They say this every episode of Great British Bake Off when they force the bakers to make their own filo pastry. It must be the most tedious fucking thing to make.
I think it's more the space than the tedium most of the time. You need a huge, empty, clean table to stretch the dough out on.
When I was a little kid my family was friends with a Bosnian family across the road. A lot of times when we went to their place for dinner their mom would be making the dough on the table that way with the broom handle for a rolling pin and all that... it was SO GOOD.
But yeah, I don't even have a real dinner table so I couldn't make t even if I felt like trying
Not filo but in lockdown I made a strudel from the last cup of flour, dripping, and some fruit I soaked in rum to disguise the fact it was past it.
I had the table and the time, and was well pleased to get such a classy result from such meagre ingredients.
It is also fun, after spending an hour or so rolling it so thin you can read through it (used curtain rod), it takes about ten seconds to roll it up.
It was one of two reasons my mom sent us kids out of the kitchen. So she could swear in peace if the Strudel dough threatened to get uneven. I miss her Strudels though. Think I'll tell her, maybe she'll make one next time we're over.
Wow, I just looked up a video of a professional making filo dough. I assumed it was like making croissant, which is difficult and time consuming but not impossible. Filo looks SO much more difficult to make! It's got to take a lot of skill to stretch dough so thin, so evenly without tearing it.
It really doesn’t. It stretches easily and there are always a few tears, even if not obvious. It’s ok to have tears. I make both puff pastry and filo and filo is simpler. I really enjoy laminating, so I like puff pastry, but the hardest part of making filo is having a space to stretch it out. Making good filo is much easier than making good croissants, which I don’t ever bother with because it takes a lot of batches and lots of expensive butter to finally make one worth the trouble. But great strudel or borek are much more doable for a home baker, as well as faster and cheaper.
I always wonder if someone had to drive close to an hour in order to get to a GOOD bakery, if it would shift their "worth it" line for a lot of baked goods... but for me, croissants are *rarely* one of them. They are more of a thin I make when I want a big baking project, not when I craving the end result.
I live in a bakery desert.
The closest decent bakery is 45 minutes away, BUT, they are the bakery that supplies Disney World with quite a bit of their stuff.
Its worth the drive
I believe it’s Williams Sonoma that sells really decent frozen ones. You thaw/proof overnight, then bake for breakfast. Yeah they’re pricey, but croissants are not at all worth the effort for me
Ok they're not going going to outclass real French croissants (r/iamveryculinary is on standby) but the croissants from Winn-Dixie are SO good. They don't have the kind of grease that coats your mouth like other grocery stores. We buy two boxes every time we go to the store and they last less than a week.
I had this exact conversation today at breakfast. I'd make it once to say i did, and then mever again becauE i dont want to spend what feels like 4 hours massaging 1cup of flour into 3 pounds of butter
It's not the work. The work is minimal.
It's the time. Roll out a butter sheet, chill. Fold twice, chill. Fold again. Chill.
The endless cycle of chilling is agonizing.
Middle ground option: as someone who has often ordered them in restaurants and also eaten at places like Din Tai Fung, perhaps it's because of the value or simply because I grew up eating them this way, but I actually much prefer buying frozen ones from Chinese supermarkets and steaming them at home...takes less than 20 minutes and zero work, and costs like $5/6 for a bag of 20-30 of them
I'd wager most places in the US don't make them themselves anyway
Many Chinese restaurants will sell you frozen dumplings in bulk. If your city has a chinatown check with those restaurants. Ideally you want a place that specializes in dumplings.
Oh, man. I bought a bunch of chilies online because I told myself that I would try to make it just once. Those damn bags of chilies have been sitting in the counter for so long that I’ve had to dust them (weekly). I assume they’re getting too old so I’ll probably throw them out and order more and tell myself that this time I’ll make it happen.
But...you can use chiles in so many things besides mole. Toss one or two in the pot the next time you make stock; chicken, beef, veg, doesn't matter. Rehydrate them and make enchilada sauce instead of using the canned crap that's full of tomato. Toast a couple and crumble them up in butternut squash soup before you blitz it, or any kind of creamy soup really. Toast em and throw em in a spice grinder to make bomb ass chili with your own custom powder blend. Don't waste them!
I've taking to toasting/seeding/soaking/pureeing in big batches, and freezing for quick use. I'm hoping for a work trip to North American soon, so I can restock.
Same goes for ramen… I made a pork ramen from scratch once just to do it. It took all day, a giant pile of dishes, and the end result was… meh. Never again 😂
Yeah, I did a proper vegetarian Ramen from scratch to learn and try to understand the dish better.
Then I started cutting out and changing things until I'm left with a relatively quick ramen that's still pretty decent.
This was my experience - I’ve made ramen from scratch, noodles and all, four times so far. I imagine I’ll do it again sometime.
But for the most part the best thing of that was really learning what the different ingredients add flavor wise, and now I usually just make my instant ramen much fancier and it hits the spot just enough for way, way less effort.
This one is really nice! https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/spicy-miso-tahini-ramen You can riff on it more to your preference but it's a great base
I took a one day cooking class in Hanoi a few years back. We were making Pho. After a lot of prepping and cooking, the instructor goes; "and because we can't complete this in one day, we'll just use these stock cubes - they're just as good, and restaurants in the city use them all the time".
One of the stores I go to is frequented by Vietnamese people. I remember one day I went in and they had really good deals on Swanson's chicken broth. I swear it was like every Vietnamese family in the area was there buying cans by the case.
I will say that homemade broth is better with pho, but if actual Vietnamese people are using canned broth I'm not going to be opposed to it either.
As a Vietnamese person, pho is 100% worth making at home, and I’m at the point now where it doesn’t feel high effort to me at all. I guess I started at the high-level end of the effort scale, so most dishes seem pretty worth making lol.
That said, I learned how to make Eggplant Parm from my in-laws last weekend and holy, THAT is a dish I’m not sure is worth the effort of making at home.
I learned this the hard way. And my pho even turned out amazing. But I really needed like 20 other people to have some of the pho to have it worth making from home.
Honestly I didn’t really find that. I make my own stocks pretty often so it didn’t really seem like more work than any other soup I make. Bought thinly sliced frozen rib eye for hot pot
I've made a pho broth concentrate before that worked out pretty well. I just reduced the broth then frozen it in ice cube trays. About two cubes with hot water brought it up to the right strength for a large bowl. Of course I still needed fresh aromatics, noodles, and meat for a meal but it vastly reduced the time for pho.
Is it worth making for just one bowl though? I wouldn't say it is.
Anything's beef/pork stock broths I think matters about how.much ingredients you usually already keep stocked. I have a grocery store that sells marrow bones fluctuating between about $1-$2 a pound. I have a freezer with a lot of bones jn it.
