The number of Americans cooking at home reached its peak during the pandemic but has begun to slowly decrease each year. With the increasing cost of groceries, consumers may feel the need to question if it is actually worth it at all.
Cooking at home can be costly, messy and time-consuming if you do not know what you are doing. This can be understandably encouraging the average American to resort to take-out most days of the week.
However, it is still worth it to cook your own food from scratch. There are a variety of recipes and resources that can help you stretch your dollar further in the grocery store and can get you whipping up easy meals like a pro.
Grocery prices are high, but often, consumers are not shopping as efficiently as they could. The average person may plan their meals for the week and buy each ingredient listed on the recipe, making no substitutions.
This is not an economical way to shop. Instead, analyze the recipes you want to make that week and find similar ingredients you can substitute into each recipe. Cooking this way allows you to purchase ingredients in bulk, which is always more cost effective.
For example, if you are having chili one night, and spaghetti and meatballs another, buy a large can of whole tomatoes, crush them yourself and use them in both the chili and a homemade sauce for your spaghetti.
Those two recipes will likely have other ingredients in common that you can buy in bulk too, such as onions, garlic, oil, ground meat and some seasonings.
It is a good idea to stock up on pantry and fridge staples, like certain herbs, spices, aromatics and cooking fats if you want to be more economical as well. Garlic, onions, butter and olive oil are used in several recipes and can hike up the price of your grocery bill if you are purchasing them every week.
However, they are shelf stable enough and readily available in large quantities for consumers to purchase and use over the course of several weeks.
Figuring out your staple ingredients comes with time, as you figure out what types of recipes you like to cook more. Cookbooks are a great resource for advice though, as many include a list of the author’s staple ingredients within the first few pages.
If technical cooking skills are what hold you back from making meals from scratch, that does not have to be a problem either. Hundreds of videos are posted online every day from people who want to share their knowledge and make cooking a little bit easier for the average person.
TikTok has become an incredible resource for the home cook. The short-form nature of its content ensures that the audience can learn as much information as possible in the least amount of time.
Often, I will use TikTok when I am in the middle of cooking and realize I need a video instruction of a skill I am unfamiliar with.
Even in the fast-paced world we live in, cooking does not have to be daunting. It can be a massive benefit to the average American, if one is willing to put in some effort up front.
It can save you money and is worth your time because most importantly, cooking is fun.
Cooking is a skill that takes time and practice, and that process is very fun. Challenging yourself to try increasingly difficult recipes, with ingredients you have never even considered buying, can give you a strong sense of accomplishment.
For the majority of human history, we had to cook at home, because no one was going to feed us but ourselves. With so many options at our fingertips now, it’s no surprise we opt for takeout so often, but if you take the time to cook a meal for yourself, you can see just how fulfilling it can be.
This story was written by Joey Schamber. He can be reached at [email protected]
