Cooking From Scratch Made Easy - 6 Tips!

So much of what I share on my instagram and blog is meals made from scratch. It’s how I cook 90% of the time.

But how can cooking form scratch be made easy? It can be done! And it may be simpler than you think.

Sometimes it requires a little forethought, but as one who is perpetually never planning ahead I can tell you It can require very little forethought with the right foods on hand.

I’m not a meal planner. Maybe I could improve the quality of my life with meal planning, but it’s simply not a priority right now. So I rely on these little tips and tricks to make meals from scratch every day and they carry me through.

Ingredients for cooking from scratch spread out on table with a dark backround

Here’s to hoping my 6 tips to make cooking from scratch easy will help you too!

1. Always Keep Thawed Meat in the Refrigerator

It’s simple to cook a meal from scratch when you have thawed meat on hand. Not having thawed meat at the ready is my biggest hang up when I go to cook a meal. It often leads to overwhelm in just getting started.

Eliminating that extra step of thawing out meat frees your mind to be more creative in the kitchen. Or to simply get the meal on the table.

Give a 13 x 9 pyrex dish a permanent home in your fridge, and this is where your thawed meat will live. At the start of the week (or if you’re like me, whenever it occurs to you), pull out a few packages of meat from the freezer and set them in the dish in the fridge to thaw.

The result is thawed meat for you to cook with all through out the week! It’s amazing!

a dinner table with meat covered in feta cheese and a bowl of salad in the backround

2. Use Frozen Veggies and Simple Salads to Make Cooking From Scratch Easy

Frozen veggies are my BEST. FRIEND.

They’re so quick to cook up and already chopped or shelled for you. They are frozen at the peak of freshness which seals in all the nutrients of a freshly picked vegetable. They can absolutely be superior in nutrition to that head of broccoli that has been hanging out in your fridge for the better part of a week.

My go-to frozen veggies are: peas, broccoli, cauliflower, corn, and green beans.

How to make frozen veggies delicious:

Broccoli and peas are easily steamed in a few inches of boiling water in a covered saucepan. My favorite thing about the steaming method is that it only takes 5-8 minutes of cook time. Drain the water off, then toss in some butter and salt. So delicious!

My favorite thing to do with frozen corn is to melt some butter in a skillet, quickly sauté a few chopped green onions in the butter, then dump in the frozen corn. Sauté until the corn is bright yellow and cooked through, then add salt and plenty of pepper. My children love this one!

For cauliflower I steam it just like the broccoli and peas. Then, if I have time I add the steamed cauliflower to a food processor, along with a few handfuls of parmesan, 4ish oz of cream cheese, a few tablespoons of butter, and a few tablespoons of any kind of milk. Puree it all until smooth, add salt and pepper to taste, and you have a beautiful whipped cauliflower that is divine! My boys devour it!

Green beans are like green fries when tossed with a few tablespoons of melted coconut oil and a handful of nutritional yeast plus salt and pepper. Spread it all on a baking sheet and roast at 425 for about 20 minutes or until they are crispy on the edges. So fun and yummy!

Cooking from scratch tip:

Butter and salt makes any steamed veggie delicious. Butter also contains nutrients that allow for better absorption of the vitamins and minerals in your veggies. So banish the idea that adding butter to your veggies will make them unhealthy. Butter in fact improves the amount of nutrients you receive from your healthy frozen veggies!

My Simple Salad:

Take any washed lettuce or greens (my favorite is romaine) and simply tear it and place it in a bowl. Top with a favorite dressing! I keep clean bottled dressings on hand to make this super fast. It doesn’t get much easier than that!

3. Always Keep Ingredients on Hand for a Few Staple Meals

two logs of cheese laying on a cutting board with a bunch dill in the backround

This is one of the most helpful tricks for those frazzled days when you just need a no brainer meal on the table. I try to always keep ingredients for a few staple meals in the pantry and freezer so that there is always a meal just 30 minutes away.

At this point I have those items memorized and it’s easy to grab them at the store when I’m out.

I like to keep these meals to as many pantry items as possible so i’m not dealing with thawing frozen meat.

