How Often Do You Rustle Up A Meal From Scratch?

JupiterKid

Well, I’ve been flat out incredibly busy with work the past week, and when I get home in the evenings I’ve been just too wrecked to start cooking a dinner for myself and my OH from scratch, so I might boil some spuds, open a tin of peas and stick a frozen Chicken Kiev in the oven.

Some days I’m so tired I’d just order something in. I know, it’s a bad habit...

But how often do you have the time - please be honest - to do a big cook with many ingredients bought fresh, prep the food and cook the meal? Is it worth the effort?

Do share...

Thelonious Monk

Dinner and breakfast every day, and I usually bring a lunch from the freezer as I make them in bulk at weekends. Soups etc. It takes 20 minutes to make a stir fry or a curry or potatoes and veg and some turkey or whatever. I never got the too tired to do this reason.
Your peas and potatoes and chicken kiev meal is almost from scratch. Swap the processed kiev for a fillet and is that not a meal from scratch?

harr

JupiterKid wrote: »

Well, I’ve been flat out incredibly busy with work the past week, and when I get home in the evenings I’ve been just too wrecked to start cooking a dinner for myself and my OH from scratch, so I might boil some spuds, open a tin of peas and stick a frozen Chicken Kiev in the oven.

Some days I’m so tired I’d just order something in. I know, it’s a bad habit...

But how often do you have the time - please be honest - to do a big cook with many ingredients bought fresh, prep the food and cook the meal? Is it worth the effort?

Do share...

Once a day apart from Saturday when we get a takeaway. I am a stay at home dad so it’s kind of expected of me to have a main meal ready for everyone in the evenings.
The slow cooker is my god send, stick all ingredients in at 9am and it’s ready at 5..

Breakfast is a big pot of sweet porridge for the whole family,

dartboardio

Everyday apart from one day a week when we get a takeaway

Then again I enjoy cooking so wouldn't mind getting home from work to make say fish pie or homemade chips, burgers salad etc.

If i want it to be quick it would usually just be basmati rice (only takes 10 mins) a chicken breast fried on the pan, sweetcorn and salad or something.


We dont have any 'oven food' like kievs etc cause i really don't like them for some reason. A chilli for example is really quick just fry a bit of mince few frozen peppers and onions, spices and a tin of chopped tomatoes.

Tacklebox

If I'm being totally honest, around 6 times a year I go all out ferral... I go out and catch a bass early in the morning, take it home and prepare it.
Dig some spuds from the garden and get some peas from said garden.

Cut the spuds into chips deepfat fry them, bake the bass in the oven and boil the peas and I have a totally fresh dinner.

Noveight

Rarely if ever.

Don’t take a huge amount of enjoyment from cooking and can get decent nutrition without too much hassle so I just don’t bother with it.

I reckon I haven’t the patience! :P

GLaDOS

Usually every day for dinner during the week, unless it's a reheat of something frozen from the previous week. Weekend depends on what im up to.

PARlance

Tacklebox wrote: »

If I'm being totally honest, around 6 times a year, I go out and catch a bass early in the morning, take it home and prepare it.
Dig some spuds from the garden and get some peas from said garden.

Cut the spuds into chips deepfat fry them, bake the bass in the oven and boil the peas and I have a totally fresh dinner.

A deep-fat fresh dinner.

ArtyC

I'm very reliant on my freezer, I make all my bulk meals from scratch every 4/5 days and survive on them . Best job !

Tacklebox

PARlance wrote: »

A deep-fat fresh dinner.

I prefer the more smaller bass say around 4lbs weight , the deep fat ones are more than likely females who are quite old and have a lot of spawning potential so anything bigger than 4lbs I tend to release.

No I'd never kill a deep bodied fat bass she's either in gestation or just a big healthy fish.

Junkyard Tom

We have cleared the land, dried the marshes, pierced the forests, made roads; we have been building, inventing, observing, reasoning; we have created complex machinery, wrested her secrets from Nature, we have made a servant of steam, electricity and the split the atom.

