Well, as I see it, the main advantages to homemade foods have already been mentioned:
No bean-counters watching you and making sure you substitute hydrogenated soybean oil for butter in your cookies, etc… You can use the best ingredients you feel like and/or can afford.
Making it to your own specs. I much prefer my breadmaker bread to something from the grocery. I prefer a heavier, denser bread than say… Mrs. Baird’s or Rainbo puts out, so I’ve found a couple of recipes that I enjoy. I also homebrew from time to time, and enjoy being able to tweak the recipe to my own preferences. If I feel like a ESB hopped with Saaz, then by God, I can! Or to use another example, I felt like having leaner bacon/ham for breakfast, so I cured a pork loin. Pretty low-fat, but still tastes like bacon/ham. It’s tough to find that in a store.
One downside to making it yourself is consistency. Using homebrew as an example, I rarely can do it the same each time, which kind of sucks if you get everything right and really enjoy a particular batch.
Another is cost/time-ineffectiveness. I can make a damn good soft pretzel, similar to “Super Pretzels”. Problem is, it’s not really any better than going and buying frozen soft pretzels and baking them myself, and the latter takes a lot less time.
Basically, with the exception of one-off trials to see if I can do something, I’ll almost always buy something unless there’s a compelling reason for me not to, be it ingredients or personal preference.
Very true. Years ago I made a bread with blackstrap molasses and lots of yellow corn grits and whole wheat flour; when it came out of the oven, it had a heavenly dark, almost wine-like flavor to it, sweet and sultry as a summer night. I’ve never been able to come close to duplicating it.
ice cream = better at home
potato chips = it could be done, if you have a good slicer and a Fry Daddy
soda = my step sisters used to make root beer at home that was better than some bottled root beers, but I grant you this one
ketchup = I beg to differ. I make excellent ketchups. And mustards. And all my salad dressings. See, that way I know what’s in 'em and get to limit my high fructose corn syrup intake. You can make all of those sugar or fat free and they still taste better than store bought.
And I also differ on the bread: I bake fresh bread every week for my morning toast. I have a bread machine. I also get to control the sugar and fat in my bread, besides eating fresh homemade bread every day.
Guacamole. The store-bought stuff is crap. And since I recently got a food processor, it doesn’t take an hour anymore!
I guess I’m probably weird, but I do like a lot of storebought stuff. Maybe it’s the consistency. Eating a frozen pizza today is exactly like eating a frozen pizza when I was a kid. The spices (and probably preservatives, additives, weird crap) are just right–there’s something that makes a cheap pizza from the frozen food aisle really good to me. Then again, I make an awesome homemade pizza that I’d probably choose over the frozen ones any day.
Back on topic, any storebought baked goods are loads better than I can produce at home. Ditto for spaghetti sauce–no matter how hard I try, my homemade sucks. A decent mid-priced jar of sauce gets me going, though. (Sacrilege!)
Oh, my favorite pickles are definitely homemade…if any of you have had those cucumbers naturally pickled by lactic acid fermentation, you know what I’m talking about. I far prefer them to the vinegary ones.
All you do is get a big ol’ pickle jar, slice through the skin lengthwise on your pickling cucumbers, and stick 'em in with some fresh dill (preferably with flowers), a few cloves of garlic, several tablespoons of salt, and boiling water to cover. Add a thick slice of fresh light rye bread on top, place a dish over the jar, and leave outside to soak in the sun. In three days or so, you’ve got pickles. (Just make sure to keep everything clean when making these. Any contamination will ruin your batch.)
I make dam good bread, pies, cakes, and lots of other things completely from “scratch,” no machines. However, there have been two things I have been a total failure at: spaghetti sauce and rice pudding.
The sauce turned out different every time I tried, and I was using top quality ingredients, too. We all hated it. One day in a rush I heated up some stuff out of a jar and hid the empty at the bottom of the garbage can. “Now this is good!” my husband said. I promised to use that recipe always.
The rice pudding turns out with crunchy uncooked rice bits, or lumpy, or just unpleasant. Out of a box, or Cozy Shack is much better than mine.
Spaghetti sauce is one of things I particularly can’t stand from a jar. It might have to do with what flavor profiles one likes, but I find it overly harsh and chemically.
