The Dish on Dinner Decisions
Ah, the age-old question: Is it better to cook or order in? While the latter certainly sounds less stressful and time-consuming, cooking more often can make your days healthier, cheaper, and a little more self-sufficient. But you don’t have to pick a team forever: learning to cook gives you flexibility, sure, but sometimes, takeout is the better choice. Here's how to know whether you should focus on building a valuable skill, or if you should just tap “place order” and move on with your life.
1. You’ll Spend Less Money Over Time
If your main focus is spending less money, it helps to know that groceries generally cost less per serving than takeout, especially if you use ingredients across multiple dishes. Once you learn a few reliable recipes, you can plan your meals and avoid impulse spending. Even small habits like cooking twice a week can noticeably reduce your monthly food costs.
2. Control What Goes Into Your Food
When you cook, you decide how much salt, sugar, oil, and seasoning end up in your dish. That control makes it easier to match your preferences and dietary needs without extra fuss. It also helps you avoid ingredients you don’t like or don’t tolerate well.
3. Easier to Manage Portion Sizes
Restaurants often serve portions that are larger than what most people need in one sitting. Cooking at home lets you plate the amount that actually suits your hunger, routine, or diet. You can also intentionally make leftovers for tomorrow instead of forcing yourself to overeat.
4. You'll Build a Useful Life Skill
Knowing how to cook is an incredibly useful skill, whether you live alone, with roommates, or with family. It can reduce your reliance on convenience food when circumstances, like health, change, so you don't have to rely on outside sources.
5. Eat Fresher Meals
Home cooking makes it easier to use fresh produce, herbs, and proteins on your own time; you’re not limited to what travels well in a delivery bag. With a bit of practice, you’ll get better at keeping ingredients fresh and using them before they go bad.
6. You’ll Waste Less Food
Learning to cook encourages you to think in terms of ingredients, not just meals (though you'll think about that, too), which makes shopping more efficient. You can cook once and reuse components in different ways across the week. Over time, you’ll get better at finishing what you buy instead of tossing it.
7. Easier to Customize for Picky Eaters
If you’re feeding other people, preferences can be tricky to deal with. Cooking gives you the option to adapt seasonings, textures, or sides without remaking (or ordering) a whole entire dish. You’ll also be able to separate components for someone who likes things plain.
8. Support Specific Health Goals Better
Whether you’re aiming for more protein, more fiber, or fewer ultra-processed foods, home cooking gives you better control. You can choose cooking methods that match your goals, like baking, steaming, or light sautéing. Tracking what you eat becomes more accurate when you know how it was made.
9. Mastering Basic Skills Gives You More Confidence
Once you understand a few fundamentals like knife skills, heat control, and seasoning, your confidence will soar. Each time you nail a simple dish, it builds momentum for trying something slightly harder, and that can motivate you to refine and perfect your cooking skills.
10. Better Dinner Hosting
Being able to cook even a handful of crowd-pleasers makes hosting more rewarding; you’ll rely less on last-minute takeout and more on meals you can whip up and portion. Trust us: your friends will appreciate the effort, and you’ll feel more in control of the whole plan. Win-win.
But cooking isn't always practical, and sometimes, ordering in is the better choice. Here are 10 times it's probably best to let someone else handle the fuss.
1. Your Time Is Worth More Than the Savings
Some days your schedule is packed and cooking would push everything else later. Ordering in can help protect your evening when deadlines, commutes, or family responsibilities take over. Spending extra money can be a rational trade if it buys back real hours.
2. Decision Fatigue Is Real
After a long day, planning a meal, shopping, and cooking can feel like another problem to solve. Ordering in reduces the number of steps and decisions you have to make, and that mental relief can matter just as much as the meal itself.
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3. Avoid Messy Cleanup
Sure, getting takeout means having to rinse out containers and separate trash, too, so there's still some tidying up to do. But cooking usually creates even more dirty dishes, counters, and pans to scrub, even if the meal is simple. Ordering in keeps your sink clearer, and it can be the best choice you make all day.
4. Your Kitchen Setup Is Limited
Not everyone has a reliable stove, decent knives, or enough space to prep comfortably, which is why ordering in can help fill a real gap when cooking tools or storage aren’t available. It’s hard to cook efficiently if your environment makes everything harder than it needs to be.
5. Explore Cuisines You Haven't Cooked Before
Some dishes require ingredients, techniques, or equipment that take time to learn, and sometimes, that's time you don't have. Ordering in lets you enjoy those foods without a complicated shopping list or a multi-hour recipe. It can also help you discover what you like before trying to recreate it.
6. A Practical Fallback When You’re Low on Energy
When you’re sick, stressed, or running on little sleep, cooking can feel overwhelming. Ordering in can help you eat a real meal instead of defaulting to snacks, or using what little energy you have to fix something up. Remember: you’re allowed to prioritize rest over productivity, and you should.
7. May Help Reduce Food Waste
If you rarely cook, buying ingredients can lead to unused produce and expired items, which is a waste of money and food. Ordering in prevents you from stocking a fridge full of good intentions that are later forgotten about. In that scenario, takeout can actually be the more efficient choice.
8. Supports Local Restaurants & Staff
Spending money at local restaurants can help keep neighborhood spots open. After the pandemic, some places still rely heavily on takeout and delivery orders to maintain steady revenue, so if you’ve got a favorite place, ordering in can be a small way to show consistent support.
Ambitious Studio* | Rick Barrett on Unsplash
9. Makes Social Nights Easier to Coordinate
When friends or family want to eat together, ordering in can satisfy multiple preferences quickly. You can mix and match dishes without having to put on your chef hat and turn your kitchen into a mini restaurant. That keeps the focus on people instead of logistics.
10. When You Need A Break from Cooking
Cooking can be enjoyable, but it can also feel like a constant responsibility you just don't have time or energy for. Ordering in is a straightforward way to give yourself a night off without skipping dinner entirely. You don’t need a special reason to choose convenience once in a while.
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