The result is, that now the child of the civilised man finds ready, at its birth, to his hand an immense capital accumulated by those who have gone before him. And this capital enables him to acquire, merely by his own labour, combined with the labour of others, riches surpassing the dreams of the Orient, expressed in the fairy tales of the Thousand and One Nights...

...and you have the barefaced arrogance to say 'from scratch'?

buried

I do a stew most weeks that last me a good few days. A big dirty unsexy stew. Stick everything into a big dirty cast iron hoor pot and let it all mulch into a glorious tender gloop. Leeks tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, meat, whatever ya got shtick it in. Boil some spuds or dice them up and fry them thangs to go with it. Hell yeah. No excuse not to do it. Anyone can do it. If anybody else don't like it, great stuff, more for you.

This is it

buried wrote: »

I do a stew most weeks that last me a good few days. A big dirty unsexy stew. Stick everything into a big dirty cast iron hoor pot and let it all mulch into a glorious tender gloop. Leeks tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, meat, whatever ya got shtick it in. Boil some spuds or dice them up and fry them thangs to go with it. Hell yeah. No excuse not to do it. Anyone can do it. If anybody else don't like it, great stuff, more for you.

Fûckin love a good stew.

GLaDOS

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

We have cleared the land, dried the marshes, pierced the forests, made roads; we have been building, inventing, observing, reasoning; we have created complex machinery, wrested her secrets from Nature, we have made a servant of steam, electricity and the split the atom.

The result is, that now the child of the civilised man finds ready, at its birth, to his hand an immense capital accumulated by those who have gone before him. And this capital enables him to acquire, merely by his own labour, combined with the labour of others, riches surpassing the dreams of the Orient, expressed in the fairy tales of the Thousand and One Nights...

...and you have the barefaced arrogance to say 'from scratch'?

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

s4uv3

Vast majority of our dinners are from scratch, but I'm home with the kids so here to do it. Do a lot of batch cooking in the slow cooker and make 2/3 days worth at a time. Chilli/curry/stew/bolognese etc.
Slow cooker is a godsend as I can prepare it at naptimes/night before.

Thelonious Monk

Tacklebox wrote: »

If I'm being totally honest, around 6 times a year, I go out and catch a bass early in the morning, take it home and prepare it.
Dig some spuds from the garden and get some peas from said garden.

Cut the spuds into chips deepfat fry them, bake the bass in the oven and boil the peas and I have a totally fresh dinner.

Caught a beautiful bass in Wexford about 10 years ago from the beach. They're a gorgeous looking fish.

Tacklebox

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Caught a beautiful bass in Wexford about 10 years ago from the beach. They're a gorgeous looking fish.

They're worth their weight in silver and taste absolutely different to most fish, almost a peanut like taste.

LimeFruitGum

nearly every day. I left out pork chops this morning, and made a potato & veg tray bake when I got home. I put the chops on over the vegetables for the last 20 minutes. Very nice it was too
I’ll probably do a stir fry with the remaining chops tomorrow & bung in some frozen peas, etc. To me, it’s just habit to cook from scratch. We never phone takeaways, as it is a pain in the butt to give directions to our apartment and get the driver through the security gates.

If I came in late from work, I would not bother cooking a full meal, but I might have some Ryvita with mashed egg or cheese to take the edge off. Or hopefully my OH will have made something and I will have some of that. If you know you are facing a heavy week, I would recommend cooking in advance and freeze up the portions: Curries, lasagne, stews, chunky soups. The stir fry mixes in the butchers can be a handy freezer go-to, just add noodles or rice and you are ready to eat in about 15 minutes.

freshpopcorn

I'm alright at cooking from scratch meals/cakes/etc from I was a teenager. Nothing really would bother me. We'd cook a good enough dinner every day. My meals probably wouldn't good looking enough for Instagram tough.

