Shortcut cooks: For them, a tasty, healthy & quick dinner is just a jar away

A LONGTIME local cooking teacher, Ann Hazan is a proponent of making things from scratch. But as a working mom who needs to get dinner on the table every night, she recognizes the need for short cuts.

That's why you'll find Hazan reaching for the Francesco Rinaldi no-salt pasta sauce when she puts together a lasagna, braises meat for osso bucco, or preps other dishes where the sauce is not the focal point. After a little doctoring with fresh onions, Hazan says, you would have a hard time figuring out that the sauce came from a jar.

"If I want to make a quick lasagna, I'll use [jarred sauce] because there are so many other things in there," said Hazan, whose class repertoire includes "30 Minute Menus" at Main Line School Night in Radnor. "If you find the right quick ingredients, it works so well."

When Hazan is serving pasta, though, she'll leave the jar in the cupboard and throw together a sauce with fresh tomatoes, olive oil and garlic.

Her choices are typical of the decisions home cooks face in trying to balance wanting to serve fresh and healthy meals with the daily deadline pressure of getting dinner on the table.

"We like to think of ourselves as purists, but it's not reality," said Hazan, who also teaches at Foster's Homeware in Old City. "Most people don't want everything from scratch - we all have our plates full."

For Deana Gunn, who has two children under age 7, her everyday cooking solution is to enlist the help of a guy named Joe - as in Trader Joe's.

Gunn, a self-trained cook who holds a doctorate in electrical engineering, has such a passion for the Monrovia, Calif.-based chain that she has collaborated with fellow MIT alumna Wona Miniati on two books: "Cooking with All Things Trader Joe's" and its sequel, "The Trader Joe's Companion: A Portable Cookbook."

"We grew up cooking from scratch, but over the years, as we got busy with careers and once we had children, we didn't have the hours to devote to it on a daily basis, but we didn't want to succumb to a life of fast food and takeout," Gunn said.

Their strategy is to use Trader Joe's vast selection of simmer sauces, tapenades, salsas, canned beans and other prepared ingredients as a cooking base. Although many stores stock such items, they prefer TJ's because of the products' relatively low cost, compared with upscale chains and gourmet shops, and reliance on all-natural ingredients.

"You have to feel good about using things from a jar," Gunn said. "When you look at a jar of Trader Joe's pasta sauce or curry sauce, it's the same stuff you would use to make it at home."

In my own cooking, I regularly supplement my repertoire with Trader Joe's products, such as salsas, guacamole and bagged salad mixes. However, Gunn and Miniati, who say they are not affiliated with the store, take their connection one step further by using the grocer's pre-chopped onions, shredded carrots, steamed lentils and frozen minced garlic.

"When you go to a restaurant and sit down and order a meal and it's in front of you 10 to 15 minutes later, it's like, 'Why can't I do that at home,' " Gunn said. "A crew has come in that day and chopped and prepared everything. We think of Trader Joe's as our prep crew."

Whatever brands you like, having an assortment of jarred or frozen products in your pantry, as well as staples like soy sauce, brown sugar, olive oil and vinegars is key to turning out a Tuesday dinner without much fuss.

"If you have the ingredients at home, it makes it a lot easier, because half of the battle is there for you," said Hazan, who is the co-author of three books, including "The Reading Terminal Market Cookbook."

"You can whip up something in 15 or 20 minutes," she said.

Some of the decisions on scratch vs. box are easy: It's really hard to tell the difference between your own pancakes and Aunt Jemima, Hungry Jack and other brand-name mixes. Frozen vegetables can make a worthy substitute, particularly when certain veggies are out of season or not readily available.

Buying precooked shrimp for a salad or other dish where the flavors are not derived from cooking the shrimp is an affordable time-saver. Labor-intensive items like puff pastry, although delectable in their homemade version, are more than adequate when purchased frozen.

Still, there are times when scratch makes more sense, either because the prep time isn't so long or it just tastes better.

For me, there's nothing like a batch of homemade brownies, from an old reliable source - my "Betty Crocker Cookbook." The prep is simple - all you need is a pot and a mixing bowl. The ingredient list is short: Unsweetened chocolate, butter, sugar, flour and eggs. And the flavor and texture is so much better than the box version.

Likewise, Hazan can't imagine why anyone would use premade or powdered mashed potatoes when the real deal takes less than 20 minutes to prep and cook, or wouldn't sauté their own boneless chicken breasts, since they're so much cheaper than precooked ones.

"People just don't realize if they haven't done a lot of cooking that you can put together some wonderful dishes, and they don't have to take a lot of time," Hazan said. "After you've cooked for a while, you get a feel for the taste vs. time. It's a matter of getting a little experience."

Robert DiGiacomo is a Philadelphia-based writer.