So you want to cook from scratch, but aren’t a planner. You don’t want to have to sit down to think deeply about which meal you’re going to eat on which night, you want to be able to decide what you’ll have that day and then throw something together. Me too! Do you think the pioneer women sat and meticulously planned out their meals for the week every Sunday night? No way! They cooked meals based around what they had, which is what I do too. Learn these top 5 secrets so that you can learn to cook from scratch without a meal plan every night of the week.
I used to be a very organized meal planner. Every Friday night, I would create a meal menu for the week, then go to the store Saturday to buy everything that I needed. I remember it always being really stressful. It would take me hours to go through Pinterest to find different ideas of what to make for dinner, then it would take another hour to go shopping for it all. By the end of the week, we were almost always left with a huge amount of food waste from ingredients we didn’t get to or didn’t end up needing.
I’ve always enjoyed cooking from scratch, but it wasn’t until we started homesteading that we really started to realize that we needed to modify the way that we ate from scratch. With a busy schedule of a full-time job, a full-time homestead, and homeschooling, we needed a way to make sure we could still eat healthy meals without the food waste and by eating with what we had from our homestead and supply stash.
Table of Contents
- WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO COOK OR BAKE FROM SCRATCH?
- Tip #1: Buy your meat in bulk, raise it yourself, or hunt
- Tip #2: Eat from the homestead
- Tip #3: Find what your family likes, then rotate through those meals
- Tip #4: Have these food items in stock at all times
- Tip #5: Learn the versatility of flour and broth!
- Ready to cook from scratch without a meal plan?
- More posts you’ll want to check out
- What are your go-to homesteading recipes and tips?
- Don’t forget to save this!
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO COOK OR BAKE FROM SCRATCH?
Cooking from scratch means using basic food ingredients to create a product. This means completely avoiding boxed or packaged foods, and creating everything for a meal or dessert with basic ingredients that have not been premade in any way.
There is a spectrum here of what it means to be “from scratch”. On the conservative end, you’ll have people who grind their own wheat to make their flour. These are extremely dedicated people!
On the liberal end of the spectrum, you’ll have people who open up packaged noodles and store-bought pasta sauce, use them for a recipe, yet still say it’s from scratch. After all, it was created entirely with basic ingredients at home!
I’m on the moderately conservative side. I like to make what I can, but there are occasional times when I reach for the boxed instant rice too. Often, though, the meals we eat are created with my own two hands with just a handful of ingredients. The main ingredients I use are flour, oats, eggs, milk, a meat source, potatoes, and then all of our preserved (or fresh in summer) fruits and vegetables. If I can’t make it or grow it, we generally won’t eat it.
Neither end of the spectrum is necessarily right or wrong; it’s all a matter of personal preference. We tend to be pretty conservative when it comes to from scratch cooking, baking our own breads, making our own noodles, and using only our preserved garden vegetables, but that’s our family’s preference. You can be as liberal or as conservative as you’d like to be!
How to cook from scratch without a meal plan: What you need to know
Cooking from scratch without a meal plan doesn’t need to be complicated. When you’re ready to start, there are a few key tips that you should keep in mind. These are just basic guidelines that are going to help you with this learning process, because that is what it is! Learning to cook from scratch is a artful skill that is going to take a little bit of time to really master. But don’t worry! It IS 100% attainable.
My husband and I were just laughing the other day about how my cooking skills have evolved from when we first got married to now. It takes experimenting, learning from mistakes, and not being afraid to try again to really be able to cook skillfully without a meal plan. But if I can do it, you can too. Trust me!
This is the way of our ancestors
During the pioneering days, everyone was cooking from scratch and there wasn’t a meal plan involved. They cooked with the food that they had from their homesteads. There wasn’t the luxury of going to the store to buy cilantro in the middle of winter and they certainly wouldn’t have been opening up a can of preserved vegetables in summer just because they felt like that’s what they wanted to eat. This type of cooking means eating with the seasons.
