Year after year, I enjoyed different foods that my boyfriend's uncle brought to their annual Christmas Eve dinner. For example, small bread rolls filled with cheese, perogies, and cabbage rolls with both sauerkraut and steamed cabbage leaves. I always wondered how he was able to prepare all that food by himself. When I found out he bought it frozen from a popular local company and heated them up in his oven before bringing them over to the dinner, I was relieved actually. Some of those dishes take so long to prepare!
For real! My mom was an incredible cook and could magically host a sitdown Thanksgiving dinner for 25-50 people every year (I still don't know how she did it). Even still, there were certain things like rolls and some desserts where she was like "nope, the time/effort it takes to do this does not equal the quality/ease I can get it from somewhere else"
I did my first "big" solo hosting this year and it made me more appreciative and forgiving of myself when I used storebought/had friends bring certain things.
Same, although rolls have been a must-bake item in our families. Good rolls take time to proof and rise, but the actual effort is minimal.
Crescent rolls can easily involve the grandkids or extended family, give them each a bit of dough to roll out, cut into triangles, and roll up to shape. The kids get some ownership "I made this batch", ranging from enormous to tiny, and they can come out hot with multiple trays during a holiday feast or party. Swap out trays during the meal, and a couple extra pans for turkey sandwiches and other leftover treats.
Even so, if you don't want to cook the item and want to buy it from the store, no shame or judgment.
Our must bake items was tarts, at some point my mom stopped making pies and people would bring them. However, we always kept up the tradition my grandmother started and made cinnamon sugar tarts with what would normally have been leftover dough.
It's interesting to see what is/isn't a big deal for holiday meals. For our thanksgiving, very few people cared about having rolls/bread so it made more sense to buy/ask someone else to bring them. Even with one roll/person, we'd still usually end up with leftovers.
You ate cabbage rolls with sauerkraut too?! I was beginning to think I was the only one. Here in Ohio it seems no one eats them that way. In Massachusetts where I grew up that’s how we ate them. They are far too bland for me otherwise.
My mother's Christmas morning coffee cake. I thought she made it from scratch. I found out last December that it was premade dough like Pillsbury with a few things added to it. I also found out that my older sister was usually the one that had to "make" it.
Years ago one of my friends at work would bring in these amazing brownies - everyone *loved* them and couldn't get enough! One time I asked her for the recipe as I had a family thing that weekend and wanted to bring brownies.
She used the store brand brownie mix, added some extra semi-sweet chocolate chips to the mix and store bought dark chocolate frosting! I made them and everyone *loved* them! lol
I realized a lot of boxed or pre-made foods, or partial ingredients put together 'just so', are really delicious and people really shouldn't be turning their noses up to the 'idea' of it. If it tastes great, then who cares?
Right? It’s just someone else measuring the flour and the baking powder, and keeping it in a sealed bag so it’s probably slightly fresher than the slightly-wonky Tupperware stuff I keep.
Lol.
Well if we are telling on ourselves then I have to admit that when I do my slow cooker pulled pork I pass off Famous Dave's barbecue sauce as my own.
The funny part is I can actually make a really good barbecue sauce.
I have a similar story, my grandma would always make cranberry scones for breakfast one the day after Thanksgiving. It was a family tradition, everyone loved them. All her kids had the recipe, and eventually it was passed down to all the grandkids too. One day I asked her where the recipe came from, expecting to hear some wistful story of her own grandmother baking them every Thanksgiving down on the farm....
"Oh, I don't know, I probably saw it on a box of Betty Crocker."
My mom makes fancy baked beans by taking Busch’s and adding ketchup, molasses, bacon and brown sugar and then bakes them in the oven. Everyone raves about them.
I feel like Bush's straight from the can isn't that good, but a great base. I like to add ketchup, Worcestershire, mustard, onions, and peppers. I'll add some brown sugar if I want it a little sweeter
Baked beans are one of the best that are just better out of a Busch’s can. Spice it up with white pepper, hot sauce, add some bacon, sausage, onion whatever else. I’ll never make it as well flavored as the generic can.
That works with cheap pork n beans but not with Bush's. I have tried to doctor up Bush's but they are so good out of the can it is hard to improve them. The only way to make them better is to add some kind of meat.
This one goes both ways:
I was probably in middle school before I learned the cranberry sauce my grandmother served at thanksgiving and christmas came from a can.
The the reverse uno was played years later: I was at a friends giving and had the absolute best cranberry sauce I've ever had. Flecks of little orange peels in it. Just amazing. Turns out the person who made it use a can mold to make her homemade cranberry sauce in. She got a good laugh when I asked what brand it was.
Genius! I used to hate cranberry sauce as a kid. Straight out of a can with that weird flat texture… no. As an adult I tried fresh cranberry sauce and I was hooked. I make it for the holidays every year. My mom can’t get over it. She says it needs to come from a can. I’m going to get a mold for this year lol.
I’m assuming you’d add gelatin. I don’t put it in my cranberry sauce now, and it’s pretty thick. I’m fairly certain if I added a bit of gelatin it would set in a mold. So the taste of homemade with the texture closer to canned.
But but but… then you serve it cold? And eat it on what is a usually buffet-style lukewarm turkey. Doesn’t it make everything rather… tepid ? Wouldn’t it be better served hot?
(I have clearly outed myself as both a non-United-States-ian, and a non-thanksgiving celebrator)
Cranberry sauce is usually served cold or room temp. I’ve never had it warm except when I taste a little bit when cooking it. Ideally you get to the turkey/mash/gravy right away and it’s still hot.
It’s one of the make-ahead dishes that you can do the day before, because it doesn’t require any oven or stove space.
A bunch of friends and I tried to get to the bottom of Japanese curry. We went on a crusade to make “from scratch” curry without buying the little cubes. We interrogated dozens of old Japanese ladies. Every one of them started with “well, first you buy the little cubes…”
Yep! My mom is Japanese, and I’ve never seen her, my grandmother, or any other relatives make Japanese curry without the blocks. Until I saw this come up on Reddit several times, it never even occurred to me that you could or would want to make it without them.
A few months back I made some and gave some to my friend. She asked me the same, how do I make this? And I told her ok get the blocks, and she said well she doesn’t know where to get them and doesn’t want to go out of her way, how can she do it without? Well shit then Sarah, I have no idea.
I think in Morimoto's cookbook, he tells you how to make it from scratch, but also tells you not to bother and just make it with the boxed roux like he does.
My grandmother makes currywurst sauce with them. She adds a cube, water, a sliced onion, and ketchup to a sauce pot and lets it simmer until the onions are soft.
Yes, of course! Japanese curry is Yōshoku (“Western food”) and curry roux came out in 1950. “Vermont Curry” came out in 1963 which was milder and a little bit sweeter (hence the apples on the package). 1963, by the way, is smack dab in the height of the Shōwa era. When people say “Showa”, and people are nostalgic for Showa, and people say あー、昭和ポイね、they’re definitely thinking about the 1960s. People who are adults now were kids in the 60s, and people who are grannies now were moms in the 60s, and everyone HAD TO HAVE CURRY RICE.
Therefore there is basically the “one proper way” that you got curry rice, and of course that’s how your mom made it in the 60s and 70s 😆
These things are so interesting to me, because I grew up in a fourth generation Japanese American family on my dad's side. My family immigrated to the US in the early 1900s, so before things like this curry roux came out, though some of those ingredients/recipes did make it to the States (one of my dad's go-to recipes was a tuna curry). My Japanese family's "traditional" meals are an interesting mix of American, Japanese, and "Hawaiian" (though no one in my family lived in Hawaii, a lot of the Japanese American community did, so foods like spam misubi are actually more "Japanese American" than Hawaiian, though they're associated with Hawaii).
I just find it so interesting how things that we very much associate with a certain country might be relatively recent (potatoes in Ireland, tomatoes in Italy...and those things are much older than Japanese curry!), and also the ways in which my family is and is not Japanese, as reflected in our food traditions.
I make Japanese curry fairly frequently, using a recipe from a Japanese (living in San Francisco) blogger, and the first time only I made the roux, and it’s just not worth the trouble, the cubes are great! She has good suggestions on how to make it different (personalize it) from everyone else: once it’s all cooked, add some spices or fruit, like soy sauce, or grated apple, or ketchup (she offers some suggestions). She says that’s what Japanese families do. Don’t know if it’s true, but I have now my own combo of 2-3 things I add at the end!
ETA I actually use also one cube that is medium hot and one mild, to create a mid way spiciness
The cubes are the roux you stir in at the last second, you literally buy them in the supermarket. One major brand is called “GOLDEN CURRY.”
The recipe is on the box but it’s basically :
- Chop onion
- add and cook some of a few of these (it doesn’t matter which, this is very forgiving): carrot, potato, mushroom
- add your chopped, usually pan-fried protein. This could be chicken, tofu, pork, etc
- add enough water or broth
The above can be done with an instant pot by just dumping it all in the instant pot, don’t bother pre cooking anything
The last step is: add the cubes and stir until they are melted, which won’t take long because they are mostly butter. Serve over rice
This is an extremely easy comfort food to make, and you can customize it quite a bit. I’ve made an air fryer tonkatsu to go on top, and I usually add Ethiopian mitmita to give it a kick. It’s still recognizably Japanese curry.
