The Case for Home Cooking

Home cooking is on the decline. Despite the rise of cooking shows, meal prep tutorials, and beautiful kitchen pinterest boards, we are cooking at home less than ever, especially in the U.S*. Only about two thirds of meals are prepared at home anymore and I used the term ‘prepared’ loosely. Frozen and pre-prepared foods are growing in popularity, with grocery stores adding more and more offerings as demand increases in these markets. We also have more avenues to eat out than ever before. Between new niche restaurants cropping up, the saturation of the food delivery market, as well as the increase in customizable fast food (the chipotle model), we seem to be outsourcing the creation of our meals with an alarming degree of frequency.

I believe this decline can be attributed to a couple factors. The first is that we all work more. Not only are women more prevalent in the workplace than in previous generations but hours are longer for everyone. The old school 9-5 model with a clear breadwinner and homemaker no longer exists. Families share responsibilities and adults find themselves working hours that are more like 8 to 6 or 7 - right across prime dinner prep time and with no clear lunch hour leaving time for quality midday meals either.

I believe that the second major factor is that young adults spend a lot of time alone. The time frame between moving away from our parents but not yet starting families of our own is getting larger - over a decade is quite common now. Therefore, young people are typically focused on meals for one. Cooking by yourself, just for yourself, can be a demoralizing experience if not nurtured properly, especially when combined with an overworked lifestyle. And if the habit isn’t formed earlier, then it will be tough to continue even in a future family/group setting when it could be more rewarding.

However, despite all of the factors contributing to the decline in home cooking, I refuse to believe it is out of fashion entirely or even that it will continue to diminish so dramatically. First of all, with the pandemic we saw a huge wave of home cooking. Now that people had time on their hands, interest in cooking spiked. Yeast prices were through the roof since everyone wanted to try their hand at making their own bread and trendy tiktok recipes caused typically common ingredients like tomatoes or feta to even be sold out. Clearly, the interest in cooking still remains. 

Secondly, I believe that once the habit of cooking is formed, it is tough to break. I say this from my own experience. When I was little I would watch and help my parents cook and now that I’m older, it’s ingrained as part of my lifestyle and I see similar habits from other people who learned to cook early on.

I define cooking as the practice of preparing food from base ingredients. In my opinion, something as simple as cooking rice or eggs totally counts, but heating up a frozen meal or putting canned soup on the stove does not. 

But why bother? There are multiple industries that specialize in food preparation so that we don’t have to. We can focus on work and other hobbies and leave everything else up to the food corporations.**

While that is true, I believe home cooking is crucial for our wellbeing. 

First of all, cooking all your own meals means you know exactly what is in your food. You know how much  salt, fat, and sugar is in there. All those things we are told to be careful about - you now control. Furthermore, by cooking your own food, you massively decrease the amounts of  preservatives and other chemicals food companies use to keep their food looking consistent and delicious. In the same vein, you can also control  how much you make. Instead of buying a frozen pizza and being tempted to eat the whole thing when it comes out of the oven, you can make exactly how much you need for your own lifestyle. 

Cooking is also one of the only ways we get close to nature in a typical life anymore. Most of us are far removed from the farming and cultivation process but handling raw ingredients reminds us that all of our food comes from somewhere in nature. Bread comes from wheat, meat comes from live animals, even alcohol comes from plants. To work with basic whole ingredients is to recognize where your food comes from and maintain that connection with the larger ecosystem.  

I also believe cooking is great for creativity. Maybe this is just me, but it is one of the only ways I am able to flex my creative muscles on a weekly basis. I can’t paint or draw or sculpt but I can cook. I can create using the medium of food,  I can play with flavors or presentations, I get to transform something using my own two hands and that is extremely rewarding.

Lastly, and most importantly, I believe cooking is great for relationships and emotional wellbeing. I’ve always known cooking was important because my parents prioritize it. I remember hanging out in the kitchen watching my mom check on bread or seeing my dad marinate chicken. I would often watch them work side by side - one parent preparing the main dish and the other tending to the sides. Growing up, I saw how important it was that they would cook for me and my sister and that we would sit down and eat what they had created together. 

I learned to cook for myself while still living with them and continued to do so even after moving away. I discovered just how much I liked it when I had the opportunity to cook for others. Cooking offers so many opportunities for connection and for intimacy. It offers a passive environment to simply hang out while something is in the oven needing periodic checks, or it offers a more labor intensive opportunity to share that feeling of creation with someone else. 

Eating home cooking together is also intensely intimate. When you eat something you’ve cooked in your own home, you’re not simply sharing the experience of consuming as you would in a restaurant (don’t get me wrong, I love doing this as well), but you get to share the cooking process as well which increases the appreciation by a huge multiplier. You and your party can recognize not only the end result of a beautiful dish or complex flavors, but also the raw ingredients and the labor you’ve put into it. The feeling you get from that accomplishment is so much more satisfying that any restaurant you could ever go to.

In many cultures, food is the ultimate love language. Parents labor over food for their children, people use it to impress their in-laws, and consistently prize fresh ingredients and family recipes. It is used as a way to bring people together and to define themselves. In the U.S., which prizes the individual so heavily, this is not usually the case. Due to our overworked lifestyles, we prioritize personal preferences, convenience, and speed instead. So when you cook your food yourself, it can even be a tiny act of rebellion against capitalism, in addition to being a creative medium, a path to health, a connection with the natural world, and an act of love - not only for others, but for yourself. 

Part of a stellar homecooked meal my boyfriend made for me - and part of the inspiration for this article

*Most of this article is from a U.S. perspective since this is where I live and have the most experience. Other countries treat food and cooking with a much different attitude.

**This article was also partially inspired by the book ‘Cooked’ by Michael Pollan where he discusses some similar concepts as part of the intro to the book.