Cooking From Scratch is a Form of Resilience
In a world where we are more and more drawn away from hearth and home, encouraged by a relentless busyness, and it’s so easy to head to the shops to buy options that promise convenience, why bother to cook from scratch? Because it not only enables you to put nutrient-dense, additive-free and real food on the table year round, it will also greatly reduce your food costs. It’s also one of the most life affirming, nourishing and resilience building, time honoured things you can do.
It’s incredibly worthwhile understanding that long before prices increase at the register, pressure has already moved through multiple layers of the system: fuel, freight, fertiliser, packaging, processing, labour, distribution and retail. By the time those pressures become visible to households, much of the movement has already occurred upstream.
These larger systems are, in most cases, out of our control, but we can influence how dependent upon them we are. Cooking from scratch is more than a lifestyle preference; it is how we feed our own best interests and build capability and resilience, while nourishing body and soul.
There’s no denying modern convenience has brought enormous advantages. Prepared meals, takeaway food, online delivery, and pre-packaged ingredients save time, reduce effort and offer accessibility to people balancing increasingly busy lives. None of that is inherently negative. Cooking without recipes, preserving food and making the most of seasonal abundance, preparing meals from staple ingredients, stretching ingredients across multiple meals, or simply knowing what to do when the fridge looks sparse and the budget is tight are all learned skills.
Up until about the past 50 years or so, across cultures, this skill was handed down in the home, kitchen and in the garden by mums, dads, grannies, nonnas and aunts. As modern convenience increased, that skill has been all but lost or forgotten. Many people still carry memories of them preparing meals almost instinctively; recipes rarely written down, but learned through repetition, observation and shared experience. In many households, cultural identity, hospitality and care were expressed through food long before they were formally explained.
Some forms of resilience are passed between generations, not purchased at stores.
This is not at all about rejecting modern life or romanticising the past. Modern systems have improved efficiency and accessibility in countless ways. The point is not to abandon convenience, but to retain enough capability within modern life that households remain flexible when external systems become expensive, strained or unstable. A skill such as cooking is a powerful capability to have.
A household that can prepare nutritious meals from basic ingredients will have resilience to the machine of commerce that is the core of our current food system, and more flexibility than one reliant entirely on highly processed or ready-made food. Basic pantry staples such as rice, oats, legumes, flour, eggs, seasonal fruits and vegetables, and simple proteins can deliver delicious and nourishing meal usually be adapted across many different meals with relatively little waste.
When you cook from scratch, you are in charge of the ingredients you use, be that how something is grown - for example, conventional, free-range, organic or biodynamic ingredients; or avoiding the stabilisers, preservatives, emulsifiers and additives found in most commercially prepared bottles of sauces, soups, dressings, canned fruit and vegetables, etcetera. Preparing meals from scratch at home allows those decisions to be made intentionally rather than outsourced to heavily processed food systems.
When it comes to cost, it’s also good to know that basic whole foods in Australia and staple ingredients are GST-free. Fresh vegetables, fruit, rice, oats, eggs, legumes and other core ingredients are often exempt, while processed or prepared foods are not.
While large supermarkets can often appear to be the cheapest overall due to scale and buying power, buying directly from the grower or local producer at markets or such - especially when fruit and vegetables are in season - is often cheaper than you may think. Cutting out the middle man makes a big difference, but also because you can reduce exposure to some of the hidden costs built into convenience-based food systems: packaging, branding, excessive processing, delivery logistics and impulse purchasing. It also means a greater share of the purchase price stays with the farmer rather than being absorbed across multiple layers of processing, transport, distribution and retail, which in turn gives that farmer the economic means to survive, building critical food security for the community.
When our busy modern lives rush on, without the learned skill of knowing how to be a thrifty shopper and how to put them to best and delicious use, it’s so easy to see convenience based food options as a welcome partner in the kitchen. Know that rebuilding capability does not require Instagram perfection or a dramatic lifestyle change. Often it begins with a few simple meals, a more stable pantry, learning how to prepare staple ingredients, or cooking more regularly with family or friends.
If you are just starting out, these are some worthy suggestions;
Take it step by step, learn one new thing at a time
You do not need expensive equipment to make nourishing and delicious meals. A good cook’s knife and paring knife are more important.
Delia Smith’s Learn to Cook - an oldie but such a goodie - is an excellent resource.
Over time, small shifts in how food is purchased and prepared can create meaningful differences in household flexibility and spending. It may also involve reconnecting with local growers, seasonal produce, community cooking, or the simple habit of preparing food at home more often. For some people, that could mean visiting farmers' markets, joining community gardens, learning basic preserving techniques, attending local cooking classes, participating in cultural food groups, or simply exchanging recipes and skills within families and communities.
