I have come across several different definitions of "scratch cooking" over the years.

Some people think any time you make something at home it is cooking from scratch even if it involves heating up an entree or can of soup or baking a cake from a mix.

Some think if is cooking a dish with ingredients that include some combination of fresh and prepackaged items (ie spaghetti made with jarred sauce & boxed pasta & fresh meat and/or veggie)

Some think it counts only if every ingredient used was fresh--no cans, jars, mixes, etc. So bread and pasta made by hand, no canned chicken or beef broth, no container yogurt etc

I go by the second definition. Today I am making chili with fresh meat and some fresh veggies, but also canned tomato soup and canned chilis. And I say it is from scratch. We may even top it with store bought fritos and cheese...it's still from scratch in my book. less

I call things 'from scratch' when I make them from the raw ingredients---from flour and water and things that couldn't be broken down any further. There's definitely wiggle-room, though---when my makes spaghetti sauce, she uses canned tomatoes---but they're canned tomatoes that she canned in the summer when tomatoes were in season. Even though she also uses a store-bought can of tomato paste along with those, I'm hardly going to say she's not making her sauce from scratch.

You know? I've never defined it for myself before. I'm going to say that, to me, "from scratch" means from the bare-bonesest ingredients possible. So pasta where you add the egg to the flour and roll it out is pasta from scratch. The etymology of "from scratch" means "from nothing," right?

That said---if you make spaghetti with boxed pasta and jarred sauce (which is how I do it---my tomato sauces never come out deliciously so I've mostly given up, and I don't have a pasta roller), you can still tell your family "I made this for you," and there's no shame in that at all. "I made these biscuits from scratch" means "I cut some shortening into some flour and baking powder and kneaded the dough and cut some biscuits and baked them," not "I opened this can of Grands." But "I made this biscuits for you" covers both of those things, and it's admirable (and probably tasty) no matter whether or not it's from scratch. less

If I bake a cake from a mix, I don't call it "from scratch." If I use flour and eggs and baking powder etc, I would call it "from scratch." If I were to use something like Hamburger Helper, I would not call that "from scratch." If I use a protein, cook pasta, and use the tomato sauce from a can, I might call it "from scratch."

As I am Mediterranean, I do not call jars of sauce "from scratch" even if something is added to it, but I do call sauce I made over hours and hours, using canned tomatoes "from scratch."

I think it varies for each person.

A chili where some of the ingredients were taken from cans? Yeah, I'd call that "from scratch" only if you used your own herb blend and didn't use one of those envelopes of a few herbs and a ton of MSG in it. less

I consider cooking from scratch to be #3 - absolutely no prepackaged ingredients. Only ingredients like flour, sugar, fresh veggies, etc. Things that cannot be broken down any further. I don't usually cook from scratch, because it's a lot more work.

I usually do what I call "home cooking". That is #2 that you mentioned. You make something yourself with a mixture of prepackaged and fresh items. Like making spaghetti sauce with canned tomatoes, and herbs, spices, etc. less