What do you make from scratch?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most treats, like cookies, pie, cupcakes or cake. I don't buy boxed treats like that for my kids because 1) they're gross, and 2) my daughter loves baking with me so it's a double treat when we make something. I also make a lot of really gelatinous bone broth that gets frozen and used in place of stock in cooking. (Thank you Costco for starting to carry chicken feet!)

I cook all beans from dried, not canned. This isn't a health thing it's a cheapness thing.

I keep failing at getting into sourdough but I would like to be that kind of person. My starters all die.

Mostly I cook all meals from scratch, not convenience meals and only rarely (2x/month) takeout or something. But I'm not making my own yogurt or kombucha or anything.

I bake treats with my kids but also buy boxed crap, depending on how much time we have that week.

Have also failed twice on sourdough starter, but would still like to be that kind of person someday.

[Anonymous]

Bread
Jam
Lox
Ice cream
Ricotta
Mozerella

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I recently saw an Instagram reel where a woman was bragging about being an "Ingredient Household" and I went down a rabbit hole to figure out what that meant and it seems to just mean . . . she has groceries? And makes meals from them? It was pretty confusing and made me think that there's no baseline anymore. There are probably people being raised only eating eggs from their own backyard and also people being raised eating only food that comes to them courtesy of Johnson & Johson and the four middle aisles of the grocery store.

I make most meals from scratch - pasta sauce, roux, almost all of the stuff listed above. Past that, is it considered "from scratch" now to boil your own eggs, peel your own garlic, and chop your own vegetables? Because I know you can buy all that stuff at step 2 now. But I would feel clinically insane to brag about making my own hardboiled eggs "from scratch". To me that's just . . . how you get a hardboiled egg.

Yes I definitely have an ingredient household (including the backyard chicken eggs) but once your kids get to a certain age they get very embarrassed if you are offering their friends homemade fruit pops and cornbread unless they are from the same style of household. You have to have some granola bars and capri sun.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not as fancy as the rest of you but here are things I make from scratch that my mom and MIL think are bizarre:
Waffles
Roux/bechamel(i.e no canned cream soup)
All pasta sauces
All sauces in general like gravy, curry
All baked goods (I.e. no canned frosting, no pillsbury cookies)
Mashed potatoes
Potato salad (not from the grocery store deli)
Pizza crust
Naan

I should have added roux/bechamel to my list above. It is so easy to make. Same with gravy. Like, just pour the drippings in a pot, and soften some butter in the microwave, dump in some flour, smoosh it up with a whisk, and then whisk it into the drippings on the stove top. Done.

I know it’s easy but tell that to my mother. She just shakes her head and says “i don’t know why you kill yourself. Don’t complain to me when you collapse from exhaustion.” As she opens her jar of brown slop..

[Anonymous]

Hummus
Guacamole
Naan, sometimes
Chia pudding
Salad dressings, including Caesar
sauces, including tomato sauce
Veggie juice
Gin ‘n’ tonics
Sazeracs, manhattans
Cupcakes, cookies, bday cakes

[Anonymous]

Pie crust. It's not the prettiest when I roll it out but the taste and texture is so much better.

Pesto

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hummus
Guacamole
Naan, sometimes
Chia pudding
Salad dressings, including Caesar
sauces, including tomato sauce
Veggie juice
Gin ‘n’ tonics
Sazeracs, manhattans
Cupcakes, cookies, bday cakes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bread
Jam
Lox
Ice cream
Ricotta
Mozerella

I'm one that makes yogurt, and lemme tell you, the amount of milk I have wasted on failed cheesemaking attempts would float a small boat. And the time I have wasted would, I dunno, build a new boat. Hats off to you

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bread
Jam
Lox
Ice cream
Ricotta
Mozerella

I'm one that makes yogurt, and lemme tell you, the amount of milk I have wasted on failed cheesemaking attempts would float a small boat. And the time I have wasted would, I dunno, build a new boat. Hats off to you

Hats off to you for trying because I also make yogurt, but hell no on cheese.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not as fancy as the rest of you but here are things I make from scratch that my mom and MIL think are bizarre:
Waffles
Roux/bechamel(i.e no canned cream soup)
All pasta sauces
All sauces in general like gravy, curry
All baked goods (I.e. no canned frosting, no pillsbury cookies)
Mashed potatoes
Potato salad (not from the grocery store deli)
Pizza crust
Naan

I should have added roux/bechamel to my list above. It is so easy to make. Same with gravy. Like, just pour the drippings in a pot, and soften some butter in the microwave, dump in some flour, smoosh it up with a whisk, and then whisk it into the drippings on the stove top. Done.

I know it’s easy but tell that to my mother. She just shakes her head and says “i don’t know why you kill yourself. Don’t complain to me when you collapse from exhaustion.” As she opens her jar of brown slop..