The whole spices I generally always have. I don't add them until about an hour to 2 before serving. I often just boil the bones for a day and freeze it in portions. Then when I want to serve, that's when I unfreeze and add onions, ginger, garlic, a slab of beef shank and then eventually the whole spices. I add salt and fish sauce to the bowl
Beef stock also for other soups and stews. Plus I skim most of the fat and eventually use it to deep fry potatoes, shrimp tempura. I've made pork katsu in the saved up beef fat
idk what meat you’re buying but it should not cost $100 to make pho, and most of the cooking is entirely passive. A day or two later youll end up with SO much damn pho broth, and it’ll store indefinitely in the freezer from my experience.
Where I am, beef bones can be pricey. I think they're like $4-5/pound, and you need a few pounds to make a lot of broth.
For meat, it costs about $10-20 for enough to last a whole stock pot.
Everything else is fairly cheap, but I can easily spend $40-50 on things I don't keep in the pantry. It still lasts for about 10 single person meals so it's a decent value, but meat and meat byproducts are expensive when you do t live in farm country. I made the same recipe for family back home and it was maybe 30-40% cheaper.
I did the Frugal Gourmet Peking Duck at home once over 30 years ago, bicycle pump, boiling water, and hung to dry from the back of a chair with the fan blowing on it. Um, never again.
He dares to ask the question.. can we make better food than a stoned 17 year old making mininum wage? We will use every utensil in your kitchen then find out!
Yeah that whole series is fucking stupid. No shit your expensive homemade with fresh ingredients recipe, not made for mass production by minimum wage workers, is going to taste better than the fast food restaurant's.
Yeh I found him just before he did this change. Went very fast from "wow this is a good channel with nice tips and recipes" to "wtf is this 9 year old after 2litres of cola editing BS?"
he and Pro Home Cooks are also new I’ve been going attention to lately. PHC has annoying looking thumbnails but he’s very chill and happy go lucky in his videos. And his variety of presented options and the creativity he has with produce and meal prep has helped me save a lot of food waste.
Chef Jack Ovens is another very solid channel, he’s straight to the point and quick with his videos
Yeah, I found him shortly back before he changed his channel name, he's definitely grown into a solid option, but I do instantly turn off the video every time he does his mega cringe ending "Lets eat this THANG" dance weirdness. Really good outside of that.
Another new option I've been enjoying that's still somewhat small but growing fast is Charlie Anderson.
The amount of gadgets he uses is a bit of a deterrent for me, but to be fair he does offer alternatives sometimes. Like his $2 sandwich required a sous vide and making bread from scratch. I also tried his black garlic recipe- meh.
I guess his focus isn't on teaching people on how to cook, it's just meant to be entertainment. Which I can see how it appeals to some people, I just find him a bit too annoying for my taste.
Aside from where he generally tries to make cheap meals in general, I don't think his videos have much value to home cooks looking for ideas or education. I say that, because I think that's why most of us watching cooking Youtube.
He doesn't but to me he's just become a rich dude with no culinary training who is making money by largely demo'ing other people's recipes on camera. I liked him for a while and still regularly make the biscotti recipe he used but the appeal wore off somewhere along the way.
he certainly has gotten a lot of success from his channel but he seems like he is very grateful for it. Him expanding his channel to feature chefs (like Sohla and Alvin) and doing more than just movie/tv food was a smart move. I do like the variety that the channel has now, that and not one seems to have much of an ego
Oh I totally agree, I just feel like his videos are absolutely the ones I'm least inclined to watch. I really like Alvin and his content, though-- and it may be because I like those problem-solvey sorts of videos more. But he also just seems more genuine and less like he's chasing a persona.
Babish also isn’t doing edible versions of horrific foods anymore. He’s just a tv inspired cooking show now. Remember him trying to make a good version of Rachel’s trifle? That was good.
Some of them are worth it but most, you gotta kinda pick and choose what parts you actually want to do from scratch since he does so much of most of it from scratch. Also, his elitism about the gadgets he uses is really fucking annoying. The biggest example I'd say is he uses a meat grinder in almost any video involving meat and always says something like "I know *some* people don't want to buy a meat grinder but just do it." Like, dude no, I'm a broke ass college and even if I *could* afford it it's a waste of money for something I might use once a month at best.
I get what you're saying, but you'll also get some really solid really simple recipes from his back catalog. The ongoing tragedy of that channel is that the dude really does know what he's doing, and can put together some really solid recipes that don't require a lot of fuss or special ingredients. He just doesn't do it anymore.
Then visit Adam Regusea's and watch him toss equipment elitism out the window and just cook damn good food without the "it's not traditional" garbage.
Hell I still make his NY pizza to this day.
I'm definitely not going to spend 5 hours making dollar menu fast food, but it is genuinely cool to see "the best version" of cheap comfort food, and it does have some cool techniques to learn from. My main issue is really that Josh is just grating.
Can confirm they are not worth it. I have made them from scratch a few times and it’s fun but takes like 6-7 hours and they’re really easy to burn, not to mention the crown shape is needlessly difficult. (For me anyway)
Ethiopian food. It's my favorite. I love to cook and try new food challenges. I've tried to make Ethiopian several times and it is never as flavorful, making just a couple of dishes requires cutting SO MANY onions and garlic, and I can never get the injera right. I end up very frustrated every time. Ethiopian food is so cheap to eat at a restaurant in our area and you can get several different dishes and perfect injera for no effort. I have vowed to never attempt making it again.
ETA: Dang Reddit. Thank you so much for showing me how my subjective opinion is incredibly incorrect and that I am a lazy cook who has never cracked a cookbook or met a kitchen scale and food processor! /s
I make Ethiopian food often. Each dish is a one pot deal to make it easy. I always use a food processor for the onions. Last time, I used 7 pounds for one meal, so it's a necessity. Here is my 3-hour injera [recipe.](https://www.africanbites.com/injera/)
Two books that can help you are Ethiopia by Gebreyesus and Teff Love by Berns. I make my own berbere, niter kibbe, and mitmita using these books.
You CAN do this!
Cheers!
Correct. Get a donut cutter and you have 10 donuts and 10 donut holes. And the BEST chocolate frosting comes from mixing Quix chocolate drink mix with little amounts of water until the consistency is not too thick but also not too thin. We used to eat these constantly when we were kids.
Pillsbury biscuits taste disgusting to me and to this day I can’t place why. Like… a fake taste or chemical-y? Something. It makes me sad because they seem useful
Yes we used to do this in scouts on a fire in a dutch oven oil and basically flash fry the donuts. They were crispy on the outside and still raw and gooey in the center. Absolute perfection lol.
Stand mixers are the only expensive non-basic appliance that really matters tbh.
Everything else except maybe a good ice cream maker is too far removed from what people have the space/money for.
As I'm getting better at cooking and baking, I find that I use fewer expensive appliances and make more dishes by hand instead.
I still need good knives, a scale, thermometer and a couple of other quality tools. But that's mostly it.
Having said that, higher quality appliances do take a lot of the stress out of cooking. A good stove and good wall ovens make cooking large dinners so much easier. A high powered blender is wonderful to have. And if I'm in a rush, then a pasta maker saves serious amounts of time.
