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Wanting to start making more of your food at home is a growing trend as more and more information is coming out about the harmful effects of all the things put into processed food. This creates the problem of overwhelm. You can’t go from buying everything pre-made to making it all from basic ingredients overnight. Especially if you are working or raising children, there is just not enough time in the day or mental capacity to learn how to make everything all at once.
These are my recommendations for the easiest order to start making things from home that will have the biggest health impact on you and your family.
Key Notes
Before we get into the actual food I want to put out a few disclaimers.
- It takes time. No one learns all of these things all at once. Be patient and give yourself some grace. Especially if you are starting as someone who doesn’t know how to boil pasta.
- Take these one at a time. Get good at making one thing and get into a good routine, before adding another.
Yogurt
Making yogurt from home is quite possibly the easiest thing to do. It just sounds scary. There are so many recipes out there. I am going to tell you the easiest right here.
- Heat milk to 180 ish degrees.
- Let milk cool to about 120 degrees.
- Stir in about half a cup of yogurt.
- Incubate for 8-12 hours
- Customize by adding honey or maple syrup to sweeten and pureed fruit for flavor.
Those are the basic instructions. How you accomplish this is up to you, depending on what resources you have available and what is conducive to your lifestyle. I will share how I go about it as well as some suggestions for other ways.
- I prefer a crockpot. Depending on my timing is if I will heat the milk on low or high.
- You can heat your milk in an Instant Pot or on the stove.
- This one very much depends on time. If I have a while to wait, I will just turn off the crockpot and let it slowly cool with the lid on. If I am in a hurry, I will pull the ceramic out of the metal heating element with the lid off and whisk it frequently to get it cooled down quickly.
- Whisk in what is left of my last batch of yogurt.
- They say plain yogurt is best for this, but I have used flavored with no problem. There is also the option of purchasing a yogurt culture.
- Put the ceramic back into the metal heating element with the lid on and wrap in towels to sit for the afternoon or night.
Baked Treats
In my opinion, learning how to make a basic baked treat is the easiest place to start. Make the cookie recipe off the back of the chocolate chip bag. Find an easy non-boxed cake or brownies recipe. There is not much difference in making one of these than a box mix. Simply a few more ingredients to measure out and mix in. Homemade waffles and pancakes fall into this category as well.
Bread
Who doesn’t love freshly baked bread? Find a simple recipe to follow and give it a try. This is one thing that takes practice to learn. How wet should your dough be? How long will it actually take to cook? How long to let it rise? Every oven and home temperature is different and will yield different results.
I started off making yeast bread and then went to sourdough. I think for most people, that will probably be the easiest to mentally, and will yield the best results most consistently. After practice, I find great flexibility with sourdough that makes it easy to fit into a busy schedule.
This doesn’t simply mean a loaf of sandwich bread. Bagels, pitas, and rolls all fall into the same difficulty category in my opinion. If you can make one, you can make them all. I am going to give an honorable mention to the tortilla and pasta-type bread products here. They are simpler because they don’t need to rise, but have a similar construction.
Find all my sourdough baking tips here.
Sauce
Whether salad dressing, enchilada sauce or hot fudge, most can be made with very simple ingredients that yield a result much better for you than what you purchase from the store.
I have had a hard time with this one, because while easy to make, the lack of preservatives will often cause a mayo or salad dressing to go bad before one or two people can eat through it. I learned eventually that you can ferment things like mayo by adding a little bit of whey and leaving it on the counter for a few hours, helping it to last longer.
I hope this helped you to know where to start in your own from-scratch food journey! If there are other foods or categories that you find are easy to incorporate into daily life, let me know in a comment below.
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