In addition to that, have you ever noticed that when you ask a grandparent for a recipe that was their mother’s, they can’t give it to you? “We just never wrote it down in those days” I often hear, which is terribly sad for me. But this is revealing of the time. These women were skilled cooks who had learned by watching their own mothers and grandmothers, experimented on their own, and then perfected their skill through time. They had cooked enough meals that they knew how much a cup of flour was by sight and they could feel when the dough was right by touch. They cooked often with very little, and had to learn how to make do with what they had.
When Pa came home with a rabbit for dinner that night, Ma had to figure out a way to prepare it for the family. There was no meal planning involved. Now your husband might not be bringing home rabbits every night for dinner, but you can still follow this pioneering woman’s lead to learn how to cook from scratch without a meal plan on your own homestead each night.
Tip #1: Buy your meat in bulk, raise it yourself, or hunt
Your freezer needs to be stocked with meat at all times. We always have a stocked supply of meat in our freezers. My husband harvested 3 deer for our family this year, we raised our own meat chickens, and we purchased a whole pig and some beef from a local farmer. Those are the meats we use. We actually had been running low on beef recently, so that meant we just weren’t going to be using it in our meals. That’s just part of it! Eating from scratch every night doesn’t always mean convenience and fulfilling your every craving, but it doesn’t mean you can’t have delicious either. Learning to realize you don’t have to eat what you’re craving at the moment and that you can eat what your homestead can provide is critical. That leads me to my next tip…
Tip #2: Eat from the homestead
In the winter when you don’t have a lot of fresh vegetables, it’s best to eat those preserved items you have in your pantry. Learn how to create multiple meals from your preserve stash and root vegetables. This might mean stews, soups, shepherd’s pies, casseroles, and meat and potatoes a lot. But, it’s up to you to be creative in how you prepare it so that your family doesn’t get bored. We’ll talk more on that in a bit! For now, know that you’ll need to experiment and try new things out!
Here are some different meal ideas based on the season:
Fall and Winter: You’ll want to base your meals around a meat and a root or preserved vegetable(s). Your plan is to use things you have stored rather than fresh in this season.
- Beef or Venison Stew
- Mashed Potatoes with Chicken and Gravy
- Sauerkraut and Dumplings with Pork Ribs
- Shepherd’s Pie
- Venison Fajitas
- Chicken Noodle Soup
- Chili
- Spaghetti and Meatballs with Homemade Noodles
- Mini Meatloaves with Boiled Potatoes and Carrots
- Bacon, Potato and Corn Chowder
- Biscuits and Gravy
- Scalloped Potatoes and Ham
In the spring and summer, you’ll want to focus on fresh foods and eating from the garden and homestead:
- Egg Bakes and Quiches
- Grilled Chicken Salad
- Cheesy Zucchini Pie
- Homemade Pizza with Fresh Toppings
- Homemade Pasta with Pesto
- Stir Fry
- Fresh Green Bean Soup
- Chicken or Steaks with a side of fresh cucumbers, fried zucchini, and other fresh vegetables and fruit
- Tacos and Taco Salads
These are all just ideas, of course! You’ll want to find meals that your family enjoys with the resources you have available.
Tip #3: Find what your family likes, then rotate through those meals
As I mentioned before, you’ll need to find what your family likes. If you’re making chicken and mashed potatoes every other week, but no one eats it, then that’s not really a good fit for your family.
You’ll want to create a list of meals that your family really likes, then just rotate through each week. When you wake up in the morning, what are you hungry for? That’s what you’ll want to make for the day! Once you decide on your meal choice, you can start unthawing meat and not have to think about it until you’re ready to cook dinner. Easy!
If your family starts to get bored with the options you have for them, start to think about ways you can be creative. Always eating potatoes in winter? How can you eat them differently? Thinking outside the box can help you to stay out of a slump and keep everyone pleased with their dinner each night.