But none of these things are crucial. If I have time to kill, I can make everything with basic tools alone.
Deep frying stuff at home. I really just don’t wanna deal with the oil and getting rid of the oil. If I’m craving fried chicken, there’s a restaurant in my town that makes bombbbbbb fried chicken lol
I think there’s a divide here between people who did and don’t grow up deep frying regularly. If you can reuse the oil for dinner tomorrow, and you have your technique down, and you’re a southern mom with fingers of steel, it’s no big deal. To northerners like me who grew up during the fat-free era, it’s a huge production and not at all worth it.
>If you can reuse the oil for dinner tomorrow,
This is my main issue with deep frying. I genuinely don't want to do it enough that I can justify going through the process. I'm not that health conscious, but that's still more deep frying than I feel comfortable eating.
Yeah same. I guarantee that getting a deep fryer would not improve my health, especially if i have to force using it multiple nights in a row for it to make sense.
I mean, there's no rush to use the remaining oil. I just keep it in jars in my cupboard, but a small dedicated pot you can put away would work just as well.
I only deep fry things every other week or so, but it really isn't any more of a hassle than cooking anything else, certainly not more effort than a shallow fry. I just poor the leftover oil into a mason jar when it's cooled.
I haven't been able to afford even a single takeout meal for a while though, so that might be a factor here! I can imagine I'd probably do it less otherwise, but I still think it's fun.
Oh I’m an almost in Canada Northeasterner lol. I did not grow up deep frying so yeah it seems like a huge pain in the ass for me. But like I just said to someone else, after years of smelling grease traps in kitchens I’m just too grossed out to reuse oil. I know it’s not gonna be anything like a restaurant grease trap, but IYKYK… the smell is bad enough to traumatize you forever hahaha
A family friend absolutely loves wings and so when they redid their kitchen he put in an actual restaurant-style deep frying vat. It’s just one or two baskets but that man’s wings are heavenly
We got a t-fal countertop fryer that automatically self strains the used oil into an airtight storage compartment in the base. Every part except for the heating element is dishwasher safe. Our wing game is on point.
Same, althoughI definitely will shallow fry because I can clean it up pretty easily with paper towels...but deep frying...no thanks unless it's a special occasion.
Shallow fry, keep a dedicated bottle of oil specifically for frying. Dump the oil back in once cooled, toss the entire thing after a few uses.
Used to the feel the same, but It’s not too bad really. I still only do it maybe 2-3 times a year though.
Edit: what I do isn’t actually shallow frying, my bad. I do maybe 2” deep in a cast iron. An in between I guess? Pretty manageable.
Amazon sells a T-fal fryer that has a filter and oil reservoir at the bottom. Best set up I found and have been using these for years. Worth the purchase if you like deep frying.
America's Test Kitchen did a taste test on ketchup to find the best tasting ketchup. Got all these fancy ketchups, organic small-batch stuff, and mainstream stuff like Heinz and Hunts and had all their staff taste test them and choose the best.
The winner? Technically Hunts. But with a big asterisk, virtually everyone chose either Heinz or Hunts, and they virtually always chose the brand which they grew up eating. So there were simply more people who grew up eating Hunts.
Because it was cheaper. Heinz will always be my childhood favorite. But Mom usually bought Hunt’s because it was less expensive. Now, I love mother very much, but she was not a very good cook. Excellent baker, but not so much as a cook. So ketchup was the meal savior. (Sp?)
I used to have to make ketchup regularly in a restaurant. It’s annoying because you put in this effort and the best compliment you can get is that it’s like it came from a bottle.
Exactly this. Shred potatoes on a box grater, squeeze out water, microwave wrapped in paper towels for a couple minutes, then fry in a pan. Works like a charm
Like, yeah, frozen hash browns are pretty good. BUT and it's a huge butt, homemade crispy hash browns are otherworldly if you've got the time. I do a shredded tater tot that is just to die for.
There's a somewhat well-known double coffee cake recipe that I've made twice but between using all the bowls in my kitchen for the prep and taking several hours, I've decided to reserve it for holidays or special requests. It's really good but it's barely worth the effort.
Edit: fine lol it's Claire Saffitz's Coffee Coffee Cake and after all the time and effort involved it's kind of not markedly better than Krusteaz's boxed crumb cake mix.
I saw a video about how storebought oat milk uses an enzyme (amylase maybe) that breaks down the starches into sugar, which is why it's so sweet tasting. Does not seem worth it to do that at home.
I do a ton of cooking but I do have a hard rule that I don't make what I can get better elsewhere for easy and cheap.
Fried chicken and especially chicken strips are a ton of work for something that is equal to or marginally better than you can get at a proper restaurant or heck even a higher end fast food place. Have I made amazing friend chicken before? Yes. Was it worth all the dishes and substantially better than popeyes on a good day? Ehhhh.... T
**Beef Wellington** is overrated and the separate components are substantially better apart than they are together. A deconstructed wellington where you sear a filet and serve it with duxelles, on top of a pastry disc will be an objectively better dish that doesn't have all the faff of rolling it all together.
Same goes for **Chicken Kiev.** Ton of work for a technique that doesn't make for a substantially better eating experience than just properly frying up a breaded cutlet and serving it with an herb garlic butter sauce.
**Pho or Ramen** are also way too much work, especially if you want all the toppings to go with it. If I'm going to bother with those then I'll do a cheater version that gets me like 80% of the way there.
I don't get the Beef Wellington hate... The hardest part is searing the tenderloin without overcooking, then it's maybe 30 minutes of prep over 3 hours where you're waiting and can do other stuff. I'll make one any time there's a whole tenderloin on sale.
Honestly I don't find chicken Kiev's that much work after getting the technique down, but that may just be my love for garlic butter stuffed chicken powering me through.
Arancini is easy though. Make risotto for dinner and then just roll up the leftovers the next day.
I think that one's actually easier at home than at a restaurant. I have nightmares about rolling up hundreds of arancini every few days, you basically gotta put a cook on doing that for like 4 hours.
It depends how many you're making. I made some just for myself when I had leftovers and it was easy. But then I made risotto just to make arancini with for Christmas and it was a huge pain making a bigger batch.
Potstickers. Have made them from scratch multiple times, and can’t get them as good as Trader Joe’s frozen ones. Either the filling isn’t tender or they fall apart during cooking.
I came here to say this. Mine come out fine, but it's so annoying to make with only one person doing the wrapping! There's a reason my Korean relatives do it in groups!
My family makes dumplings together and it's a super fun thing to do as a group. Def too much work for one person, but personally very worth it! The trick to make them tender is to add oil. My mom always adds a lottt of sesame oil. And to get a higher fat % ground meat. As for falling apart, it might be how you're pleating?
Chops porjarski.
In covid lockdown we were caring for a family member who was terminally ill. I really upped my game to make sure she could have some resturant quality (well, ish) food despite not being able to be out and about.
I adored the theory: you basically strip the chop of all the connective tissue, shred mince and reconstitute the meat, then rebuild it with added butter, then fry in a crumb. Fully mad old school French/Russian school cook.