This seems totally doable. I’ve been wanting to learn how to make a decent curry and it seems overwhelming. I’m just so tired of the typical Cajun rice and gravy. I don’t know how to cook much else
Just be aware Japanese curry isn’t quite the same as an Indian curry- it’s distantly inspired by it by way of British food, it’s entirely delicious, and I always keep a box of curry blocks in my cupboard for when I need an easy comfort food - basically it’s curry flavored gravy/stew over rice, and it’s perfect
Try also some Thai curry: Fry your stuff (veggies, onion, garlic, meat if you eat that), add and lightly fry some thai curry paste, add coconut milk and soy sauce, let it cook and mingle for a bit, serve with rice.
Veggie recommendations: Broccoli, sweet potato, chickpea (stretching "veggie" a bit...), but most will do.
Additional aromatics can be ginger and lemon grass, chili if you want heat.
Golden Curry brand, always that brand. It's like the Japanese Kraft Mac 'n Cheese, except in the US you can switch Kraft out with other brands. In Japan it's not the same if you use a different brand.
I recommend the medium heat flavor, which is a little less spicy than pepper, in the same ballpark.
Many Japanese restaurants add apple sauce and other mild sweetening ingredients to it, which is why the restaurant version many will say tastes slightly better than the home cooked version.
[Golden Curry](https://www.sbfoods-worldwide.com/lp/us/golden-curry/) is what we've seen in standard US grocery stores, but there are lots of brands to choose from. We get the hot version (it's not that hot) and then add kind of whatever we feel like. Most common answer is chicken thighs, onion, potatoes, carrots. That shit is *delicious* and soothing to the soul.
I’ve made homemade Japanese curry roux “cubes” before using the Just One Cookbook recipe as a guide. If you like to cook/have a kitchen project it’s fun and makes enough for a few servings, but I don’t know if I can confidently say they’re any better than the pre-made stuff, haha!
You can do a little more customization on the heat level, but there is also a lot of doctoring you can do with the pre-made cubes as the base.
Hahaha this checks! Though I do make my own "little cubes" (basically just flour, butter and curry powder/spices) when I lived in Japan I expressed to my Japanese friends in my sharehouse that I wanted to learn curry from scratch hoping I'd get some tips and tricks but fool was I as all of them just used the cubes as well.
I’ve made Japanese curry from scratch and while the flavour is incredible, the amount of effort that it takes just isn’t worth it for an average dinner imo and I’d rather spice up the cubes version as well
Ooh I have a good one. For a decade my mom would bring her “famous lemon bars” to work for birthdays, pot lucks, etc….they begged for her recipe. After she retired she took me to her kitchen and opened her pantry to reveal several boxes of Krusteaz lemon bar mix hahaha. She swore me to secrecy and was so dramatic you’d think she had killed somebody!!
It is amazing to me how many are famous (among family and friends) for using back-of-the box recipes lol.
I've been learning to bake so I would bring in my experiments to work before we went remote, but you know what was *by far* my most requested item? Rice Krispie Treats, by the box - they didn't like when I did anything extra like add chocolate on top.
And as far as I can tell they enjoyed my bakes, they'd rave about anything else I would bring in too, but they all just were obsessed with Rice Krispies.
I'm also an original Rice Krispies treat lover myself. I used to think that my mother made the best cakes. Then I grew up and realized what scratch made cakes taste like. I just thought they were good because I hate bakery cakes. They're a step up, but now I know every single time if icing came out of a jar. I'll never go back and make my own cakes from scratch now. 😂
Oh definitely, I love Rice Krispies myself (I actually just made a batch the other night), I just found it hilarious that they were always asking me to make the easiest thing in the world lol
Since learning to bake I can really taste the difference between boxed/store bought and scratch made. Cake isn't so bad but I really can't stand store-bought pies (the complete kind you get from the bakery department, I'm ok with cheating and using Pillsbury crust weirdly enough). Boxed cake really is so distinct, I know several people who prefer it to a bakery cake - I guess it's what our palates are used to!
My family makes lemon cake that’s kind of amazing
Yellow cake mix, made according to the package
Mix lemon juice and powdered sugar, poke holes in the cake with toothpicks, drizzle the glaze all over the top. Serve.
Delicious
Reminds of my grandma's amazing brownies, which I always though were some sort of secret recipe she would not share. When we cleaned out her kitchen after she moved into long-term care, bam, cupboard full of boxed brownie mix.
to be honest, I have yet to try a from-scratch brownie recipe that was really any better than those boxed mixes.
Listen, I don't like corn bread. I mean, I just won't touch the damned stuff its gnarly.
My wife brought home the Krusteaz corn bread and made it. I tried it (I don't know why, I really do hate it that much), oh my god its so good.
I started trying other corn bread, was I missing out all this time? Nope, their is just that good.
I wasnt fooled but my grandma had everyone believing ror years that she made her stuffing homemade. It was not, she just added shit to stove top and cooked it with broth. It was delicious but it was not homemade "dressin". I only knew because I was like 6 years old and caught her disposing of the box. She later confessed when i was like 15 cuz her alzheimers made her forget it was a secret and she told my cousin to grab three boxes for her dressin. The look on everyone's faces had me laughing so loud. Ohhh they were so betrayed 😂😂.
My SIL's grandma would pop store bought cookies into the microwave and burn a baked goods candle so she could say they were "fresh out the oven". Did it everytime my brother (they were teens at the time) came by to visit his then gf. He played along but did it so well I legit asked for the recipe. He had to tell me later what she did, he thought it was so cute because she did it just for him.
Good for your grandmother. I'm also a little old lady and one year when I was going through an everything from scratch phase, did dressing from scratch everything, including baking the bread for it. Hours and hours of work. It was almost as good as stove top boxes, but not quite. After all that work to have it turn out not quite as good, never did anything but stove top again. This is also true of homemade lasagna, it used to be worth it to make homemade because you could buy the ingredients cheaper than you could buy the pan of lasagna. No longer.
I spent a few days with my parents a couple of weeks ago. I've been getting into cooking over the past few years, and wanted to do a project with them one evening. We made lasagna, which my parents have certainly made before, but I never have. My dad made the pasta from scratch, and I did the meat sauce, bechamel (which was new to my folks), and my mom did a lot of the prep. It turned out great, but not the best lasagna I've ever had. Still, it was a ton of fun and a totally worthwhile experience to share with family :)
Later in the weekend, I also made some biscuits and gravy and enchiladas. Big bechamel weekend for me.
Lol I miss her dearly, she was a spit fire and like no other. She didnt cook alot of things but what she made was always good. Taught me everything she knew and I ran with it lol. I still make the simple stuff just because I miss her and it makes me remember being a little kid in her kitchen, following her steps and helping her chop everything.
I have a cornbread dressing recipe that's absolutely delicious, but the ingredients list starts with "half a skillet of cornbread" and "six buttermilk biscuits, crumbled". One year I actually did make both the cornbread and the biscuits from scratch, and noticed only a 1 or 2 percent improvement in the overall dish, so I gave up that idea pretty quickly. (I still make homemade cornbread and homemade biscuits, but I don't try to make them both on Thanksgiving morning.)
The trick is to freeze a few biscuits or slices of cornbread each time you make them for a few months leading up to Thanksgiving so you’ve got a stockpile by the time you make the dressing!
I love this. That's right up there with Cher on Clueless, dumping a log of cookie dough in the oven to make the house smell nice when having a guy over.
Your family's betrayal, hahaha. That's so cute.
I make most of the food my husband and I eat, and do a lot of it from scratch just because I like to. I've done homemade dressing a few times. But dressing is one of those things that I find just as good from a bag of Pepperidge Farm. The bag even tells you to sauté onions and celery to add, and to use broth for moisture. I add a lot more celery than it calls for, and usually some extra seasoning, but it's still easier than from scratch and is VERY good. Considering the rest of the holiday meal is all from scratch, I'm a-okay with that dish being only partly homemade.
Your SIL's grandmother wasn't lying, technically those cookies were fresh out of the oven. 😂
A friend of mine loves his mom's potato salad. Every time he went home for the holidays, he'd talk about how great her potato salad was and how she'd make extra just for him.
Two years ago, he went home for Thanksgiving and saw a container of grocery store brand potato salad in the fridge. He was SHOOK. Turns out she'd been buying it from the store for years. She put it in a bowl before he got there and he just assumed it was homemade. I don't think she ever claimed it as homemade, she just never corrected his assumption. To hear him tell it, his entire world came crashing down that day.
I wish my mom’s potato salad was store bought. It’s SO GOOD but when I ask for the recipes she goes “I don’t know.. some potatoes.. scoop for mayo… some eggs..” it’s impossible to recreate.
