Many restaurants and small town diners tout their cuisine as "home cooking". But just what does this phenomenon known as home cooking really mean? Home cooking is most associated with food that is painstaking prepared by traditional methods and often passed down family recipes. A neon sign boasting "home cooking" immediately conjures the tastes and smells of mom's kitchen, grandmother's house, and the corner lunch counter.

The key aspect of home cooking is really the preparing of each component of the meal from scratch. For example, a home made pizza would traditionally also entail home made dough, fresh tomatoes and hand shredded, fresh mozzarella. A home made Southern meal, for example would include fried chicken, not cooked in a deep fryer at a local fast food establishment, but hand fried on the stove in a pan. In costal regions such as Maine, lobster and other seafood would be a main ingredient in most home cooking, such as chowders and bisque. Home cooking often reflects what resources are most readily available in a particular region of the country, thus helping to shape culture.

To truly capture the essence of home cooking, the freshest of ingredients are essential. From garden fresh vegetables to farm fresh eggs and grain fed beef and pork, a good old fashioned home cooked meal will tell you a good deal about the agricultural of the place you're in. In addition to preparing full home cooked meals, many people will prepare basic staples to be stored for future use, such as baking breads, canning preserves and making their own wine from a private vineyard.

Unfortunately it is getting increasingly difficult to find true home cooking in American restaurants. Many newer chain restaurants use ingredients that are prepared at other locations, frozen and shipped to the respective restaurants. It is not uncommon for food items such as lettuce to come chopped up and prepared for Caesar salads, stored in large bags.

Despite the increase in chain restaurants, many Americans still prefer the quaint, warm and friendly quality of an independently owned "mom and pop" restaurant where true home cooking can still be found.