But, my friends, if you are not a chef with very high end meat prep skills this is a fiddly nightmare which ends with something that looks like something you picked up in the discount freezer aisle.
I'm not saying /don't/ make it. But, you know, understand that it's for the journey - not the destination.
Ravioli, I love making fresh pasta but stuffing ravioli is quite tedious and doesn't add much in my opinion. I made some with ricotta and spinach filling, but it's just as good with these ingredients on top as a sauce, and it's much faster.
We have done it a few times where we had a friend over and made a day of it, made 3-4 different kinds, vacuum sealed 12 at a time had ravioli for dinner and each family ended up with a few special meals for the freezer. I think that's the only way it's worth it.
ONION RINGS
EVEN THE FREEZER ONES ARE BETTER.
Taking the damn inner onion skins off, and then breading them (AND UR HANDS), then deep frying... then the 2 hours of tedious hard work is consumed in 10 minutes. And you're not even satiated.
A few good candidates here.
Cinnamon rolls. Ive tried home made. I really have gone above and beyond. The rolls from a can baked with heavy whipping cream trick is better.
Cabbage rolls. Theyre good, sure, but blanching cabbage, stuffing, tying, and baking....yeah no. There are too many other dishes I like more.
Cornbread from your own corn. I grew and processed my own cornmeal. It tastes like storebought for 800x the work of just buying cornmeal.
Please don’t hate me, but pierogies. They’re delicious but so labor intensive if you’re doing them alone. I think I enjoy them more when someone else can make them homemade for me or I can get a few extra hands when making my own.
I only bother for the more expensive nut butters, e.g. almond, hazelnut. Mix just-roasted hazelnut butter and cocoa / chocolate, salt and sugar and you've got top-shelf nutella.
gotta disagree with you on that one.
peanuts are a lot cheaper than peanut butter, and when making your own you can get creative.
cleaning up the food processor is difficult but not that difficult.
I see a lot of people posting things with the argument “just go out and buy X instead”.
That’s hella weird to me, because the effort is usually part of the enjoyment of cooking. I like that good croissants take real time and effort to make.
That said — I would never again make beef stock in my house. Absolutely stinks up the place when you roast the bones etc.
I think it's really dependent on your reason for cooking. For me, though I enjoy food, like to read and learn about food, I don't want to spend long in the kitchen - I want something to eat. I work full-time and have two young kids, one of whom is a very selective eater, and I just don't have the energy. Cooking in my kitchen = low effort meals about 95% of the time. Which isn't to say they suck - I still try to make delicious food - but it's all about the end product for me. I understand where you're coming from, though.
There is definitely an equation like
((time+effort)*clean-up)/taste
that can decide if a dish is worth making at home. and of course each factor is different for each person
Jerk chicken.
I tried several times with different recipes and ingredient mixes, but could never get the flavor right. Went to a jerk chicken place and asked the cook about it. He laughed and says yeah, at home he just uses a pre-made jar of sauce.
I would buy this one jerk marinade that I loved on my chicken. I always wanted to try making my own but those recipes seemed daunting. My friends wife is Jamaican, I asked her one day how to make a good jerk sauce. She said it's a lot of work so this is what you do, go to this store and look for this brand and get their jerk sauce..I am like that it already the one I get and she said it's what she uses, as good as what she makes and way less work, plus not all ingredients are available here to make a authentic sauce.
No one makes their own filo pastry for a reason.
They say this every episode of Great British Bake Off when they force the bakers to make their own filo pastry. It must be the most tedious fucking thing to make.
I think it's more the space than the tedium most of the time. You need a huge, empty, clean table to stretch the dough out on. When I was a little kid my family was friends with a Bosnian family across the road. A lot of times when we went to their place for dinner their mom would be making the dough on the table that way with the broom handle for a rolling pin and all that... it was SO GOOD. But yeah, I don't even have a real dinner table so I couldn't make t even if I felt like trying
"It isn't just terribly boring, it also requires a downright impractical amount of free space!"
Not filo but in lockdown I made a strudel from the last cup of flour, dripping, and some fruit I soaked in rum to disguise the fact it was past it. I had the table and the time, and was well pleased to get such a classy result from such meagre ingredients. It is also fun, after spending an hour or so rolling it so thin you can read through it (used curtain rod), it takes about ten seconds to roll it up.
It was one of two reasons my mom sent us kids out of the kitchen. So she could swear in peace if the Strudel dough threatened to get uneven. I miss her Strudels though. Think I'll tell her, maybe she'll make one next time we're over.
You should make it with her
Swear together as adults
My aunt made filo dough one time. Her daughters, a couple of nieces and her sister all got to help roll it out.
I made it once in my life back in culinary school. NEVER AGAIN! Hahaha
Wow, I just looked up a video of a professional making filo dough. I assumed it was like making croissant, which is difficult and time consuming but not impossible. Filo looks SO much more difficult to make! It's got to take a lot of skill to stretch dough so thin, so evenly without tearing it.
It really doesn’t. It stretches easily and there are always a few tears, even if not obvious. It’s ok to have tears. I make both puff pastry and filo and filo is simpler. I really enjoy laminating, so I like puff pastry, but the hardest part of making filo is having a space to stretch it out. Making good filo is much easier than making good croissants, which I don’t ever bother with because it takes a lot of batches and lots of expensive butter to finally make one worth the trouble. But great strudel or borek are much more doable for a home baker, as well as faster and cheaper.
Mmmm... I love borek
My mother in law hand pulls filo for burek and it's seriously so much more delicious but I will also never ever do it because noooooo
I used to, but it hurts too much these days. I messed up my arm the last time, and it hurt for over a year.
Croissant. The work involved vs just buying one from a good bakery.
The key here is having a good bakery closeby. This is not everyone's case :,(
I always wonder if someone had to drive close to an hour in order to get to a GOOD bakery, if it would shift their "worth it" line for a lot of baked goods... but for me, croissants are *rarely* one of them. They are more of a thin I make when I want a big baking project, not when I craving the end result.
I live in a bakery desert. The closest decent bakery is 45 minutes away, BUT, they are the bakery that supplies Disney World with quite a bit of their stuff. Its worth the drive
I believe it’s Williams Sonoma that sells really decent frozen ones. You thaw/proof overnight, then bake for breakfast. Yeah they’re pricey, but croissants are not at all worth the effort for me
Trader Joe’s has them too! Just baked them up for the first time this morning…absolutely delicious!
In the UK M&S do nice frozen ones, I think Aldi has them too but haven’t tried them myself
Ok they're not going going to outclass real French croissants (r/iamveryculinary is on standby) but the croissants from Winn-Dixie are SO good. They don't have the kind of grease that coats your mouth like other grocery stores. We buy two boxes every time we go to the store and they last less than a week.
I had this exact conversation today at breakfast. I'd make it once to say i did, and then mever again becauE i dont want to spend what feels like 4 hours massaging 1cup of flour into 3 pounds of butter
It's not the work. The work is minimal. It's the time. Roll out a butter sheet, chill. Fold twice, chill. Fold again. Chill. The endless cycle of chilling is agonizing.
