What's a food you love, that isn't worth making from scratch?

ericbomb@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 165 points –

For me, crepes ain't worth the stress to make fresh. Just buy a little pack from store and focus on filling is my go to.

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Croissants, or any other layered flaky pastry. Like, there should be a robot for this by now.

Puff pastry. Never, ever try to make puff pastry at home, it takes forevee, vut xosts like $5 at the shops for a big packet of it

There is something better than a robot, it’s the supermarket. Never ever am I making puff pastry again.

There's a machine doing all the rolling out to specific thicknesses that's used in bakeries

Baklava is my answer here. That shit is so good but i don't have the patience to make it at home.

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!

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.

Just reading this opened my appetite

It definitely is worth it. You can tune it like you want, it is really more flavourful.

But it does take a lot of time.

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.

Ramen is easy to make, assuming you don't prep anything and don't want the soy eggs then you can make it easily in 15 min

Fried chicken.

It's soo good but not worth the hassle of dealing with all the oil.

Although, I've since found that air-fried, if done right, can be just as good.

Oh man same.

Dealing with having to deep fry for a single meal is such a pain.

That's what Frydays are for. I fry up chicken for reheating in the air fryer later in the week, then fish and chips for dinner. Not every Friday is Fryday, but maybe once a month is Fryyyydayyyy.

Any air fryer method you would recommend?

  • Fry at 360⁰F for 12 mins
  • Flip them and fry again at 360⁰F for 12 mins
  • Flip again and fry for 6 mins at 400⁰F

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.

I don't remember the oil being much of a hassle tbh

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!

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

Even I can make crepes lol. Have one of those small pans. Make the batter, open the butter, get cracking.

I have a mental block against making things one by one that have like 20 calories in them.

Brain says small things bad unless can make a million at a time.

And yeah screw making those things from scratch.

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.

yeah it is annoying when using a small pan/stove as opposed to a giant griddle where one crepe is actually a lot

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.

Sushi. I just toss all the ingredients in a bowl and be done with it, instead of bothering to roll.

Sashimi, bowl of rice, fish on top, add nori and sesame seed with pickled ginger on the side.

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.

Crepes are stressfull? How simpler could something be?

I have a mental block against things that need to be made one by one and are like 20 calories.

I want lots of food if I do things one by one.

Have you tried two pans at the same time? Solves the one by one problem quite nicely.

When I get a million dollars, that’d be me.

You might be sliiiightly overestimating the cost of a stove and pans.

How else are you gonna get two pans at the same time? I figure with that kind of money, I’d find a way.

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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.

Yeah but using pre bought it takes like 3 minutes depending on the filling.

So that's why brain say bad.

How simpler could something be

I do wonder this a lot on Lemmy

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Gyoza/potstickers/dumplings

I will inhale plates of em and the time it takes to wrap em made me both appreciate the food more and appreciate the premade ones so much more

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.

Ugh yes.

Also some of that stuff is more expensive to make at home.

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 really tried but I just can't cook it right. Those youtube chefs videos make it look so easy and make a lot less to clean up than I do.

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.

Very true indeed. But sugar pumpkins are horrible for jack o lanterns lol. Well, if you do them the way we do. It's kind of a big thing for us. We do that fancy shit and have a line of them on the porch. Actually, this year we didn't go all out and only had five, with only one being fancy.

But if I'm making pumpkin pie filling from scratch, you're dead on. I'm not messing with scraping one out, I'm just cutting it up, baking it and going from there.

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.

The store bought pie dough isn't vegetarian because it's made with lard. I learned that when I served a pie to some vegetarian friends.

i have depression and adhd so it varies between every food and no food based on the rng going on in the ol' endocrine

Sometimes brain say making gnocchi is no big deal.

Other times, grill cheese too much.

Butter. I churned some once and no. Never again. Also ice cream, for similar reasons. And because we have some ice cream here that's very nice.

IMO homemade ice cream is primarily for making flavors you can't get otherwise.

I am a vanilla ice cream being. Or banana which is more difficult, but ultimately findable!

I like occasionally making some really weird stuff, tends to be very hit or miss. Totally wouldn't do it if I didn't have an ice cream machine though. I've done it fully by hand before. Never again.

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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.

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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).

I beat whipped cream by hand once. Once.

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.

You can use a stand mixer, btw. Only really worth it for compound butter though, IMO.

I'd still rather just buy some nice butter! Compound, maybe in the future.

Cultered butter is amazing, and it's easy to churn in a stand mixer.

Same with ice cream. An ice cream maker makes the difference.

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.

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Ravioli, pierogies, wontons. Basically anything small that's wrapped up like that. Huge PITA and the quality improvement usually isn't worth it.

Maybe something worth doing in a social setting with a group though. Have some beers and BS while assembling everything.

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

Homemade pasta is indescribably better. If you get a pasta maker, it's not even that hard. Just a bit time consuming. And it's sooooo yummy.