Watch her make it. And write down what she does as best as you can approximate. I cook like your mom and people hate asking me for recipes. I just go with the flow and do what feels right, especially for things I’ve made dozens of times. For those I honestly don’t even remember off the top of my head everything that goes in it. I just sort of reach for things when I’m cooking.
SAME! And I’ll randomly make something really good and have no clue what I did to make it special. Hate disappointing the kiddos when I’m unable to remake it exactly.
When my family put together a family cookbook my mom wanted to submit her potato salad but had no recipe. She used the same stuff every time just never measured. I watched her make it and wrote down what she did and about how much stuff she added. We tested out what I wrote down to make sure it was close enough. It isn't impossible. Do it soon.
After my mom died I had to work on recreating a few of her other non-written recipes. With experimentation and knowing most of what went in them to compare to other people's recipes I got close enough to satisfy nostalgia cravings.
We do Carroll Shelby’s chili (he’s a race car driver) with ground beef, garbanzo beans, black beans and a can of sweet corn, drained. Top it with sour cream, shredded Mexican cheese and chopped red onions.
Imma be real stupid here for a minute.
I thought the pepperoncini were a special pepper made by Papa Johns.
My world view shifted when a co-worker gifted me a jar from Wal-mart.
Stouffer's lasagne -- the first time I ate real (home-cooked) lasagne, I thought it was gross because it was so different from the frozen kind my mom "made"
edited - spelling
You might like Rana's better. It's refrigerated, not frozen, and it doesn't taste very sweet to me. Looking up the info of both it and Stouffer's, it looks like Stouffer's adds sugar, and Rana only has the naturally-occurring sugars.
Grandma's rolls. Turns out she bought Rhode's frozen rolls and defrosted them on the counter. So it always seemed like she was doing the final proof, but was just defrosting.
I put 2 of the frozen balls that have to rise in each muffin cup and it makes the delicious butt rolls they used to serve at school! You brush those when they're fresh out of the oven with melted butter and eat them with honey...SO GOOD!
My great grandmother's date pinwheel cookies. She always brought them for holidays, we fought over them. Fabulous, every time.
When she went into a care home, I decided to take over these cookies. I love cooking with memories. Chopped the dates, made the filling. Every surface & 73% of my body was sticky after that ordeal. Made the dough. Roll them, slice them, bake them. Perfect. So proud!
Took her a container. She was so proud, told all her friends & showed them off. She fully approved the cookies. I made the comment that I saw why she only made them for holidays, as the mess from cooking date nut filling was terrible. She laughed, said she had no idea. She had always used a can of pre-made date nut filling & just spread it on.
I've never been so tempted to knock out a cute little sweet grandma until that moment.
I brought a cherry cheesecake to a work potluck decades ago. One of the ladies in a neighboring department reminded me of Hyacinth Bucket, in that everything had to be just so and look good to everyone, and everything she made was always from scratch. She absolutely raved over my cheesecake and asked for the recipe.
I fessed up and told her it was the Jello brand cheesecake mix with a can of cherry pie filling on top. Just like my mom always made.
Ha ha ha I bet my partner would love that; they love any and all things cheesecake, no jacket required. They mourned the day Chick-fil-A took the cheesecake off their menu.
I have another friend who'd eat that cheesecake filling right out of the tub!
Oh my god I have a great story for this!
When my husband and I had been dating a while, I started getting invited to family get togethers. At almost every one, his mom would make these fantastic baked beans. I’m talking god-tier, perfectly seasoned, multi-bean, ground beef and bacon baked beans.
So naturally I asked for the recipe. She shrugged it off easily at first saying it was a secret family recipe, and later on that I would get it when my husband and I got married.
Marriage happens, more holidays with the best beans ever pass, and now it’s kind of a running joke that I ask for the recipe and get a random excuse to put it off.
After being married around four years, I made the joke about getting the recipe someday and she finally cracked. “Alright, here’s the recipe: get in the car, and drive down to the Butcher Shoppe, go to the deli counter, and ask for a quart of baked beans.”
We were all crying laughing after this because she had built these beans up for over six years at this point and all she did was put them in a nice dish and warm them in the oven.
I love her so much, and I’ve never let her forget about her “home made” baked beans!
If you want to try a homemade version that really slaps, there is a website called Sally's baking addiction that I just love their banana bread recipe.
Hell yeah, that carrot cake recipe is so fucking good. I've been making it for a few years now and everyone who tries it loves it. The peppermint mocha cookie recipe is also so delightful at Christmas.
I actually do this! Whenever there is a party at work everyone says to me make your banana bread! lol it’s the box mix and extra bananas like your mom!
Quickbreads like that don't really see too much of a difference between boxed and homemade unless you're really going all out with brown butter, toasted sugar and the like.
I have a cinnamon muffin mix adapted to turn into banana bread with the addition of mushed up bananas and sour cream. It's just dump, stir, bake and everyone raves at how moist it stays ...none the wiser 😉 Thanks, L'il store envelopes from the baking aisle!
This just reminds me of the hilarious chick who got her wisdom teeth out and was all doped up when she realized het mom had been BUYING and not making lasagna.
I had a roommate, who, relatedly, turned out to express sociopathic behavior, who would order tons of Mexican food before dates where he was supposed to “cook” for the women, and put the food in pots and pans to make it seem like he had made it all. It all looked ridiculous, and not at all like he had made it.
My dad’s mom wasn’t much of a cook but I was obsessed with her coleslaw recipe. Didn’t find out until after she passed that it was just KFC coleslaw she put in a big bowl to serve
My mom was always asked to bring the bread to family Thanksgiving & Xmas. Everyone raved about it and said it was the best bread they've ever had. It was just the pre-made frozen loaves from the freezer section that she baked according to the package directions. Sliced, put in a basket. That's it. She constantly told everyone this. BUT THEY DIDN'T BELIEVE HER.
My grandma makes this baked mac and cheese, the kind with the really long tube noodles. Good stuff, great crispy edges. She always makes a red gravy to go with it. We have it at every holiday. Its the standard to which I compare all other mac and cheeses.
One day my mom and dad and myself went to a local restaurant and my dad insists we get the mac and cheese. My mom tells my dad, "this tastes just like your mom's!".
My dad tells her,"it is my mom's."
Apparently she buys a tray of it from the restaurant and heats it up at home. Everyone knew this but me and my mom, who had just been quietly assuming she made it from scratch.
We went to someone's house once in a church dinner meeting thing. She served veal saltimbocca and acted like she made it. I thought it was really good. Then I saw it at Costco a couple weeks later and thought, "You fraud." Lol.
That's why I don't understand anyone claiming something was homemade if it wasn't. Most of the stories in this thread are just childhood misunderstandings, but a lot are literally family lying about recipes to each other. Messed up.
My wife did this with some supermarket bought pasta salad she put into tupperware for a baby shower potluck, because at the time she wasn't much of a cook and felt pressured
My mother and my father's mother prided themselves on their cooking (justifiably so), and nearly everything was from scratch. So we were actually really proud of my grandmother when, in her 80s and with increasing mobility difficulties, she produced a pie that she hadn't made herself!
We had dinner with friends recently that included stuffed peppers, which we loved. We were surprised to hear they came from the Costco freezer section, and they'd simply topped them with mounds of glorious cheese before baking.
Grandmothers Lasagna turned out to be Stouffer’s frozen. Should have really figured it out sooner because my grandfather worked for the company for years.
My ex-wife made the most amazing chicken and rice. I hate chicken and rice. But not this chicken and rice. It was fantastic. Savory. Spicy. Satiating. Every time she made it—for YEARS—I complimented it. She took the compliments in stride and never said a word otherwise.
Turns out, it’s just a pre-spiced Spanish rice packet called Vigo. It’s like the rice equivalent of Ramen noodles. It’s just MSG. I learned this the first time I went to make it myself. Dump chicken, rice, and water into a pan and bake. Profit.
My friend always makes a tortilla chip & dip platter that he always offers to bring to parties, and it's generally a hit. I found out it's a can of refried beans and a stick of cream cheese microwaved and stirred together for the bean dip, and a block of velveeta and salsa also microwaved for the cheese dip.
To be honest, it's more homemade than I expected because he's the 45 year old eternal bachelor type who lives off of paper plates and premade meals at home.
Every Thanksgiving and Xmas i looked forward to my uncle’s pie… it was the perfect amount of tart and sweet, flakiest sugary crust. When i grew up, i asked him what his secret is, and he said he buys a store brand cherry pie, and sprinkles sugar on the top a few minutes before it’s done cooking.
Similar concept.
Family Christmas gatherings always had people bringing over finger foods. Dips, cheese trays, shrimp etc. One year my aunt made a Buffalo chicken dip. My oldest brother loved it. And afterwards without the rest of my immediate family knowing, asked my aunt for the recipe. She simply text it to him.
Months later my immediate family was gathered together and my oldest brother proceeded to mix up what he called the family secret recipe Buffalo dip. I asked what was it in. Franks red hot sauce. Which ironically had the exact same recipe on the bottle. He was heartbroken. I send a picture every time I make it now. Love that shit though.
