I've always liked morrocan pancakes, which are also a layered type of food, so decided to make them myself one day. So much much work for something that doesn't taste at least half as good as the ones from the bakery... Never again I told myself!
Store bought laminated dough is perfectly fine and freezes well. I don't mind making it because I find it's just a few minutes every so often, but I was lucky enough to learn the technique such that I don't have to think about it. Use case for making your own is you can use a specific flour or butter and fresh baked pastry is the best.
Honestly? Ramen. There are way too many ingredients that all needs to be cooked differently, and even the broth itself is a nightmare amount of effort for what you get at the end.
I spent 2 days cooking my first ramen broth, the tare, the marinated eggs and the garlic oil. It's definitely a case of tripling the batch and freeze it because it takes a lot of work regardless of the quantity.
I don't know if there is anything special about Ramen broth, but once you get used to the process, homemade bone broth is absolutely worth it.
I get pork knee joints from the Asian market, bake them at about 400 for an hour, and simmer on the stove top for a couple of days. That broth is my winter staple.
I'd say a lot of my favorite Asian dishes follow this pattern. Most of them are pretty challenging to recreate due to the amount of ingredients and types of cooking involved. Guess there's a reason they taste so good
I made homemade General Tso's and it is absolutely worth the effort. The recipe I used stayed crispy for days even with sauce on it. I could control the flavor. It was so good.
You can kind of use a simplified method to get a good broth with a pressure cooker, because from what I read, the key to getting something good seems to be a sustained hard boil with lots of collagen and fat on the meat.
I got a deep fryer that goes on the countertop and has a temperature deal. The lid fits over the basket so I don't have to get anywhere near the oil when it's hot. When I'm done frying, there's a temperature-sensitive mechanism to drain the oil into a box below to store it until next time (it can be reused a few times). The part that holds the oil when frying gets wiped out and tossed in the dishwasher. The only thing I really have to deal with washing is the heating element. It turns deep frying from absolutely not worth trying to deal with the mess/temperature/hot oil/cleanup to something I'm willing to do more than once a year. Don't let your fry dreams be dreams!
They should come out super crispy but still very juicy on the inside.The one drawback is that it takes a total of 30 mins and you can only make as much as fits in your frier. You really want to have only one layer of wings and not have them laying on top of each other. My frier is fairly small so it's not something I can make for a whole bunch of people.
Crepes? Jesus, they're one of the easiest things you can cook.
Anyway, to answer your question: croissants! I've made them from scratch before and it definitely wasn't worth it. Took half a day and weren't a patch on the real thing
A crepe is like 100 calories and you can pour like 5 in less than 10 minutes. But anyway, to reach their own. personally I hate chopping stuff even if it takes 1 minute.
I was surprised by this too! I mean I can understand thinking that crepes will be hard because they’re pretty dainty and might be delicate, but they’re surprisingly easy to do.
Do you means from absolute scratch? Here in the Netherlands it is common to buy a can of pre-made dough for croissants. You have to roll and bake them yourself, and adding some egg is also a great idea. But it is technically not entirely from scratch.
They taste way better than the pre-baked ones that you have to re-heat. Absolutely worth the minimal effort.
What you describe is not making from scratch at all. Those are premade save the final couple of steps, no different than a frozen pizza from the grocery store. No one gets a frozen pizza and says they made it from scratch.
Baklava. I love it. When my aunts make it it's always amazing. But holy crap if it isn't the most tedious, fiddly, obnoxious stuff to make. And that's if you're not also making your own phyllo dough... all like six miles of it that goes in a batch one vapor thin layer at a time.
That seems like one of those cases where the production is only worth it if it's a group/family tradition to get together and enjoy everyone's company while you do it.
Like...no part of my family makes baklava, but if I had a friend whose Greek or Turkish family met up once a year and made it, I would love to come help, as much for the experience as to learn about how to make it.
In my area where I grew up (if not my actual family) that food is pierogi: families will get together and make massive quantities of pierogi, usually with the grandmas of the families directing the process. Everyone goes home with dozens and dozens for the freezer.
From what I gather, it's not worth making like...one dozen for a meal, but if you're going to go through the process, you might as well make hundreds.
