Staying Home for National Day Without Wanting to Cook: How Do Prepared Dishes Win Over the Family Table?

During the National Day holiday, some people head for scenic spots, while others decide to postpone their trips for a few days and stay home to rest. But when mealtime comes, they still don't want to wash vegetables, cut meat, or stand by the stove busy cooking. Besides ordering takeout, going to Hema or Sam's Club to pick up a few dishes, or placing an order on Dingdong Maicai or Xiaoxiang Supermarket and then preparing them according to the instructions, has also become an option for eating at home. However, convenience foods should not all be counted as prepared dishes. According to the notice issued by six government departments in 2024, prepared dishes are pre-packaged dishes that are pre-processed industrially and can be eaten only after being heated or cooked, and staples such as quick-frozen dumplings do not fall within this scope. Ready-to-eat cooked foods that can be eaten straight from the bag after purchase should not be confused with them either.

Why are consumers willing to buy them? What they save is not just the few minutes of stir-frying. For a braised meat dish, buying the ingredients, preparing them, and then seasoning and stewing them often requires considerable preparation. By handing these processes over to the factory, consumers can save some time. This is especially evident when only one or two people are eating during the holiday, or when someone wants to eat a dish they are not good at making.

But convenience is only part of the reason to buy. When the price is close to that of takeout, consumers will compare which is more cost-effective; if the packaging looks abundant but the main ingredients are few once opened, it is also hard to retain customers. For brands, the real competition takes place at the dining table: whether the meat becomes tough after heating, whether the fish slices fall apart, and whether the sauce is too salty are all more persuasive than a freshly clever dish name.

These issues ultimately come back to the production workshop. There is no universal processing flow for prepared dishes. Taking stewed and braised products as an example, after raw material acceptance and washing and cutting, ingredients need to be measured according to the recipe and then enter the steaming or stewing stage. Cutting and preparation equipment helps standardize the size of ingredients, measuring equipment controls the ingredients, and equipment such as jacketed kettles handles batch heating. Mechanization makes operations easier to repeat, but temperature, time, and feeding amount still need to be adjusted for specific dishes.

Moreover, being tasty when it comes out of the factory pot does not mean the task is complete. Products have to go through storage and transportation and finally be reheated in the home kitchen, so these processes should be considered together during research and development. Industrial cooking technology materials also point out that temperature, humidity, airflow, and time all affect the texture and moisture retention of food. The role of equipment is to make these conditions more controllable and provide a foundation for stable mouthfeel.

The subsequent cooling, packaging, storage, and transportation are equally not to be taken lightly. Refrigerated, frozen, and ambient products use different preservation solutions, and bagging or vacuum sealing cannot be regarded as a complete preservation method. For products requiring a cold chain, temperature control at the processing end must extend to warehousing and distribution; whether packaging seals are reliable and whether storage and heating instructions are clear also directly relate to how consumers handle the product after receiving it.

Staying home for National Day and buying a prepared dish is about being busy for a little less time while still having a meal that suits your taste. How far this market can go depends on whether companies can make convenience truly solid: clear portions, reasonable prices, reliable quality, and, when prepared according to the instructions, a dish brought to the table that meets expectations. Only such products have a chance to go from an occasional novelty during the holiday to a daily standby in the refrigerator.