For a quick dinner I sauteed some Trader Joe’s fried rice in a pan and added some hand shredded chicken breast from a leftover store bought rotisserie chicken, a scrambled egg and some salt, pepper and soy sauce.
Would you call this “Home made” chicken fried rice?
That kind of thing happens often around here and we call it “Improvising”. Also applies to conjuring up a dish from raw / fresh items on hand but without a recipe.
Is the Trader Joe’s fried rice like already fried?
Then I would not call it “home made” in the same way that I would not call campbell’s tomato soup with some added veggies or herbs “home made tomato and herb soup.”
Close enough. Tho tending towards the “not” side, as the 2 main ingredients - the chicken and the fried rice - were seemingly pre-prepared. But it seems pretty extreme to require that you use only minimally processed, single ingredients for something to be home made.
We’ve discussed this often around here. Home made is pretty much meaningless. Always sorta jars me when I see it on pre-packaged food or restaurant menus.
I’d probably further split hairs and call it a “Home cooked meal”. It was cooked (as a complete dish) at home, but not quite home-made, and as TL states, certainly not made from scratch.
But really, if you’re cooking what you like, I don’t deeply care about what labels you want to apply. And if you didn’t confess to us, it’s not like we would know. Or the aforementioned “Mother in Law” test. Don’t ask, don’t tell!
I grab a piece of cheese(no, sorry didn’t milk the cow or make and age the cheese)
Grab two pieces of bread(again, sorry it’s store bought bread)
Grab the country Crock of make believe butter(what can I say? I like it)
Put it together, slap it in a skillet.
Look y’all I made grilled cheese sammich!
Of course I didn’t go to a restaurant and get it, I home made it. Right here in my skillet. On my stove, in the kitchen at my home.
Funny you say that because the first time I made it I added a few packets of hot sauce from a Chinese restaurant and it was good but didn’t have any this time.