I literally made 15 10-inch crepes for my family this morning. Using 2 pans it took about 30-40 minutes. Made some raspberry sauce before getting the crepes going. All told, the whole process took less than an hour and was awesome.
I grew up making crepes, or whatever the Mennonite equivalent is, and it's one of the easiest things in the world to me. I have a ziplock full of crepes in my freezer right now.
Chinese food. The common fast food type here in the US. Yeah, I can spend a bunch of time, work, and money to make orange chicken, boneless spare ribs, crab rangoon, teriyaki, coconut shrimp, and pork fried rice. Or, I can go 5 minutes up the street, and pay my favorite restaurant $20 for a big plate with all of that, with absolutely no work on my part, and it all tastes way better.
First time, can be. After that not so much. I'm cheating making my own five spice and having about a decade and a half experience in Chinese kitchens, so I know their recipes.
I agree with everything on your list except the fried rice. True, If you're trying to recreate the take away recipe exactly from scratch you're going to have a bad time. But, with a big pan (if you don't have a wok) that you can get real hot it's just a leftovers dish. Leftover rice, leftover protein, frozen veggies, egg, vegetable oil, and soy sauce. It's not usually worth my time unless I already have the leftovers. The hardest part is not over loading your pan with ingredients or oil. You've also got to have everything ready when you start because it all comes together very fast if the pan is hot enough. Sure, I probably still can't beat the economy of scale of the restaurant, but the point is that I'm using up my own leftovers instead of throwing them out.
I just remind myself that I once thought it was a good idea to make an entire thanksgiving dinner for 3 people using a college dorm kitchen, and then the idea of frying a cheese sandwich doesn't seem that daunting.
Tip though for grilled cheese is butter the pan not the bread.
Pumpkin pie filling. The real stuff takes forever and it’s stringy. It also doesn’t taste quite the same. Libby does it so well it’s not worth making your own.
My wife says pie dough. Pillsbury’s is almost as good and a lot less effort. I prefer pie dough with a ton more butter but she doesn’t.
Gods! Making it from raw pumpkin takes so fucking long. You can get rid of the strings, but you're still going to be putzing with it forever. I don't like wasting food, so I end up doing it every Halloween, but if I'm doing pumpkin recipes any other time of year, and that has run out, I'm buying canned.
I swear, every year I have an argument with myself to just throw the scraped out stuff in the yard for the birds. They end up getting the jack o lanterns anyway so what's the big deal? But both sets of my grandparents grew up in the depression, so wasting anything is kinda impossible lol.
Jack o lantern pumpkins are not good for pies, in part because they are too stringy. A sugar pumpkin is the way to go if you want to do it from scratch.
I haven't bought canned pumpkin in 20 years. It's not bad to process and freeze it, and with good pie pumpkins, it's unparalleled. Plus you get home roasted pumpkin seeds as a bonus.
Croissants. Only really good when an independent coffee shop makes someone come in at 4am to start making them. Even the industrial ones at the big chains or supermarkets are pretty meh and it's way too complex and time consuming to do myself but made right they are one of the best foods.
This is like a lot of pastry that uses laminated dough, having them fresh out of the oven as intended is completely different than supermarket. I dunno what process you were using but there's some easier ones and I find they all freeze incredibly well. Once I froze a few full muffin trays of kouign amann to bring somewhere and popped them in an oven, turned out perfect.
Ice cream snob here, I can make better stuff at home than at any grocery store, but I can't top a good gelateria if you're lucky enough to have one nearby. If I didn't have access to a good local spot I'd still make it.
I grew up on a farm and we used to make homemade butter. I've lived off the farm for more than 20 years and I have not made butter since I left. The minor difference in cost is simply not worth the effort.
Agreed. I'll gladly spend the extra buck for kerrygold. Not quite as good as homemade with high quality cream, but more than close enough (and cheaper depending on just how high quality were talking with the cream).
Huh. I am the exact opposite, for a small amount I usually don't want to drag out the mixer, so put metal bowl, whisk, and carton of cream in the freezer for a few minutes then whip some cream. It is a workout but somehow seems easier than mixer. Almost always whip cream by hand.
This is the only reason I will occasionally make butter. To make it from creme fraiche cultured with buttermilk. More flavor.