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo

I cook something more or less everyday but try be efficient with effort. Whatever I decide to make I make enough for a number of portions, so I can eat some that day or over the next 3 days, and freeze a bit as well.
Diced onions, peppers, mushrooms, carrots can be gotten to put in the freezer. Knowing very little about herbs and spices can go a long way - (basically every food can be paired with a variety of herbs and/or spices, just buy a few dried ones and go).
Having tins/packets of rice, pasta, noodles, fish, beans (not only baked), pickles, stock can cover you for so many dishes (and have an extremely long shelf life just like dried herbs and spices).
Some salady things to keep in the fridge with some fresh meat /fish and you're sorted.

With the internet, it is really easy to make tasty, easy, nutritious food for not too an expensive price.

if i dont the missus will have, or else itll be reheated/reworked from night before

love cooking, its a great way to unwind once we get home and i dont view it as a chore at all. podcast or spotify on and we'd be sitting down to one of hundreds of recipes by the time half six rolls around every evening.

dartboardio

[Deleted User] wrote: »

if i dont the missus will have, or else itll be reheated/reworked from night before

love cooking, its a great way to unwind once we get home and i dont view it as a chore at all. podcast or spotify on and we'd be sitting down to one of hundreds of recipes by the time half six rolls around every evening.

Yep definitely. I actually enjoy getting home from work and roaming around the kitchen preparing a meal, and if im lucky having a beer or glass of wine while i do that.

My mother on the other hand is the complete opposite and would rather just bung a chicken goujon tray in the oven with frozen chips.

Captain Red Beard

All the time. Cooking isn't hard. If you can read you can cook, and the more you do it the better you get. Its just a mental block with a lot of people, they see a list of ingredients and instructions and a kind of panic sets in.
But do a recipe a couple of times and it becomes second nature. When you have a few recipes you're comfortable with you start to think 'maybe if I took the meat from that and the veg from this and add in these herbs...' before you know it you've got your own recipe or method.
Watch some YouTube videos and next you're cooking Indian, Chinese, American BBQ, middle Eastern... All this on top of decent Irish, European fare and you're laughing my friends. Also it can be cheap too, the money you save is definitely noticeable.

In saying all that I love a take away every now n then, the pizzas from the cheap Turkish places, the kebabs too, I ****ing devour them. Sometimes you just want cheap and nasty xx.

questionmark?

Batch cooking is the way to go. With so many houses having two people out working who has time to cook from scratch every evening? Just cook up two or three healthy meals on a Sunday night that will see you through to Thursday. Curry's, stews, chillis etc... which all taste better when left to mature for a day or two. For anyone interested BBC Good Food is a great site for receipes.

fryup

macaroni cheese over chips, does the job

theteal

Most Sundays I take a bit of time to do a big batch of something e.g. bolognese, chili, curry, pasta bake etc. That'll do dinner that day and then cover me or lunches until maybe Wednesday - being honest I'm probably sick of it by Wednesday so hit Tesco for a meal deal.

Everyday dinners are easy, I mean spuds, rice, pasta with chicken, steak, salmon etc. and a bunch of veg doesn't take much time really - sure the meat and veg cooks while the spuds are boiling so all in about 15 minutes. When we have chips it takes a bit longer because of the prep, par boil and then airfryer is a bit slow but apparently we're allowed now have these slimming world chips straight from the freezer - how convenient!

I enjoy the process of cooking, after a day of dealing with issues/people it's good for helping the brain relax.

I cook from scratch practically every day. This time of year salads are a quick and easy way to put a meal together. Chicken Caesar is one of my favorites.

Another quick and handy one is pasta and pesto along with a bean salad, or another good one is potato salad with cucumber, tomatoes and dressing.

A quick and handy lunch is Bruschetta with mozzarella.

red petal

Practically never anymore! My go to quick and moderately healthy meal is salmon in the oven for 20 mins, microwaveable rice and veg. I don't enjoy cooking. I would prefer to have a sandwich most evenings myself but have to make something for my son and my OH is often not there for dinner time so it's not worth the hassle.

pwurple

Multiple times a day.

It's not that hard to make a toasty cheese sandwich... or do pasta or a stir fry. Chuck a salad together. That's usually our weeknight meals.

