Originally Posted by
hedur
You know what's one of the easiest things in the world to make? Marinara sauce. But that doesn't mean it isn't smart to have some jarred marinara on hand for those times when you just don't have the time. Same for pie crust, cake mix, canned soup, pizza dough, pesto, etc. etc. etc.
People like to get on their high horse and put people like Sandra down but I guarantee you she doesn't always cook "semi-homemade" at home. Sometimes she makes things from scratch. And I guarantee you that Ina Garten doesn't cook from scratch all the time but instead breaks out that store bought hummus when she needs to.
Has anyone ever seen the Next Food Network Star? One of the things FN pushes the contestants to come up with is their "niche" or "theme" or "message". They are always encouraged to stick to the thing they came up with that defines their potential show. Their established celebrity chefs are no different.
It's just TV cooking people. No reason to take it so seriously. Something Anthony Bourdain would do well to remember.
Marinara is simple to make, but it is also
much more time consuming (blanching the tomatoes, peeling them, etc) than using jarred. I do keep canned tomatoes around to make a quick pasta sauce (and on that one, mainly because the cans of tomatoes are often 1/3 of the price of the same things, with a few herbs in, and called sauce, so I prefer to make my own, both from a cost perspective, and also because I will add some other bits and bobs to a store bought sauce in any case to make it taste better).
On the flip side, it takes
fractionally more time to measure the ingredients for a cake than to tip the pre-measured ingredients in to a bowl - really, maybe 30 seconds more to weigh the flour, sugar etc - and you still have to add the egg / oil, mix together, put in the tin etc. Cake mixes are one of the most absurd cooking thing I have ever come across. I hadn't heard of them until I moved to Canada, and was intrigued, thinking they must be really good - I bought a few packets, and they were nasty tasting (well, in fairness, tasteless may be a better description) and the texture was funky compared to a cake made from scratch. Ina Garten absolutely uses short cuts, I've seen her do so on her TV show - mayonnaise is one I recall, puff pastry another. But anything she does on her show to promote cooking more from ingredients is completely undermined by the fact she sells cake mixes etc!
Pie crust is in the same bracket, 30 seconds to measure the stuff out, pop in the mixer, and it is a ball in moments, then you just have to roll it out into the dish. If you don't have a mixer / processer, yes, it will take longer, but even using the breadcrumb method (as I did when I first moved here and didn't have a mixer) it only takes a couple of minutes. You normally have to defrost a frozen pie shell for 15 minutes or so anyway, so the make it yourself method overall is quicker!
Pizza dough is better from a pizza maker IMO - I guess they have the starters, which give a much better flavour than packet yeast, so if I am making pizza that I want to be like pizza I buy the dough fresh. If I am making something that simply needs a bread base, I do something like a foccacia base, which does take some time, absolutely, but it isn't 'hands on' time.
Pesto, fresh tastes so so so much better, so in season, yes, I will make it with fresh basil from the garden. In winter, jarred will probably taste better than stuff made with out of season chilled supermarket pack basil.