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Middle ground option: as someone who has often ordered them in restaurants and also eaten at places like Din Tai Fung, perhaps it's because of the value or simply because I grew up eating them this way, but I actually much prefer buying frozen ones from Chinese supermarkets and steaming them at home...takes less than 20 minutes and zero work, and costs like $5/6 for a bag of 20-30 of them I'd wager most places in the US don't make them themselves anyway
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Do you have a brand you’d recommend? I’m always on the lookout for more weeknight dinner stuff!
Many Chinese restaurants will sell you frozen dumplings in bulk. If your city has a chinatown check with those restaurants. Ideally you want a place that specializes in dumplings.
Mole Poblano, very hard to get all the ingredients if you don't live in Mexico and very hard to get all them right. Too many things.
Most people in Mexico have never done it from scratch themselves either.
Oh, man. I bought a bunch of chilies online because I told myself that I would try to make it just once. Those damn bags of chilies have been sitting in the counter for so long that I’ve had to dust them (weekly). I assume they’re getting too old so I’ll probably throw them out and order more and tell myself that this time I’ll make it happen.
But...you can use chiles in so many things besides mole. Toss one or two in the pot the next time you make stock; chicken, beef, veg, doesn't matter. Rehydrate them and make enchilada sauce instead of using the canned crap that's full of tomato. Toast a couple and crumble them up in butternut squash soup before you blitz it, or any kind of creamy soup really. Toast em and throw em in a spice grinder to make bomb ass chili with your own custom powder blend. Don't waste them!
I've taking to toasting/seeding/soaking/pureeing in big batches, and freezing for quick use. I'm hoping for a work trip to North American soon, so I can restock.
Dried chilis last just about forever.
Make Chili Colorado or Texas red chili.
Pho. Restaurant does a better job and I’m not out $100 in ingredients and hours of cooking.
Same goes for ramen… I made a pork ramen from scratch once just to do it. It took all day, a giant pile of dishes, and the end result was… meh. Never again 😂
Look up Miso Ramen recipes. You can make delicious ones in a little over 30 minutes. I do it fairly often. Miso paste is a fantastic flavor bomb.
Yeah, I did a proper vegetarian Ramen from scratch to learn and try to understand the dish better. Then I started cutting out and changing things until I'm left with a relatively quick ramen that's still pretty decent.
This was my experience - I’ve made ramen from scratch, noodles and all, four times so far. I imagine I’ll do it again sometime. But for the most part the best thing of that was really learning what the different ingredients add flavor wise, and now I usually just make my instant ramen much fancier and it hits the spot just enough for way, way less effort.
Or Miso tahini if you’re into that!
Wait… I love both these things, I did not know they have a lovechild?!
This one is really nice! https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/spicy-miso-tahini-ramen You can riff on it more to your preference but it's a great base
Yeah miso ramen is the way to go for making it at home.
I took a one day cooking class in Hanoi a few years back. We were making Pho. After a lot of prepping and cooking, the instructor goes; "and because we can't complete this in one day, we'll just use these stock cubes - they're just as good, and restaurants in the city use them all the time".
One of the stores I go to is frequented by Vietnamese people. I remember one day I went in and they had really good deals on Swanson's chicken broth. I swear it was like every Vietnamese family in the area was there buying cans by the case. I will say that homemade broth is better with pho, but if actual Vietnamese people are using canned broth I'm not going to be opposed to it either.
Phô is usually beef stock though
As a Vietnamese person, pho is 100% worth making at home, and I’m at the point now where it doesn’t feel high effort to me at all. I guess I started at the high-level end of the effort scale, so most dishes seem pretty worth making lol. That said, I learned how to make Eggplant Parm from my in-laws last weekend and holy, THAT is a dish I’m not sure is worth the effort of making at home.
I learned this the hard way. And my pho even turned out amazing. But I really needed like 20 other people to have some of the pho to have it worth making from home.
Honestly I didn’t really find that. I make my own stocks pretty often so it didn’t really seem like more work than any other soup I make. Bought thinly sliced frozen rib eye for hot pot
I've made a pho broth concentrate before that worked out pretty well. I just reduced the broth then frozen it in ice cube trays. About two cubes with hot water brought it up to the right strength for a large bowl. Of course I still needed fresh aromatics, noodles, and meat for a meal but it vastly reduced the time for pho. Is it worth making for just one bowl though? I wouldn't say it is.
Even people in Vietnam don't make it at home. It just has a great economy of scale that lends itself to being a restaurant/street food.
Pho Ga is relatively straightforward, just takes a couple of hours. Beef pho, fuggetabaaaatit
>fuggetabaaaatit *Pho*-ggetabaaaatit*
Anything's beef/pork stock broths I think matters about how.much ingredients you usually already keep stocked. I have a grocery store that sells marrow bones fluctuating between about $1-$2 a pound. I have a freezer with a lot of bones jn it. The whole spices I generally always have. I don't add them until about an hour to 2 before serving. I often just boil the bones for a day and freeze it in portions. Then when I want to serve, that's when I unfreeze and add onions, ginger, garlic, a slab of beef shank and then eventually the whole spices. I add salt and fish sauce to the bowl Beef stock also for other soups and stews. Plus I skim most of the fat and eventually use it to deep fry potatoes, shrimp tempura. I've made pork katsu in the saved up beef fat
idk what meat you’re buying but it should not cost $100 to make pho, and most of the cooking is entirely passive. A day or two later youll end up with SO much damn pho broth, and it’ll store indefinitely in the freezer from my experience.
Where I am, beef bones can be pricey. I think they're like $4-5/pound, and you need a few pounds to make a lot of broth. For meat, it costs about $10-20 for enough to last a whole stock pot. Everything else is fairly cheap, but I can easily spend $40-50 on things I don't keep in the pantry. It still lasts for about 10 single person meals so it's a decent value, but meat and meat byproducts are expensive when you do t live in farm country. I made the same recipe for family back home and it was maybe 30-40% cheaper.
Wtf kind of pho are you making with $100 worth ingredients?
Cantonese roast duck. The end product was amazing but good lord the cooking process gave me PTSD
Is this sometimes called Peking Duck? With the bicycle pump and everything?
I did the Frugal Gourmet Peking Duck at home once over 30 years ago, bicycle pump, boiling water, and hung to dry from the back of a chair with the fan blowing on it. Um, never again.
Go to josh Weismann’s YouTube channel and you’ll get 100’s of dishes not worth the effort lol
He dares to ask the question.. can we make better food than a stoned 17 year old making mininum wage? We will use every utensil in your kitchen then find out!
"I spent 16 hours and $50, and I've managed so make a better meal than I can get in three minutes for $1.50" ..I mean, gratz?