I feel that way about working moms who are making their own yogurt, cheese and pasta on the regular, so I guess we all have our own lines. A certain generation of woman was taught that if she wanted to her family healthy, her hours were better spent on sanitizing her house rather than from scratch cooking. That was the result of germ theory plus also the growth of food manufacturing to fuel ww2 armies. We’ve now shifted to a view that food is medicine and excessive home hygiene is actually not great for your health, which is really different. But we shouldn’t blame our mothers and grandmothers too much for doing what they were told was healthy for their families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pie crust. It's not the prettiest when I roll it out but the taste and texture is so much better.

Pesto

Some of this stuff is context dependent. I make my own pesto in the summer but in the winter I often use the delicious Costco stufff which is made with fresh California basil.

I make my own pie crust for pie but I am not above using premade pie crust if I just want to make mini quiches for a quick after work dinner. I can get mini quiche on the table in like 20-30 minutes if I use pre rolled crust. I think of that as semi homemade. I do a lot of semi homemade for work night dinners when I was not WFH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not as fancy as the rest of you but here are things I make from scratch that my mom and MIL think are bizarre:
Waffles
Roux/bechamel(i.e no canned cream soup)
All pasta sauces
All sauces in general like gravy, curry
All baked goods (I.e. no canned frosting, no pillsbury cookies)
Mashed potatoes
Potato salad (not from the grocery store deli)
Pizza crust
Naan

I should have added roux/bechamel to my list above. It is so easy to make. Same with gravy. Like, just pour the drippings in a pot, and soften some butter in the microwave, dump in some flour, smoosh it up with a whisk, and then whisk it into the drippings on the stove top. Done.

I know it’s easy but tell that to my mother. She just shakes her head and says “i don’t know why you kill yourself. Don’t complain to me when you collapse from exhaustion.” As she opens her jar of brown slop..

I feel that way about working moms who are making their own yogurt, cheese and pasta on the regular, so I guess we all have our own lines. A certain generation of woman was taught that if she wanted to her family healthy, her hours were better spent on sanitizing her house rather than from scratch cooking. That was the result of germ theory plus also the growth of food manufacturing to fuel ww2 armies. We’ve now shifted to a view that food is medicine and excessive home hygiene is actually not great for your health, which is really different. But we shouldn’t blame our mothers and grandmothers too much for doing what they were told was healthy for their families.

This. Highly recommend this book for insight into industrial food and women in the workforce, and how all that shaped what we eat.

https://a.co/d/0g6zKkN0

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, thanks for posting--I started doing yogurt a few months ago and have been meaning to see if anyone has pointers for getting a smoother texture? Mine is good, will never go back to the grocery store stuff, but is a bit lumpy.

Also do granola sometimes. Where do people source nuts, since they can be $$$ and I am cheap? I typically do Trader Joe's but should perhaps try Costco.

Definitely no homesteader here, though. Zero desire to ever make pasta from scratch, and plenty of other processed stuff in this house.

Heating milk to 180°F is a crucial step for the best homemade yogurt. It permanently denatures the whey proteins (allowing them to create a thicker, custard-like gel) and kills off any natural bacteria in the milk that could compete with your yogurt culture

[Anonymous]

I have been baking a lot the last few years after pretty much a lifetime of not enjoying baked goods/sweets. After making a chocolate cake for my DH's birthday, and finding it about 100x better than a grocery store cake or even a bakery cake, I realized that maybe I do like baked goods, I just haven't really had good ones. So most weeks I experiment with a cake or pie or cookies or muffins or something, usually a recipe from Sally's. I see people all over the internet posting that there is no sense in making homemade brownies because the Ghiradelli mix is so good. This is a huge lie, and I have no idea how it got started, lol.

Other things:

Baked beans. These are amazing from scratch, not even the same food as the canned ones.

Salad dressing. Olive oil, vinegar, dijon and some salt is better than the gloopy sugar-laden stuff from the store.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pizza dough, takes almost no effort in the stand mixer. Same with no-knead bread- literally just stir the ingredients together with a spoon and put plastic wrap on the bowl and come back in a couple of hours to shape it and throw it in the dutch oven and bake. I don't make sandwich bread or anything, but if we want a crusty loaf of bread to go with dinner it's super easy. Caveat for both of these obviously is that I work from home so the timing for the rise, etc isn't a problem.

Pancakes and waffles. Baffles me when people use the mix for these. It's literally just flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, eggs, butter, milk. And with the mixes, you still add the eggs and a liquid of some kind so what are we really saving time on here by using the mix?

Chocolate chips cookies, also super easy and store bought ones are always kind of gross IMO.

Things like pasta, granola, yogurt- I'm never going to make these from scratch, not worth it, too time consuming.

Will just add re: yogurt as OP said, it's almost all passive time. I get it going in the morning on weekends or WFH days virtually every week. Minimal effort.

Yep and it is one to one- ie one quart of milk turns in to one quart of yogurt.