A funny thing happened on the way to the microwave.
Consumers decided that instant isn't everything. That taste matters. And that fixing a family meal is not so bad.
Enter "speed scratch" -- a way of preparing meals using packaged ingredients that cuts cooking time but still provides a higher-quality meal than simply zapping a frozen entree.
Several issues -- including time-strapped lifestyles and America's shifting demographics -- help explain the growing popularity of component cooking. But one of the keys remains unhappiness with bare-bones microwaving and the desire for a more satisfying cooking experience.
"People don't have time to prepare food, but they feel guilty not spending time in the kitchen," says Joshua Isenberg, associate editor of the Food Channel, a trend-tracking publication from the Chicago-based food-marketing agency Noble & Associates.
Whether they're called "speed scratch," "component cooking," "assembly meals" or "meal kits," these packages help absolve the guilt for modern cooks. Each consists of some or all of the basic makings of a meal, ready to be quickly assembled.
"Speed scratch lets you make a meal that's already half done -- so you're getting the speed, but it also satisfies the emotion," says Mr. Isenberg.
"The average amount of time in meal preparation today is 20 minutes," says Jeffrey Nedelman, vice president, communications and strategic planning for the Grocery Manufacturers of America, a trade group for makers of brand-name retail products. "That's expected to fall to 15 minutes in the year 2000."
"Hectic lifestyles is why it's all happening," says Mr. Nedelman. "It's two-income families, it's 70 percent of women working, it's no kids taking home ec in school."
It's also the growing number of Americans who live alone.
"Twenty-five percent of all consumers live by themselves," he says. "They want food that's single-serve, that doesn't go bad, that they don't have to waste."
At the same time, Mr. Nedelman says, "We're aging, and we're getting more diverse ethnically. . . . People are trying Thai food and Chinese food" and liking it enough to want to re-create it at home.
Convenience, as well as taste and nutrition, plays a role in current cooking styles, he says. "If you look in the produce section, you see all these pre-cut salad and vegetable items -- it's brand new, and it's among the most popular of all items in recent years. You take it home and you open a bag, and all you're doing is assembling a salad, not preparing it."
With slow growth in the microwavable products market -- up just 3 percent between 1991 and 1992, according to the Food Channel -- manufacturers such as Lipton, Green Giant, Kraft's Boboli division, Johnsonville Sausage and Rich-SeaPak are turning to "speed-scratch" meal kits to capture consumer dollars.
Green Giant, for example, began national distribution of its "Create a Meal" kits last year, and recently added two new varieties to the line of frozen pasta and vegetable mixtures with a sauce packet. Consumers brown meat in a skillet, add sauce and vegetables, cook for about 10 minutes, and serve it over rice or noodles.
Green Giant has two other lines that lend themselves to "speed-scratch" cooking: Pasta Accents, featuring seven varieties of frozen vegetable-and-pasta combinations, and "American Mixtures," featuring eight frozen vegetable combinations. The company has developed what it calls "Rush Hour Recipes" with the meal kits, one-dish meals that can be on the table in less than 20 minutes.
"The idea is you can make dinner in about 20 minutes with, ideally, six ingredients or less," says Audrey Nelson, project manager in Green Giant's consumer foods center. (Green Giant is a division of Minneapolis-based Pillsbury Co.)
And without using the microwave.
"Our research indicates the primary uses of the microwave ovens are, frankly, for heating cups of coffee and tea or microwaving popcorn," says Ken Wheeler, director of consumer products for Rich-SeaPak, which introduced its "Shrimp Sensations" meal kits last fall. "Consumers are less enamored of the quality when they tried to use the microwave in scratch cooking."
In quick-meal preparation, the microwave is being replaced by the skillet.
"The skillet is the microwave of the '90s," says Ms. Nelson of Green Giant. "It works better for browning, and it's pretty fast and it works pretty well."
For example, "Shrimp Sensations" can be assembled on top of the stove in about seven minutes. Each meal contains separate pouches of frozen shrimp and vegetables with either pasta, tortillas or rice.
Rich-SeaPak, a shrimp processor with a processing plant in Nanticoke, tested the products in the Baltimore-Washington area. "They generated the highest purchase-intent scores I've ever seen with any product," Mr. Wheeler says.
The emotional issue of feeding the family plays a big role in the popularity of meal kits, Mr. Wheeler says. Research Rich-SeaPak did about a year and a half ago showed "people wanted to feel some satisfaction" when preparing a meal. "They wanted to feel they were investing themselves for their family."
And they wanted it to be fast, but not too fast.
Consumers told the Thomas J. Lipton Co. that, at least when it comes to soup, there was a limit to how speedy people wanted it to be. "If it takes 10 minutes, people don't believe it's homemade," says Mindy Sweetwood, senior home economist for Lipton. "There's a certain credibility you have to have."
The company's market research also showed that customers "wanted home-made taste, but they wanted it to be convenient," says Ms. Sweetwood.
So Lipton introduced "Kettle Creations," packets of dried ingredients that can be prepared in 30 minutes. There are four varieties: bean medley with pasta, minestrone, chicken flavor with pasta and beans, and chicken flavor and onion rice.
The packages have a "Cook's Corner" box suggesting things people can add to "personalize" the soup mixes: fresh or leftover chicken, frozen or leftover vegetables. "Then they feel like it's their own," says Ms. Sweetwood.
Are meal kits just a fad, or truly a trend?
Mr. Isenberg says trend, though the product category doesn't seem to be growing as fast as it did initially. "I think this is a long-term thing that's going to stay," he says. His conviction is based on what's going on in people's lives. "It's totally lifestyle-driven."
While she laments the lack of cooking skills in the population, cooking teacher Ann Grieves agrees that speed-scratch cooking answers modern consumers' needs. "I think manufacturers are finally getting on board and creating products that help people who don't cook," says Ms. Grieves, who operates two Take Five cooking schools, one in Baltimore and the other in Nantucket, Mass.
"The thing I'm seeing is that people are willing to buy part of a meal," she says. "Maybe they'll make a dessert and buy a Wolfgang Puck pizza." She also says she thinks manufacturers are discovering that "people who work" will pay for food that's nutritious and easy to prepare.