Ice cream I sometimes make by freezing a mix that includes some booze as antifreeze, then once completely frozen, cut into chunks and whir it in the food processor. Then back into the freezer. That stays pretty nice, is lovely. Started this because one of my (grown) kids is vegan and it works with coconut milk as the cream.
Homemade ice cream is worth it if you have the equipment for it, by which I mostly mean the actual churning machine. All the custard and stuff is a lot fiddlier if you don't have a stand mixer or a family member to mix for you, but it's still doable.
Gotta disagree on the pierogi front. I don't make them often, but homemade is so much better than the boxed stuff that occasionally making a huge batch and freezing a bunch is totally worth it.
I 100% endorse this comment and am glad to see someone here representing. Anyone who says store bought pirogi's are almost as good has not had good homemade ones. They are next level.
Raviolis were worth it when I was making a huge huge amount and then freezing bags of them. Then over the course of months could just eat them whenever! For a single meal? No, terrible
I've got to disagree. When I make it, it tastes so much richer than the more quickly made stuff you can get at any restaurant. The two don't even compare.
Edit: Even more so, bo kho. The homemade stuff takes me about 14 hours for a big batch with lots of leftovers. I can't even bother eating the stuff made at restaurants where they cut corners and don't simmer all day.
If you've got a pressure cooker you can make pho ga (chicken pho) in under 30 minutes and it's almost as good as beef in my opinion. Also way cheaper to make than beef pho.
I used to think this until I spent a month tinkering with different recipes and ideas to make a good "cheater pho". Pho that doesn't take 1 day to make yet gets about 90% of the tastes of a great pho. I think i succeeded but it's probably basphamy to some people.
I found the food networks recipe to be a great starting place if you want to give it a shot.
Pho. I have a killer recipe for the instant pot but it basically works out to the same price as just buying it from our local takeout. And they're Vietnamese.
1 packet of vietnamese meatballs (these cook separately to the other meat)
CHARRED VEG
1 root of ginger (around 3 inches long), unpeeled, cut in half lengthways
1 onion, skinned and cut in half
FLAVORS
10 pieces of star anise (aniseed)
1 tablespoon coriander seed
1 cinnamon stick
1 tablespoon salt
1 clump of rock sugar
6 tablespoons of fish sauce
MSG (? amount)
TOPPINGS
Fresh Cilatro
Culantro (sawtooth, big leafy shit)
Basil
Green onion
Lime
Sliced onions
Bean sprouts
Hoisin Sauce
Sriracha
OTHER
Rice Noodles
Bring a big pot of water to the boil and drop the meat (except the meatballs and flank) into the boiling water. Furiously boil for 10 minutes. Drain and wash the meat under the tap.
Turn on the broiler, put the ginger and onion in, cut side up, until nicely charred.
Fill the instant pot to 1 inch below full line (12 cups/3 quarts or a little more). Add the washed meat (not the meatballs, not the flank) to the water and adjust water if overfilled. Then add the charred veg and the flavor ingredients.
Lid on, pressure cook button and set to 1 hour and 30 minutes. Prep toppings. Add the noodles to cold water and soak for at least 30 minutes. Let the pressure cooker depressurize naturally when done. During this time, prepare a pot of boiling water for the meatballs and noodles.
Once the Instant Pot beeps finished, boil the meatballs in water for 10 minutes. When these are done, remove, and leave the water boiling ready for the noodles. When ready to serve, dip the noodles in the boiling water for 1-2 minutes and remove immediately.
Open Instant Pot and remove meat to cut and plate. Strain the broth. If you have time, strain it a second time through a piece of kitchen towel to remove extra impurities. Return broth pot to Instant Pot and turn to low saute - taste and adjust seasonings as needed.
Plate up the food, starting with noodles, then meat, flank, broth, then toppings and sauce. Get slurpy.
I disagree on this one, corn tortillas are really simple if you have a press. The dough is literally just mix masa and water. And to cook them, you just put it on a hot surface for 30 seconds. Meanwhile corn tortillas from the store are always so dry and tasteless, they're rarely worth buying
I agree a lot of commercial corn tortillas are not good. I particularly don't like the fake-soft ones that have dough conditioners and preservatives for no reason. But with as much cooking as I do, I can't bring myself to make tortillas when I make masa - I always end up doing pupusas, arepas or tamales. My main use of corn tortillas is enchiladas casserole style so homemade ones are kind of pointless since they 75% disintegrate.
