nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

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...

Find more posts tagged with

Quick Links

Comments

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.

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.

[Deleted User]

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.

[Deleted User]

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.