Shortcuts: The good, the bad and the ugly

When are cooking shortcuts too short? Every home cook has a line that she or he will not cross. I draw mine at using cream-of-anything soup as a shortcut to a cream sauce, processed cheese food and any so-called "home baked" goodie that comes in a tube in the dairy aisle. (Confession: Cracking the tubes open terrifies me.)

Sam Zien, aka "Sam the Cooking Guy," who has a cooking show on FitTV and at least two cookbooks under his belt, has his own standards. In his latest book, "Awesome Recipes & Kitchen Shortcuts" (2010 Wiley), he interprets "shortcuts" to include gravy in jars, packaged Hollandaise, shelf-stable "ready" bacon and pizza dough from one of those scary tubes.

OK, I disagree. Why not just avoid recipes that call for gravy or Hollandaise if you don't have the time to make your own? And does it really take that much time to cook bacon? (To me, the "ready" stuff tastes weird.) And you don't have to make dough from scratch to have a top-quality pizza: Frozen dough from the supermarket or, even better, fresh dough from the local pizzeria is far preferable to the tube stuff.

Be that as it may, I'm on the same page with the Cooking Guy when it comes to frozen vegetables and frozen fruits. Sure, there's nothing better than ripe strawberries in season, but when they are out of season, we know that frozen berries taste way better than the cottony "fresh" ones available year-round. Frozen spinach adds vitamins (A and C), iron and taste to all manner of pasta sauces, omelets and soups. Frozen peas are so far superior to canned peas that they seem like a different vegetable. Frozen peas are even preferable to fresh peas unless those fresh peas are recently picked and shucked. (As with corn, the sugar in peas quickly turns to starch.)

If you are a gardener or have a farm stand or farmers' market nearby, go for it. If not, head for the frozen-food aisle.

No one argues that you should cook "from scratch" all the time. Many home cooks prefer a "half from scratch" method, which relies at least partially on healthy, quality prepared foods. What constitutes "healthy" and "quality"? Here are some of the Cooking Guy's recipes that pass my test.

• Marialisa Calta is the author of "Barbarians at the Plate: Taming and Feeding the American Family" (2005 Perigee). More at marialisacalta.com.