Yup I can't find anything in the stores that compares and I don't mind making them. Really only do this in the summer when there's some garden ingredients though, with a ground meat or bean sauce for protein.
Now I dont "love" them as a standalone but I do a few really nice loaded versions for catering family events. I tried to "elevate" my dishes by making my own and while I could and they were a little better it took half a day and a shitload of mess.
Honestly, you could probably make loaded hash browns and just make them slightly smaller and it would be pretty awesome. But I do agree that I'm not a big fan of the soak time for potatoes and getting them to bond and cook right.
That being said, spaghetti sauce. Yeah, home made is better, but "doctoring" a jarred sauce gets 95% as good without hours of work. You can't fix the canned shit, but I've not found a jarred sauce that I can't tweak with fresh herbs and some quickly sweated aromatics and end up with something that people love. It also satisfies my picky ass. Now, I will say that fucking ragu is pretty shit overall, and doctoring it only goes so far. But it is still good enough that making sauce from scratch ain't happening.
Edit:
There seems to be a lot of range in spaghetti sauce recipes. It's also important to note that I'm not talking about marinara.
So, the real time involved is split between prep and simmering.
Here's how we do it. Remember this is an american talking here, so don't redirect expect something traditionally Italian. And I'm a southerner that's mostly german and Scots-Irish, so don't expect any new York style stuff lol.
You take your tomatoes, skin them however you prefer. I use a quick dip in boiling water, aka blanching.
You give those peeled tomatoes a rough chop into nice size chunks. Now, the kind of tomato matters for that because something like a roma e isn't gong to need as many chops as a beefsteak. You'd usually be using something like a roma anyway, but if your neighbor drops off a giant bucket of tomatoes, you can only use what you got, you know?
You chop up an onion, maybe two. You mince some garlic, maybe half a bulb if you really like garlic. I love garlic, so I go heavy.
Now, that's your usual start. Most people in my family don't add anything else in the way of veggies. Me? I like to char a couple of red or yellow bell peppers, skin them, and get them in there too. If I'm feeling frisky, I might have zucchini, eggplant, or whatever else cut up and ready to add at the appropriate time too, but that's optional.
You get the onions sweating. While they're starting, you feet your herbs together. Idgaf about fresh vs dried, each has benefits for flavor, you do what you prefer. I do oregano, basil, marjoram, a little thyme, and that's it. I'm simple.
A little black pepper, a little salt (you really don't need much, maybe a teaspoon for a big batch; salt your damn pasta water instead) to taste.
Once the onions are almost ready, I add the peppers since the quick char and steam to peel them tends to get them halfway cooked anyway.
This is around a half hour of work for most people. For me, it's closer to an hour. Yay disability!
Then you add your tomatoes, herbs, and any optional veggies. Bring to boil, reduce to simmer.
After that, it's patience. You're making sure any veggies added are tender, and after that it's cooking things down and letting the flavors develop. And, I promise you, anything under a half hour of simmering isn't going to taste right, and will be super runny. You'll usually have what amounts to chunky tomato water until close to the hour mark. For a big pot (my biggest is 6 quarts, and it starts damn near full when I do it) an hour and a half is bare minimum for the right thickness.
Now, if you're going to jar that up, you're done except for that part, which isn't involved in what I originally said.
If you're going to add meat, you'll want to start browning it off about a half hour ahead of when the thickness will be right. You add the cooked meat in and let it simmer for 15 minutes at minimum. Do yourself a favor and deglaze the pan used with a nice, semisweet red wine, add that to the pot and go at least a half hour after adding it.
Now, exactly how long it needs to simmer is variable because you're dealing with tomatoes, and the water content varies between varieties, time of year, weather conditions, etc. But I've never had a full sized batch take less than an hour and a half counting from the initial bring-to-boil stage.
