If both adults work full time, do you cook your evening meal from scratch every day?

[lowlevelanxious]

DH usually makes a pasta with homemade sauce once a week, and I usually do a curry.
Then we try and switch it up for the remaining nights taking turns and make risotto, lasagne, chilli, fajitas, things like that. I am finding it incredibly time consuming to be honest, less the cooking and more the washing up and cleaning the kitchen after. It takes time that I don’t feel I have! Do you cook fresh every night?

We’ve only got a small freezer with 3 drawers so can’t do loads of batch cooking. Trying to avoid UPFs and mainly a veggie household anyway.

YABU - we cook even when we’ve both been out the house working a long day

YANBU - those days we have quicker meals from the freezer, jacket potatoes etc and don’t feel bad about it

Yes 90% of the time. There is usually one day where end up having frozen cod in batter and chips or something, often when we just don't have any food in.

Cooking a stir fry, chilli or curry type thing is literally 10-20 mins max so it's just so easy it's not worth having too much processed food when you can cook something so easy nutritional and delicious

Do you have a slow cooker? It takes minutes to chuck in the ingredients for a curry or beef chilli., We do this quite often.

We don't cook from scratch every night - every Tuesday is (frozen, shop bought) pizza night. We alternate cooking between us, my DH makes oven food (think burgers, chips and veg) and i will batch cook bolognaise/chilli/curry. So some nights when i 'cook' it is something from the freezer for the main, with fresh rice/pasta/cous cous and veg. Every now and then i make something different that only lasts one meal e.g. Sunday was roast potatoes, veggie sausages, homemade yorkshire puddings, veg and gravy. About every two weeks we will have a takeaway/eat out.

I feel like we have a good balance as the stuff in the freezer means there is a 'homecooked' meal when i don't feel up to cooking from scratch, or if we are running later than usual that day.

It used to be that deciding what to cook each day was the bigger chore, but we have settled into a pattern and it seems to work for us.

Yes, we do. Although once a week is usually beans on toast! I consider feeding my children healthy meals basically the only bit of parenting I’m really good at

Agh my whole lengthy post just disappeared 😱

Long story short - yes but quick things like gnocchi with tomato and aubergine, scrambled eggs on toast, ramen with airfried gyoza and whatever raw veg I have, pasta with lemon and courgette etc.

At least once a week we do something in the slow cooker - chilli, meatballs in broth with pasta, Bolognese etc. the kids eat with us probably 4/5 nights out of 7.

I also always have in the freezer: salmon fillets, veggie gyoza, burgers, chicken burgers for the kids, veggie sausages, ready-made pies. I do make.pies too but if mid-week I use e.g. leftover roast chicken and shop-bought pastry.

I also freeze sandwiches/wraps for packed lunches (chicken and sweetcorn, plain ham) plus shop-bought sausage rolls, homemade muffins etc so I always have packed lunch stuff ready and am more likely to feel inclined to cook an evening meal later!

Nope! Husband works full time. I work 4 days. Neither work from home. We have two small children (who eat at school/childcare) so week day meals are whatever I can muddle together. I always try and add veg/salad (and to be fair, we are both a healthy weight!) I make more of an effort for meals on a weekend.

But weekdays are:

Pan fried salmon, steamed veg and noodles
jacket potato with various toppings
shop bought nice soup and nice bread
freezer fish and chips
wraps with meatballs, Mexican rice, salad etc

To go against the grain, no I don't. fT working single parent to two very fussy and opposite preferences teens with activities on two of the five week nights. There's a lot of frozen chips, waffles or garlic bread alongside chicken Kievs, fish fingers, pizza, quick pasta with pesto, tinned soup and heated up bread rolls. I used to cook properly all the time but not worth it just for me either time or expense wise and I'm fed up trying to do it. There's veg or salad in the plate though it rarely gets eaten. On a weekend I'll cook one of the very few decent things they'll both eat but otherwise it's just a matter of "fed".

Tell me the recipe for chilli or curry that takes 10-20 minutes?

Yes, we do cook every meal from scratch but only because we can't afford not to and because we get in from work at a decent time -one of us is usually back by 5pm, so just get cracking with dinner. Any later, and it would feel draining. Whoever doesn't cook does the washing up and wiping down afterwards. All done by 7pm.

