Home Cooks Are Sharing The "Already-Prepared" Foods That Are Way Better And Cheaper Than If You Made Them Yourself, And It’s So Helpful

We all have those days where we just don't feel like cooking. You know, moments where you want time in the kitchen to be easy, effortless, and still result in something delicious on your plate. Reddit user Thewhitesthispanic1 asked, "What foods are better purchased "already cooked" rather than the effort and cost to prepare it yourself?" Here are the ready-made dishes and ingredients people swear by:

1."Canned pumpkins for pie. Don't bother getting pumpkins and gutting them. Assuming you got the right pumpkins, it'll still be a lot of work and won't taste any better."

2."Frozen lasagna slaps IMO."

3."Dim sum anything — basically all dumplings."

4."Ketchup. Don't do it. Don't put yourself through it. I was intensely curious and decided to make diabetic-friendly ketchup for my mom. I got the purest and freshest ingredients I could then spent two to three days slowcooking and refining it. What did I get? Ketchup. It tasted and looked identical to Heinz. Who, I learned later, already make diabetic-friendly ketchup."

5."Ribs. I can order some good ribs. 20 minutes later I'm enjoying ribs. If I make ribs, it's a four-hour process. Cleaning the ribs, prepping them, and slowcooking them properly."

6."Kebab. I managed to get quite close to the taste I'm looking for, but I doubt it's worth it even from a utility cost perspective, not to mention time and effort."

7."Pho soup from scratch."

8."Croissants. I curiously looked up how to make them from scratch. Hard no from me."

9."Ice cream."

10."Egg rolls. I tried making them once and almost half of them tore up. It's better to just buy them by the box."

11."Rotisserie chicken."

12."Crackers."

13."Beignets. I was born and raised in the New Orleans area but failed in every homemade attempt. I am ashamed."

14."Canned beans, lentils, and chickpeas! It's about the same price as the dried ones and saves you hours of soaking and cooking."

15."Baklava."

16."Thai food. I’ll never make the stuff myself, and we love it, so that's my splurge."

17."I have a photo from my dad of my great-grandmother in Greece making homemade phyllo dough. I cannot even begin to imagine the work. Now I can walk into the store and choose between about four or five different thicknesses."

18."Unless you want to make dozens of them — tamales."

19."Pretty much anything deep-fried. It's a simple process that almost any restaurant can do perfectly well for most foods, but it doesn't scale well to a home kitchen at all. You end up making messes, possibly scalding yourself, and having to figure out what to do with a big leftover pot of oil just to get something that's maybe marginally better than what you could've gotten at a restaurant for probably less money."

Which food would you rather buy than prepare yourself? Share it in the comments!

Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.