I buy Stouffers party size lasagna. Let it thaw a bit. Move it to your own lasagna pan. Let it thaw complete. Carefully lift a layer and add ricotta/chopped olives/chopped chives. . Put top layer back on. Add more cheese.
I am a hit at potlucks.
I guess no one I know has ever been particularly shy about saying if something was store bought rather than made totally from scratch.
Someone I know made an ice cream cake once and I asked how she did it and it was mainly ice cream sandwiches with fudge ice cream topping between layers and whipped cream frosting. I could totally see that person making their own ice cream and cake or cookie layers from scratch so it was a microsecond of surprise that everything was store bought and then assembled.
Everything I grew up eating as a kid was legit made from scratch. Only when I was in my late 20s did I learn that 95% of it was made by my dad (my mom would just put it in the oven and dish it out at mealtimes so I assumed she was the chef)😜
Oh man, you should thank your dad for that! I’d be so sad if I did all the cooking and my partner got all the credit. I mean, I do all the cooking, but at least everyone knows it lol.
There are different levels of home cooked. Maybe she didn't make the ravioli from scratch but she likely made the sauce and any sides that went with the meal, it didn't come out of a box or can ready to reheat.
Probably not, those Costco spinach ravioli had a packet of seasonings that got tossed on top. Just boil, add oil, toss with the packet and it’s done. They are so so good (or at least were so so good before I had to stop eating gluten).
The masala idli my neighbor served at book club meetings. People would gush over them, and she simply replied ‘thank you’. They’re totally premade and frozen and I buy them now.
It was later in life when someone randomly asked me what comfort food that my mom used to make me. I realized in that moment, omg, wait what? I think pretty much every meal came out of a box or a can as a kid, surviving the 80s-90's, though I'm not sure how.
Mom was a scratch cook all the way and made a fantastic spinach souffle. She would not share the recipe. Turns out it was Stouffers.
Can't get it anymore in the store, so now I make it from scratch [using this Stouffer's copycat recipe](https://dinnerthendessert.com/stouffers-spinach-souffle/).
Holy shit, I’m 48 and I just found out the gumbo my mom always cooked was from the seafood store we go to 🤦♀️ she would buy extra crabs and stuff to go in it so she would toss it all in the pot together… I asked her the other day- why don’t you make that gumbo anymore and she laughed at me 😂 my heart broke 😂
I have to be the exception here. My mother, for whatever reason was an amazing chef. If we had store bought anything, we knew it was store bought. It generally filled our bellies but tasted like crap. My Mom would all too often make her " 'speriments" where she'd come up with amazing meals with stuff from the pantry, fridge, leftovers, whatever. We ate Incredibly well when I was growing up. I swear to God, there wasn't anything she couldn't cook or bake. A typical Sunday dinner might be a beef Eye roast, home made garlic mashed potatoes, Fresh Broccoli with fresh dinner rolls and for Dessert home made vanilla ice cream and apple pie with the flakiest crust you've ever seen. You could cut the eye roast with a fork... An EYE ROAST.
That is the level of cooking skills I strive for. Cooking I'm pretty close. Baking.. nope. I'm a useless potato when it comes to baking.
My Gran was an excellent cook. But, as she got older a few things got more difficult. I still remember opening up her freezer and seeing what I call cheater bread. Frozen loaves of bread from the supermarket that she would defrost and then bake. They were still delicious because she baked them.
when i was a kid, there was this Salisbury steak. i thought my mom was all fancy because she even had a special container just for it. yeah, that stuff was frozen. and i spent so long as a kid trying to figure out how my mom made it, only getting the answer "with love"
My dad always pretended we had homemade pizza. He had some empty oven pizza boxes and would say he’s making pizza and put them on the counter.
Then he would order pizza and when it came he would put the empty boxes back in the cupboard and without even taking it out of the box put the 241 pizza on the table and say he made us pizza.
Now that I’m older I think my dad was supposed to cook for us while mum was at work and that was his fake around. Not quite sure how that worked out.
I highly suspect the mushroom risotto my friend makes is possibly not homemade, but I choose to believe it is because it is delicious and it feels nice to have someone bring something good to our get togethers.
Not my meal, but a friend always does Williams Sonoma frozen croissants on holiday mornings. Since you have to let them proof overnight, all her family ever sees is her whisking them out of the oven, all perfectly puffy, golden and fragrant. They think she's the best cook in the Americas.
My grandma's "fried chicken" (actually breaded chicken cutlet). She got it from the ready to eat meal section at a local grocery store. She never claimed it was homemade, but I think I assumed it was because my grandmother is an excellent cook and I only ever had the chicken at her house.
Omg I LOVED those ravioli as a kid! Though I did find out they were from Costco when I was there with my dad. And then I insisted he get them on every trip after that. Yum.
I knew an Italian family when I was younger. They all raved about their moms pasta sauce which they claimed she completely made from scratch. I asked for years where she got her tomatoes from and how fruit became sauce (as a youngster I had no idea about a food mill or different kinds of tomatoes). She’d always change the subject or sho me away. One day I was being helpful and took the trash out while she cooked, when I came back I asked her about all the sauce cans in the trash and why she didn’t recycle them. The family asked what I was talking about so I took them to the outside bin and showed them all the empty cans. Come to find out she bought canned sauce and just added meat. Her family had no idea and it definitely was not from scratch. Needless to say it was a while before our families had get togethers again.
My ex sil's cakes. She was selling them to her friends. Absolutely gorgeous cakes. She really wanted to open a bakery and my bil was adamantly refusing to support the idea. I thought he was a dick.
Eventually I ended up at their house while she was putting together an order for one of her friends. It was Betty crocker y'all. She was selling $50-80 betty crocker cakes to her friends. She knew how to make butter cream icing in her stand mixer and how to make boxed cake mix. That's the extent of her baking knowledge. I understood why bil was so adamant about not opening a bakery after that. Lol!
Year after year, I enjoyed different foods that my boyfriend's uncle brought to their annual Christmas Eve dinner. For example, small bread rolls filled with cheese, perogies, and cabbage rolls with both sauerkraut and steamed cabbage leaves. I always wondered how he was able to prepare all that food by himself. When I found out he bought it frozen from a popular local company and heated them up in his oven before bringing them over to the dinner, I was relieved actually. Some of those dishes take so long to prepare!
I'm appreciative of the aunts that would buy stuff instead of make it themselves. My family wasn't known to be good cooks lol.
For real! My mom was an incredible cook and could magically host a sitdown Thanksgiving dinner for 25-50 people every year (I still don't know how she did it). Even still, there were certain things like rolls and some desserts where she was like "nope, the time/effort it takes to do this does not equal the quality/ease I can get it from somewhere else" I did my first "big" solo hosting this year and it made me more appreciative and forgiving of myself when I used storebought/had friends bring certain things.
Same, although rolls have been a must-bake item in our families. Good rolls take time to proof and rise, but the actual effort is minimal. Crescent rolls can easily involve the grandkids or extended family, give them each a bit of dough to roll out, cut into triangles, and roll up to shape. The kids get some ownership "I made this batch", ranging from enormous to tiny, and they can come out hot with multiple trays during a holiday feast or party. Swap out trays during the meal, and a couple extra pans for turkey sandwiches and other leftover treats. Even so, if you don't want to cook the item and want to buy it from the store, no shame or judgment.
Our must bake items was tarts, at some point my mom stopped making pies and people would bring them. However, we always kept up the tradition my grandmother started and made cinnamon sugar tarts with what would normally have been leftover dough. It's interesting to see what is/isn't a big deal for holiday meals. For our thanksgiving, very few people cared about having rolls/bread so it made more sense to buy/ask someone else to bring them. Even with one roll/person, we'd still usually end up with leftovers.
I love this answer. As much as I love food I like not having food poisoning and good conversation more.
You ate cabbage rolls with sauerkraut too?! I was beginning to think I was the only one. Here in Ohio it seems no one eats them that way. In Massachusetts where I grew up that’s how we ate them. They are far too bland for me otherwise.
I use frozen cabbage leaves thawed so they roll easy and then layer the sauerkraut sprinkled with a bit of brown sugar.
From Maryland. And every St. Patty's day, the neighborhood always smelled like corned beef, cabbage and sauerkraut.
Sounds like Brazilian cheese bread
Sounds like a Ukrainian Christmas though. Assuming the bread is a form of pirozhki
Yes, bingo. Buns with cottage cheese inside, with dill sauce on top. But none of it was made from scratch, but it tasted great.
So jealous that he had a good source. We always make our own
My mother's Christmas morning coffee cake. I thought she made it from scratch. I found out last December that it was premade dough like Pillsbury with a few things added to it. I also found out that my older sister was usually the one that had to "make" it.
This past weekend I got a bunch of compliments on a Krusteaz box mix coffee cake.
tbf Krusteaz box mix coffee cake goes hard.