I'm one person and I hate/don't cook full dinners from scratch all the time., its such a waste of time in the evening!
I love to batch cook, even without a lot of freezer space you could do something. Are you happy to eat the same thing twice in a row? I happily will for days but I know some people hate it.....
If you do things like make double portions of lasagne then on the end day all you have to do is re heat (or even better, construct it in a separate dish and keep it in the fridge, will be less likely to dry out than actual leftovers) and put it beside a salad. Chilli freezes and repeats brilliantly so maybe do triple portions. 1 to eat, 1 for the fridge and one for the freezer to use another week.
Even a tiny amount of batching would halve the cooking duties.
Or even just prep double the veg and keep half in the fridge ready to chuck in your steamer.

I cook from scratch at least 5 nights and grab something from the freezer or have a deli board on the other nights.

But I really enjoy cooking and there's loads I can cook in way under 30 mins. I clean as I cook so there's no big clean up after.

Yes but on the days when we are both out all day we do a stir fry as it's quick and easy. So many variations on stir fry sauces you can whip up in minutes if you have all the right ingredients!

We do a mix of things - some nights are quick and easy because of DD after school stuff, so for example tonight we had quiche, home made wedges in the air fryer and salad. About once a week we have a ready made lasagne or something just to give us a break but most of the other days we cook from scratch. We often batch cook and freeze so we've always got a decent meal in the freezer and either have salad or veg with it.

Yes but I have a good repertoire of quick dishes.

Salmon and vegetables
Omelette and salad
Shakshuka
Curry - ones like palak paneer or chana masala are quick

These are frequent mid week meals for us

You could.make a Goan/Sri Lanka style coconut milk chicken curry in 20 mins I reckon, or a Thai one, but I tend to leave Indian-style curries to slow cook. And I've never managed a chilli in under 1.5hrs on the hob! Instant Pot is another matter though.

Yes we (well I) cook from scratch pretty much every night, but work nights will be quicker stuff.

So tonight we had stirfried pork and tender stem broccoli with udon noodles.

Tomorrow will be green vegetable risotto with smoked salmon stirred through it.

Thursday will be pasta with tomato, courgette and pepper sauce I made at the weekend - perhaps with some tuna.

Have you tried a slow cooker?

Yes, but very simple stuff.

Stirfry with rice or noodles at last two week days.

Pasta.

Bung-in-the-oven stuff like sausages, jacket potatoes, chicken & veg tray bake etc.

Quick to assemble stuff like fajitas.

I make a big lasagne or DH makes a big curry at the weekend that lasts two days.

Tidy up as we go along. The one who didn’t cook has to clear away plates and clean kitchen afterwards.

It’s mostly manageable. We tend to run out of steam a bit on Fridays, though.

Yeah by Friday we either eat out or I get something quick and easy to bung in the oven like a quiche or pie.

We do but sometimes the meals are quick ones. For example-

Tonight-cod cooked in foil for 20 minutes plus stir fry veg and pilau rice pouch.

Slow cooked chicken casserole-on all day.. Microwave baked potato.

Red Thai chicken or veg and nut curry. 20 minutes.

Sometimes a healthy plate of stuff! A few nuts, a salad, bottled artichoke, a slice of sourdough or leftover rice, a piece of cheese. Etc.

Literally never. Isn't cooking 'from scratch' using basic non convenience foods?

So making bread, tortillas, pasta etc yourself. No ready sauces or anything.

So yeah I cook, but not from scratch. I doubt anyone really does bar restaurants and the ultra committed.

Yes.
Maybe a box of enchiladas or chicken kiev once a week, but cooked from scratch the rest of the time.
It helps that DH does half the cooking tho.

Presumably with breast. I only eat thigh and wouldnt cook that in 20 mins

It would take me 20 mins to do all the chopping/paste, unless you buy a paste of course

Agreed about chilli, mine cooks down for the same time, cant cook chilli in 20 mins

We cook completely from scratch 4 or 5 nights per week. On the other days we have baked potatoes or filled pasta and ready made sauce or pizza and salad

And there is no jeffin way I'm making lasagne on a weeknight. No way