There is no simple answer to which is better - home-made or store-bought food, although most people will likely think that home-made is a unanimous winner. But consider the complexity of the question - how do you define "better"? Although I take pride in making home-made pastas, sauces and other foods from scratch as much as possible, even though equivalents are readily available in a store, I would not claim that this is absolutely the only and best choice to eat well and is always superior to store-bought foods that one simply needs to heat up at home. There are many brands out there that are very good and nearly equal to home-made foods. On the other side of the spectrum are people who only buy ready-made foods in the store and rarely or never cook at home. And then there are people in between who buy some pre-made ingredients and use them in their cooking. For example, although I do make pasta at home, I take shortcuts and buy pasta in the store too. So why choose one over another?
Let's consider a bit of history. Supermarkets with endless isles of cans, boxes and jars of preserved foods and convenient one-stop shopping are a very recent invention. It is only after WWII that Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (now A&P) opened a first supermarket in New York. Although preserves and canning existed since Napoleon (he actually encouraged that invention since his army needed reliable food resources), it is much more recent advances in food science that allow for so many food items to be pre-made and readily available in stores so that a meal would require a minimal amount of preparation.
With our busy lives, buying food that saves time in the kitchen, and in one-stop shop, is certainly a great convenience. Common perception is that buying something like sauce or stock in a store saves you time and money. However there are several cons to buying pre-made ingredients. First, consider the preservatives that are required to be added in order for the food to be safe. Companies certainly want to extend the shelf life of their products as much as possible - if product is not sold before expiration date, it must be disposed of by law. Preservatives are supposed to be safe, but it is really an (unnecessary) addition to the actual ingredient.
A benefit of buying pre-made foods is that something like a sauce or pasta is available for a quick dinner on a whim. Even if you accept my argument above to avoid preservatives (I'm not an all-organic, fresh foods only nutcase, but I do like to avoid unnecessary additives when possible), if you want to have a dinner of pasta with sauce, your choices are to either to start cooking early and spend a lot of time to prepare everything from scratch or go with the pre-made foods. But does that pre-made pasta and sauce have to be store-bought?
There is a happy middle that a lot of people do not consider. It is possible to store home-made foods for later use. It will not last as long as mass-produced preservative-filled items found in a store ("apocalypse food"), but with proper storage, you can prepare a good amount of some food, then refrigerate, freeze or otherwise store it for later use. A lot of sauces, when refrigerated, can be stored for one or two weeks, and several months if frozen. There are many advantages here. First, you know all the ingredients that went into your food - if tomatoes were fresh and firm for your pasta sauce, if ginger was young and high-quality for your ginger-garlic paste, etc. Another interesting advantage is that some sauces actually improve, if are used a day or two later after preparation - flavors blend better and sauce actually improves. Besides sauces, pastas and stocks are great candidates for make-ahead foods in your kitchen. Another major advantage of home-made food is of course the quality. Like I mentioned earlier, there are brands of pre-made foods in stores that are very high-quality and comparable to home-made foods, but high-quality usually comes with high price-tag. In my experience, to achieve a certain quality, it is cheaper to buy ingredients and invest own time and effort than to buy that high-end food in a store.
In the end, there are many factors to determine the better option between home-made or store-food. And even though I generally would prefer to have food made at home and from scratch, I take shortcuts too, because sometimes convenience wins over quality, and other times, when certain ingredients are not in season, it is cost that makes a jar of some food a preferred choice. I certainly wish that more people would at least attempt to create from scratch what they usually buy pre-made in store. Here is the simplest food to make at home from scratch to get you started.
Basic tomato sauce
Buy a pound or two of nice plump tomatoes.
Then, using a grater or a food mill (one I have is just a fancy specialized grater), process tomatoes. If you are using a simpler grater, peal tomatoes first - it helps to dunk tomatoes in boiling water for a few seconds and then in cold water, skin will split and come off very easily; then push tomatoes though the grater. If using a food mill like mine, you don't need to peal the tomatoes, but it greatly helps to cut them into chunks.
Process tomatoes.
Skins and seeds will remain in the food mill, while juices and pulp will collect below.
Mince few cloves of garlic.
Heat some olive oil in a pan.
Add garlic to the pan; fry, stirring, for a minute or two - do not let it brown.
Add tomatoes.
Stir. Add herbs to taste. Today I am adding dried oregano and some freshly ground black pepper. I do add a bit of salt at this stage, but, because sauce will be reduced, do not add all the salt to taste now. If you do, when sauce is reduced, it will be over-salted.
Stir, and let sauce simmer until reduced to desired consistency.
I like to add some fresh basil at the end. Also, now add salt to taste. It is a good idea to slightly under-salt it, depending on how you intend to use this sauce.
I then store this in the fridge for a couple of weeks. It is a good sauce to use on pizza. Another common use in our kitchen is to use it with pasta - cut some vegetables (onions, mushrooms, anything else you like), fry for few minutes, add this sauce, add olives if you like, then add cooked pasta, mix and enjoy.
And now on to Saturday night tasty adventures!
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