I dunno, maybe there's time savers I've never thought of. Maybe the folks saying it's a half hour are doing a different version of "from scratch", or whatever. But that's how we do it, and it's pretty much what the typical recipes I've seen online do (I went and checked because I wondered if I was crazy lol), plus or minus some details that don't really change simmer time.
I've had some batches need a full two hours of simmering. And, yeah, you don't have to stand over the pot the whole time, but chances are you'll still be in the kitchen cleaning, keeping an eye on things stirring occasionally, adding any herbs or spices to adjust taste as it goes, etc. So it isn't like you can just pop down to the local pub (or equivalent in your location) and go by time alone. You'll still be in the general vicinity, with the added heat and humidity from cooking.
But that's why I rarely go from scratch. I can pick up a jar of whatever, add some herbs, extra garlic and/or onions, brown any meat and then the deglaze and be done in under an hour from start to finish, including prep. The taste isn't the same, nor is the texture, but it's still yummy.
I learned from America's Test Kitchen to look at the ingredients. If the first ingredient is tomato paste or tomato concentrate, pass. If it is tomatoes, it will probably be fine. Although usually this means a more expensive jar, there are plenty of expensive/fancy looking jars that don't pass this test.
That said, Del Grosso's has a premium line with "Aunt Mary Anne's Marinara". It is our go-to and far and away the best I've tried.
I’m a huge fan of Rao’s sauce, but the price jumped from about $4 a jar to $10 last year and I just can’t justify that. I sometimes find it on sale for under $5 and def grab it, but it’s rare these days.
I came here to hard disagree, especially with the crepes example, but egg on my face and apologies all around: I am with you regarding spaghetti sauce.
I just don't consider any of that an answer to the question. For the most part, nobody is expecting every individual ingredient of a meal to be made from the raw ingredients (I don't actually think sauce is a lot of hands on work, but I don't usually bother to make it either). While I have a pasta maker and love fresh homemade pasta, if I make a lasagna from store bought noodles, jarred sauce, and store bought ricotta, nobody is going to yell at me for calling it homemade. The version with fresh pasta, homemade sauce, and homemade ricotta is going to be better (OK, I haven't done ricotta so I might make it gross), but the first one still counts.
I’m the exact opposite on spaghetti sauce. I find an incredible sauce is very easy to make heaps of with San Marzano tomatoes and tastes almost zero effort, just lots of time. But then I have like ten spaghettis’ worth and it’s wrecks shop on any jar sauce!
Italian scratching his head here. I can think of only one particular type of ragu that takes a few hours to make properly and is obviously not what's being discussed here due to jars, doctoring sweating and general confusion.
Mate putting together a tomato sauce from scratch for some spaghetti shouldn't take longer than the time it takes to the water to boil plus the 9 or so minutes that it takes to cook the pasta you are overthinking it
I'm American, and do use jarred sauce if I have it, but more often what I have is tomato paste, a half bottle of wine hanging out in the refrigerator and some garlic or olive oil and butter. Anchovies. Usually have canned peeled tomatoes too, but those do have to cook awhile to taste good.
I guess I don't set out to replicate jarred sauce, generally speaking, but can quickly dress pasta for supper with something good.
I used to doctor storebought sauces too. Recently though, I've just been buying those cans of cento crushed tomatoes. They're a blank slate, and probably better quality tomatoes too.
Macaroons. I have made them from scratch. I can appreciate the sophisticated sublime expression of culinary caution it takes to split egg white, whip them until hard peaks, and then gently and precisely fold in the other ingredients to get the flavor you are after... But holy hell is it tedious with lots of potential for failure most of the way.
Alternatively, making cinnamon rolls from scratch. Not because it's hard, just because it takes too long. I believe the recipe I was using allowed the dough to rise three separate times. Simple enough to make, but planning ahead for them to be breakfast is a 16:00 the previous day commitment.
Because I'm dumb, do you mean macarons? Or do you actually flavor your macaroons? If you do what flavors do you recommend for them? I assume something tropical to go with the coconut?
Yeah the biggest annoyance is the tapioca. It's hard to get just right (chewy but not too soft), you cant really make large batches and save it for later and it takes a long time just to make a single serving for one drink.
Almost anything that involves phyllo dough. Banitsa is worth occasionally doing homemade only because you can't really find it anywhere, but anything else is just not worth it.
