Learning to cook from scratch might seem overwhelming at first, but it’s one of the most rewarding skills you can develop – especially if you are feeding a large family. Today I’m sharing some of my best tips to help you learn to cook from scratch.
I did not grow up with a kitchen full of from scratch, home-cooked meals. My mom worked during my childhood and she did a wonderful job taking care of us. I did learn some basic skills of cooking and cleaning. We made a lot of food out of boxes or prepackaged ingredients. So, when I got married I did not know much about cooking from scratch. I pretty much knew how to make Hamburger Helper and mac and cheese and that was about it. We ate a lot of cereal for breakfast because we were in public school and were always rushed to get out the door. We had a lot of mac and cheese out of a box because that was easy and quick and something my sister and I could make on our own.
Now, one of my favorite meals that my mom made when I was a kid was cheeseburger pockets. She made these out of the Rhodes rolls, the frozen ones that you get in the freezer aisle at the grocery store. They were delicious and it worked really really well as long as you could keep the dough frozen. The drive from our house to the grocery store was a good 45-minutes. Often the rolls would be thawed out and even raised a bit before we got home, which would then ruin our meal. But, if we could keep the dough frozen it worked really well to use those frozen rolls to make our cheeseburger pockets.
When I Started
It wasn’t until my husband and I got married that I realized you could make rolls from scratch. This was not something I had ever seen anyone do and not something that was ever done at my house. It was a new thing that I could learn to do and I was super excited about it.
My mother-in-law taught me her roll recipe and they are so, so delicious. Everyone always gives lots of compliments anytime I make them. And, they’re really easy, much easier than I would have thought they would have been. When I was younger, those frozen rolls were super delicious but, not the most healthy thing for you. This roll recipe began my quest to learn to cook from food from scratch.
Now, I am definitely not a professional cook and there are a lot of things that I don’t know. But I do know how to follow a pretty simple recipe and I know how to do most things in my kitchen. I’ve learned what my family likes to eat. Sometimes I make things that they don’t enjoy. When this happens I make a mental note and remember not to cook those things again. But I have learned quite a bit since those first days of marriage almost 23 years ago.
I thought I would share a few tips with you today on how you can learn to cook from scratch. I think our society today is an instant gratification society. We want things now and we don’t want to wait for them. Cooking from scratch can take time and it takes effort to throw a meal together. You can’t just take it out of the freezer and stick it in the oven to cook. You have to get the ingredients, measure them and put them together just perfectly so that you will have the outcome that you want.
Tip #1
My first tip is to start with something simple. Begin with basic recipes. Soup is pretty easy to make following a recipe without messing it up. You could also make some pasta sauces fairly easily by following a recipe. Roasted vegetables in the oven are also pretty simple. Some recipes are not complicated and the techniques are not complicated. You just have to actually do them instead of, the soup for instance, opening the can and warming it up. You have to make your grocery list, write out each ingredient you will need for your soup, and then follow the directions for putting that soup together.
Tip #2
Along with starting simple, you want to try to just keep things basic and focus on the staple foods that you eat every day. You could master a bread recipe for instance. If making bread is something you really want to learn to do, find a simple, homemade bread recipe and repeat that recipe over and over and over until you get it right. I have burned a lot of food in my cooking days. Often make things incorrectly and have had things not turn out. Actually, just the other day the smoke alarm was going off because I was burning something on the stove.
So, even after 23 years of cooking several meals for my family every single day I still burn things. But whenever you repeat the same recipe over and over and over, eventually you’re going to figure out what works the best. Then you can just stick with that basic recipe. You don’t have to make things complicated.
Tip #3
Something else that you can do that is a really simple but has a huge impact in your kitchen would be to make homemade broth from scratch. This is seriously the simplest thing to do. You take the bones from your meat- it could be from a beef roast that you cooked for dinner the night before- put those bones in your crockpot, fill it with water, add a little splash of apple cider vinegar and turn it on.
Let it cook for 24 – 48 hours, as many hours as you want to get all of that good nutrition out of the bones. Then what I do is let the broth cool and then I transfer it into freezer bags. I use quart size freezer bags and I put it in the freezer. Then when I want to use it, I put one of my freezer bags into a bowl, let it thaw overnight and use it the next day. Making broth is a super simple, very hands off cooking method. You can begin making food from scratch and help improve the nutrition of the food that you’re feeding your family.
Tip #5
My next tip to help you learn to cook from scratch is to focus on learning only one skill at a time. When you are first beginning I know it’s exciting. You want to know all the things and be able to cook all of the yummy food. But it really is best if you focus on learning one skill at a time. Master that bread recipe. Get it down so you don’t even have to look at the recipe anymore. You know it so well that it turns out perfectly every single time. Then move on to something else.
If you try to do everything all at once you’re going to overwhelm yourself. It’ll be easy to give up because you’ll feel like since you can’t do one thing there’s no way you’re going to be able to get all these other things done. So, you just give up and quit trying to learn anything and that’s not what you want. You want to make sure you master one skill first before you move on to the next.
Tip #6
Something else that is really important with learning to cook from scratch is making sure that you have all of the right ingredients you will need for that cooking. So, whenever you’re making your meal plan make sure you write down every single ingredient that you will need. I don’t know how many times I have thought I was going to make something just to start making it and realize I don’t have all the ingredients. Then, I have to come up with something else to make using what I already have mixed together. I am able to do this now because I’ve been at it for a long time, but that can totally throw a beginner off. Having all of the ingredients you need is really important so make sure your kitchen is well stocked.
Tip #7
Another important tip for learning to cook from scratch is to learn how to repurpose your leftovers. This is something that I do all the time because we often have leftovers and not many people in my house are fans of leftovers. What I will do is take a meal that’s left over in the fridge and turn it into something else.
A good example of that is meatballs. We had meatballs left over so as few days later I decided to use them in a meal. I chopped up some chicken breast and then cooked it in some butter in a frying pan. I added that to the meatballs and put it all into a casserole dish. Then I took some sauce that I had left over, a creamy white sauce, and I poured that over the top of the meatballs and the chicken. I added some cheese on top and warmed it up in the oven. Served with leftover mashed potatoes and leftover macaroni and cheese, we felt like we were eating a fresh new meal. Revamping leftovers will help keep from wasting food. It also helps you to learn more creativity and maybe even learn some new cooking techniques. It’s just a good skill to have.
I hope that these tips were an encouragement for you. I hope that they will help you honor the Lord by serving your family through your kitchen. If you have any tips that helped you to learn to cook from scratch, please share them in the comments below! I would love to hear them and maybe even apply them in my own kitchen.
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