Weekend we do something more elaborate.

We've kids though, so it would be a small fortune to have the whole lot of us eat out all the time. I guess you can afford it if it's just you.

Dial Hard

Every day, or every other day if something I've made is a two-night portion. We don't do takeaways but I do enjoy eating out.

As others have said, I love cooking and find it very relaxing. It's how I draw the line under my working day.

Sundays I also tend to batch-cook a big portion of something for lunches during the week.

Feisar

When you say from scratch, sometimes if I don't have stock on hand I'll use a stock cube.

Feisar

freshpopcorn wrote: »

I'm alright at cooking from scratch meals/cakes/etc from I was a teenager. Nothing really would bother me. We'd cook a good enough dinner every day. My meals probably wouldn't good looking enough for Instagram tough.

Just add avocado for Instagram.

lawred2

JupiterKid wrote: »

Well, I’ve been flat out incredibly busy with work the past week, and when I get home in the evenings I’ve been just too wrecked to start cooking a dinner for myself and my OH from scratch, so I might boil some spuds, open a tin of peas and stick a frozen Chicken Kiev in the oven.

Some days I’m so tired I’d just order something in. I know, it’s a bad habit...

But how often do you have the time - please be honest - to do a big cook with many ingredients bought fresh, prep the food and cook the meal? Is it worth the effort?

Do share...

pretty much every day

always worth the effort

nothing ready made or convenient comes close in taste to what I make myself

Lux23

5 days a week at the least.

jiltloop

I enjoy cooking most days, get lazy maybe once a week and get something quick but in general I enjoy cooking and have a decent foundation of knowledge to get something cooked as long as I have a few fresh ingredients in the fridge.

Once you have rice, noodles, pasta, tinned beans/tomatoes, spuds in the kitchen you can always buy fresh veg every 2-3 days and rustle something up. Once a week we usually get fish, chicken, pork, some red meat (less so these days) and freeze it in portions, take it out in the morning before work so it's defrosted by the time I'm home.

Feisar

theteal wrote: »

Most Sundays I take a bit of time to do a big batch of something e.g. bolognese, chili, curry, pasta bake etc. That'll do dinner that day and then cover me or lunches until maybe Wednesday - being honest I'm probably sick of it by Wednesday so hit Tesco for a meal deal.

Everyday dinners are easy, I mean spuds, rice, pasta with chicken, steak, salmon etc. and a bunch of veg doesn't take much time really - sure the meat and veg cooks while the spuds are boiling so all in about 15 minutes. When we have chips it takes a bit longer because of the prep, par boil and then airfryer is a bit slow but apparently we're allowed now have these slimming world chips straight from the freezer - how convenient!

I enjoy the process of cooking, after a day of dealing with issues/people it's good for helping the brain relax.

a bolognese can become a chili fairly easily have it with rice one night and a backed potato the next, so three fairly distinct dinners from the one pot.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Every day.

Wibbs

Kehlani Tender Rodent wrote: »

Every day.

This. Every meal pretty much. Once a month I'll pop to the chippers for a single of some greasy stodgy chips but that's about it.

Irish Guitarist

I bought an omelette maker a couple of years ago and for a while made omelettes every day. I enjoyed using it but the thing was too hard to clean. I've made a nice pasta bake a couple of times with Tesco tomato soup, pasta and grated cheese. I don't know if that counts as from scratch as the soup was already made. I make the odd egg salad sandwich or scrambled egg and toast. I'm not sure if that counts either.

lawred2

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

I bought an omelette maker a couple of years ago and for a while made omelettes every day. I enjoyed using it but the thing was too hard to clean. I've made a nice pasta bake a couple of times with Tesco tomato soup, pasta and grated cheese. I don't know if that counts as from scratch as the soup was already made. I make the odd egg salad sandwich or scrambled egg and toast. I'm not sure if that counts either.

Is an omelette maker not a frying pan?

Irish Guitarist

lawred2 wrote: »

Is an omelette maker not a frying pan?

