Meal/Recipe Starters

flyinglentris

flyinglentris

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How many members start a recipe by using a commercially available product and then adding more to it?

For instance, I sometimes start a spaghetti sauce with some bottle sauce and add additional ingredients and spices. I could have done the whole thing from scratch, but I figure the bottled stuff had time to age and that effects flavor in a positive way.
 
Very rarely, except to say that I use canned tomatoes and canned beans, things like that.
 
Almost never really. Canned tomatoes and beans don't count in my book as they don't contain other ingredients/additives. Same with tinned fish.

It rather depends what is counted as 'commercial'. I use N'duja sometimes and add to it to make a pasta sauce. Its a soft spicy Italian sausage. And I use commercially available bacon. ham etc.

Maybe clarify what you mean?
 
TV "chef" Sandra Lee has made a good living out of the concept of "Semi-Homemade Cooking," which she described as 70% prepackaged items and 30% from-scratch.

Not for me, though.
 
I do this if I'm in a hurry or I like a particular product but want to spruce it up a bit. I almost always cooked from scratch when I had my family. I tend to take shortcuts now that it's just me.
 
We very, very rarely doctor things up. We used to do pizzas that way a lot, but stopped once we started making homemade pizzas.

Craig tried a shortcut a couple months before his accident using Rao's tomato sauce, and we ended up chucking it. Honestly, I don't see why so many people like it, even rave about it, because, besides what was made with it, the rest of it went into our garbage. We'd done the same in the past once in a while with other brands, and they were okay, but that Rao's just was yucky.
 
medtran49 said:
We very, very rarely doctor things up. We used to do pizzas that way a lot, but stopped once we started making homemade pizzas.

Craig tried a shortcut a couple months before his accident using Rao's tomato sauce, and we ended up chucking it. Honestly, I don't see why so many people like it, even rave about it, because, besides what was made with it, the rest of it went into our garbage. We'd done the same in the past once in a while with other brands, and they were okay, but that Rao's just was yucky.
Click to expand...

If I shortcut a spaghetti sauce, I use Classico sauces. I loathe all the others.
 
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I suppose the real reason I buy bottles spaghetti sauces and canned soups is the quick and easy time saving value, if the product is a good one.
 
I did that often years ago, it was easy, always eadible and filled the belly. Mostly I added good cheese or salami on pizza or a nice sausage into lentil soups. Today I'm using other ingredients for my meals and your question let me realize that I still have to make a lot of culinary adventures.
Stay healthy
 
Because of my health issues, I sometimes fall back on ready made spice pastes, frozen pizza or store bought cakes, custards and cookies. But overall the only real pre made products I use are like the rest of the members here, things like tinned tomatoes and tinned fish and tinned preserves. And often, pre cut chips. But that's all really.
 
I can't remember the last time I used a bottled or canned sauce as a base at home - its so easy to make your own, tastes better, and you know exactly what's gone in there.

Tomorrow in a break with my usual habits I'm going to be trying Mutti's pizza sauce for the first time
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I usually make my own pizza sauce (make a big batch and freeze it) but lots of people on the Ooni Facebook group say that Mutti's is great and it was on offer at Ocado so I thought I'd give it a go and see how it compares to my own.

I'm not a totally convenience-free zone.....I do have tinned soup in the cupboard - good for a quick and healthy lunch when working from home. And on holiday to save washing up I sometimes use a bottled pasta sauce. But I tend to use them as they come, rather than as a base for something "homemade".
 
I will use boxed cake mixes, because I'm horrible at cakes. Every so often, we'll have canned soup or ramen noodles, something like that, but I'd never used canned soup as an ingredient (much to Campbell's displeasure).
 
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