Let someone else do the prep work
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- August 14, 2023
- 844
The worldwide explosion in interest in food and cooking, which has slowly gathered steam in the last 50 or so years, has led us to a huge number of sources for recipes, advice and inspiration.
You can draw a line from Julia Child’s first appearance on television to all those cooking competitions on the tube today. Much of what we see and hear is rightfully concerned with getting the freshest ingredients and preparing everything yourself.
The best meals truly do come about that way, but you know what? Sometimes I’m just tired. My wife works the long and late hours restaurants require, getting home quite late in the evening.
A chef might spend the day carefully drizzling sauces and tweezing garnishes, but when they get home, they likely want something quick before turning in for the night to start all over the next day. Our little secret is we eat up a pretty respectable amount of pizza rolls, Hot Pockets and raw veggies with dip. Sometimes, you cheat, and that’s OK.
There are times when you want to invest the time and work to fuss, like when you’ve picked up a haul of fresh produce from the farmers market. Such high-quality ingredients deserve respect. There also are times when it’s just fine to use something prepared, boxed or frozen.
Peas are a good example. Fresh spring peas from the garden are a delight and also work. Think of bucolic scenes of helping grandma hull peas, so popular in old movies, where the kids look like they’d rather be playing baseball. Outside of that short window when they’re fresh, frozen peas are about all you can get, and they’re quite good.
Sometimes, you really have no choice but to use something premade, like phyllo dough. I’m sure there are people out there who can make that from scratch, but the frozen dough is the thing to use.
I used to think pancake mixes make such a good product there’s no point in making them up from scratch, but that’s not true. Find a good recipe and it’s a short bit of work to do them right. Same with biscuits from a tube. Your own are better, but in each case, when you’re just not feeling it, let someone else do the prep work.
Making up a batch of French fries is easy enough with just potatoes and a pot of hot oil, but there are so many iterations of frozen fries ready to go that you can be forgiven cutting out the cutting step. I’d still fry them in hot oil, rather than baking, but that’s your choice.
There are some ready-made foods I cannot understand or get behind. The clear winner here is mashed potatoes. I see them in plastic-wrapped containers ready to go, and I almost want to pull up a folding chair and watch to see who actually buys these things, besides college fraternity pledges with the munchies.
If you like pesto, there are brands of pesto that are quite good, good enough to forgo making your own when you’re not up to it.
An obvious packaged food that is great to use anytime is pasta. I love fresh pasta, something that is not hard to do once you get the hang of it. But having spent hours rolling out little fresh ziti wrapped around a dowel, just buying a box of pasta is A-OK. Boxed pasta varies in quality so it’s not a time to skimp, but I won’t judge you if you take the shortcut.
I’ve made chicken pot pies from scratch, and they were delicious, but the good frozen ones are my go-to easy supper when I just want to fill my tummy and plop on the couch.
Frozen lasagna, frozen entrees in gravy and frozen veggies in “sauce” are all iffy choices to me.
You can’t cheat on everything, but there are some good things out there that fit the bill and are good enough.