The wife and I will do dumplings every once in a while, but it's definitely not worth the trouble unless we do a couple hundred at once.

I tried tortillini once, they turned out worse than the frozen kind at the store (I took too long and my dough dried out). Never again.

Tortellini look extra annoying. I always thought they were done with a machine.

Once you get the technique down, they're just ravioli with a little twist at the end. Just less forgiving.

Phở Bo (Vietnamese beef soup). It’s such an amazingly good soup, but the making of it is a multi-step process that takes hours.

https://www.cooking-therapy.com/traditional-vietnamese-pho-recipe/

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.

Corn tortillas. It's a lot easier to just buy some.

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.

Part corn part wheat is the best tortilla, but I can't buy them near me so i make them sometimes.

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.

Can you share the recipe please?

So sorry, I forgot to reply.

Pho

Ingredients

MEAT:

  • 1 packet of oxtail
  • 1/2 packet of tendon
  • 1 packet of flank (add this when plating up)
  • 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.

Xiao long bao (aka soup dumpling). Also, made from scratch Tonkotsu Ramen.

Tried making them both. So much work.

Tater Tots.

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.

Tbh, not much.

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.

Honestly it's the price that makes jarred sauce not worth it for me. They've gotten ridiculous.

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.

Hours? Literally takes half an hour and you can just leave it donits own thing while its working in the pot lol

Apparently, either my family recipe is a shit ton more complex than the norm, or in not talking about the same kind of sauce other people are lol.

Also, that includes prep time

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’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!

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.

Oh yeah I tried eating some out of the jar and BLEH.

Just more Garlic makes such a difference in most jars.

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

Pretty sure they’re talking about the brand Ragu, which is some of the cheapest jarred spaghetti sauce you can get in the US.

That said, toss me one of those easy tasty sauce recipes?

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.

My sauces take a few hours to make, but they’re insanely good.

I made ragu for the first time about a year ago, and it was outstanding. I gotta make some more of that.

Yeah, I'm talking about the brand ragu.

Also, it seems that my family recipe is more involved than the norm lol

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.

Bubble tea. I've made everything from scratch before, but it's so much easier to just buy one and let someone else cook the boba.

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.

You know you can make baked fries right? They are very easy and tasty.

What do you think an air fryer is? It’s nothing more than a small convection oven.

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.

For extra yummy at home fried food, mix 4 parts table salt with 1 part MSG and use as fry salt.

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.

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

Even more so, bo kho.

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.

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

Pancakes and crepes are significantly different.

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.

One is supposed to be as thick as possible, the other as thick and fluffy as possible. A polar opposite attribute is significant.

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.

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.

It's not hard, or overly time consuming, assuming you're making it from scraps you've already cooked.

If you're setting out to make it from scratch, it's expensive and a waste of time/fuel.

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.

Interesting never heard of hot and sour soup using pork broth. Everywhere around here is beef or chicken.

There are a couple of things that make this easier :

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
2 more...

Brunch. I'm too hungover to be cooking anything.

Definitely lots of food out there I'm not cooking from scratch but any "food I love" is probably something I'm cooking from scratch to begin with.

Sub sandwiches are legitimately the same price or even less expensive if you buy it from a restaurant compared to buying all the ingredients yourself.

Similar with gyros.

cinnamon rolls

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.

yes and you have to make them like 10 years before you actually want to eat them

Honestly, brownies. From scratch versus box I hardly notice a difference and in some instances the box was better... And the box is a lot less work.

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!

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

Lefsa.

Making it solo is a monstrous pain in the butt. It's so easy to screw up too.

Albertsons antipasta pasta (salad).

I can't cook, so basically almost all the food in the world

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.

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...

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.

dΓΆner and shawarma are si amazing but I don't see how to scale it down well. maybe for a barbecue

Pizza. Every time I've tried it's stuck to the stone and when I just got something to cook it was no better than the local place.

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.

Try shaping and topping the pizza on parchment paper. After being on the hot stone for ~3 mins, you can just slide the paper out from under the pizza.

Anything with a lot of Indian spices. I just buy the paste in jars.

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)

Dried pasta is superior to fresh pasta. It is impossible to make it at home.

Do you have the right equipment to make fresh pasta? If you're doing it manually then it may as well be impossible.

Fresh pasta cannot be al dente, it's useless for most traditional Italian pasta dishes. And it is near impossible to make dry pasta at home.

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 cannot be al dente, it's useless for most traditional Italian pasta dishes. And it is near impossible to make dry pasta at home.

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.

It's hard for me to say what is most dishes. I've never been to Italy and haven't studied pasta making deeply, so it's hard to say. From my limited understanding you pair cream sauces with fresh egg pastas. And in my opinion, stuffed pastas are also enjoyable when fresh.

