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What are the most popular meals moms cook
Hello! Thank you for your question about the most popular meals moms cook. The most useful sources I found to answer your question were AllRecipes.com and SimilarWeb. The short version is I was not able to find the most popular meals moms cook for families with kids ages 9-18, or the percentage of these recipes. However, the short version is I did find several popular mom/family/household/home/overall recipe websites, and discovered that data from PeaPod, America’s largest online grocer, shows that popular recipes are those made in slow cookers or crock pots and that have a preparation time of less than 15 minutes. Below you will find a deep dive into my research methods and findings.
I conducting advanced Internet searches using a variety of key words and query types. I sifted through information from trusted news sources, industry reports, company websites and social media feeds. I confined the results to within the last of 2 years unless otherwise noted.
After extensive searching, I found hundreds of popular meals, however, I did not find any data or statistics indicating the percentage popularity (most popular) of certain meals in the US. The popularity of recipes would have to be determined on a site by site basis. I also did not come across any age age-related data or information about which family member did the cooking of certain recipes.
I proceeded on the assumption that recipes related to mom’s, families, homes and/or households could include children in the age range of 9-18. During my research, I found that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs and websites run by moms that talk about the dishes their readers find most popular. Their recipes are often quick and easy to make. I used the website SimilarWeb to check the site traffic and determine the popularity of sites, and hence, the popularity of the recipes they had. I also discovered that about 43% of men in the US do the grocery shopping for the family, and 43% also do the cooking. Therefore, I also looked at recipe websites that are popular overall, representing not just what a mom might cook, but a dad or anyone else in the family.
There is evidence regarding what makes a recipe popular for home cooking, which is discussed in the section below called Popular Meals Cooked at Home. Finally, because of the popularity of meal kit deliveries, I checked to see if there was data about the most popular meals the services sold, or what customers were requesting. As it turns out, although there are some services like Plated that let you choose the recipe you want, I was not able to find any data on which recipes were popular.
GENERAL STATISTICS ON EATING AT HOME
Research data has shown that eating meals together is beneficial for individual family members as well as the family as a whole. A study conducted by the national Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse discovered that teens who eat dinner with their families a minimum of 5 instances per week, are 1.5 times less likely to experience stress than their peers who eat dinner with their families less frequently. These teens also are also 50% less likely to try drugs and they have more solid relationships with their parents. Additional benefits for kids eating with the family include getting better grades and less instances of depression.
Survey data of 14,431 boys and girls in the 9-14 age group showed about 44% of them eat dinner with their family every day. Another survey of 5,014 adolescent children from ages 12-15 revealed 42% of them have family dinner every day. From the parental perspective, a survey conducted by the Food Manufacturing institute showed about 57% of parents say they have a sit-down meal with their kids in the evening. The data also show that the majority of parents want to eat dinner with their kids (about 71% of them), but it is a struggle sometimes with busy schedules and conflicting commitments.
When asked what would help with meal preparation in order to create more time to eat with their families, parents most frequently asked for grocery stores to: 1) provide recipes that kids like, 2) create displays that have all the ingredients for a meal in one spot, and 3) offer more foods that kids like, including those that are ready to eat.
POPULAR MEALS COOKED AT HOME
PeaPod.com is America’s biggest online grocer. They run a recipe website called FromThePod.com that has had over 35,000 visitors in the last 6 months, and over 100,000 during the 2016 holiday season. The data they gathered for their most popular recipes shows that they are made in slow cookers or crock pots and the preparation time is less than 15 minutes.
ALLRECIPES.COM
AllRecipes.com has had 88.5 million site visitors in the last 6 months. Their site can be filtered to show popular recipes in a variety of categories. Just enter the recipe name into the field at the top of the page and press enter to search. Two of the popular recipes in the slow cooker category that had the highest star ratings along with the most reviews are Awesome Slow Cooker Pot Roast (4.5/5.0, 7,000 reviews) and Slow Cooker Chicken and Dumplings (4.5/5.0, 7,000 reviews). Popular and highly rated recipes in the breakfast, lunch and dinner categories are:
Breakfast and Brunch-
Fluffy Pancakes (5.0/5.0, 9,000 reviews)
Cheesy Ham and Hash Brown Casserole (4.5/5.0, 2,000 reviews)
Lunch -
Sloppy Joes II (4.5/5.0, 5,000 reviews)
Absolutely Ultimate Potato Soup (4.5/5.0, 2,000 reviews)
Dinner -
Broiled Tilapia Parmesan (4.5/5.0, 7,000 reviews)
World’s Best Lasagna (5.0/5.0, 10,000 reviews)
AllRecipes also has a list of the most popular recipes that can be ready in less than 15 minutes. A couple of the most popular and highly rated are Chinese Chicken Fried Rice II (4.5/5.0, 1,000 reviews) and the Broiled Tilapia Parmesan, which is also popular in the dinner category (4.5/5.0, 7,000 reviews).
CRAZED MOM
In the last 6 months, the Crazed Mom website/blog has had over 70,000 site visits and it has a broad range of recipes. They report their top 20 recipes of 2016; some are meals, some are snacks and desserts. Here are the top 5:
MOM IN TIMEOUT
The Mom on Timeout website has had over 400,000 site visits in the last 6 months. The recipes can be sorted by slow cooker, but there was no indication of which ones were most popular. Of their top 10 recipes for 2016, 7 of them are desserts. The other 3 meal-type recipes in the top 10 are:
FAMILY COOKBOOK PROJECT
The Family Cookbook Project is a website that provides resources and services for people to make a cookbook of their family recipes. It also can be used as a source of fundraising for organizations and causes. The website has had over 160,000 visits in the last 6 months. All of the recipes that go into the 7,000+ cookbooks that have been created are available for searching. Five of the most popular slow cooker recipes are:
Hawaiian Smoked Pork Roast in a Slow Cooker
Slow Cooker Chicken and Dumplings
Cousin Dave’s Slow Cooker Brisket
Slow Cooker Ground Beef BBQ
Zesty Slow Cooker Chicken Barbecue
MOMS WHO THINK
MomsWhoThink.com has over 433,000 site visits in the last 6 months. The have posted a list of their top 15 most popular easy recipes. They include the following meals: lasagna, chicken salad, chili, cabbage soup, French toast, meatloaf, macaroni and cheese and pulled pork.
There have been over 11.5 million visitors to the TasteOfHome website in the last 6 months. They have hundreds of recipes that are all categorized, and they also publish a magazine of the same title. This page on their website shows the categories of their award-winning recipes. The winners were the recipes that had the best reviews in their magazine contests. Five of the top rated grand prize-winning meals are:
Traditional Lasagna
Seafood Lasagna
Taco Lasagna
Smothered Chicken Breasts
Pork Chops with Apples and Stuffing
Five of TasteOfHomes award-winning dinner recipes are:
Wild West Wellingtons
Apple Halibut Kabobs
Spiedis
Garden Style Beef Lasagna
Garden Vegetable Lasagna
CONCLUSION
To wrap it up, I was not able to find the most popular meals moms cook for families with kids ages 9-18, or the percentage of these recipes. However, I did find several popular mom/family/household/home/overall recipe websites, and discovered that data from PeaPod, shows that popular recipes are those made in slow cookers or crock pots and that have a preparation time of less than 15 minutes.
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