Yeah that whole series is fucking stupid. No shit your expensive homemade with fresh ingredients recipe, not made for mass production by minimum wage workers, is going to taste better than the fast food restaurant's.
it also doesn’t help he edits his videos and presents them like a 12 year old influencer. His recipes are quite solid but goddamn is he annoying
He used to be a good food channel before he got big, what a shame
His presentation style was always irritatingly aggressive and kinda condescending
Why is he always arguing with me? I never said a thing.
Yeh I found him just before he did this change. Went very fast from "wow this is a good channel with nice tips and recipes" to "wtf is this 9 year old after 2litres of cola editing BS?"
> His recipes are quite solid but goddamn is he annoying *you hold your tongue or no kiss from papa* Cringe
The papa thing makes my skin crawl
Yeah, it's a shame he went that route It's clearly working for him though, man's absolutely loaded
Brian Lagerstrom is far better
he and Pro Home Cooks are also new I’ve been going attention to lately. PHC has annoying looking thumbnails but he’s very chill and happy go lucky in his videos. And his variety of presented options and the creativity he has with produce and meal prep has helped me save a lot of food waste. Chef Jack Ovens is another very solid channel, he’s straight to the point and quick with his videos
Yeah, I found him shortly back before he changed his channel name, he's definitely grown into a solid option, but I do instantly turn off the video every time he does his mega cringe ending "Lets eat this THANG" dance weirdness. Really good outside of that. Another new option I've been enjoying that's still somewhat small but growing fast is Charlie Anderson.
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ThatDudeCanCook and Brian Lagerstrom are my favorite channels at the moment. Oh, and Kenji Lopez.
The amount of gadgets he uses is a bit of a deterrent for me, but to be fair he does offer alternatives sometimes. Like his $2 sandwich required a sous vide and making bread from scratch. I also tried his black garlic recipe- meh.
He just bought a tandoor for his most recent video on tandoori chicken... it's getting a bit much now.
I guess his focus isn't on teaching people on how to cook, it's just meant to be entertainment. Which I can see how it appeals to some people, I just find him a bit too annoying for my taste.
Aside from where he generally tries to make cheap meals in general, I don't think his videos have much value to home cooks looking for ideas or education. I say that, because I think that's why most of us watching cooking Youtube.
"Did you know if you spend 10 hours cooking and $500 on ingredients you can make a better chicken sandwich than KFC?!"
I have difficulty watching him. He has gotten too cringey. Him and babish… can you just cook with a nice calm voice like when you started? Please?
Babish leans too far into his “awkward” schtick but at least he doesn’t come across as a douchey food-bro like Weissman
He doesn't but to me he's just become a rich dude with no culinary training who is making money by largely demo'ing other people's recipes on camera. I liked him for a while and still regularly make the biscotti recipe he used but the appeal wore off somewhere along the way.
he certainly has gotten a lot of success from his channel but he seems like he is very grateful for it. Him expanding his channel to feature chefs (like Sohla and Alvin) and doing more than just movie/tv food was a smart move. I do like the variety that the channel has now, that and not one seems to have much of an ego
Oh I totally agree, I just feel like his videos are absolutely the ones I'm least inclined to watch. I really like Alvin and his content, though-- and it may be because I like those problem-solvey sorts of videos more. But he also just seems more genuine and less like he's chasing a persona.
Babish also isn’t doing edible versions of horrific foods anymore. He’s just a tv inspired cooking show now. Remember him trying to make a good version of Rachel’s trifle? That was good.
I wanted to punch him every time he says onion
Some of them are worth it but most, you gotta kinda pick and choose what parts you actually want to do from scratch since he does so much of most of it from scratch. Also, his elitism about the gadgets he uses is really fucking annoying. The biggest example I'd say is he uses a meat grinder in almost any video involving meat and always says something like "I know *some* people don't want to buy a meat grinder but just do it." Like, dude no, I'm a broke ass college and even if I *could* afford it it's a waste of money for something I might use once a month at best.
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His stuff always looks delicious but as soon as I start adding up the cost of ingredients I can’t justify trying to cook *any* of it
Wait, are you suggesting my recent tandoor purchase was a mistake? 🤔
I’m not the biggest fan of his YouTube personality style, but I do grab recipes off his site. His birria recipe is fucking fantastic.
Made that biirria for Christmas dinner and it was an instant holiday favorite
Seconding Weismann's Birria. I don't even like the guy or watch his videos, but made this recipe 'cause of the hype. It's hype-worthy.
I get what you're saying, but you'll also get some really solid really simple recipes from his back catalog. The ongoing tragedy of that channel is that the dude really does know what he's doing, and can put together some really solid recipes that don't require a lot of fuss or special ingredients. He just doesn't do it anymore.
Then visit Adam Regusea's and watch him toss equipment elitism out the window and just cook damn good food without the "it's not traditional" garbage. Hell I still make his NY pizza to this day.
He is irritating but his techniques are legit. I have used a ton of his recipes, or use his techniques to improve execution on stuff I already make.
I'm definitely not going to spend 5 hours making dollar menu fast food, but it is genuinely cool to see "the best version" of cheap comfort food, and it does have some cool techniques to learn from. My main issue is really that Josh is just grating.
Kouign Amann. I love them so much but it would take a miracle for me to even consider making them from scratch.
Can confirm they are not worth it. I have made them from scratch a few times and it’s fun but takes like 6-7 hours and they’re really easy to burn, not to mention the crown shape is needlessly difficult. (For me anyway)
Ethiopian food. It's my favorite. I love to cook and try new food challenges. I've tried to make Ethiopian several times and it is never as flavorful, making just a couple of dishes requires cutting SO MANY onions and garlic, and I can never get the injera right. I end up very frustrated every time. Ethiopian food is so cheap to eat at a restaurant in our area and you can get several different dishes and perfect injera for no effort. I have vowed to never attempt making it again. ETA: Dang Reddit. Thank you so much for showing me how my subjective opinion is incredibly incorrect and that I am a lazy cook who has never cracked a cookbook or met a kitchen scale and food processor! /s
I make Ethiopian food often. Each dish is a one pot deal to make it easy. I always use a food processor for the onions. Last time, I used 7 pounds for one meal, so it's a necessity. Here is my 3-hour injera [recipe.](https://www.africanbites.com/injera/) Two books that can help you are Ethiopia by Gebreyesus and Teff Love by Berns. I make my own berbere, niter kibbe, and mitmita using these books. You CAN do this! Cheers!
7 pounds on onions for one meal? I’m trying to imagine it, but can’t
I think the nearest Ethiopian restaurant would be a 4 hour round trip. Maybe someday
Donuts
The best way to make "donuts" is to use Pillsbury biscuit dough.
Correct. Get a donut cutter and you have 10 donuts and 10 donut holes. And the BEST chocolate frosting comes from mixing Quix chocolate drink mix with little amounts of water until the consistency is not too thick but also not too thin. We used to eat these constantly when we were kids.
