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??

Oh also - an amazingly quick 15-20 min noodle stir-fry based on this authentic recipe except we usually throw in a bag of pre-cut stir-fry veg and cook high for 4 mins before adding the noodles and sauce. We leave out the meat obviously but sometimes sub soya mince in. Use thick rice noodles - they just need to be soaked rather than boiled.

And an equally quick (10 mins) Korean bulgogi-style mince recipe here - the kids absolutely love this. I add a red pepper and serve with Kimchi (homemade <proudface>) rice but it would be just as good with sesame oil-garlic -soy sauce-spring onions fried rice I mentioned above.

A mixture of batch cooking and easier simple alternatives

Ie your quiche option. I would only make a quiche at weekend if time, weekdays I would opt for a quicker omlette or scrambled egg instead

Lasagna- takes ages from scratch. When I make I bulk make. Make enough meat ragu sauce to freeze 4 portions of bolagnese and make 4 lasagnas ( freeze 3, eat one that night. Means I make on a weekend, then can use over the next month or two as quick weekday meals as already done.

Rice - I always cook double. Cool half straight away and in fridge. Next night can just fry up some leftover veg and eggs and it’s a quick egg fried rice meal.

Scrambled egg on toast, with some fruit and yogurt after is a perfectly acceptable meal in this house when time is low.

I am Indian - Indians use the pressure cooker for everything. So authentic recipies always use it (lately instapot). 20 mins for dahl turns to 20mins for dahl, rice and curry if you use the made in India steel stackable pots for pressure cookers.

@JustAMinutePleass Ooh interesting! If you had a minute I would love to see a quick vegan curry recipe using an instapot if you have one - I do a lot of Indian cooking when I have more time but for weekdays can only manage quick dahl!

Your microwave rice packets -- you know you can cook regular rice in a microwave? With one of these
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sistema-Microwave-Rice-Cooker-2-6/dp/B00BTIVNT4/ref=sr_1_3?crid=VB4FCUUC4JPC&keywords=microwave%2Brice%2Bcooker&qid=1695908581&sprefix=microwave%2Brice%2Caps%2C86&sr=8-3&th=1

It's easier and quicker than on the hob, because you just shove it in and do something else in the meantime. It also actually cooks the rice more nicely. And a big sack of rice is definitely cheaper than many small packets.

In fact, using the microwave more might make cooking without packets easier for you, generally. Here's some other ideas
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/10-easy-healthy-microwave-recipes

Microwaves aren't trendy with whole food types but actually they cook in a really healthy convenient way.

I don't understand batch cooking pasta sauces, chilli and curry, they only take half an hour or less to make anyway.

This is so quick and easy. It takes me a bit more than five minutes but probably no more than 15.

https://thehappypear.ie/5-minute-dahl/

Swap your packet rice! All you need is a 1:2 ratio. 1 cup rice, 2 cups water. Bring to the boil, simmer with lid on until the water has just dried up and then take off the lid and move off the heat. 2 mins later you have perfect rice.

Oh and on pressure cookers I really recommend "the new fast food".

I disagree.

I would cook a chilli for at least an hour, preferably a few hours on simmer.
Curries, it depends but again, if there is at least a paste or sauce in the freezer it's so much quicker. My mum would cook a bolognese for 20 minutes. That's nowhere near enough time really.

Tempted by the microwave rice steamer but apparently it doesn't do brown rice very well.

@Graciebobcat - most sauces like Bolognese need far longer to break down the meal properly. I cook ours for at least 3+ hours. It’s it’s something like goulash it needs even longer. Hence why if I’m going to cook for that long I make bulk

Mine is veggie which probably makes a difference. I know some people cook tomato based sauces for hours but I've never had the patience for that.

i think your meals are great for a working mum. you can’t work miracles! it’s not as if you are eating ready meals out of the freezer, the food you are having is fine and nutritious. If it makes you feel better just cook from scratch on days off

Same. Also I live alone and I'm not making one portion of sauce/stew/cottage pie
I make 5 portions, eat 1 and freeze the rest so the freezer has about 6 different meals in

I have started meal planning these past few years after we retired and it’s been
such a help.
Basically I do a food shop every Saturday morning and my plan is as follows:
SATURDAY - Always salad (fresh as bought today) with lasagna or moussaka, or burgers or steak as a treat etc.
SUNDAY- Sometimes a roast or a various recipes including chicken or sausages, sweet potato all thrown in a one pan and cooked in oven. Maybe a chicken wrap etc.
MONDAY - Often a mash potato day so shepherd’s pie out of freezer or left over roast meat with mash. Sometimes liver, onions and mash, sausages and mash.
TUESDAY - Always fish, so maybe salmon with oven potatoes, or a salmon stir fry or fish finger wraps (so so easy).
WEDNESDAY - Always pasta. Have around 10 recipes i rotate.
THURSDAY - Always a vegetable curry such as aubergine or sweet potato or egg etc. (Batch cook)
FRIDAY - This has become a bits and pieces day. (Our diet day). Quite often a baked potato with grated cheese or baked beans or tuna mayonnaise. May follow with cheese and biscuits, fruit. Or halloumi cheese, mushrooms, avocado etc with microwave grains.

All my food is cooked from scratch apart from I use the microwave packets of rice/grains once weekly on average.

