Our modern diet, what some call the Standard American Diet (yes, the initials are SAD), has evolved from real and unprocessed foods to a precariously stacked pyramid of prepackaged foods bought from local groceries or big box stores. These already prepared and conveniently packaged foods include precooked and frozen meals, plastic-wrapped breads, shelf-stable condiments, and snack foods with faraway expiration dates. Unfortunately, most of these packaged foods are laden with artificial ingredients that do nothing to support good health. That’s a problem.
So what can modern home cooks do? We need convenient, easy-to-prepare meals, but more importantly, we need foods that bring back the nutrition that used to be part of daily meals. The solution is to turn back the clock just a bit and embrace traditional foods. These homemade foods are made with simple, whole ingredients, eschewing the more complex and artificial ingredients that contribute more to shelf life than to a healthy life.
With the constant demands of modern life, the task of making the bulk of your food at home can seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Think of your transition from a processed foods kitchen to a traditional foods kitchen as a journey, and one you don’t have to complete overnight. Simple steps will make it easy for you to get started, and with each subsequent step, you'll build your experience and confidence in acquiring the traditional culinary skills of making homemade foods. Resolving to throw out all the packaged food from your pantry and begin making everything homemade on day one is a recipe for failure. You don’t need to rush the process.
The Power of a Roast Chicken
In the comments on the traditional foods videos I publish on my Mary’s Nest YouTube channel, viewers often ask me what’s the easiest way to start creating a traditional foods kitchen. I immediately respond, “Just start with a roast chicken.” Most people love roast chicken, and there’s so much you can do with a roast chicken. Its journey doesn’t end with the leftover chicken scraps at the end of dinner.You don’t need any fancy equipment or ingredients to roast a chicken. Like our ancestors, you can use something as simple as a cast-iron skillet and familiar vegetables. First, place some carrots on the bottom of the skillet to make a bed for your whole chicken, and then surround your chicken with quartered potatoes and onions. Sprinkle everything with a bit of salt and pepper, dot your ingredients with butter, and pop your skillet in the oven at 350 degrees F for an hour or so.
That didn’t take much time on your part, other than snuggling your whole chicken into the vegetables you prepared. Your oven did the work, and in just a short time, you cooked the “original” one-pan meal and fed your family a tasty dinner with real foods. You’ve just started on your traditional foods journey, and it’s just as easy to take the next step.
Once everyone’s enjoyed all the chicken meat, you now have a chicken carcass. (Just think that you wouldn’t have these chicken bones, a valuable commodity in a traditional foods kitchen, if you had succumbed to buying a packaged frozen dinner of chicken nuggets.) You can toss your chicken carcass into a stock pot with vegetable scraps, including carrot peelings and onion skins. (Yes, those scraps are edible!) Add a bit of vinegar, cover the contents with water, and simmer for six hours. After you strain out the solids, you’re rewarded with a richly gelatinous chicken bone broth, which cost you pennies to make. (And cleverly, you got your stock pot and stovetop to do most of the work for you!)
Use your chicken bone broth to help you move a few more steps on your traditional foods journey by using it as a nutritious substitution in place of water when cooking rice or other grains. Plus, bone broth makes a tasty sipping beverage, and you can even add it to a fruit smoothie for a collagen boost!
Next Steps
Many home cooks who are new to traditional foods are often pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to make homemade jams and pickles, which can then be made shelf-stable and tucked into the pantry thanks to a process known as water bath canning. This type of home canning requires very little special equipment. If you have a stockpot and some canning jars and lids, you can get started. You will quickly find that home canning can be a bit addictive, which is good because your pantry shelves will always be brimming with a whole host of goodies. Best of all, you control the ingredients, and yes, again, you’ve persuaded your stockpot and stovetop to do most of the work for you.However, one category of recipes can often stump new traditional foods cooks: how to make bread. Is sourdough a healthy option? Of course. But it’s not always easy for a new home baker to begin and maintain a sourdough starter. If you’ve never made homemade bread before and jump in to try baking sourdough bread, you may get frustrated and discouraged when your sourdough starter refuses to bubble. (Sourdough starters can be persnickety!)
You'll be more successful if you first build up your baking skills. Start with something easy and familiar. Try making a super-simple, super-soft sandwich bread to replace the plastic-wrapped bread from the grocery store. And when I say super simple, I mean it. The sandwich bread recipe I’ve included here requires very little effort. You don’t even need to knead the dough. It is little more than a stir it up, throw it in the pan, let it rise, and bake it recipe! Once you master how to make sandwich bread and discover how much tastier it is than store-bought bread (with its dough conditioners and preservatives), it will be hard to buy what comes in that plastic sleeve again.
The next thing you know, you'll want to make a sourdough starter and, yes, sourdough bread. And if you are patient with yourself and your starter, it will bubble in time, and you will be baking beautiful sourdough boules that are pretty close to what your local baker sells.
So start on your journey of self-improvement and transform your kitchen into a traditional foods kitchen, one recipe and one step at a time. Add to your repertoire slowly and master one skill before moving on to the next. And never be hard on yourself or strive for perfection.
Will there be the occasional culinary disaster? Sure, but home-cooked meals made from whole simple ingredients will be better than prepackaged and processed foods from the supermarket. And that’s what we’re striving for, along with the convenience of getting your kitchen equipment to do the work for you. The food you prepare at home is tastier and more nutritious, and it also contains a secret ingredient—the love you give to all those who enjoy your meals. So join me on this traditional foods journey—and just start with a roast chicken!