Here are some of the staple meal ingredients I always keep on hand:

Lentil Soup
White Bean Chile
Spaghetti with Meat Sauce
Dump and Stir instant Pot Mexican Beans and Rice
Salmon Patties

4. Utilize Biscuits, Sourdough Starter, and Bakery Breads

french bread spread with butter and soup made from scratch on blue and white dishes

Biscuits and flat breads made from sourdough starter make for easy and filling sides! Plus, what’s more comforting than a fresh from the oven biscuit or warm flat bread?

From scratch biscuits may sound intimidating, but once you have made them once or twice they make cooking a complete meal from scratch easy. They are pretty quick because they don’t require any rise time. They can be on the table from start to finish in 30 minutes time, and 20 of those minutes is the baking time.

Flat breads are another simple side! Sourdough flatbread is easiest of all! Just pour some sourdough starter on a really hot oiled skillet and flip once the edges start to look cooked through. Sprinkle with herbs, course salt, and drizzle with olive oil.

The easiest option of all is to keep some bakery breads in the freezer. I like to grab them when they are super cheap in the “day old” bakery section of my grocery store. Sliced bread is best because it defrosts quickly, but you can absolutely defrost an entire loaf in time for dinner as well.

Check out this article about how to properly freeze and defrost bread!

5. Keep quick Proteins in Stock

While it’s great advice to always keep thawed meat on hand, I can be an easily distracted person and miss the boat on setting out meat in time to have it thawed for dinner.

In those cases, I find it incredibly helpful to keep quick proteins on hand!

My favorite quick proteins to make cooking from scratch easy:

Eggs
Canned Beans
Dried Lentils
Wild Caught Canned Salmon
Frozen Wild Caught Salmon Filets (they thaw in a bowl of warm water in 10 minutes)
Frozen Peeled Shrimp
Ground Sausage

frozen shrimp being cooked in a cast iron skillet

How to cook from scratch with quick proteins:

Eggs give you many options! Frittatas are so quick and a great way to use up any extra veggies left in your fridge. Here is my favorite frittata recipe. I love this one because she gives you a base recipe, then tells you how much chopped veggies and cheese you need so you can use whatever you have on hand.

I have also created this simple, elegant egg dish that can easily be created with ingredients I typically have on hand. And the best part is that it’s super fast to throw together. You don’t even have to beat the eggs!

easy and elegant goat cheese and dill egg dish on a white plate with a sprig of dill

You can always do breakfast for dinner with scrambled eggs, or make it a hash by adding in some veggies.

Canned beans are my main protein in soups when I just need to throw something together real quick.

Dried lentils also cook up in 20 minutes and make the creamiest soup. I have even just cooked them in just water before because I was out of broth. Add lots of seasonings to bump up the flavor. I love to add a little bit of nutritional yeast to my lentil soups and also dashes of Worcestershire sauce and liquid aminos for extra flavor!

I use canned salmon to make salmon patties which are surprisingly delicious! Fry them in lots of coconut oil for a crispy edge. So good!

Frozen salmon filets thaw so quickly in a bowl of warm water. Sometimes I cook them stovetop in a skillet or bake them in the oven. I love to make a little sauce for them in skillet my melting a few tablespoons of butter, then adding a few tablespoons of cream, and little bit of fresh lemon juice. I sprinkle in some dill, salt, and pepper, whisk it all together, then pour a little bit on top of each filet.

Frozen shrimp can be dumped into a hot skillet and cooked up in minutes! I love adding it to pasta or just doing a simple shrimp scampi. Check out my 15 minute garden pasta with shrimp for inspiration!

a platter of beautiful summer garden pasta with shrimp

Ground sausage keeps so long in the fridge and makes cooking from scratch easy! I get it in the tubes ( I know, not the healthiest) and they can last a month or two in the fridge. My boys will devour anything with sausage so I add it to lots of dishes.

I love to add sausage to jarred marinara sauce for my own spin on spaghetti with meat sauce. Add ground sausage to your frittata, use it as a pizza topping, or a make a hash of sausage, sweet potato, and onion.

6. Meals Cooked From Scratch Can be Super Simple

Don’t over complicate things. The point of all of this is to gather your loved ones around the table, nourish them, and make memories. You can do this with very simple food.

a little boy with large eyes drinking from a mason jar at a meal cooked from scratch

In the old days, meals were just meat and veggies and maybe some bread. Every meal doesn’t need to involve a complicated recipe with coordinating sides.

When in doubt use healthy fats like grass fed butter and coconut oil and real mineral salt. Salt and fat make almost anything incredibly delicious!