During periods of rising costs, many households rediscover simple meals that are exceptionally nourishing but cheap to make, but sadly, have quietly disappeared from everyday life; soups, slow-cooked dishes such as the Irish Stew recipe below, shared meals built around staple ingredients, preserving seasonal produce, or cooking larger meals that carry across several meals. Again, these activities are not about perfection. They are small but powerful steps towards rebuilding familiarity, confidence and participation around food.
None of this removes larger economic pressures. Households still face rising costs, fuel volatility and broader supply chain pressures that sit far outside individual control. However, the more practical capability a household or community retains, the less vulnerable it becomes to disruptions it cannot control; external disruptions do not immediately become personal crises. Resilience does not always begin at the national level.
This is particularly important in a world increasingly dependent on complex and tightly integrated systems. Modern supply chains are extraordinarily efficient, but efficiency and resilience are not always the same thing. Systems optimised for convenience often operate with very little redundancy or flexibility. This is why small forms of household capability still matter.
A pantry is not just storage. It is your backup plan for flexibility
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Cooking is not simply food preparation; it is actively feeding your own best interests.
Resilience is often quieter than people expect. Sometimes it looks like knowing how to prepare a meal from basic ingredients, teaching a child a family recipe, supporting a local grower, or maintaining enough household capability to adapt when costs rise or external systems become strained.
The goal is not to move backwards.
It is to move forward using time honoured practical skills that have always helped households remain well nourished, capable, connected and adaptable within changing conditions. Now, more than ever, it's time to restore the forgotten skill of cooking.
Bonus Recipe
IRISH STEW
Low gluten, serves 4 - 6
Lamb neck, rich with bone and marrow and a bounty of meat, is one of the cheapest and most nourishing options going and perfect for stews and soups in the cooler weather. Cheaper and tastier still would be neck from hogget or mutton. This stew is a classic example of thrifty buying and cooking from scratch, tried and true over generations. The stew is delicious served with Brussels sprouts.
Kitchen Note:
Buy your neck sliced into rounds.
Herbs such as flat-leaf parsley, thyme, marjoram and chives are easy to grow and love the milder temperatures in autumn, early winter and spring.
An enamel coated cast iron Dutch Oven is perfect for making this stew
Butter or ghee for frying
1 onion, skin discarded, cut in half and finely sliced
2 medium leeks, well rinsed and finely sliced
2 sprigs fresh thyme, two roughly torn, one left whole
3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
3 springs flat-leaf parsley
1 good sprig of marjoram
3 fresh bay leaves
6 medium carrots, sliced on the diagonal, approximately 2 cm thick
4 good size celery stalks, roughly chopped
950 g sliced rounds of lamb neck, some of the fat trimmed
600 g small potatoes
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons pearl barley
1 teaspoon tamari (traditionally brewed soy sauce)
1.25 litres vegetable stock
Handful of fresh flat leaf parsley, finely chopped to serve
Small handful of fresh chives, finely chopped
2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves, finely chopped
Herb Butter
60 g butter
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
Small handful of fresh chives, finely chopped
2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves, finely chopped
Preheat oven to 180ºC, or 150 - 165ºC if fan forced.
Heat 1 tablespoon butter in a large flameproof dish. Add the onion, leek and the roughly torn thyme and sauté over a gentle heat for 2 - 3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Remove half this mixture to a bowl and set aside.
Tie the parsley, marjoram, whole sprigs of thyme and bay leaf together. Place half the carrots and celery on top of the onion mix, topped by 3 - 4 pieces of neck, followed by half of the potatoes. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, half the pearled barely and top with the tied herbs. Repeat the layering with the remaining onion mix, carrots, celery, meat, barley and potatoes. Add the tamari and enough stock to barely cover the stew. Cover with the lid and put in the oven for 2 ½ hours or until the meat is almost falling of the bone.
Meanwhile, to make the herb butter, combine all ingredients in a small bowl, use a fork to mix together. Set aside.
Remove the stew from the oven, remove the lid. Skim off as much fat as possible from the broth (this will be deliciously flavoured fat that you can store in a glass container in the fridge for a long period of time. Use it for roasting vegies!) Remove the meat, place in a dish, cover and set aside. Transfer the pot to the stovetop over a medium - high heat for 15 - 30 minutes, to slightly reduce. Reduction is where flavour is developed. Add tamari, or salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. The potatoes should be partly broken down, also helping to thicken the broth. Taste While this is happening, use a fork and knife to remove the meat from the bone, and any marrow as desired. Discard the bone and gristle.
Return the meat to the pot and sprinkle liberally with the chopped parsley and chives.
Serve the stew with small spoonfuls of the herb butter, which is particularly delicious mashed into the potatoes.