French Fries. For those who don't know, when starting with a potato, you have to fry them twice. Once at a low temp to cook through, then again at a high temp to crisp up and brown. The frozen fries at the grocery have already had the first fry.
The double frying is just too much effort when the frozen stuff is just as good, even in an air fryer. So long as they're hot, the drive thru can compete with anything you make at home.
I used to feel the same way about egg rolls, but the product you get from scratch is superior to frozen or even take out.
Try letting them soak in water for a while after cutting them. Then dry them off before coating in oil and frying them. We do them in the air fryer that way. Not the same as deep fried but it’s good and close enough for us while being little effort.
I'd rather make Kenji's crispy potatoes instead now. You add baking soda and boil potatoes for 10 mins, it get the outside super mushy, you toss in a bowl with oil and they get covered in this potato paste, then oven high heat until cwispy.
Halal Chicken and Lamb over rice. I've made my own at home before and after all the effort that goes into making the sauces, the meats, the rice, and veggies, I somehow end up with a dish that cost at least twice what street carts sell, at 5 times the length to make it and isn't as good. I wouldn't make it at home unless I lived somewhere where that was the only way I could get it
I just want to express my appreciation for this phrase.
I also do agree that homemade broth is worth making, but it is more a byproduct of having made something else for me. And it's not difficult just takes a long time. Chuck everything in the slow cooker overnight, in the morning there is stock. Then from the bones of that stock you can make the bone broth, again overnight will work.
A lot of French cuisine. Not talking about laminated dough here which I've done many times. More so the complete modern French meal involving multiple reductions and real demiglace and all the techniques that seem to require a full restaurant process. It's the one style of food I will go to a restaurant and happily pay for once in a while, I understand why it's expensive to make and respect the skill it takes.
The other style I food I do this with is the very opposite, shitty fast food I can't make at home.
I don't have enough meat scraps and carcasses coming through to make proper demi-glace or stock in the quantity I use so I prefer a dehydrated powder used in restaurant service for home use. My scraps usually end up in a single soup recipe.
And yeah I love making French stews and all that, and I make components of French meals, but I'm talking like a full contemporary French menu from appetizer to dessert. To me that's a very simple menu, some basic ingredients of exceptional quality, each prepared in a way that makes them taste as good as they can using techniques it takes a lot of experience to get good at, with some experimental or playful element that isn't too pretentious, then plated and presented in a creative way. That type of meal I will gladly pay for because it's almost the fact someone else has imagined it and made it real that makes it worth it, like I wanna see what kind of tricks they're doing that I wouldn't have thought to do. Not only that but everything has to come together perfectly for it to work, and even if I know I can technically do it all, can I do it all at once by myself as a home cook? That's why I respect the restaurant process for this style of food.
There's a lot, most of which I make anyway for sake of cost/volume ratios, but in no particular order...
Tomato paste (love to use, can't be arsed to make my own), sriracha (like it but don't use enough for the amount I make), waffles (don't crave them nearly as much as I used to), scotch eggs (love 'em, hate making 'em), pickled asparagus (which really sucks because they're so good), lotus root chips (maybe if I had a fry daddy, air fried just doesn't do it), chicarrones (lots off local places make 'em fresh and cheap), horchata (same), meat pies (there's a local Brit shop that sells 'em), falafel (lots of local vendors), jalebi (way too much work)...
Oh my God fuck cinnamon rolls and I love them. If any recipe involves a suggestion for getting unscented non waxed floss just to cut the shapes something is wrong with the level of effort they expect from me.
These are great, done them about 10 times now, realized I didn't hate making cinnamon buns I just hated the recipes. I dunno what it is with the standard "just like grandma's" cinnamon bun recipes but it seems like an excuse for making it overly complicated.
You do you, but those are not difficult to make IMHO. I make a ton of batter and keep it in a squeeze bottle so I can easily make my kid pancakes in the morning
For me it's macarons and most baked goods
I still make lasagna from scratch but that's because I have to use gluten free pasta. All the pre made versions are awful
Significantly? One is thick and fluffy due to a couple of extra ingredients and one is thin and light. They're basically the same thing base ingredients, prep and cooking method wise.