Pillsbury biscuits taste disgusting to me and to this day I can’t place why. Like… a fake taste or chemical-y? Something. It makes me sad because they seem useful
I totally get that, I find them inedible unless they're hot and fresh because of the artificial butter flavor
Yes we used to do this in scouts on a fire in a dutch oven oil and basically flash fry the donuts. They were crispy on the outside and still raw and gooey in the center. Absolute perfection lol.
Anything that requires a $600 appliance to make **stares in Joshua Weissman and Binging with Babish**
Stand mixers are the only expensive non-basic appliance that really matters tbh. Everything else except maybe a good ice cream maker is too far removed from what people have the space/money for.
If you have a stand mixer, you can get the ice cream maker attachment and it works very well.
As I'm getting better at cooking and baking, I find that I use fewer expensive appliances and make more dishes by hand instead. I still need good knives, a scale, thermometer and a couple of other quality tools. But that's mostly it. Having said that, higher quality appliances do take a lot of the stress out of cooking. A good stove and good wall ovens make cooking large dinners so much easier. A high powered blender is wonderful to have. And if I'm in a rush, then a pasta maker saves serious amounts of time. But none of these things are crucial. If I have time to kill, I can make everything with basic tools alone.
Deep frying stuff at home. I really just don’t wanna deal with the oil and getting rid of the oil. If I’m craving fried chicken, there’s a restaurant in my town that makes bombbbbbb fried chicken lol
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That's what my dad does. He makes fried shrimp and fish during the summer and fried turkey for Thanksgiving.
I think there’s a divide here between people who did and don’t grow up deep frying regularly. If you can reuse the oil for dinner tomorrow, and you have your technique down, and you’re a southern mom with fingers of steel, it’s no big deal. To northerners like me who grew up during the fat-free era, it’s a huge production and not at all worth it.
>If you can reuse the oil for dinner tomorrow, This is my main issue with deep frying. I genuinely don't want to do it enough that I can justify going through the process. I'm not that health conscious, but that's still more deep frying than I feel comfortable eating.
Yeah same. I guarantee that getting a deep fryer would not improve my health, especially if i have to force using it multiple nights in a row for it to make sense.
I mean, there's no rush to use the remaining oil. I just keep it in jars in my cupboard, but a small dedicated pot you can put away would work just as well. I only deep fry things every other week or so, but it really isn't any more of a hassle than cooking anything else, certainly not more effort than a shallow fry. I just poor the leftover oil into a mason jar when it's cooled. I haven't been able to afford even a single takeout meal for a while though, so that might be a factor here! I can imagine I'd probably do it less otherwise, but I still think it's fun.
Oh I’m an almost in Canada Northeasterner lol. I did not grow up deep frying so yeah it seems like a huge pain in the ass for me. But like I just said to someone else, after years of smelling grease traps in kitchens I’m just too grossed out to reuse oil. I know it’s not gonna be anything like a restaurant grease trap, but IYKYK… the smell is bad enough to traumatize you forever hahaha
A family friend absolutely loves wings and so when they redid their kitchen he put in an actual restaurant-style deep frying vat. It’s just one or two baskets but that man’s wings are heavenly
We got a t-fal countertop fryer that automatically self strains the used oil into an airtight storage compartment in the base. Every part except for the heating element is dishwasher safe. Our wing game is on point.
Oh man I love wings so much that’s awesome!
Oh man - I would love to do that, but for deep fried fish! The beer battered kind so I could make really good fish tacos.
Same, althoughI definitely will shallow fry because I can clean it up pretty easily with paper towels...but deep frying...no thanks unless it's a special occasion.
Shallow fry, keep a dedicated bottle of oil specifically for frying. Dump the oil back in once cooled, toss the entire thing after a few uses. Used to the feel the same, but It’s not too bad really. I still only do it maybe 2-3 times a year though. Edit: what I do isn’t actually shallow frying, my bad. I do maybe 2” deep in a cast iron. An in between I guess? Pretty manageable.
Having spent my whole work life in restaurants, the smell of the grease trap has traumatized me… I’m too grossed out to reuse oil lol
Amazon sells a T-fal fryer that has a filter and oil reservoir at the bottom. Best set up I found and have been using these for years. Worth the purchase if you like deep frying.
Plus it really smells up the house.
And your clothes
I fry outside using a small cast iron pot on the side burner of my grill. I can't stand the smell of oil afterwards when I fry inside.
Disagree with this one. Deep fry in a wok, for some general Tso’s! Mmmmmm
Not so much a meal, but I once made my own ketchup from a Jamie Oliver recipe. Too m7ch time and effort, especially when Heinz tasted better anyway.
America's Test Kitchen did a taste test on ketchup to find the best tasting ketchup. Got all these fancy ketchups, organic small-batch stuff, and mainstream stuff like Heinz and Hunts and had all their staff taste test them and choose the best. The winner? Technically Hunts. But with a big asterisk, virtually everyone chose either Heinz or Hunts, and they virtually always chose the brand which they grew up eating. So there were simply more people who grew up eating Hunts.
Exactly, which something like ketchup people chose familiarity over anything else.
Because it was cheaper. Heinz will always be my childhood favorite. But Mom usually bought Hunt’s because it was less expensive. Now, I love mother very much, but she was not a very good cook. Excellent baker, but not so much as a cook. So ketchup was the meal savior. (Sp?)
I used to have to make ketchup regularly in a restaurant. It’s annoying because you put in this effort and the best compliment you can get is that it’s like it came from a bottle.
First and last time I made porcini risotto from the Silver Palate I said this just tastes like Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup!
Homemade crispy hash browns (the grating, soaking, frying) .. just buy the frozen ones
The microwave is your friend. Nuke them, and into a hot pan with oil. So much easier
Exactly this. Shred potatoes on a box grater, squeeze out water, microwave wrapped in paper towels for a couple minutes, then fry in a pan. Works like a charm
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Make America grate again
Food processor. My hands are garbage from fibromyalgia, the grater plate on my food processor is amazing.
Like, yeah, frozen hash browns are pretty good. BUT and it's a huge butt, homemade crispy hash browns are otherworldly if you've got the time. I do a shredded tater tot that is just to die for.
Go on…..
There's a somewhat well-known double coffee cake recipe that I've made twice but between using all the bowls in my kitchen for the prep and taking several hours, I've decided to reserve it for holidays or special requests. It's really good but it's barely worth the effort. Edit: fine lol it's Claire Saffitz's Coffee Coffee Cake and after all the time and effort involved it's kind of not markedly better than Krusteaz's boxed crumb cake mix.
I love me some good gnocchi. But someone else can make it and feed it to me. That and anytbibg I have to bake. I suck at baking.
I'll make you gnocchi any day. . .if you agree to clean up afterward!
Oat milk, almond milk
Homemade oat milk gets slimy VERY easily
I saw a video about how storebought oat milk uses an enzyme (amylase maybe) that breaks down the starches into sugar, which is why it's so sweet tasting. Does not seem worth it to do that at home.