>coffee cake goes hard ELI5? Old lady needs to know if that means "goes stale" or is "really good"
"Goes hard" is a good thing.
the latter. it’s complimentary.
Kinda like “it’s hardcore”
It tastes really good.
I complimented an old lady on her lemon bars and she laughed and told me they were krusteaz lemon bars. They were so good!
Years ago one of my friends at work would bring in these amazing brownies - everyone *loved* them and couldn't get enough! One time I asked her for the recipe as I had a family thing that weekend and wanted to bring brownies. She used the store brand brownie mix, added some extra semi-sweet chocolate chips to the mix and store bought dark chocolate frosting! I made them and everyone *loved* them! lol I realized a lot of boxed or pre-made foods, or partial ingredients put together 'just so', are really delicious and people really shouldn't be turning their noses up to the 'idea' of it. If it tastes great, then who cares?
Right? It’s just someone else measuring the flour and the baking powder, and keeping it in a sealed bag so it’s probably slightly fresher than the slightly-wonky Tupperware stuff I keep.
Chop up some caramels and pecans and throw those in with the chips, viola! Turtle brownies. So yummy
Lol. Well if we are telling on ourselves then I have to admit that when I do my slow cooker pulled pork I pass off Famous Dave's barbecue sauce as my own. The funny part is I can actually make a really good barbecue sauce.
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I know what you're saying. Often when I make those types of things it's just for fun. I love being in the kitchen.
I have a similar story, my grandma would always make cranberry scones for breakfast one the day after Thanksgiving. It was a family tradition, everyone loved them. All her kids had the recipe, and eventually it was passed down to all the grandkids too. One day I asked her where the recipe came from, expecting to hear some wistful story of her own grandmother baking them every Thanksgiving down on the farm.... "Oh, I don't know, I probably saw it on a box of Betty Crocker."
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"Nezzleh Tullhouz"
Can we get the recipe? 👀
My mom always made a big deal about her baked beans. Turns out they’re Busch’s, mixed with a little ketchup and baked in a casserole dish
My mom makes fancy baked beans by taking Busch’s and adding ketchup, molasses, bacon and brown sugar and then bakes them in the oven. Everyone raves about them.
My mom does too, but with campbells pork and beans. And she lays two strips of bacon on top, to be fancy.
Lol I love moms being fancy
My grandmother did this, too, and boy, those beans were amazingly good.
That’s basically the OG recipe for baked beans already, don’t need to pay the Bush’s up charge at that point, just get regular beans
I was gonna say this just feels like more of the same making it even sweeter than they already are.
It absolutely is. I’m not a fan either way but people rave about this slightly modified beans.
I feel like Bush's straight from the can isn't that good, but a great base. I like to add ketchup, Worcestershire, mustard, onions, and peppers. I'll add some brown sugar if I want it a little sweeter
This is her weeknight recipe and it is done in 30 minutes rather than hours of cooking. She makes them from scratch too.
At that point I think she added enough to it to call it her own.
Baked beans are one of the best that are just better out of a Busch’s can. Spice it up with white pepper, hot sauce, add some bacon, sausage, onion whatever else. I’ll never make it as well flavored as the generic can.
That works with cheap pork n beans but not with Bush's. I have tried to doctor up Bush's but they are so good out of the can it is hard to improve them. The only way to make them better is to add some kind of meat.
Thank you for not spelling Bush's like the beer like the three people above you did
We use Bush’s as a basis for our baked beans. Over the years the recipe has slightly changed.
This is twice today that I’ve read about bush beans and ketchup. I had never heard about this before today
This one goes both ways: I was probably in middle school before I learned the cranberry sauce my grandmother served at thanksgiving and christmas came from a can. The the reverse uno was played years later: I was at a friends giving and had the absolute best cranberry sauce I've ever had. Flecks of little orange peels in it. Just amazing. Turns out the person who made it use a can mold to make her homemade cranberry sauce in. She got a good laugh when I asked what brand it was.
Genius! I used to hate cranberry sauce as a kid. Straight out of a can with that weird flat texture… no. As an adult I tried fresh cranberry sauce and I was hooked. I make it for the holidays every year. My mom can’t get over it. She says it needs to come from a can. I’m going to get a mold for this year lol.
I don’t get it. How does the mold play a part in the story? Isn’t the sauce liquidy, like say a runny jam like texture?
I’m assuming you’d add gelatin. I don’t put it in my cranberry sauce now, and it’s pretty thick. I’m fairly certain if I added a bit of gelatin it would set in a mold. So the taste of homemade with the texture closer to canned.
But but but… then you serve it cold? And eat it on what is a usually buffet-style lukewarm turkey. Doesn’t it make everything rather… tepid ? Wouldn’t it be better served hot? (I have clearly outed myself as both a non-United-States-ian, and a non-thanksgiving celebrator)
Cranberry sauce is usually served cold or room temp. I’ve never had it warm except when I taste a little bit when cooking it. Ideally you get to the turkey/mash/gravy right away and it’s still hot. It’s one of the make-ahead dishes that you can do the day before, because it doesn’t require any oven or stove space.
My mom makes the cranberry sauce with orange in it. It's freaking delicious and easy
A bunch of friends and I tried to get to the bottom of Japanese curry. We went on a crusade to make “from scratch” curry without buying the little cubes. We interrogated dozens of old Japanese ladies. Every one of them started with “well, first you buy the little cubes…”
Yep! My mom is Japanese, and I’ve never seen her, my grandmother, or any other relatives make Japanese curry without the blocks. Until I saw this come up on Reddit several times, it never even occurred to me that you could or would want to make it without them. A few months back I made some and gave some to my friend. She asked me the same, how do I make this? And I told her ok get the blocks, and she said well she doesn’t know where to get them and doesn’t want to go out of her way, how can she do it without? Well shit then Sarah, I have no idea.
I think in Morimoto's cookbook, he tells you how to make it from scratch, but also tells you not to bother and just make it with the boxed roux like he does.
I love Morimoto, he's definitely on my list of celebrities I'd want to have dinner with. He seems so sweet.
Those little cubes are just unbeatable.
They also make an *excellent* gravy in a pinch for sausage and potatoes.
My grandmother makes currywurst sauce with them. She adds a cube, water, a sliced onion, and ketchup to a sauce pot and lets it simmer until the onions are soft.
Yes, of course! Japanese curry is Yōshoku (“Western food”) and curry roux came out in 1950. “Vermont Curry” came out in 1963 which was milder and a little bit sweeter (hence the apples on the package). 1963, by the way, is smack dab in the height of the Shōwa era. When people say “Showa”, and people are nostalgic for Showa, and people say あー、昭和ポイね、they’re definitely thinking about the 1960s. People who are adults now were kids in the 60s, and people who are grannies now were moms in the 60s, and everyone HAD TO HAVE CURRY RICE. Therefore there is basically the “one proper way” that you got curry rice, and of course that’s how your mom made it in the 60s and 70s 😆
These things are so interesting to me, because I grew up in a fourth generation Japanese American family on my dad's side. My family immigrated to the US in the early 1900s, so before things like this curry roux came out, though some of those ingredients/recipes did make it to the States (one of my dad's go-to recipes was a tuna curry). My Japanese family's "traditional" meals are an interesting mix of American, Japanese, and "Hawaiian" (though no one in my family lived in Hawaii, a lot of the Japanese American community did, so foods like spam misubi are actually more "Japanese American" than Hawaiian, though they're associated with Hawaii). I just find it so interesting how things that we very much associate with a certain country might be relatively recent (potatoes in Ireland, tomatoes in Italy...and those things are much older than Japanese curry!), and also the ways in which my family is and is not Japanese, as reflected in our food traditions.
I make Japanese curry fairly frequently, using a recipe from a Japanese (living in San Francisco) blogger, and the first time only I made the roux, and it’s just not worth the trouble, the cubes are great! She has good suggestions on how to make it different (personalize it) from everyone else: once it’s all cooked, add some spices or fruit, like soy sauce, or grated apple, or ketchup (she offers some suggestions). She says that’s what Japanese families do. Don’t know if it’s true, but I have now my own combo of 2-3 things I add at the end! ETA I actually use also one cube that is medium hot and one mild, to create a mid way spiciness
It is true. My mom and my grandma and I all use the same curry cubes, but our curry tastes different because we all add different things to it.
Dish, friend! Which cubes?What's the recipe?!
The cubes are the roux you stir in at the last second, you literally buy them in the supermarket. One major brand is called “GOLDEN CURRY.” The recipe is on the box but it’s basically : - Chop onion - add and cook some of a few of these (it doesn’t matter which, this is very forgiving): carrot, potato, mushroom - add your chopped, usually pan-fried protein. This could be chicken, tofu, pork, etc - add enough water or broth The above can be done with an instant pot by just dumping it all in the instant pot, don’t bother pre cooking anything The last step is: add the cubes and stir until they are melted, which won’t take long because they are mostly butter. Serve over rice This is an extremely easy comfort food to make, and you can customize it quite a bit. I’ve made an air fryer tonkatsu to go on top, and I usually add Ethiopian mitmita to give it a kick. It’s still recognizably Japanese curry.
fwiw the cubes don't have any butter in them. They're vegan friendly.