Macarons are one I picked up a few years back. I'd be damned if I'm paying almost $3 for a cookie after my niece asked for some at the store. I went home, compared recipes and had a few dozen in front of her that night. They're time consuming, but much of the time is waiting for them to set, which is perfect for my ADHD ass cause I just forget about them for 30 mins to a couple hours. It's a skill that has definitely paid off, and I love giving them to everyone who has never tried one because of the price.
Stuffed vine leaves. I made them once for a gathering I had and they took me about 3 hours in all. Everyone loved them but for the time they took me, and how much of a pain in the arse they were to make, it wasn't worth it. The ready made ones in tins are just fine.
Never made any before but broth doesn't seem worth it unless you make a big batch, even then I don't have the room for a big ass pot or a gallon of broth in my fridge/freezer.
Beef/chicken/vegi stock, totally. I have to drive 65 miles to the closest store that sells pork stock, but I can get pork bones from my local butcher, so it's absolutely worth it to make my own pork stock for home made hot and sour soup.
I just don't get enough scraps for how much I cook with stock. I'll have a couple ziplocks of bones and veg and roast them, then boil, deglaze the roasting pans into the pot, boil, boil, reduce, reduce... great now I can make... a few servings of soup, a cup of concentrate for sauces.
There are a couple of things that make this easier :
throw your trimmings from vegetables into freezer bags. Then freeze them until you have a day to make broth. Onion peels color broth, so don't forget to save those.
concentrate the broth. Once you have the flavor you like, strain out the chunks and put it back on a simmer until there's 1/4 to 1/2 the volume.
pour the concentrated broth into muffin tins and freeze. Pop them out and throw them in a freezer bag. You now have individually portioned condensed broth that you can throw in whatever you're cooking.
My broth/stock hack is to just get a bulk canister of dehydrated stock powder marketed to restaurants, you can find perfectly acceptable quality-wise for any use at home and its consistent. I do save things for making soups but come on... you're not gonna get a quantity that's worth all the effort if you're just going through the food you'd eat at home. These ingredients how they're used today were basically invented through restaurant processes where you have large quantities of ingredients and importantly, meat scraps like trimmings bones and carcasses coming through daily on a predictable schedule.
I used to do this but after falling down a YouTube rabbit hole I can make a balti from scratch very quickly. Onions, garlic, ginger, chilies, tomatoes + coriander powder, turmeric, chili powder, garam masala, dried fenugreek leaves.
Throw in some chicken and finish with coriander (cilantro for the Americans)
I find frozen fries from the grocery store that are either air fried or deep fried are pretty good. My fries from scratch have always been disappointing or an ordeal.
Was gonna throw Dominique Ansel's crepe process up, it's what I use now. Grew up making crepes this way with my Mennonite grandma (minus the pan caramel), but the way he mixes the dough is a lot smarter to not have any lumps.
Churros! The recipe, by itself, is kinda easy. But, to do a really good one, it needs to be done in a perfect way. A very, very tiny error, while not ruining the recipe, will made a "maybe tasty, but not that good" one! I would rather to buy in a street food place and eat if I want to. I live in Brazil, so it is kinda easy to find one!
Wide rice noodles. If you've ever tried to make pad kee mao (drunken noodle) with dried rice noodles you know it's essentially not even worth it. The noodles are too important to the dish and the dried ones curl up and are just awful. My wife and I eventually figured out how to make fresh wide rice noodles and while it's very simple to do so (rice flour slurry into a cake pan, steam it) it's very laborious and time intensive. I'll do some laborious stuff (bake my own bread, homemade yogurt and soft cheese, pasta and red sauce etc) but damn if one of my favorite foods isn't too much work for all but special occasions.
Thank god we found a place a mile away that sells fresh noodles. Now we can have it whenever we want.
Cooking is one of those things you have to do at least twice a day so I can’t understand not taking the time to learn unless you live in New York City and only have a hot plate or something.
Because you don't have to do it twice a day. We live in a society of people with lots of skills so having others that handle the cooking and you handle some other important beneficial task would be fine.
And then to fill space between wanting to eat what everyone else is having, using preserved or easy to eat items at home would fill the gap. That would be a rational society though. But we all need to be individually independent.