I like to batch cook on a Saturday afternoon and I make lasagnas, moussaka, shepherds pie, chilli, curry etc for my adult children to put in their freezers too.
This routine really helps me and I have a folder with all the receipts in sections.
It means every single day I have an idea of what to have for dinner.
it seems to me that you are doing really well. It’s not realistic to expect everything to be cooked from scratch if you are working with young children.
The above is really helping me as I now look after grandchildren several days a week so need the Monday to Friday meals be ready quickly.

VegrecipesofIndia is my go to.

This dal makhni is my absolute fav to cook in the instapot but almost all of her sabzis and dal can be made like this. To turn this vegan just subsitute in whatever vegan fat you like - my mum prefers a little mustard or rapeseed oil instead of cream / butter.

https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/dal-makhani-restaurant-style-recipe/

The more you do it the quicker it gets honestly.

That boxed quiche? it takes me literally less than five minutes to make pastry, I make a big lump and freeze what I don't use.

Morning - get lump of pastry out of freezer and leave to defrost then go to work
After work - roll out pastry, beat a couple of eggs with milk and throw whatever you have festering in the back of the fridge. Half a pepper? a wrinkled mushroom? a dry end of cheese? - all chopped up and thrown in the egg mixture and baked in the oven.

Yes, it took longer than it would to unbox a quiche but it will taste 100 times better, be cheaper and use up things you might throw away.

Saturday morning - put a beef stew on low, make the most of your oven being on and do a Thai chicken curry at the same time with chicken thighs. Do whatever you do on a Saturday morning, you can safely leave it for a couple of hours. That's at least two dinners for the next week that have been cooking whilst you have been out of the kitchen and possibly out of the house.

@JustAMinutePleass that looks fab! I have an InstaPot, I'm going to give this a go.

What you make sounds good 👍
I cook everything from scratch and almost all my meals in Ninja Foldie. I make things like spaghetti bolognaise, shepherds pie, fish pie, risotto with chicken, Spanish style chicken, variety of pastas with meat/veg, curries and slow cooked things in it. Didn’t take long and a doddle to clean. No need for jars and you can easily recreate majority of packets if you see what’s in it and just add those spices as you cook. Most of the meals I make take around 30 minutes. There are tons of Ninja recipes online and on FB ☺️

You need to understand why the recipes take hours. Chillis, curries, tandoor meats all come from countries that often still use charcoal fuel sources - it took ages because it had to. In India and Mexico gas was bought by the bottle and was expensive so you had to ration it and so batch cooking was done low and slow on woodchips, coal or charcoal to allow you to use the gas for other meals. Even potage was made like this.

Modern day UK / India / Asia / Mexico doesn’t require long and slow cooking if you use the right materials. All authentic Indian curry and dal recipes use a pressure cooker. Even Mexican chilli recipes now use pressure cookers and if you do it right the flavour is much, much better as the food is broken down more.

I don’t think it’s necessarily more expensive to cook from scratch. I am currently making a stew in the slow cooker which has cost me around £5 and will last me for 3 meals. I can also make a lasagne and make it last for 3 meals easily and it’s easy to freeze, probably costs less than £5 to make.

At the moment there’s only me and dd so I understand that our food maybe stretching a lot further than those who have a family of 4+. I don’t always cook from scratch, last night we had pasta bake, the sauce came from a jar, this was due to not having the time and because the chicken I was going to cook smelt iffy. I do keep a few jars of sauces for emergencies and curry sauce as I don’t have the space to keep everything I would need to make a curry from scratch. I probably cook from scratch 5 or 6 days out of 7.

I mean a bolognese isn’t hard.
mince, onions, Worcester sauce, mixed herbs, garlic granules, passata & a red wine stock pot. Honestly doesn’t take very long.
add chilli powder/kidney beans you have a chilli.
or swap the beef mince for pork mince and add some spinach

as for the white sauce, 50g butter, 3 tbsp flour & about 450ml milk. Melt the butter, add the flour, mix together. Slowly add the milk so it doesn’t go lumpy. If you want, add cheese. combine both for lasagne. Plus much nicer than jars. Can also use for macaroni cheese

we used hello fresh for a bit to help expand what we can cook. Found some lovely recipes through it & all super easy too!

ready made puff pastry sheet, Passata with some herbs, add cooked chicken, spinach and cheese. Pop in the oven. Super quick and easy

Two of favourites (quick easy and the kids eat it) are chicken pesto pasta (chicken pesto, plus some cream cheese and either Broccoli or spinach) or salmon cream cheese pasta (as it sounds, with peas, plus dill and lemon juice as added extras).
I have the same struggles as you though!

Haven't read the full thread so this may have already been mentioned but I was always hopeless at getting rice right but then we got this:

https://www.josephjoseph.com/products/m-cuisine-rice-cooker-white

The instructions that come with it tell you how much rice and water to add for how many people and for all the different rice types. It's so much easier and we find, less faff than the pouches.

OP you’re doing fine, seriously unless you have a new abundance of time to crack on with from-scratch cooking then give yourself a break. We eat from scratch probably thrice a week - other days are fridge buffet, breaded fish etc, often with a veg. It’s not perfect but I don’t like cooking and have other things I need to be doing. I also use pesto sauce, stock pots, frozen onion etc to make life easier.

I’m purposefully not reading the replies as these threads tend to be full of people smashing this out the park when I’m not - comparison is the thief of joy and all that