Five Processed Foods You Can Easily Make at Home

If you feel like you have no time to make homemade foods, you may be surprised how easily you can make some of the foods that you are used to buying at the store.  In fact, there are five types of processed foods that you can easily make at home.  These foods are breads, yogurt, ice-cream, syrups, and sauces.  One reason that certain processed foods can be made with minimal effort is due to cooking machines.  Cooking machines can be valuable additions to your kitchen since you can make certain foods with minimal time and effort.  Here is a breakdown of each of the categories:

1. Bread: Using a bread machine can allow you to make quickly and easily make homemade bread.  This can be especially useful since there are many different types of bread that we may consume throughout the year and you can make them easily at home and without preservatives and additives.  In addition to sandwich bread, you can make stuffing for turkey, or bake your own croutons for salads.  These are all things you may not have imagined you could easily make at home.
2. Yogurt: Yogurt cookers make the process of making homemade yogurt extremely simple.  You need only to measure and heat milk, add plain yogurt and pour the mixture into jars.  The cooker does the rest of the work while you sleep and in the morning you have your own homemade yogurt.  You can use a yogurt cooker to make a variety of different yogurt flavors as well as Greek yogurt.
3. Ice-Cream: Though ice-cream is not the most health of foods, with an ice-cream maker you can make ice-cream and know exactly what is in it and can even make your own low-fat or low sugar varieties.  How many types of ice-cream can you find at the store that are made with a specific type of honey or the sweetener of your choice?  Furthermore, you can make desserts such as sherbets and frozen yogurt for a faction of the price of store bought frozen desserts.
4. Syrups: You may be surprised how simple it is to make a fruit syrup.  All you will need is sugar or honey and frozen or fresh fruits.  Here is a simple recipe I found for raspberry syrup that can be used successfully with any type of fruit that you can think of.  When your syrup is ready, refrigerate it and use it for ice-cream toppings, to flavor yogurt or to flavor homemade milk shakes.  Additionally, if you buy canning jars, you can easily can the syrup and stock your pantry.  Just be sure to follow the instructions for canning on the jar label.  Plus, if you get into making syrup, you should know that you are only one step away from making jelly since the only difference is that you add fruit pectin when making jelly and jam.  Again, for best results, follow the jelly recipe on the fruit pectin label.
5. Sauces: There are many different types of sauces, stocks and gravies that you can easily make at home.  So instead of buying spaghetti sauce, consider making your own.  If you don't have a cook book, Google it and you'll find plenty of recipes.  The same is true for broths, stocks, dips and salsa.  All of these types of sauces will taste much better if you make them on your own and will be without preservatives and other harmful additive found in processed foods. 

So, even if you live a busy lifestyle, there are plenty of healthy alternatives to processed foods which you can make at home with minimal time and effort.  Though these are only five food types, you will find that there are plenty of other types of processed foods that you can replace.  Just pay attention to what goes into your shopping cart.  If you find that you have grabbed a processed food, think about whether or not you can make it instead of buying it.  The chances are you can Google the recipes for many different types of foods that you would have never imagined to be so simple to make on your own.