While cooking from scratch is a satisfying endeavor, it can certainly feel intimidating and time consuming if you are not prepared. 

However, preparing yourself to make homecooked meals using scratch ingredients is something that anyone can learn and will find that it is surprising easy to manage.

Cooking from scratch is something that is an ongoing learning project for me.  I think that we do pretty good in this category, about 90% of our meals are cooked from home and about 80% of that is completely homemade from scratch.  That was definitely a work in progress as I learned to cook over the last 5 years.

Cooking from scratch to me is all about the ingredients that you are using.  I love to follow recipes but I also love to just wingit’ sometimes. 

Many times it seems so much easier to just use prepackaged, processed foods but in reality, with some planning and practice, you will find cooking from scratch is actually pretty easy.

The biggest misconception about cooking from scratch is that it is time consuming.

Follow these tips to make cooking from scratch, fast, easy and fun!

1) Build a solid “From Scratch” pantry

Cooking from scratch is so much easier to manage when you are intentional about building a stockpile of staple pantry items. 

The importance of keeping a well stocked fridge and pantry is paramount to providing an easy cooking from scratch practice.

Without pantry staples, the planning required to make a from scratch meal is much more intensive.  Having to worry about buying herbs and other pantry items with each meal would be troublesome, however, this is how you will build your spice cabinet and pantry slowly.

You want to make sure you have spices, oils, baking goods, sweetners, and condiments on hand.

For a complete list: grab our Simple Living Starter Kit which includes a from scratch pantry checklist to help you make sure that you have a well-stocked pantry!

2) Start with making ONE thing from Scratch

The easiest way to start cooking from scratch is to start by making one thing that you are using in a dish or meal that is packaged or processed and make it from scratch.

Being able to find a substitute for a packaged item, is usually very easy.  My favorite substitutions for items that we had made were our own Taco Seasoning, using a blend of herbs, instead of the packets sold in the grocery store. We found that the flavor was much better and we could use it in various quantities depending on how much ground beef we used.  We really enjoy this recipe:

Another recipe that we have used to substitute a package product is a copy-cat recipe for cheddar broccoli rice a roni.  We used to use rice a roni packages all the time until I realized it was just rice and a packet of spices that I could totally do myself.  The recipe I use now uses real broccoli and real cheddar making it a hearty side that actually takes care of the starch and vegetable portions of the meal.  So easy!

You can definitely do this yourself.

This week take something that you would normally use a packaged, processed item and make it homemade.

Some suggestions are: flour tortillas, macaroni and cheese, soup, and mashed potatoes.

Cooking from scratch is so much more attainable when you make little steps and incorporate different skills along the way.

3) Learn to Meal Plan

One of the most important skills for cooking from scratch is meal planning.  Really, in order to cook from scratch easily, there needs to be some sort of advanced planning. 

Whether it is weekly meal planning, stockpiling pantry and fridge staples, batch cooking, or freezer meals, planning in advance is a must do.

Once you get the hang of it, it will also make your life so much easier! There is nothing worse than coming home from work, or hitting 4:00 and not having anything planned or prepared for dinner.  For me, that is SO stressful!  However, if I schedule too far in advance, I stray from my schedule.  I have found that for us, about 5 days is the extent of my meal scheduling.

Once a week, usually the night before I grocery shop, or even that morning, I will check out our fridge and freeze to see what we have on hand.  I will make a list of about 5 meals that I can make from what we have or add items to our grocery list. 

I will go through everything that needs to be made for those meals and make sure we have it on hand.

I will then try to plan out my husband’s lunches for work and figure out lunches for us at home.

That is really it, totally manageable!

Try these tips at home this week and see if you have slowly incorporate scratch meals into your busy life!

The biggest setback for me in the begining was a lack of confidence in the kitchen.  After plenty of burned meals, I am not confident in cooking our favorite meals and confident enough to try new recipes!

You will make mistakes and will serve less than perfect meals or dishes but ultimately, the skill of cooking from scratch will become the norm for your kitchen and the outcome will be beyond satisfying!