Sure, if you want to make boring omelettes. These are much sexier.

lawred2

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

Sure, if you want to make boring omelettes. These are much sexier.

they look nice but that's exactly how my omelettes look out of my frying pan...

RobertKK

Everyday, porridge and omelette for breakfast. The omelette usually with cheese and some greens.
Dinner sometimes it two veg and fish, more times I make a chicken stew - cook the chicken in the oven, then chop it up, throw it into a large saucepan, add a load of different vegetables, some chicken stock, and I have a dinner for a few days, good healthy and simple.
It doesn't have to be complicated. Once it tastes great with good nourishment, that is all I want.
I make my own bread, tarts and things too. Being biased but it is much better than mass produced in my opinion.

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

Not as often as I should, though I eat a lot of them. My partner is self employed and works from home a lot so he naturally ends up doing most of it. Nights he's not there or has already eaten (he eats meat and I don't so sometimes he fancies a steak or whatever) I'd rarely actually cook from scratch.

I walk past an Iceland on my way home so I might grab a ready meal there. Otherwise I'll just graze away for the evening on fruit, toast, whatever veg is on the fridge that doesn't need peeled or cooked (cherry tomatoes, celery, peppers), nuts etc. Basically just a very large deconstructed salad :pac:

The days I'm off I usually would cook something that'll do a few days, stew, chilli, curry.

Don't get takeaways very often, not sure when I last had one. There have been phases where it was multiple times a week though.

kowloon

freshpopcorn wrote: »

I'm alright at cooking from scratch meals/cakes/etc from I was a teenager. Nothing really would bother me. We'd cook a good enough dinner every day. My meals probably wouldn't good looking enough for Instagram tough.

I don't think the instagram crowd actually eat that food. You spray it with clear varnish to keep it good for longer. It's something nice to look at while you ingest your nutrient rich survival paste.

LimeFruitGum

Cooking a meal can take as long as waiting for a takeaway, so you may as well cook. It doesn’t take that long to chop some veg, season some fish or meat, and bung them into the oven.

Bassfish

It pays to plan meals smartly. Plan your meals and do your shopping based on the meal plan. E.G throw on a Chicken and a stew/pie on a Sunday Morning. Roast chicken dinner Sunday, chicken noodles/fried rice Monday evening, stew/pie Tuesday and Wednesday, quick pasta dish Thursday, things that cook quickly Friday and Saturday: burgers/steaks/fish etc. Rinse and repeat!

dartboardio

What even is an omelette maker? Thats like a fried egg maker..

Surely it's just to keep it in a nice shape or something?

Struggling with cooking ideas for the warmer time of year, end up having burgers and salad or chicken salad rice and sweet corn everyday.

Any ideas?

arybvtcw0eolkf

Almost every day, tbh I can't remember the last take away I've had.

I spend a bloody fortune in the butchers on fresh meats, but then I have a very high protein, low carb and medium fats diet which isn't cheap.

Helps that my daughter is a chef, paying for her culinary arts degree has been worth every penny

Zelda Weak Radial

Zelda Weak Radial wrote: »

Almost every day, tbh I can't remember the last take away I've had.

I spend a bloody fortune in the butchers on fresh meats, but then I have a very high protein, low carb and medium fats diet which isn't cheap.

Helps that my daughter is a chef, paying for her culinary arts degree has been worth every penny

That’s the point of having kids, so they can look after us in our old age.

My daughter came out a few years ago. It’s something I thought would never happen to me, but I love her and I respect her decision.

Now I just have to accept that I have a vegetarian in the family.

wakka12

I cook a curry/stew whatever twice a week, a big pot, that will last me for 2 dinners and 2 lunches, other than that, might get a few meals in college, some nights just do something easy like an omelette or toast with egg and avocado. I find cooking tough and boring and I think its expensive to buy the ingredients tbh. I must be doing it very wrong but I spend nearly the same amount from buying my weekly groceries as I would from eating lunch and dinner out daily(in a cheap cafe obviously)

But I prefer cooking at home just because its much healthier, scary how much salt and sugar food bought out of home has in it