Get the frozen pre-made meal or just make it yourself?

My wife is definitely team 'make it from scratch'.

She is also a very slow cook. We also have an infant that is currently taking up 110% of our time.

It's hard for me to justify spending two hours a night preparing a lunch for the next day. She likes to sleep in, so I never get to eat it fresh.. it's always leftovers.

I don't mind cooking something fresh for lunch or dinner, but I'll do something that takes 20 minutes of prep and then take care of itself on the stove or in the oven. Chilli, pot roast, or a casserole.

I think frozen dinners probably have a better balance of protein/carbs/veg than either of us makes, and at half the price.

I try to make everything from scratch, but sometimes I make pre made when I know I'm avoiding eating because I don't feel like cooking. If I make pre made though, I'll always add something to it to bulk it out. Ramen? Handfuls of frozen veg. Frozen pizza? Slap mushrooms, peppers, onions on top. Pasta sauce? Spinach, homemade stock, and carrots.

To me, its about health. I know processed food isn't healthy, so I want to mitigate the damage.

I have two suggestions: homemade pre-made, and why not both.

You can pre-make things like pancake mix, taco seasoning, pasta sauce seasoning, etc. write any instructions on the ziplock bag or container.

Instant items from a box or bag can usually be dressed up with fresh foods. If she’s cooking then offer to prep fresh items.

Also, respect that some people simple have no patience for cooking and don’t want to learn any. Communicate with each other to understand how to make it work.

This is easy. Whoever's doing the cooking does it their own way. If you don't like it, then you do the cooking so it can be done your way.

You are two separate people, so you can do two separate things.

Yay freedom.

Pro tip, make the premade stuff. Make like a gallon of pasta sauce and freeze/can it all. Make like 5 pounds of meatballs and freeze them.

I like to make my pasta sauce when I can, from tomatoes. If you are a fast chopper, it goes by really quickly. Super thin slice it, add some diced enough, maybe some shredded carrot and celery, add some crushed garlic, salt, pepper and some seasonings. In around an hour or so you will have made a bunch of it.

Also look for professional advice for canning, cause idk if my way is the safest. I boil some water in the can in the microwave, dump it then add the pasta sauce, and close it really tight with an oven mitt.

I also grind my own meat, with just a knife. Dice the meat into small cubes and mince it for a while. I do it until it can form a cohesive meatball. Also consider what you'll use it for, if its just being tossed in a bolognese sauce, it doesn't need to be so fine.

You can make pizzas ahead of time too, roll the dough, add marinara, mozzarella and wrap it in foil and put it in the freezer.

I make my own stock too. I'll collect bones and veggie scraps in a freezer bag, and when it's full, I dump it in a slow cooker, set it and forget it. The store bought stuff is basically just water. If it's tasteless, it's baseless.

I've also frozen lasagna portions too, fully cooked. If raw its impossible to cook them without completely de-thawing them.

I also have a box of instant cake batter I mixed together myself. It's like a year old but it's still not terrible!

Having a frozen lasagne is better than taking the full effort when...

Last month i made two lasagnas in one day and had none of it. I cut them up in pieces and froze them into 24 pieces. Now we have home made lasagna for those days where we dont feel like cooking dinner. It really does not need to take too much time and if you enjoy it, there is no need to not do it.

I think the one who cooks should do things their way and the others should not interfere unless there's some kind of medical concern.

Cooking your own meals with unprocessed ingredients is one of the basic parts of a healthy diet.

If you practice a bit cooking a home made meal can be done in less than 30 minutes. If times a issue I have some 20 minute recipes.

I make sure to have a basic stock of ingredients like pasta, flour, some vegetable stock cubes, some assorted spices, onions, fresh garlic,...

Sometimes I don't have the motivation to cook, sometimes I do. Sometimes I have the motivation to get shit done that isn't in the kitchen. Throwing a pizza in the oven can buy me an extra hour of working on something else because I don't have to come in early to wash up, prep, cook, then wash the damn dishes.

Have both options available.

My stance is that if you make it from scratch then you know exactly what is in it. If you buy premixed then you don't. Even worse if you buy pre cooked or even frozen after cooking then you're basically eating like if you'd eat reheated leftovers, half of the flavour which makes it taste good is gone.

If time is a problem I can live with not having the most of the flavour, but otherwise I totally enjoy the fresh made.

It really depends. One specific shop near my home has good quality frozen meat pancakes and dumplings. Yeah I have made dumplings by hand some 20 years ago, but those frozen ones are simply better. Maybe I can do some exotic dumplings with a buckwheat flour and a lot of eggs, but that would not necessarily be better, just different.

On the other hand, pasta sauce prepared from scratch will always taste better than store-bought one, mainly because the stores here only sell ketchup and mayo, and pretty much all pasta sauce here is some variety of tomato concentrate with a bit of carrots.

Cooking from scratch is excellent... But there's also an extreme for how far you consider "cooking from scratch" to actually be "from scratch"... For Example: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C76cACZB0oq/

Do you milk the cows yourself? Churn the butter? Etc.