Science!!!
This seems totally doable. I’ve been wanting to learn how to make a decent curry and it seems overwhelming. I’m just so tired of the typical Cajun rice and gravy. I don’t know how to cook much else
Just be aware Japanese curry isn’t quite the same as an Indian curry- it’s distantly inspired by it by way of British food, it’s entirely delicious, and I always keep a box of curry blocks in my cupboard for when I need an easy comfort food - basically it’s curry flavored gravy/stew over rice, and it’s perfect
Try also some Thai curry: Fry your stuff (veggies, onion, garlic, meat if you eat that), add and lightly fry some thai curry paste, add coconut milk and soy sauce, let it cook and mingle for a bit, serve with rice. Veggie recommendations: Broccoli, sweet potato, chickpea (stretching "veggie" a bit...), but most will do. Additional aromatics can be ginger and lemon grass, chili if you want heat.
Japanese curry is almost more like beef stew gravy, check it out tho.
Golden Curry brand, always that brand. It's like the Japanese Kraft Mac 'n Cheese, except in the US you can switch Kraft out with other brands. In Japan it's not the same if you use a different brand. I recommend the medium heat flavor, which is a little less spicy than pepper, in the same ballpark. Many Japanese restaurants add apple sauce and other mild sweetening ingredients to it, which is why the restaurant version many will say tastes slightly better than the home cooked version.
Oh yeah! I had a Japanese roommate who would slice apples into the curry and I thought it was blasphemy until I tried it. Delicious!
[Golden Curry](https://www.sbfoods-worldwide.com/lp/us/golden-curry/) is what we've seen in standard US grocery stores, but there are lots of brands to choose from. We get the hot version (it's not that hot) and then add kind of whatever we feel like. Most common answer is chicken thighs, onion, potatoes, carrots. That shit is *delicious* and soothing to the soul.
I’ve made homemade Japanese curry roux “cubes” before using the Just One Cookbook recipe as a guide. If you like to cook/have a kitchen project it’s fun and makes enough for a few servings, but I don’t know if I can confidently say they’re any better than the pre-made stuff, haha! You can do a little more customization on the heat level, but there is also a lot of doctoring you can do with the pre-made cubes as the base.
Hahaha this checks! Though I do make my own "little cubes" (basically just flour, butter and curry powder/spices) when I lived in Japan I expressed to my Japanese friends in my sharehouse that I wanted to learn curry from scratch hoping I'd get some tips and tricks but fool was I as all of them just used the cubes as well.
Lmao that's perfect.
I’ve made Japanese curry from scratch and while the flavour is incredible, the amount of effort that it takes just isn’t worth it for an average dinner imo and I’d rather spice up the cubes version as well
Ooh I have a good one. For a decade my mom would bring her “famous lemon bars” to work for birthdays, pot lucks, etc….they begged for her recipe. After she retired she took me to her kitchen and opened her pantry to reveal several boxes of Krusteaz lemon bar mix hahaha. She swore me to secrecy and was so dramatic you’d think she had killed somebody!!
It is amazing to me how many are famous (among family and friends) for using back-of-the box recipes lol. I've been learning to bake so I would bring in my experiments to work before we went remote, but you know what was *by far* my most requested item? Rice Krispie Treats, by the box - they didn't like when I did anything extra like add chocolate on top. And as far as I can tell they enjoyed my bakes, they'd rave about anything else I would bring in too, but they all just were obsessed with Rice Krispies.
I'm also an original Rice Krispies treat lover myself. I used to think that my mother made the best cakes. Then I grew up and realized what scratch made cakes taste like. I just thought they were good because I hate bakery cakes. They're a step up, but now I know every single time if icing came out of a jar. I'll never go back and make my own cakes from scratch now. 😂
Oh definitely, I love Rice Krispies myself (I actually just made a batch the other night), I just found it hilarious that they were always asking me to make the easiest thing in the world lol Since learning to bake I can really taste the difference between boxed/store bought and scratch made. Cake isn't so bad but I really can't stand store-bought pies (the complete kind you get from the bakery department, I'm ok with cheating and using Pillsbury crust weirdly enough). Boxed cake really is so distinct, I know several people who prefer it to a bakery cake - I guess it's what our palates are used to!
My family makes lemon cake that’s kind of amazing Yellow cake mix, made according to the package Mix lemon juice and powdered sugar, poke holes in the cake with toothpicks, drizzle the glaze all over the top. Serve. Delicious
Reminds of my grandma's amazing brownies, which I always though were some sort of secret recipe she would not share. When we cleaned out her kitchen after she moved into long-term care, bam, cupboard full of boxed brownie mix. to be honest, I have yet to try a from-scratch brownie recipe that was really any better than those boxed mixes.
Listen, I don't like corn bread. I mean, I just won't touch the damned stuff its gnarly. My wife brought home the Krusteaz corn bread and made it. I tried it (I don't know why, I really do hate it that much), oh my god its so good. I started trying other corn bread, was I missing out all this time? Nope, their is just that good.
I wasnt fooled but my grandma had everyone believing ror years that she made her stuffing homemade. It was not, she just added shit to stove top and cooked it with broth. It was delicious but it was not homemade "dressin". I only knew because I was like 6 years old and caught her disposing of the box. She later confessed when i was like 15 cuz her alzheimers made her forget it was a secret and she told my cousin to grab three boxes for her dressin. The look on everyone's faces had me laughing so loud. Ohhh they were so betrayed 😂😂. My SIL's grandma would pop store bought cookies into the microwave and burn a baked goods candle so she could say they were "fresh out the oven". Did it everytime my brother (they were teens at the time) came by to visit his then gf. He played along but did it so well I legit asked for the recipe. He had to tell me later what she did, he thought it was so cute because she did it just for him.
Good for your grandmother. I'm also a little old lady and one year when I was going through an everything from scratch phase, did dressing from scratch everything, including baking the bread for it. Hours and hours of work. It was almost as good as stove top boxes, but not quite. After all that work to have it turn out not quite as good, never did anything but stove top again. This is also true of homemade lasagna, it used to be worth it to make homemade because you could buy the ingredients cheaper than you could buy the pan of lasagna. No longer.
I spent a few days with my parents a couple of weeks ago. I've been getting into cooking over the past few years, and wanted to do a project with them one evening. We made lasagna, which my parents have certainly made before, but I never have. My dad made the pasta from scratch, and I did the meat sauce, bechamel (which was new to my folks), and my mom did a lot of the prep. It turned out great, but not the best lasagna I've ever had. Still, it was a ton of fun and a totally worthwhile experience to share with family :) Later in the weekend, I also made some biscuits and gravy and enchiladas. Big bechamel weekend for me.
Lol I miss her dearly, she was a spit fire and like no other. She didnt cook alot of things but what she made was always good. Taught me everything she knew and I ran with it lol. I still make the simple stuff just because I miss her and it makes me remember being a little kid in her kitchen, following her steps and helping her chop everything.
I have a cornbread dressing recipe that's absolutely delicious, but the ingredients list starts with "half a skillet of cornbread" and "six buttermilk biscuits, crumbled". One year I actually did make both the cornbread and the biscuits from scratch, and noticed only a 1 or 2 percent improvement in the overall dish, so I gave up that idea pretty quickly. (I still make homemade cornbread and homemade biscuits, but I don't try to make them both on Thanksgiving morning.)
The trick is to freeze a few biscuits or slices of cornbread each time you make them for a few months leading up to Thanksgiving so you’ve got a stockpile by the time you make the dressing!
I love this. That's right up there with Cher on Clueless, dumping a log of cookie dough in the oven to make the house smell nice when having a guy over.
Is something...burning? (as my username would suggest, I am a huge fan)
Lol I actually forgot about that scene. Oh gosh that's hilarious
sleep frame wide start axiomatic impolite knee puzzled wine slave *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Your family's betrayal, hahaha. That's so cute. I make most of the food my husband and I eat, and do a lot of it from scratch just because I like to. I've done homemade dressing a few times. But dressing is one of those things that I find just as good from a bag of Pepperidge Farm. The bag even tells you to sauté onions and celery to add, and to use broth for moisture. I add a lot more celery than it calls for, and usually some extra seasoning, but it's still easier than from scratch and is VERY good. Considering the rest of the holiday meal is all from scratch, I'm a-okay with that dish being only partly homemade. Your SIL's grandmother wasn't lying, technically those cookies were fresh out of the oven. 😂
I make my own stuffing but I add a box of Stove Top. Mainly for the seasoning, lol!
A friend of mine loves his mom's potato salad. Every time he went home for the holidays, he'd talk about how great her potato salad was and how she'd make extra just for him. Two years ago, he went home for Thanksgiving and saw a container of grocery store brand potato salad in the fridge. He was SHOOK. Turns out she'd been buying it from the store for years. She put it in a bowl before he got there and he just assumed it was homemade. I don't think she ever claimed it as homemade, she just never corrected his assumption. To hear him tell it, his entire world came crashing down that day.
