The idea of cooking from scratch seems terrifying at first. How on earth is anyone supposed to take a pile of loose ingredients and turn them into actual food?

Fortunately, cooking from scratch is not nearly as hard as it looks. People who do it right save money and give themselves control over what goes into their mouths.

Some people combine cooking from scratch with weekly meal prep. That makes having a home-cooked dinner every night of the week as easy as getting take-out or making a frozen dinner.

Recipes for: Cooking Food from Scratch

Here are three things to keep in mind when looking for good recipes:

• How complicated is the recipe? No one wants to start a home chef adventure by trying to execute something that takes all day and requires 57 different ingredients, including 19 that no one has ever heard of. New home chefs should also avoid recipes that call for complicated knife skills or other advanced techniques. Home chefs should read recipes carefully to make sure they understand them and feel comfortable with them.
• What ingredients does the recipe require? Some recipes sound great, but use fruits or vegetables that may not be in season. Or, they won't work without a rare spice blend that isn't sold at most grocery stores. A new home chef should begin cooking food from scratch using ingredients that he or she knows and loves. Many recipe databases allow people to search recipes by ingredients.
• What equipment does the recipe require? The biggest challenge that people face when they start cooking food from scratch is making sure they have all the right equipment. All new home chefs need to make sure that they start with recipes that only require basic pots and pans. Save the recipes that use a fancy pasta maker or sous vide machine for later!

A good recipe will be relatively basic, won't require rare ingredients, and won't require a ton of new kitchen tools.

Top 5 Routes for "Cooking Food from Scratch"

These five routes are full of recipes, equipment recommendations, and tips for home chefs of all ability levels.

1. The Kitchn This comprehensive website has an incredible collection of tutorials. The Cooking School is a set of 20 videos that allow the home chef to learn or practice a broad set of basic skills. The Kitchn has recipes for everything from fresh pasta to fresh garnishes.
2. Serious Eats This is another comprehensive website that gives readers science-based tips and techniques for all types of preparations. What does science say about making the best steaks and burgers from scratch? Serious Eats is the place to find out.
3. Simply Scratch This is an excellent collection of simple recipes that are all from scratch. There are dinner recipes, salad recipes, breakfast recipes, and recipes for special dietary needs. Readers can search the recipes by ingredients.
4. Tastes Better from Scratch This is another comprehensive recipe collection. Many of these recipes require relatively few ingredients. The site also offers quick recipes and meal plans. Readers can search the recipes by ingredients.
5. Meal Prep on Fleek Lots of people want to cook food from scratch but have jobs that make them tired at the end of the day. Meal prepping may be helpful for people in this situation. Meal prepping is when someone makes a week's worth of meals in one evening. With meal prep, anyone can have a healthy, homemade dinner, even on a busy weeknight. Plenty of foods that taste great when cooked from scratch - like pasta sauce and soups - are ideal for meal prepping.