I don't care either way, but too many premade meals I have bought in the past were gross and inedible to a point where I had to toss them and just make food from scratch. I just keep the supplies for a quick 1 pot Carbonara in my fridge at all times - it might not be super healthy, but it's always a predictable taste/texture and only costs about 1,50€ per Portion

Need more reasons to stop eating ultra-processed food? How about 32 of them? That's the number of health problems noted in the largest-ever review of studies about the dangers of diets high in ultra-processed foods. The findings, published online Feb. 28, 2024, by The BMJ, come from a review of 45 analyses published in the last three years, involving about 10 million people in total.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/nutrition/more-evidence-that-ultra-processed-foods-harm-health

As others say, premades are generally less healthy and carry more preservatives like sodium. I personally keep them on hand anyway in case I need something in a pinch, but even then I have a few easy meals if foods are stocked (like carbonara, which i make tonight!)

If you do go frozen for the wife, be sure to check what you're getting. My step father has been having heart issues lately and I don't think he realized his diet of mostly frozen dishes were putting him at like 300%+ daily intake of salt.

My partner hates cooking, and I love it, so the deal in our house is I cook and they do all the cleaning in the kitchen, unless I made something specifically for me, since they have some medical issues that prevents them from eating certain things, then I will do the cleaning of the mess made during the preparation of cooking that specific meal.

As far as cooking from scratch or pre-made, I'm about half and half. I rarely make my own red sauce or pasta, but all baking is from scratch, breakfast foods like pancakes, yes I would make those from scratch as well. Soups, stews, chili, Asian, Mexican, Indian recipes, mostly from scratch, but many sauce elements I would buy.

I'd call what you're doing "cooking".

I'd call what she's doing "not cooking".

Depends on difficulty. I make most things. but a labor-intensive dish like lasagna I'm happy to buy frozen.

Its all a very complex equation of quality vs additives vs effort vs cost vs time vs storability vs fridge life vs convenience.

Some stuff is just too much or too little of some of them.

If a lasagna is more effort than you want to put in, there are lots of recipes for “deconstructed” lasagna, so you can make it yourself much easier!

Whenever we order out, when I don't have the energy to cook my son orders the gross pasta that cost 15€ and complain afterwards I do it better.

Today I did not want to cook, so he wanted to order the carbonara.... if you would serve that to an Italian they would rather jump into the Vesuvius than eat it. I just skip the meal anyway because ordering out is not satisfying to me.

So damn it, made him a take away style tortellini with spinache and ricotta, shrimp (out of the freezer) and cream with fresh herbs, and on top mozzarella out of the oven, then salmon filet on skin out of a skillet, in compound butter on young salad leaves with a mildly sweet and sour garlic vinaigrette. This is cheaper than the 15€ take away. Took me half an hour, but I am a trained chef.

I do freeze prepared meals though, but I say fresh food over anything else. I certainly don't buy any prefab from the supermarket, mostly. I did cheat on the tortelinni.

Most of the time I make my meals from the scratch. Exceptions are usually takeaway food; I only buy stuff like frozen lasagne and the likes very rarely, it's expensive and it doesn't taste as good. (In fact even a few of my spices is homemade.)

As others said, in your case (provided that you're the one in charge of cooking) it might be sensible to buy the store-bought pancake mix for the sake of your wife, and then prepare the rest of the food as you typically do.

Depends on how much I care about that particular meal and leftovers vs the effort. This includes stocking separate ingredients.

I definitely love prepared frozen vegetables like shredded potatoes for hash browns, frozen cut broccoli, etc. that just need heated up. I also buy pasta instead of making it myself, although there is a chicken and noodles recipe that I have made fresh noodles for. But not for spaghetti, or even lasagna even if the rest of the lasagna is assembled manually.

But I do tend to make my own diced and slow cooked peppers (mix of colorful bell peppers and jalepenos) that I will use to top scrambled eggs just because I find it fun.

I'm all over the map, just depends.

If you take the time to make food, especially smelling it as it cooks, it gives your body time to get excited about it and improves digestion.

If the ingredients on the package are unreadable than I make it myself, but if its got like 2 preservatives but the rest is golden buy the premade

I would rather cook because I like the taste much, much more. Almost all frozen stuff is just flavorless to me so I end up having to doctor it up anyway. It’s easier for me to just start from scratch unless it’s something that’s a giant pain.

I also worked as a cook when I was young so the effort/time is probably a bit less for me since I can do the food prep stuff quickly and without much mental effort. When I chop vegetables, my brain basically does it on autopilot.

I make as much as possible to avoid the flavor additives, texture modifiers, and preservatives found in much packaged food.

I make waffles from scratch and freeze them for quick breakfast. Prep large pots of soup, chili, stew, etc and freeze in deli tubs.

But as to who is right? No answer on that. I have built up plenty of cooking experience so things that seem tricky or time consuming to other people don’t faze me.

Quite frequently I have no energy. But me and my husband need to eat. So premade it is. When I do have energy? I'll cook, bake, from scratch! And if I have a lot off energy, maybe I'll premake something and freeze it, like ravioli or a lasagna.

There is a big price for eating shite out of the box... if you don't accept it, just do what you do. but you can' expect others to "see it" that way.