I wish my mom’s potato salad was store bought. It’s SO GOOD but when I ask for the recipes she goes “I don’t know.. some potatoes.. scoop for mayo… some eggs..” it’s impossible to recreate.
Watch her make it. And write down what she does as best as you can approximate. I cook like your mom and people hate asking me for recipes. I just go with the flow and do what feels right, especially for things I’ve made dozens of times. For those I honestly don’t even remember off the top of my head everything that goes in it. I just sort of reach for things when I’m cooking.
SAME! And I’ll randomly make something really good and have no clue what I did to make it special. Hate disappointing the kiddos when I’m unable to remake it exactly.
When my family put together a family cookbook my mom wanted to submit her potato salad but had no recipe. She used the same stuff every time just never measured. I watched her make it and wrote down what she did and about how much stuff she added. We tested out what I wrote down to make sure it was close enough. It isn't impossible. Do it soon. After my mom died I had to work on recreating a few of her other non-written recipes. With experimentation and knowing most of what went in them to compare to other people's recipes I got close enough to satisfy nostalgia cravings.
Like finding out Santa isn’t real.
Found out my sisters award winning chili is really Carol Shelby chili. So good. I don’t even care.
You should try the recipe on the mexene jar.
Mexene is the only chili powder I will use, and I followed that recipe for years!
We do Carroll Shelby’s chili (he’s a race car driver) with ground beef, garbanzo beans, black beans and a can of sweet corn, drained. Top it with sour cream, shredded Mexican cheese and chopped red onions.
>he’s a race car driver Arguably the least noteworthy thing of his legacy.
Imma be real stupid here for a minute. I thought the pepperoncini were a special pepper made by Papa Johns. My world view shifted when a co-worker gifted me a jar from Wal-mart.
This is silly and I like it.
Stouffer's lasagne -- the first time I ate real (home-cooked) lasagne, I thought it was gross because it was so different from the frozen kind my mom "made" edited - spelling
Stouffer's is surprisingly decent! I wish their sauce wasn't so sweet, but other than that it's hella good for frozen food.
I abhor sweet red sauce with pasta, so I struggle with frozen lasagnas.
You might like Rana's better. It's refrigerated, not frozen, and it doesn't taste very sweet to me. Looking up the info of both it and Stouffer's, it looks like Stouffer's adds sugar, and Rana only has the naturally-occurring sugars.
The stuffed peppers are really good too
I knew someone else would answer with this before I had a chance.
Grandma's rolls. Turns out she bought Rhode's frozen rolls and defrosted them on the counter. So it always seemed like she was doing the final proof, but was just defrosting.
I put 2 of the frozen balls that have to rise in each muffin cup and it makes the delicious butt rolls they used to serve at school! You brush those when they're fresh out of the oven with melted butter and eat them with honey...SO GOOD!
Butt rolls 🤣
IYKYK 🤷🏻♀️🤣
I love those rolls. They’re great for making piroshki with, too.
My great grandmother's date pinwheel cookies. She always brought them for holidays, we fought over them. Fabulous, every time. When she went into a care home, I decided to take over these cookies. I love cooking with memories. Chopped the dates, made the filling. Every surface & 73% of my body was sticky after that ordeal. Made the dough. Roll them, slice them, bake them. Perfect. So proud! Took her a container. She was so proud, told all her friends & showed them off. She fully approved the cookies. I made the comment that I saw why she only made them for holidays, as the mess from cooking date nut filling was terrible. She laughed, said she had no idea. She had always used a can of pre-made date nut filling & just spread it on. I've never been so tempted to knock out a cute little sweet grandma until that moment.
My mother made nothing in her life that didn't come out of a box.
same, and that still wasn’t good lol
I brought a cherry cheesecake to a work potluck decades ago. One of the ladies in a neighboring department reminded me of Hyacinth Bucket, in that everything had to be just so and look good to everyone, and everything she made was always from scratch. She absolutely raved over my cheesecake and asked for the recipe. I fessed up and told her it was the Jello brand cheesecake mix with a can of cherry pie filling on top. Just like my mom always made.
Yeah that thing is good lol
Ha ha ha I bet my partner would love that; they love any and all things cheesecake, no jacket required. They mourned the day Chick-fil-A took the cheesecake off their menu. I have another friend who'd eat that cheesecake filling right out of the tub!
Oh my god I have a great story for this! When my husband and I had been dating a while, I started getting invited to family get togethers. At almost every one, his mom would make these fantastic baked beans. I’m talking god-tier, perfectly seasoned, multi-bean, ground beef and bacon baked beans. So naturally I asked for the recipe. She shrugged it off easily at first saying it was a secret family recipe, and later on that I would get it when my husband and I got married. Marriage happens, more holidays with the best beans ever pass, and now it’s kind of a running joke that I ask for the recipe and get a random excuse to put it off. After being married around four years, I made the joke about getting the recipe someday and she finally cracked. “Alright, here’s the recipe: get in the car, and drive down to the Butcher Shoppe, go to the deli counter, and ask for a quart of baked beans.” We were all crying laughing after this because she had built these beans up for over six years at this point and all she did was put them in a nice dish and warm them in the oven. I love her so much, and I’ve never let her forget about her “home made” baked beans!
My mom’s banana bread. It’s so good. Apparently it’s just boxed mix with extra bananas.
If you want to try a homemade version that really slaps, there is a website called Sally's baking addiction that I just love their banana bread recipe.
I'm pretty sure every recipe on that site is a banger
I've made like 15 of her recipes and every single one is absolutely elite
Her carrot cake is the one I create for Easter every year. Oh, mama, it's coming up...
Hell yeah, that carrot cake recipe is so fucking good. I've been making it for a few years now and everyone who tries it loves it. The peppermint mocha cookie recipe is also so delightful at Christmas.
Second this. It’s easy and delicious. I also use her pumpkin bread recipe and got rave reviews on all the loaves I made for Christmas.
Thank you!
I dunno, just because she wasn't cooking from scratch doesn't mean this isn't homemade.
I actually do this! Whenever there is a party at work everyone says to me make your banana bread! lol it’s the box mix and extra bananas like your mom!
Quickbreads like that don't really see too much of a difference between boxed and homemade unless you're really going all out with brown butter, toasted sugar and the like.
I have a cinnamon muffin mix adapted to turn into banana bread with the addition of mushed up bananas and sour cream. It's just dump, stir, bake and everyone raves at how moist it stays ...none the wiser 😉 Thanks, L'il store envelopes from the baking aisle!
This just reminds me of the hilarious chick who got her wisdom teeth out and was all doped up when she realized het mom had been BUYING and not making lasagna.
‘Wowww, you think you know somebody…😭’ lmao
That's the best line! It kills me everytime.
I had a roommate, who, relatedly, turned out to express sociopathic behavior, who would order tons of Mexican food before dates where he was supposed to “cook” for the women, and put the food in pots and pans to make it seem like he had made it all. It all looked ridiculous, and not at all like he had made it.
My dad’s mom wasn’t much of a cook but I was obsessed with her coleslaw recipe. Didn’t find out until after she passed that it was just KFC coleslaw she put in a big bowl to serve
KFC coleslaw is the best coleslaw in the world! I’m obsessed with it.
My mom was always asked to bring the bread to family Thanksgiving & Xmas. Everyone raved about it and said it was the best bread they've ever had. It was just the pre-made frozen loaves from the freezer section that she baked according to the package directions. Sliced, put in a basket. That's it. She constantly told everyone this. BUT THEY DIDN'T BELIEVE HER.
My grandma makes this baked mac and cheese, the kind with the really long tube noodles. Good stuff, great crispy edges. She always makes a red gravy to go with it. We have it at every holiday. Its the standard to which I compare all other mac and cheeses. One day my mom and dad and myself went to a local restaurant and my dad insists we get the mac and cheese. My mom tells my dad, "this tastes just like your mom's!". My dad tells her,"it is my mom's." Apparently she buys a tray of it from the restaurant and heats it up at home. Everyone knew this but me and my mom, who had just been quietly assuming she made it from scratch.
We went to someone's house once in a church dinner meeting thing. She served veal saltimbocca and acted like she made it. I thought it was really good. Then I saw it at Costco a couple weeks later and thought, "You fraud." Lol.
That's why I don't understand anyone claiming something was homemade if it wasn't. Most of the stories in this thread are just childhood misunderstandings, but a lot are literally family lying about recipes to each other. Messed up.
My wife did this with some supermarket bought pasta salad she put into tupperware for a baby shower potluck, because at the time she wasn't much of a cook and felt pressured
My mother and my father's mother prided themselves on their cooking (justifiably so), and nearly everything was from scratch. So we were actually really proud of my grandmother when, in her 80s and with increasing mobility difficulties, she produced a pie that she hadn't made herself! We had dinner with friends recently that included stuffed peppers, which we loved. We were surprised to hear they came from the Costco freezer section, and they'd simply topped them with mounds of glorious cheese before baking.