Well, I've been to Italy many times and I have Italian friends, one of them actually worked in a restaurant in Italy. Most Italian dishes use dried pasta and they use it for a reason. You can learn more about dried pasta here https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLURsDaOr8hWXz_CFEfPH2wFhIbJn9iHJY&si=5jl6Z2vwxFX4sVXF

Okay. First, apologies. I see my intent wasn't clear in my initial posting. I posted that under your response because I saw many responses that confused fresh pasta as being a direct replacement to dried pasta. Instead of replying to each instance of confusion, I figured I'd put a response under your initial reply. I should have been more clear when responding.

It's surprising to hear that there's not too many dishes that use fresh pasta. I always assumed there would be a fair amount of both dried and fresh. Thanks for the info.

I appreciate the link to the playlist. I really like Alex's videos.

No worries, we're just having a civil discussion here (:

As for dried pasta popularity, according to many internet sources, it became popular somewhere around 14th and 15th century, I guess Italians had plenty of time to adjust their cuisine. Dried pasta also has a benefit of long storage, which was important in their warm climate before the invention of an affordable domestic refrigerator in 20th century.

I remember coming across an early (either 12th or 13th century) pasta recipe. It was a simple fresh noodle in a delicately spiced broth, and, importantly, delicious.

What facinstes me is the status of fresh pasta in the American gastronomical context. It has achieved an ascendent status as demonstrated in this video. I'm sure many of the shapes are dried and I see this video as primarily entertainment and not necessarily an achievable thing for most home cooks. But it shapes an ideal for the viewing population.

I suspect that pasta will become one thing in America and another in Italy if it hasn't already. I think looking at pizza in America, NYC in particular, vs pizza in Italy could provide an anthropological template.

Much ranting, I know. But hopefully interesting!

Well, I've never been to US, so I don't know much about American food and learning something is always great!

You must be trolling, it's 45s to make the dough in a food processor and the sauce actually clings to the noodles.

Fresh pasta doesn't have proper al dente chew, it gives a cheap instant noodle mouth feel. The sauce clings the same. To any pasta.

Mashed potatoes.

The "just add hot water" things are just as good, if not better since they come in all sorts of flavors.

Edit: The snobbery here is astounding. They're potatoes!

No shade; it's just funny that mashed potatoes are so derisive lol

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.

so easy

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 am not peeling nor boiling, have never peeled a potato. Boiling them in chunks I agree won't yield something so much better than dehydrated powdered potatoes - that puts too much water into the equation and makes them similarly gluey. You can microwave chunked potatoes and mash them if you don't have a pressure cooker or instant pot.

Yes it takes longer than boiling water but in the context of cooking other things it's easy and potatoes pressure cooked whole are so fluffy and easy to mash.

I have used the flakes for potato bread, they are useful like dry milk is. But just like dry milk, or instant coffee, something is lost in drying and rehydration.

This is a very subjective prompt though - if the marginal time savings are worth it to you, they are. I don't usually have an urgent timeline for mashed potatoes so letting them cook while I do other stuff works out.

I don't peel, wait to boil, or even mix. I'll literally throw whole garlic cloves in at once, and between the heat and the mashing they'll take care of themselves. It also helps a lot of you have an actual potato masher and you're not just using a spoon or something. Unlike this gif I found though, I just mash them in the pot as they cook.

If you just follow the directions, you're a heathen.

But if you're going to disregard the directions and add cream, butter, salt, pepper etc. Then you can get a result thats almost as good.

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.

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.

It's probably how you mash them, if you over mash them they get gummy. It's really easy with a mixer or blender to overdo it.

That was one of the first things I learned how to cook that wasn't between two pieces of bread.

I'm not a good cook by any means -- it just surprises me that mashed potatoes would be one of "those" foods for someone who can actually cook!

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. :)

They're literally just dehydrated potatoes cut into flakes. Nothing is lost.

If homemade mash tastes exactly like the box to you, you're doing something wrong when you make them. I'm not saying instant is bad to have in a pinch, but having the dehydrated potatos in flakes immediately makes them starchier and have a more gluey consistency. Plus, there are tons of additives that definitely make it taste different from freshly cooked potatoes.

If your flakes come out gluey, you're not using enough liquids to rehydrate it. I feel like everyone disagreeing here likes lumpy potatoes. One person already admit they don't even remove the skin when they make theirs. Gross. They're supposed to be smooth and creamy.

I skin the potatoes and use a ricer. They are very smooth and creamy, not lumpy. I actually like boxed potatoes, but fresh still taste 10x better

It's more recent science, but it seems every step of processing food (boiling, mashing, drying etc) breaks down cell structures, and that this in turn can make it harder for the body to take up nutrition. So you end up eating more but getting less nutritional value.

Research is still ongoing though, and of course mashed potatoes from powder is obviously still much better than ultra-processed food.

Here's a source

If it's not from scratch it's not good.

I bet you don't even breed your own chickens

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.