Mother's Little Helper - A Jar of Spagetti Sauce

The cover story for this month's issue of Saveur magazine is dedicated to the quest for the perfect Ragu sauce in Bologna, Italy. There are numerous recipes for delicious sounding, slow-cooked, authentic Italian Ragu dishes - most taking about 3 hours or more to prepare. The very thought of those rich and meaty sauces over fresh-made pasta is enough to make my mouth water in anticipation. While reading the article I started trying to mentally schedule a day when I could devote the 3 to 4 hours needed to make the perfect saucy pasta dish for friends and family to enjoy. After a few minutes of contemplation over the scheduling manipulations that would be required to free up the 4 hours of cooking time needed for my pasta feast, I was forced to admit scheduling defeat. (Scheduling is so hard when you are trying to do it all from Career Woman, to Family Manager to Domestic Goddess!) So maybe I will have to leave the creation of the perfect home-made pasta feast in the capable hands of one of the local Italian restaurants (at least for now), where my only time requirement will be the hour or so to sit and enjoy dinner.

There was another interesting shorter article in Saveur this month, titled "Mother's Little Helper". Deputy Editor, Dana Bowen, talked about her mother, a second generation Italian-American woman, and her surreptiticious use of Ragu-brand pasta sauce as a basis for her own legendary "homemade" Italian sauces. Dana even mentioned that if family and friends were coming over for dinner her mother took great care to throw the store bought sauce jars away in the outside trash cans so that no one would spot the confederates to a true "homemade" meal in the kitchen trash. I wonder if Dana realizes that while her mother was bring old world traditions over to America she was also modifying those traditions to work in an increasingly fast pace society. Her mom's creative uses for store bought pasta sauces as a basis for her own variety of Italian dishes made her an early adopter of the semi-homemade cooking trend which is all the rage in American kitchens today.

Today's cooks are more sophisticated in their tastes but less proficient in their cooking skills than past generations. What they want is slow cooked authentic deliciousness when they dine out and simple dinner solutions that taste homemade for busy meals at home. If you want to appeal to the masses, simple recipes using pre-made ingredients that generate healthy interesting meals in a hurry are just the ticket. Be sure to mix it up with an interesting selection of ethnic dishes as well as simple versions of familiar classics for the broadest reach on usage occasions and the widest appeal to consumers.

The Return to Butter!

I admit it - I have always loved butter. In the 90's I slathered it on bread even when prevailing diet wisdom advised a shift to "heart-healthy" margarine. By the late-90's and into the early 2000's however I, like many other Americans, followed the food trends and shifted to more Mediterranean-style cooking. This, of course, pushed me towards using more olive oil. Butter went from a staring role in most of my meals to an supporting and indulgent role for certain recipes. And as one would expect my rate of grocery store purchases of butter dropped dramatically. More recently though I noticed a gradual increase in recipes calling for butter. Maybe it has been because of our increasing dalliance into new types of ethnic recipes which call for for wonderfully rich ingredients like butter and ghee. It could be due in part to a certain amount of consumer disillusionment with the previous claims of the "heart-healthy" virtues of margarine. I think it also has something to do with just the natural circle of life in all trends (every trend seems to come back into style eventually).

It seems like I am not the only one noticing this delicious butter trend. This month's issue of Saveur magazine is a special issue devoted to "The Beauty of Butter". In the editorial by the Editor-in-Chief, James Oleland, he notes that 2005 was the first year since 1957 that Americans ate more butter than margarine. To me this shift makes sense as you look at how Americans are starting to being more mindful of the foods they eat. There is shift from overly-processed food towards more natural and organic options or at least towards foods with ingredients people can pronounce.

So as you look for recipes to fit your needs think about what type of ingredients your target market prefers - butter, margarine, olive oil, corn oil or something else. You want to keep your recipes diverse and current while being mindful of what staple ingredients your target consumer is currently stocking in her refrigerator and pantry.

The Rise of the Cooking Inconfident

There was a really interesting article in the Washington Post about 10 days ago titled Cooking 101: Add a Cup of Simplicity. It outlined a trend that many of the big food brands who have dedicated teams of recipe developers already know - Americans tend to lack basic cooking skills. There lots of factors that have led to this like increasing numbers of moms in the work place (they have less time to teach the next generation how to cook), the rise of convenience foods, the proliferation of the microwave, the elimination of Home Economics classes from high school curriculums and, of course, there is also Americans' love affair with fast food. The net result is there are a lot of people who don't have the basic cooking skills that past generations took for granted. But don't mistake people's lack of cooking knowledge with a lack of interest in cooking. You only have to look at the explosion of TV chefs, the food network, cooking websites and cooking magazines to know that people are ready to return to their kitchens.....they just needs a little help.

What kind of help should you and your brand give them? If you are a mainstream brand, start with giving consumers very simple "semi-homemade" type recipes that start with your delicious food product as a base. Keep the ingredients list short. Limit the range of ingredients to things commonly found in the pantry of your consumers. Bullet point the prep steps and keep chopping and measuring to a minimum. Keep the prepping and cooking time as short as possible. Finally test your recipes before you publish them to make sure they really are tasty! Nothing will deter a consumer faster from trying more of your recipes than having served a bad or inedible meal to her family. Remember your goal is to be your consumers' resource in the kitchen.