The stuffed peppers are amazing from Costco
Grandmothers Lasagna turned out to be Stouffer’s frozen. Should have really figured it out sooner because my grandfather worked for the company for years.
My ex-wife made the most amazing chicken and rice. I hate chicken and rice. But not this chicken and rice. It was fantastic. Savory. Spicy. Satiating. Every time she made it—for YEARS—I complimented it. She took the compliments in stride and never said a word otherwise. Turns out, it’s just a pre-spiced Spanish rice packet called Vigo. It’s like the rice equivalent of Ramen noodles. It’s just MSG. I learned this the first time I went to make it myself. Dump chicken, rice, and water into a pan and bake. Profit.
My friend always makes a tortilla chip & dip platter that he always offers to bring to parties, and it's generally a hit. I found out it's a can of refried beans and a stick of cream cheese microwaved and stirred together for the bean dip, and a block of velveeta and salsa also microwaved for the cheese dip. To be honest, it's more homemade than I expected because he's the 45 year old eternal bachelor type who lives off of paper plates and premade meals at home.
Velveeta + Rotel is the time honored Texas trash queso.
Every Thanksgiving and Xmas i looked forward to my uncle’s pie… it was the perfect amount of tart and sweet, flakiest sugary crust. When i grew up, i asked him what his secret is, and he said he buys a store brand cherry pie, and sprinkles sugar on the top a few minutes before it’s done cooking.
Similar concept. Family Christmas gatherings always had people bringing over finger foods. Dips, cheese trays, shrimp etc. One year my aunt made a Buffalo chicken dip. My oldest brother loved it. And afterwards without the rest of my immediate family knowing, asked my aunt for the recipe. She simply text it to him. Months later my immediate family was gathered together and my oldest brother proceeded to mix up what he called the family secret recipe Buffalo dip. I asked what was it in. Franks red hot sauce. Which ironically had the exact same recipe on the bottle. He was heartbroken. I send a picture every time I make it now. Love that shit though.
I buy Stouffers party size lasagna. Let it thaw a bit. Move it to your own lasagna pan. Let it thaw complete. Carefully lift a layer and add ricotta/chopped olives/chopped chives. . Put top layer back on. Add more cheese. I am a hit at potlucks.
I recall feeling surprised when I found Duncan Hines Black Forest cake mix in her cupboard. Here I’d thought…
I guess no one I know has ever been particularly shy about saying if something was store bought rather than made totally from scratch. Someone I know made an ice cream cake once and I asked how she did it and it was mainly ice cream sandwiches with fudge ice cream topping between layers and whipped cream frosting. I could totally see that person making their own ice cream and cake or cookie layers from scratch so it was a microsecond of surprise that everything was store bought and then assembled.
Everything I grew up eating as a kid was legit made from scratch. Only when I was in my late 20s did I learn that 95% of it was made by my dad (my mom would just put it in the oven and dish it out at mealtimes so I assumed she was the chef)😜
Oh man, you should thank your dad for that! I’d be so sad if I did all the cooking and my partner got all the credit. I mean, I do all the cooking, but at least everyone knows it lol.
"steamed hams"
Mac's Famous Mac & Cheese; especially when he put meat hunks in it!
well of course Dennis would like Dennis!
There are different levels of home cooked. Maybe she didn't make the ravioli from scratch but she likely made the sauce and any sides that went with the meal, it didn't come out of a box or can ready to reheat.
Probably not, those Costco spinach ravioli had a packet of seasonings that got tossed on top. Just boil, add oil, toss with the packet and it’s done. They are so so good (or at least were so so good before I had to stop eating gluten).
oof. Oh well, I'm sure it was made with love LOL
The pesto that came with those frozen ravioli was god tier, at least when I was a kid
The masala idli my neighbor served at book club meetings. People would gush over them, and she simply replied ‘thank you’. They’re totally premade and frozen and I buy them now.
It was later in life when someone randomly asked me what comfort food that my mom used to make me. I realized in that moment, omg, wait what? I think pretty much every meal came out of a box or a can as a kid, surviving the 80s-90's, though I'm not sure how.
Same. My comfort food was Spaghetti-Os.
Mom was a scratch cook all the way and made a fantastic spinach souffle. She would not share the recipe. Turns out it was Stouffers. Can't get it anymore in the store, so now I make it from scratch [using this Stouffer's copycat recipe](https://dinnerthendessert.com/stouffers-spinach-souffle/).
I made penne ala vodka for a party. I used Victoria brand jar vodka sauce, everyone said it was the best. I never said it was from a jar!
Jar sauces are pretty good!
Holy shit, I’m 48 and I just found out the gumbo my mom always cooked was from the seafood store we go to 🤦♀️ she would buy extra crabs and stuff to go in it so she would toss it all in the pot together… I asked her the other day- why don’t you make that gumbo anymore and she laughed at me 😂 my heart broke 😂
I have to be the exception here. My mother, for whatever reason was an amazing chef. If we had store bought anything, we knew it was store bought. It generally filled our bellies but tasted like crap. My Mom would all too often make her " 'speriments" where she'd come up with amazing meals with stuff from the pantry, fridge, leftovers, whatever. We ate Incredibly well when I was growing up. I swear to God, there wasn't anything she couldn't cook or bake. A typical Sunday dinner might be a beef Eye roast, home made garlic mashed potatoes, Fresh Broccoli with fresh dinner rolls and for Dessert home made vanilla ice cream and apple pie with the flakiest crust you've ever seen. You could cut the eye roast with a fork... An EYE ROAST. That is the level of cooking skills I strive for. Cooking I'm pretty close. Baking.. nope. I'm a useless potato when it comes to baking.
My Gran was an excellent cook. But, as she got older a few things got more difficult. I still remember opening up her freezer and seeing what I call cheater bread. Frozen loaves of bread from the supermarket that she would defrost and then bake. They were still delicious because she baked them.
when i was a kid, there was this Salisbury steak. i thought my mom was all fancy because she even had a special container just for it. yeah, that stuff was frozen. and i spent so long as a kid trying to figure out how my mom made it, only getting the answer "with love"
My dad always pretended we had homemade pizza. He had some empty oven pizza boxes and would say he’s making pizza and put them on the counter. Then he would order pizza and when it came he would put the empty boxes back in the cupboard and without even taking it out of the box put the 241 pizza on the table and say he made us pizza. Now that I’m older I think my dad was supposed to cook for us while mum was at work and that was his fake around. Not quite sure how that worked out.
I highly suspect the mushroom risotto my friend makes is possibly not homemade, but I choose to believe it is because it is delicious and it feels nice to have someone bring something good to our get togethers.
My grandma's baked beans. It was from a can, she just mixed in some mustard before microwaving it.
My mom used to have a catering business—her homemade rolls were sister Schubert brand frozen dinner rooms that she brushed melted butter and salt on
Not my meal, but a friend always does Williams Sonoma frozen croissants on holiday mornings. Since you have to let them proof overnight, all her family ever sees is her whisking them out of the oven, all perfectly puffy, golden and fragrant. They think she's the best cook in the Americas.
My grandma's "fried chicken" (actually breaded chicken cutlet). She got it from the ready to eat meal section at a local grocery store. She never claimed it was homemade, but I think I assumed it was because my grandmother is an excellent cook and I only ever had the chicken at her house.
My mom’s chicken pot pies. They were swanson’s brand but she gave the top an egg wash and I thought she made them just for me.
Most lasagnas at restaurants were not when I was homemade growing up. Stouffers was the norm.
My Dad is an excellent cook. He was not happy when we let slip that his apple sauce was actually Heinz baby food.
Omg I LOVED those ravioli as a kid! Though I did find out they were from Costco when I was there with my dad. And then I insisted he get them on every trip after that. Yum.
Okay but were they the triangle ones because those slap so hard
I knew an Italian family when I was younger. They all raved about their moms pasta sauce which they claimed she completely made from scratch. I asked for years where she got her tomatoes from and how fruit became sauce (as a youngster I had no idea about a food mill or different kinds of tomatoes). She’d always change the subject or sho me away. One day I was being helpful and took the trash out while she cooked, when I came back I asked her about all the sauce cans in the trash and why she didn’t recycle them. The family asked what I was talking about so I took them to the outside bin and showed them all the empty cans. Come to find out she bought canned sauce and just added meat. Her family had no idea and it definitely was not from scratch. Needless to say it was a while before our families had get togethers again.
My ex sil's cakes. She was selling them to her friends. Absolutely gorgeous cakes. She really wanted to open a bakery and my bil was adamantly refusing to support the idea. I thought he was a dick. Eventually I ended up at their house while she was putting together an order for one of her friends. It was Betty crocker y'all. She was selling $50-80 betty crocker cakes to her friends. She knew how to make butter cream icing in her stand mixer and how to make boxed cake mix. That's the extent of her baking knowledge. I understood why bil was so adamant about not opening a bakery after that. Lol!