What is your definition of 'cooking from scratch'?

My definition is the same as your's.

Honestly, I don't cook everything from scratch, but I do what I can. I can't make pasta to save my life so I buy it. I think my mistake was using an electric pasta machine. Just add ingredients and turn on. Um no. It was awful. It comes out like dry sheets of plaster mixed with pebbles.

One day I will get brave and try it again. Not with an electric pasta machine though. I gave it away.

I grew up in a household where the basic cooking phrase was "Ya cant get a square meal out of a round can". I buy most of our spices, sugar, flour and other staples, but I like to put the meal together myself.

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"Nothing so needs reforming as other peoples habits." Mark Twain

No ingredients I can't pronounce

It's not a technical Worcestershire because it doesn't have anchovies, but it tastes just as nice... also, sorry about the metric:

750g Green Apple [I'd say this is four large grannys]
225g Sugar [a cup?]
60g Garlic [60g is the same weight as an egg... so an egg of garlic? LOL]
1 tsp chilli powder
1 teaspoon cloves, whole or ground
25g salt
2.6L apple cider vinegar [little over half a gallon]
500g treacle [1 3/4-2c or so, this should be heavier than the sugar]
Alternatively, get a scale and press 'metric'. XD

Boil all ingredients except treacle for two hours and strain. Add treacle and boil for 10 minutes. Seal - mature at least 3 weeks.

Scratch same as you but go back to when I was a Kid nothing was measured Try that now days and explain how you make it.I guarantee you will get the Deer in Headlights look from many.

big rockpile

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I love being married.Its so great to find that one person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.



If I need a Shelter
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I go to the Rock!

I cook "from scratch" as much as I can but time does not always allow.

I use my microwave a lot. That said it is hardly ever used for actual cooking. I picked out one that has buttons such as "melt" "soften" and "express defrost". This is ever so helpful when you wakeup in the morning ready to bake and discover someone used the last of the butter in the fridge that you were planning on using and all the rest is frozen Also helpful when someone forgets to take meat out of the freezer and it is getting close to dinner time!

I"m writing a cookbook like this. Cooking stuff that tastes the best IS really about a lack of measuring. Since each tomato has a different flavour from the next and a different acid content - the other ingredients need to match. Your spices could be older than the recipe calls for and less potent, etc.

I've been working on writing a book that focuses on appearances of food as well as flavour of results. It's actually quite hard to do. D:

I love cooking this way. Sometimes I feel exact recipes are like chains. I edit even high-end chef's recipes if I see fit. Only one cook I don't edit: Maggie Beer.

OK, I'm probably going to make yall mad at me, and maybe it's just because I can't tell the inflection of voice on a computer, BUT most of you "sound" pretty condescending over your "I cook from REAL scratch." Seriously, what does it matter? Most things I make from scratch. Cornbread, mashed potatoes, fried chicken etc. The majority of things really, but I DO use pasta and other convience foods sometimes. I generally use a box cake mix, but make the chocolate buttercream frosting myself. I'm just glad my family and friends aren't as judgemental as many of you seem to be.

Our scratch-made Thanksgiving meal started with catching the live turkey

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"Perhaps I'll have them string a clothesline from the hearse I am in, with my underwear waving in the breeze, as we drive to the cemetary. People worry about the dumbest things!"
by Wendy

Same as yours: basic ingredients. That's how I was raised. That's how we cook.

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That kwanzaa cake video is gagworthy

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"Perhaps I'll have them string a clothesline from the hearse I am in, with my underwear waving in the breeze, as we drive to the cemetary. People worry about the dumbest things!"
by Wendy

Yep! Starting with the staples, spices, fresh meat and vegies, etc. and winding up with a meal is cooking from scratch

I see cooking from scratch a lot like the way you do but...

Unless you're taking a corn cob out of your garden and placing it directly on your table, I don't know how frozen corn is anything other than from scratch cooking. I don't know anybody who makes their own pasta so don't see why that cannot be considered homemade. I don't consider purchased pasta sauce to be homemade but I don't know that there's a huge difference between opening a jar of spaghetti sauce and opening a can of tomato sauce and doctoring it up to make spaghetti sauce.

I guess I don't see why it really matters. Who cares if somebody cooks from scratch or not. To each his own. I think it's better to eat jarred spaghetti sauce at home with one's family than to eat fast food in the car.

My daughter loves "my" brownies. They're awfully yummy but they do come from a box of chocolate chunk brownies we got at Sam's. Sad to say they're better than any recipe I've made from scratch.

What really bugs me is when a company says they sell home cooked food. Ummm, how in the world does one make homemade food in a factory?

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Moms don't look at things like normal people.
-----DD

I don't think anyone is looking down on folks that don't cook from scratch; I think they are looking down on people who think that making a cake out of a box that says "Betty Crocker" IS making it "from scratch".

~smiles~ I don't know how old you are, if you are native, or if you were brought up rural, but do you remember the older ladies sniffing and talking about others, and one of the worse things they could say about someone was, "Oh, bless her heart, she makes her biscuits from a can."?

That would be the epitome of being judgmental towards someone who doesn't cook from scratch.

However, a vastly different thing would be, "Oh, bless her heart, she thinks if she takes biscuits out of a can and bakes them, they are from scratch!"

We're pretty much engaging in the latter on this thread.

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Peace,
Caliann

"First, Show me in the Bible where it says you can save someone's soul by annoying the hell out of them." -- Chuck

Pancake mix from scratch is the easiest thing to make in large batches. Thank you Alton Brown. We make waffles for Sunday breakfast religiously. Every six weeks, we need to make a new batch of mix.

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Honesty and integrity are homesteading virtues.

Scratch = basic ingredients here too.

My husband's grandmother was well known in the family for her wonderful cooking, and made most things from scratch (she knew how to raise her own chickens and prep them for the table). However, she was quick to use a box mix if it made her life easier on a busy day.

Just the other night, I served leftovers from New Years Day, including collards and dried peas I had soaked the night before. The one thing I added was a box of Jiffy cornbread. My niece was here and loved the cornbread. She said, "It's just like Nanny used to make!". I told her well, now you know her secret.

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“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”
- C S Lewis

Spinner's Lap Cloths (and more) at Bede Sisters

sometimes if you saw me then you would think the same thing... however, you wouldn't know that my "real food" has been canned, frozed, dehydrated, smoked etc at home and that I may just be at the store for some "junk food" for a party or whatever. You never know the reasons behind things you see... that's why I leave the judging of people up to others who do it better.

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What Caliann said. Cooking is such a lost art that anyone who picks it up these days think ANY cooking warrants the "from scratch" term. They figure if they put any work into the cooking that they did it "from scratch" and they just don't realize that that's not exactly what it means.

In my mind, using a bag of Green Giant corn does not automatically mean that a meal was not made from scratch. Most people do not raise their own meat, or make their own cheese, or grind their own wheat, yet can still use those ingredients to create something from scratch. It's nice to be able to say you've used your own home grown ingredients, though.

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Wise enough to know I'll never be wise enough to know it all

i agree about cooking from scratch with you, but I generally don't go out and kill the steer myself

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Brenda Groth
http://restfultrailsfoodforestgarden.blogspot.com/