Tip #4: Have these food items in stock at all times
There are a few items that should be in your pantry all the time when you’re cooking from scratch. These are things that you’ll find yourself using again and again, over and over. These are the food items that you’ll want to have stocked at all times:
- Flour (more on that below in Tip #5)
- Broth (chicken, beef- more on that below in Tip #5)
- Meat (discussed in Tip #1)
- Preserved vegetables (in winter) or fresh (in summer)
We use lots of diced tomatoes and tomato sauces in our winter months. We grow a lot of tomatoes in the summer, so that means eating a lot of tomato preserves in the winter. You can be creative and versatile with this! Chili, pizza, soups….There is a lot of variety to be had with tomatoes! - Baking Powder
- Yeast
- Sweetener (maple syrup, honey, or sugar)
- Dairy products (milk, cheese, butter)
- Seasonings (salt, pepper, garlic powder, basil, oregano are all good places to start)
If you have these things in stock at your house, you’ll be able to make LOTS of different foods, just with these items. All of these things can be purchased in bulk, so you won’t be running to the store week after week. When cheese goes on sale, stock up on it and buy a few month’s worth. Same with butter and seasonings. Purchasing flour, baking powder, yeast, and your sweeteners in bulk will also give you some freedom from the grocery store.
Tip #5: Learn the versatility of flour and broth!
Flour and broth are literally the building blocks of almost every meal I make. There are so many things you can make with flour and broth when you cook from scratch without a meal plan! Flour is the building block behind all of the bread I bake each week for our family, the biscuits we eat alongside our stews, the thickener in stews and cheese sauces, the foundation for our tortillas and noodles, and the crust of our homemade pizzas. It’s everywhere! If you can learn how to make your own favorite flour foods, then you are surely well on your way to learning to cook from scratch without a meal plan.
Broth is also up there in importance. Broth can be used as a base for soups and stews, as well as a filler for casseroles and as a foundation for gravy. It’s a big winter month staple, but it can be used in a lot of different dishes in a lot of different ways during those long winter months.
Ready to cook from scratch without a meal plan?
With these 5 tips in tow, you’ll be well on your way to getting started with cooking from scratch without a meal plan. At first, you’ll probably need a few recipes to get you started. Once you have made those recipes a few times, though, you’ll find that you won’t need to look at the recipe anymore. You might even be ready to start adding some tweaks and additions of your own.
The main thing is find out what your family likes to eat. Then, break it down. Can you make that from scratch? Those tortillas your family loves? Can you find a recipe to make those yourself? How about the pasta? Bread? Changing your mindset from thinking, “I have to go get that from the store” to “How can I make this at home?’ is a big part of learning to cook from scratch without a meal plan.
More posts you’ll want to check out
- HOW TO START WITH SMALL BATCH MAPLE SYRUP MAKING
- CANNING FOR BEGINNERS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE STARTING HOME PRESERVATION
- QUICK AND EASY HOMEMADE PIZZA DOUGH
- EASY SOURDOUGH BREAD
- THIS IS WHAT AND HOW MUCH TO PLANT FOR A SELF-SUFFICIENT GARDEN THIS YEAR
- CHOOSING COLD HARDY TREES FOR YOUR SMALL HOMESTEAD ZONE 4 ORCHARD
What are your go-to homesteading recipes and tips?
Do you have favorite recipes that you love to cook from scratch without a meal plan? How about tips for others on how you share from scratch? Share them in the comments below!
Here are a few recipes and tips that I think you might be interested in trying from some other bloggers. Be sure to head over to their websites and check them out!
- Butternut Squash Lasagna without Noodles from Joelle at From Scratch Farmstead
- Easy Weeknight Chicken Enchilada Soup from Janelle at Crowded Table Farmstead
- How to Keep a Well Stocked Fridge to Cook From Scratch from Britt at The Simple Salvaged Farmhouse
- More on Eating from the Homestead
Don’t forget to save this!
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