Discussion Forums
for the
Personal Chef Industry

I'm interested in knowing how many folks use prepared foods such as rice mixes, flavored canned tomatoes, stuffing mixes etc. in place of preparing from sratch? I know they save time but does the client know or care? Thanks

Jon - we use quite a few things like flavored couscous, wild rice mixes, etc. However, the one thing we never use is canned pasta sauce. We always make our own with canned tomatoes.

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Jim Davis
The Really Good Food Co.
A Personal Chef Service

Hi Jon! Welcome to the Forums!
I always found that canned diced tomatoes were frequently superior to the fresh (tasteless) tomatoes I was purchasing, and a really good time saving convenience for me.
It seems that tomatoes have been "engineered" to travel well...now if they could just engineer them to TASTE like tomatoes again...
Candy

Hi Jon:

We use canned tomatoes, tomato paste, lite coconut milk either frozen or in a can, sometimes will buy an organic cornbread mix then fortify it. Other things like Thai chili paste, etc....but thats about it. I prefer buying my grains from bulk in a whole foods store, so that I only purchase what I need. Packaged grains or pastas with the cute little package in them....Never...
The problem I have with them is that so often they contain too much sodium, and MSG..
We use bases to fortify some stocks, but only top quality, such as "Minors", and only if they say "no MSG".....
I am mostly concerned with flavor and ingredients when it comes to processed items, but I am not a fanatic....case in point: as a young Executive Chef (a long time ago) I made my staff roast pumpkins and extract the pulp in order to make 40 pumpkin
pies for Thanksgiving....after tasting them I realized that it tasted no different than buying the canned pumpkin and adding the rest of the ingredients. I never used fresh pumpkin for this again!!!!
Do not sacrifice quality, but also do not think that because you are taking the longer method that it will be better.

My two cents!!!!

Good Luck,

Chef Dennis Nosko
A Fresh Endeavor
Boston

A lot depends on your target customer and how you've focused your business. I promise high quality and lower salt and fat than take-out and restaurant food.

That salt thing takes care of eliminating a lot of convenience foods. But if the Lundbergs are kind enough to mix an assortment of fancy rices together for me, I will take advantage of that.

And canned tomatoes almost always beat fresh except for a brief shining moment in the summer.

But some chefs use canned sauces and other prepared mixes all the time and that's fine with their customers -- all depend on who you're serving....

Dennis, you made me laugh -- I wish we had compared notes before I did the same thing for a "pumpkin ale"! Cursing and scraping at those damned pumpkins. Last year I used canned. Tasted better and took less than a tiny fraction of the time.

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Meredith
Whisk For Hire
Kensington, MD

Hi Dennis- I swear by Minors and it is the only base I like.It goes back to the restuarant/catering days,even for just enhancing stocks and sauces.
The Pumpkin Pie from scratch I tried for the first and last time this past Thanksgiving and I agree the canned is fine.
Where do you shop for your Whole Foods? What about your Meat/Seafood/Produce etc,if you don't mind saying?
Thanks and I look forward to meeting you in September.Take care.

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John McGrath
Chef de Cuisine
Boston

Hi John:

Meats I get from McKinnons meats in Somerville. If I need free-range, antibiotic free meats I get them at Wild Oats in Medford, or Bread & Circus on occasion... They are not cheap, but when items go on special they are reasonable.
Seafood at Fresh Pond in Cambridge (Julia Child's haunt), Wild Oats, Star Market, and in Chinatown (Boston). Asian Products & Macrobiotic in Chinatown (Boston), Kotobukiya in the Porter Square Exchange, Cambridge, and some items in Wild Oats, or Star Market. For Middle Eastern and Indian, Shalimar Indian Spice Market in Cambridge (Central Square, some Armenian shops in Watertown. Produce, Wild Oats, Pemberton Farms (Mass. ave, Cambridge), Star Market, Wilson Farms (Lexington), Chengkwong market in Chinatown, Oh Buster Jr. in Salem, and Harvest Food Coop in Central Square, Cambridge. We also keep our eyes out for farmers markets during the season.

I am sure I have forgotten a few!!!!!


Dennis Nosko
A Fresh Endeavor
Boston

Personally, I vow to use as little canned or pre-processed foods, as well as mixes, as possible. Not only do I not know what goes into these things (if it is canned, expect more salt than you can shake a stick at), I don't know the quality of ingredients nor the amount of care that was used when making the pre-processed.
Call me a nut, but when I cook, I talk to what I am cooking, telling it how good it looks, smells, etc. My girlfriend laughs at me for doing it; it is most likely 100% psychological, but I swear it tastes better when I talk to it (Should I be telling you al this?!?). If you put a canned [whatever] in your dish, you don't know what it has been told. It could ruin your whole dish!
Seriously, though. I only cook from scratch. It costs a bit more, but the outcome is unbelieveably better.

If you think about it, Personal Chefs are some of the last "scratch" cooks around. Candy

Even though I don't have my first official cookdate until next week I just wanted to join in the fresh v packaged thing. I've always used canned toms but this week I got some still warm from the sun toms from my neighbors garden, and basil too. I think I made the best chicken cacciatore I've ever made. I know I wont always get perfect ingreds but when they come along I do prefer them. The pumpkin thing sounds like a labor intensive nightmare!! Thanks for sharing.
Lorraine
Masters Pantry

You wanna talk labor intensive???
(You're gonna love this Karen from Cornucopia PC service) I once made a cornucopia out of pastry dough to put on the table at Thanksgiving. Never again!!!! This was years ago, before I had any clue about wanting to work with food. I just like to be challenged in the kitchen. I think to do that in the first place I must have been mentally challenged! For some reason the strips of dough kept falling off so I was going mental. I used egg to bind them and everything but they were just defying gravity so they didn't want to stay. When all was said and done (and baked) it came out very nice.

Sadly, I now have the urge to make another one to see if a decade or so has taught me anything. Ah! A challenge!!!!

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Samantha Ellis
The Enchanted Kitchen
Cape Cod, MA
Enchanted_Kitchen@excite.com