
COMFORT COOKING. Pictured is a serving of one-skillet cheesy beefy
macaroni. More people are cooking at home these days, and when they do eat
restaurant food, they’re often looking for comfort food, experts say. Other
trends include simpler recipes, recipes with fewer ingredients, one-pot
meals, sheet-pan meals, finger food, and pantry-ingredient recipes, all up
significantly year over year. (Cheyenne M. Cohen/Katie Workman via AP)
From The Asian Reporter, V30, #11 (October 5, 2020), page 7.
From quick shortcuts to slow cookers, how we’re eating now
By Katie Workman
The Associated Press
In normal times, food trends often started in restaurants, with top
chefs. Maybe they got written up in food magazines or blogs. After some
time, you could find the trending ingredients on grocery store shelves.
These days, the pandemic is determining how and what we eat, from quick
shortcuts to slow cookers. There’s lots more home cooking, and many more
family meals.
Even when people do eat restaurant food, they’re often looking for
familiar dishes, experts say.
In general, "the trend is looking backwards rather than forwards," says
Esmee Williams, who looks at where home cooking is heading for
allrecipes.com, based in Seattle. Recipes from the 1960s and ’70s, like
chicken Kiev, chicken a la king, cheese fondue, and salmon patties have
become more popular, she says.
"There’s a lot of disappointment happening in our days, so nobody wants
tears at the table. Let’s treat ourselves to something we all will like,"
says Williams.
It’s part of a nostalgia wave sweeping many industries, including decor,
fashion, and beauty.
Back to basics
A year ago, Williams says, many foodies were aspirational in their diets.
Less so now.
As Darren Seifer, a food and beverage industry analyst for the NPD Group
in Chicago, puts it, consumers aren’t looking to explore new and fancy. Most
"are just trying to get by."
Under all sorts of pressure, people are juggling a desire for comfort
food with the need to find a healthy diet and avoid "stress eating," he
says.
"If you are a food and beverage manufacturer, you need to be thinking
about convenience and comfort right now," Seifer says.
That leads to some contradictory trends. Home cooks are doing more with
vegetables, particularly seasonal produce, while also hunkering down with
indulgent sweets and treats. Seifer cites higher sales of both vegetables
and ice cream in May 2020, compared to the previous May.
Taking it easy
Seifer and Williams also see a trend towards shortcut products, like
refrigerated dough, frozen pizza crusts, and pancake mixes.
Carli Baum of New York City describes a morning routine that echoes this
trend; she has been baking refrigerated biscuits or crescent rolls for her
young kids, but pairing them with homemade eggs and fresh berries. She is
happy to make breakfast, but doesn’t want "to make EVERYTHING from scratch."
Baum has been going to more farmers’ markets this summer and leaning into
the idea of cooking what is available. She says her kids seem to be more
open to trying produce they have seen displayed and purchased at the
markets.
Stretching those cooking skills
Another trend cited by Williams: more recipe searches than before for
authentic ethnic foods, such as Asian, Mexican, and Soul Food.
"People are travelling with their taste buds, re-creating dishes they ate
out but now have to cook instead," she says. "Also, these dishes connect us
with relatives we can’t be with right now."
And don’t forget today’s fascination with what Williams calls
"self-reliance" cooking — things like homemade bread, homemade pasta,
homemade yogurt, and an interest in canning. These more labor-intensive
foods provide a way to keep busy, learn something new, save money, and eat
well, she says.
Family meals
In households where adults are working from home and kids have shorter
school days, the dinner hour may well start an hour earlier this fall,
Williams predicts.
"The family meal is back — and it’s happening across all three meals.
Home is the epicenter of all activity, and meals are a big part of that,"
she says.
Searches for family-friendly recipes on allrecipes are up 34% from last
year. Searches for breakfast recipes are up 35%, and lunch up 45% in page
views. "We are making many more meals for ‘we’ rather than ‘me,’" Williams
says.
Other trends include simpler recipes, recipes with fewer ingredients,
one-pot meals, sheet-pan meals, finger food, and pantry-ingredient recipes.
Vegan and vegetarian cooking is on the rise, she says. Tofu and tempeh
searches, which have declined in recent years, are now increasing; grilled
tofu was a popular search on allrecipes this summer.
Homemade pizza "is going crazy — family pleasing, creative, and fun, a
good alternative to takeout," says Williams. "People have become more
comfortable with yeast, and people are also buying pizza ovens."
So, which appliances are riding these new waves? Multicooker sales are
up, as are recipe searches for Instant Pot recipes (68% higher than this
time last year on allrecipes.com). Air fryers and slow cookers are popular.
And sales of bread makers were up 800 percent in April compared with the
previous April, Seifer said.
Ordering in
As for restaurant takeout, digital ordering is growing quickly. Seifer
says pre-pandemic digital ordering (online or via apps) made up 6% of
orders; now it’s double that. Another trend is QR code menus that you pull
up on your phone, as opposed to paper menus. Using a QR code and a phone for
payment eliminates the need for handling credit cards and cash.
Katie Workman writes regularly about food for The Associated Press. She
has written two cookbooks focused on family-friendly cooking, Dinner
Solved! and The Mom 100 Cookbook.
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