have a minimum cooking capacity to feed 4. But even then you could freeze what you don't eat. I'd recommend a smaller one tho unless you actually ARE cooking for 4 every time.)

If you struggle with cooking rice, you can pick up a rice cooker for under £20 if you look around for a good price, which will give you perfect rice every time. You would make back the cost pretty quickly compared to using microwave rice. They usually have a keep warm function too, if you need to eat at different times. Microwave rice cookers are even cheaper, although I have never tried one so I don't know how good they are.

£25 from waitrose between 7 of us, but to be honest bigger would be more cost effective. Sack of spud £5 plus carrots and peas. Will do at least 2 meals.

If you don’t have time to pre-soak rice make sure you rinse it well before cooking. I often cook double and use the rest to make fried rice the next day.
Things like tomato sauce freeze really well so find a simple recipe and make a batch. If you put it in ziplock bags you can freeze it flat and it doesn’t take up a lot of room.

I enjoy cooking dinner as I find it is a bit of wind down time from work (often WFH so it helps me disconnect).

we got stuck in a food rut.

we started using hello fresh and enjoyed it! We used it until the discounts stopped then switched to Gousto - with more discounts. Then hello fresh wanted us back so we flipped back with renewed discounts. You get the picture! Fresh food, cooked from scratch with random ingredients we don’t need to get a whole bottle of something and waste it.

You can always find meals to suit and as a family of 3 we order the 3-5 people box so we have left overs for lunch or the next evening and just re-heat.

We buy very little to supplement it for lunch and breakfast.

it’s not dirt cheap at all but I suspect it works out cheaper than how you’re buying you’re good as buying a combination of home cooked and expensive packaged meals.

Habit. Both partners doing their bit, I'm not lumped with all the shopping and cooking responsibility. Cooking is not an option, but a must. So we build it into our day/week.

Both DH and I grew up in households where our parents cooked everything from scratch. The food I cook is far far nicer (and cheaper!!) than any supermarket sauce or cheap takeaway. You can do a nice salad, stir fry or pasta in about 15 minutes if you have fresh stuff and all the herbs in. Batch cook once or twice a week too.

What changed it for me was using TikTok to search for quick and easy but also nutritious meals. There’s loads of videos to pick from! I have a few favourites I follow for a lot of veggie and vegan recipes but I’ve not looked back. No more jars of sauce, fresh is so much better and pretty easy if you just go for basic ingredients. Also whip up my own dressings and sauces using Greek yoghurt, coconut milk, lime, paprika etc. I’ve always got my spices stocked up for flavour and loads of things like chickpeas, red lentils and kidney beans which are so nutritious and easy to use. We also love feta, tofu and halloumi. Aldi do cheap versions of all three. Add seasoning for white meat and fish for the kids and hubby if they fancy that.

Because I don’t want to spend my spare time doing it. I use a lot of ‘cheat’ sides like packet rice or ready made mash for quick dinners. I especially like noodle dishes as they’re so quick and you can pack a lot of veg in. A tomato pasta bake is pretty easy and is a few tins of tomatoes and cupboard herbs.

After working all day, it’s not interesting to me to spend an hour cooking + cleanup in our tiny kitchen where I feel isolated. Would rather spend time with the family. Ultimately, it’s about what you want to do with your time. I tried batch cooking at the weekend but frankly, I didn’t enjoy spending my Sunday doing it. Each to their own!

Same with their wild rice. With energy prices, I’d bet it works out equal with how long you’d have to cook brown rice or wild rice vs the cost of the microwave packet. Usually takes over 25 mins and for a small portion it doesn’t feel worth it to me.

Such a good point on the taco kit. BBC good food have a recipe for fajita seasoning, of course you have to buy the spices but if it’s something you use regular then worth it. And then just buy wraps in the bakery aisle

Mexican, Indian, Arab and SE Asian food use the same base ingredients in different ways. Things like cumin, coriander, paprika (also called kashmiri chilli or sweet chilli) would never be wasted

I think OPs meals sound fine…

Stop beating yourself up OP!

We're avoiding all UPF-type additives and went vegan last year and tbh it's a PITA.

The huge shock has been that 'natural' or organic or otherwise 'posh' ready made food has just as many UPF gums, stabilisers, emulsifiers, mono- and tri-diglyceride shite and preservatives than the bog-standard stuff we used to get. Most 'sourdough' bread from supermarkets is made with the Chorleywood method so is still very processed. Even posh wraps are full of shit (apart from Crosta and Mollica). So we couldn't even throw money at the problem if we had it

But the longer I've been doing it, the quicker both the shopping and the cooking gets. Haven't fully solved the 'getting buy-in from teenagers' thing yet though ...

Pasta sauces are definitely the way to go for speed during the week. Some variation on a slow-cooked tomato sauce (v easy to batch cook and freeze) or a garlic, cream and mushroom one (we use silken tofu instead of cream).

When we weren't vegan, a pack of supermarket prawns and loads of garlic, chilli and olive oil plus chopped parsley was amazing with pasta.

There's an amazing 20 minute dhal recipe in the Spicebox book - I can post if you're interested.

Lots of recipes need onions to be softened/caramelised so i often double the amount and freeze half - that saves 10 mins the next time.

Sometimes it's easiest to do really basic 'English' stuff with good ingredients - again, if you're not vegan, things like egg and chips or beans on toast.

We use brown basmati rice (much less heavy than standard brown) and we always make double or triple and have it in the fridge to microwave for a quick carb, or turn into fried rice with garlic, spring onions, sesame oil and soy sauce or a cheats mujadara with caramelised onions from the freezer,some olive oil, salt and a tin of green lentils. Delicious.

In terms of ready-made food - Crosta and Mollica do great wraps but also pizzas and pasta which are comparable with other branded ready-mades like Pizza Express.

We are on a tight budget too and I have found Mr Organic's range of 'posh' tinned beans to be briliant - Greek-style beans, Italian-style, etc etc. No nasties, pretty tasty especially if you add some fresh herbs and vegan parmesan, and around £2.25 per tin. Non-vegans could add a bit of chorizo and grated cheese plus crusty bread for a genuinely satisfying £2 per head meal?

Tinned beans generally are a godsend - butterbeans and chorizo into your batch-cooked tomato sauce with some frozen 'mediterranean grilled veg'; kidney beans and soya mince plus Gran Luchito chipotle paste in the same sauce for chilli, etc etc.

This. Make it in a slow cooker. Add the ingredients in the morning, it's ready by the evening then portion out & freeze. You can do the same with bolognese sauce or chilli.

Also if you are making something like egg fried rice or curry, make extra so you can freeze portions when you need a quick meal.

No one really enjoys spending their Sundays batch cooking do they?
who wants to spend their precious weekend time stuck in the kitchen?! Especially in summer!

We eat pretty similar meals to you but we do batch cook at the weekend things like bolognaise, chilli, veg curry, tomato sauce for pasta from scratch. Then I can just pull them out of the freezer for quick dinner on a weekday and at least I feel like we are having a few proper homemade meals.