If you preheat the Stone and send the pizza off a wooden peal (which will take some practice, granted), the dough will start to crisp right away and it shouldn't be stuck at all when you go to turn it in a few minutes. You don't even need oil. Cooking cold pizza from a cold stone though, that makes sticking much more likely. Also like that other guy said, use a little bit of cornmeal and flour under the pie, or I hear you can use semolina flour, which is courser apparently.
Ramen. There are a lot of ways to do the broth faster, but nothing beats the real thing that needs to be boiled over several hours; and I don’t have the time to do that. I make a lot of other japanese dishes myself but ramen will always be eaten at a restaurant.
Spanikopita - or anything with layered phyllo dough
Char Siu Bao - so delicious, so fluffy, but the Chinese yeast dough is much more difficult to perfect the texture of than regular dough
Gaufre de liège. I made a very authentic version once, involving making a brioche type dough over a few days, giving time to rise and for the perle sugar to rest. Best waffles I've ever had, but so much trouble.
I haven't found them outside Central Europe and miss them so much I have been thinking about making that dough again...
This is wild. I even thought lasagna was worth the minimal effort before, but I just got KitchenAid attachments for Christmas and it's insanely easy. You mix the dough in the bowl, and then flatten a couple times, run through the slicer, put in the water and it boils way faster than dried. It's also so so much better than dried.
I'm with you on like, ravioli though. Also we occasionally made wide rice noodles from scratch for Thai cooking and while they're not technically hard, they're very labor intensive and time consuming. The problem is the difference between them and dried is night and say - dried wide rice noodles arent even really worth eating. Finally found a shop that sells them fresh though so we are golden.
Fresh pasta and dried pasta are two different ingredients that serve different purposes. It's impossible to get a fresh pasta al dente and unlikely that most home chefs have an extruder to get round shapes. The tougher texture allows it to stand up against hearty sauces.
Fresh pasta, however, has it's own merits such a delicate texture that pairs well with delicate sauces. That delicate, silky texture isn't achievable with dried pasta which would become mushy when trying.
I agree that they're two different ingredients, but most Italian pasta dishes require dried pasta. The biggest exception is probably gnocchi, they're always fresh.
My stepson, the first time I was around for his birthday, asked me specifically for "mashed potatoes made from potatoes". I don't think most people would agree with you on this one. Instant pot whole potatoes, mash with milk and butter, salt and pepper. I never peel them. So good and so easy.
Santa (aka my credit card) brought me an instant pot for Christmas. Do you have pressure and times for the potatoes? I didn't even think of cooking them in there and then mashing.
Peeling, boiling, mashing, mixing taking like 30-60 minutes, depending on how much you're making vs 3 minutes boiling water in a microwave and mixing a bag of flakes in for the same starch paste.
Any differences are marginal and so not worth the effort and time it takes.
I'm with you on this one. It's one of the few things I refuse to make from scratch on Thanksgiving. I don't know how or why, but every time I've tried to make them from scratch they get fucked up and turn into an inedible mess. I consider myself a decent cook and so does everyone else I've ever cooked for, but I cannot make mashed potatoes from scratch.
Yeah, flavor wise, there's not any significant difference. Texture wise, that's where scratch cooked excels. But if you're going to rice it or cook it down all the way anyway? Dehydrated is going to be as tasty once finished.
But making mashed potatoes from scratch is so easy and has way better texture.
Btw when you say "they come in all sorts of flavours", what does that mean? Like strawberry or something? I have never seen flavoured mashed potatoes. Is it an American thing?
In terms of nutritional value it's actually quite a huge difference, with homemade mashed potatoes being a lot better for you. Something about food being healthier when it's less processed.
Still, the powder one is not the worst thing, and boiling up potatoes takes too long some days. I like keeping some texture though, so for me it's homemade whenever I feel like having it. :)
I didn't cook/bake growing up. I couldn't care less about doing it now. I have a handful of places that have yummy food from steak to sushi. And a great bakery. I need not to spend a moment of my time doing anything more than eating & enjoying.
There's a huge difference between not butchering your own chickens and buying some fucking nasty frozen crepes full of preservatives and random filler trash.
If it's premade at a grocery store, it's disgusting and way less healthy on top.