A good spaghetti sauce need not be more than olive oil (Frantoia is my preference), fresh roma tomatoes, garlic, and basil or perhaps some red pepper flakes. Really. That’s all you need for a kick-ass sauce. However, the tomatoes are the key. Unless I’m using tomatoes from my own garden or from a trusted vendor at a farmer’s market, I stick with canned Italian plum (Roma) tomatoes. The resulting sauce is much fruiter, livelier, and simply fresher than anything out of a jar.
Try as hard as I might, my homemade cakes are no match for a box cake mix – those are so moist & flavorful that I use the cake mix and concentrate on making a great frosting.
Have one…what I don’t have is a good commercial oven and a good commercial grill. And access to the same quality of tenderloin you get at the best steakhouse in town.
Bagels are definitely better home made. It took me a good two months before I could make decent bagels that were pretty, too. French bread I’m still working on, but I know it can be done. A neighbor of mine made french bread so fantastic it could make you cry and then kiss her little hands in gratitude. And she did it all in a dinky little trailer-size oven, using ancient, cheap, baking sheets.
Homemade soda is fun and fairly easy. Ginger beer from scratch is fantastic, especially since you can make it as fierce as you’d like.
I agree that regular old cake is just as good from a box, unless you practice like crazy. Frosting from a can is evil compared to homemade.
It seems like making something from scratch or store bought depends upon priorities. I adore tinkering and/or the process. Like making ice cream-- I like getting everything together, and taking turns cranking the handle thingie while visiting with friends. The superior flavor of good ingredients is just a bonus. Other people want convinience because ice cream is not that big a deal to them, they’ve got stuff to do and can’t stand messing with stupid old machines.
I make my own spaghetti sauce more often than not. In the winter I use canned tomatoes, in the summer fresh (thank you Farmer’s Market!). I have been buying Emeril’s Marinara Sauce which isn’t bad. I can’t stand how thin the Ragu/Prego sauce is.
Making my own bread? Depends on my mood. LilMiss is not a fan of the healthier breads, and I can’t fathom $4.00 for a loaf, so I make my own 8-grain and rye breads - in a bread machine. I also use the bread machine for cinnamon rolls, garlic twists, etc.
I will admit to buying a pack of Oreo’s once in a great while, but I otherwise make all desserts from scratch. I just prefer the taste of my own creations. And yes, I have made my own Oreos, which turned out pretty good.
What I cannot eat out and about is restaurant pancakes/waffles. They’re gross. Ditto egg salad/chicken salad. Ice cream? I’ve never had homemade ice cream, but live for Brown’s Velvet Ice Cream. To me, their ice cream is the best and anything I would pale so much in comparison that it’s just not worth my time and effort.
I envy many of you in this thread For me, it’s mostly a question of quality vs. time. I am a college student who has been truly cooking for myself for six months now (I spent my first two years eating from the school cafeteria, but I have my own house now), and I’m already pretty confident that 90% of what I make will be better than any store-bought alternative. The problem is, I’m supposed to be doing homework :o
That said, I absolutely can’t stand store bought spaghetti sauce. If I have pasta during the week, I just use some olive oil, fresh garlic, and parmesan, and it tastes so much better. I make a point to take a weekend evening once every week or two and make a big spaghetti sauce, with fresh tomatos and so much ground beef that it’s sometimes more of a stew than a sauce. Good food and the making thereof definitely helps one relax.
One other sort of different thing I love making on my own much more than getting any other way is chicken wings. I go out and buy some fresh wings, give them some quality time with a homemade soy sauce-BBQ marinade, cook them up right good, and I can go through a whole batch while watching a football game. Heavenly, and certainly better than any of the frozen or pre-seasoned wings the powers that be would have you eat.
Tom Yum soup. I’ve tried half a dozen recipes, and can’t get it anywhere near as good as any of my local Thai restaurants. (But the canned stuff from the store is even worse than my attempts.)
Also I second light and fluffy breads and middle eastern/Indian breads.
I’ve done this! I have a friend who’s a physics teacher, so he can get liquid nitrogen. We had an ice cream party, and he brought a flask of liquid nitrogen so we could make instant ice cream. We tried to make the Dippin’ Dots kind of ice cream, but it’s hard to make all the little blobs the same size. Then we froze flower petals and shattered them. Lots of fun!
For me, it’s mostly a question of quality vs. time. I am a college student who has been truly cooking for myself for six months now (I spent my first two years eating from the school cafeteria, but I have my own house now), and I’m already pretty confident that 90% of what I make will be better than any store-bought alternative. The problem is, I’m supposed to be doing homework :o