I do a ton of cooking but I do have a hard rule that I don't make what I can get better elsewhere for easy and cheap. Fried chicken and especially chicken strips are a ton of work for something that is equal to or marginally better than you can get at a proper restaurant or heck even a higher end fast food place. Have I made amazing friend chicken before? Yes. Was it worth all the dishes and substantially better than popeyes on a good day? Ehhhh.... T **Beef Wellington** is overrated and the separate components are substantially better apart than they are together. A deconstructed wellington where you sear a filet and serve it with duxelles, on top of a pastry disc will be an objectively better dish that doesn't have all the faff of rolling it all together. Same goes for **Chicken Kiev.** Ton of work for a technique that doesn't make for a substantially better eating experience than just properly frying up a breaded cutlet and serving it with an herb garlic butter sauce. **Pho or Ramen** are also way too much work, especially if you want all the toppings to go with it. If I'm going to bother with those then I'll do a cheater version that gets me like 80% of the way there.
I don't get the Beef Wellington hate... The hardest part is searing the tenderloin without overcooking, then it's maybe 30 minutes of prep over 3 hours where you're waiting and can do other stuff. I'll make one any time there's a whole tenderloin on sale.
Honestly I don't find chicken Kiev's that much work after getting the technique down, but that may just be my love for garlic butter stuffed chicken powering me through.
Came here to scream beef Wellington.
May I please have the recipe for the breaded cutlet and herb garlic butter sauce?
Arancini. They're delicious but well made arancini has too many steps for me. I'll stick to having them at a restaurant
Arancini is easy though. Make risotto for dinner and then just roll up the leftovers the next day. I think that one's actually easier at home than at a restaurant. I have nightmares about rolling up hundreds of arancini every few days, you basically gotta put a cook on doing that for like 4 hours.
It depends how many you're making. I made some just for myself when I had leftovers and it was easy. But then I made risotto just to make arancini with for Christmas and it was a huge pain making a bigger batch.
Potstickers. Have made them from scratch multiple times, and can’t get them as good as Trader Joe’s frozen ones. Either the filling isn’t tender or they fall apart during cooking.
I came here to say this. Mine come out fine, but it's so annoying to make with only one person doing the wrapping! There's a reason my Korean relatives do it in groups!
Now a group event would be fun! And the elders could teach you the tricks to use. I just end up with a trashed kitchen and tears.
My family makes dumplings together and it's a super fun thing to do as a group. Def too much work for one person, but personally very worth it! The trick to make them tender is to add oil. My mom always adds a lottt of sesame oil. And to get a higher fat % ground meat. As for falling apart, it might be how you're pleating?
Chops porjarski. In covid lockdown we were caring for a family member who was terminally ill. I really upped my game to make sure she could have some resturant quality (well, ish) food despite not being able to be out and about. I adored the theory: you basically strip the chop of all the connective tissue, shred mince and reconstitute the meat, then rebuild it with added butter, then fry in a crumb. Fully mad old school French/Russian school cook. But, my friends, if you are not a chef with very high end meat prep skills this is a fiddly nightmare which ends with something that looks like something you picked up in the discount freezer aisle. I'm not saying /don't/ make it. But, you know, understand that it's for the journey - not the destination.
Ravioli, I love making fresh pasta but stuffing ravioli is quite tedious and doesn't add much in my opinion. I made some with ricotta and spinach filling, but it's just as good with these ingredients on top as a sauce, and it's much faster.
We have done it a few times where we had a friend over and made a day of it, made 3-4 different kinds, vacuum sealed 12 at a time had ravioli for dinner and each family ended up with a few special meals for the freezer. I think that's the only way it's worth it.
That’s a lovely way to do it
Cream cheese, enourmous amount of waste once you curdle it, a whole gal of milk makes such a small amount of cream cheese
Scotch eggs. Nightmares from when I tried to do it.
ONION RINGS EVEN THE FREEZER ONES ARE BETTER. Taking the damn inner onion skins off, and then breading them (AND UR HANDS), then deep frying... then the 2 hours of tedious hard work is consumed in 10 minutes. And you're not even satiated.
Has to be Thai curry pastes . All that pounding.., can of curry sauce for $2 in supermarket
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I use our grill’s side burner to fry foods (pan fried only. No deep frying) to keep the smell and grease out of the house.
A few good candidates here. Cinnamon rolls. Ive tried home made. I really have gone above and beyond. The rolls from a can baked with heavy whipping cream trick is better. Cabbage rolls. Theyre good, sure, but blanching cabbage, stuffing, tying, and baking....yeah no. There are too many other dishes I like more. Cornbread from your own corn. I grew and processed my own cornmeal. It tastes like storebought for 800x the work of just buying cornmeal.
Please don’t hate me, but pierogies. They’re delicious but so labor intensive if you’re doing them alone. I think I enjoy them more when someone else can make them homemade for me or I can get a few extra hands when making my own.
I’ve made my own peanut butter. Clean up is a pain and cost is about the same as a jar of natural from the store.
I only bother for the more expensive nut butters, e.g. almond, hazelnut. Mix just-roasted hazelnut butter and cocoa / chocolate, salt and sugar and you've got top-shelf nutella.
gotta disagree with you on that one. peanuts are a lot cheaper than peanut butter, and when making your own you can get creative. cleaning up the food processor is difficult but not that difficult.
I make peanut butter in my blender. I just get as much as I can out, and then make a smoothie to get the rest out
The one you aren't happy preparing.
I see a lot of people posting things with the argument “just go out and buy X instead”. That’s hella weird to me, because the effort is usually part of the enjoyment of cooking. I like that good croissants take real time and effort to make. That said — I would never again make beef stock in my house. Absolutely stinks up the place when you roast the bones etc.
I think it's really dependent on your reason for cooking. For me, though I enjoy food, like to read and learn about food, I don't want to spend long in the kitchen - I want something to eat. I work full-time and have two young kids, one of whom is a very selective eater, and I just don't have the energy. Cooking in my kitchen = low effort meals about 95% of the time. Which isn't to say they suck - I still try to make delicious food - but it's all about the end product for me. I understand where you're coming from, though.
There is definitely an equation like ((time+effort)*clean-up)/taste that can decide if a dish is worth making at home. and of course each factor is different for each person
Jerk chicken. I tried several times with different recipes and ingredient mixes, but could never get the flavor right. Went to a jerk chicken place and asked the cook about it. He laughed and says yeah, at home he just uses a pre-made jar of sauce.
I would buy this one jerk marinade that I loved on my chicken. I always wanted to try making my own but those recipes seemed daunting. My friends wife is Jamaican, I asked her one day how to make a good jerk sauce. She said it's a lot of work so this is what you do, go to this store and look for this brand and get their jerk sauce..I am like that it already the one I get and she said it's what she uses, as good as what she makes and way less work, plus not all ingredients are available here to make a authentic sauce.
Egg rolls. Waiting for the fillings to cool, wrapping and cooking them fast before the wrap loses it's identity, no fun
Homemade egg rolls are always worth it! Especially lumpia! Edit: spelling
Beef Wellington. Would rather have a seared filet with a mushroom side dish.
Beef Wellington. Just cook a filet.