A home-cooked meal is a meal prepared from raw ingredients in a domestic kitchen — or presented as having been: the phrase covers both grandmother’s stew and the restaurant dish marketed as “home-style cooking.” The genuine article means cooking from scratch with fresh ingredients, seasoned to the household’s taste — widely regarded as healthier, cheaper, and more satisfying than ready meals or takeaways, since the cook controls salt, fat, and portions. Nutrition research broadly supports the reputation: frequent home cooking correlates with better diet quality. The commercial use of “home-cooked” trades on nostalgia for that virtue — regulators watch such claims, since a factory canteen’s “home-cooked” pie may be anything but.