I’d love go make chana masala, my favorite indian dish. but it just takes too long to make…
Lamb Vindaloo.
God I wanna be good at making that. And veggie samosas
I just made that this week and think I may agree with you, or at least I’d not try on a workday again. I didn’t have the right peppers and used dried ancho, jarred roasted red pepper and a little fresh red pepper and it came out really good, sorta new world /old world delicious fusion but my God, toasting, grinding, processing, tasting, resting the paste. Started in the morning and let it rest while I was at work. Also started sourdough naan in the morning & of course made a vegetable dish to go with the meat - everything was good but I was exhausted by the end of the day!
I’ve never even tried to make it, so you’ve done much more than I!
Its my favourite dish whenever I go out to eat… but I just couldn’t put aside the time, money or effort to make it…
Croissants - 3 days prep time minimum? You have to be very precise with everything and it’s just such a bother.
I once made borscht. That is a labour of love I’ll never go through again. I also made a hot chocolate layer cake, including making the marshmallows, and that was a lot of work.
Tofu.
Pressing the water out, marinating for hours, then cooking properly so it’s delicious and not a rubbery mess is just too much hassle.
Just dice or slice it, dust it with corn starch and fry it until crispy. Serve with sauce or in a stirfry. No need for pressing water out. It won’t be rubbery.
I rarely even marinate my tofu, and have never really had issues with it getting rubbery, but the hassle of pressing the water out is enough of a deterrent for me. I’ve considered buying a tofu presser, but I have a small kitchen, so I don’t really like owning such specialized tools.
but the hassle of pressing the water out is enough of a deterrent for me
Get super firm, they are vacuum sealed and pre-pressed. You can skip the pressing step entirely.
Really? That’s what I usually buy, but there’s still some liquid in the package, so I’ve always pressed it. I guess I’ll have to try it without pressing some time.
Cake. Orange cake.
I like to do a bunch of baking for the holidays, and usually do a mix of easy/familiar recipes, plus some new/challenging recipes. I made caramels, and while I was pretty happy with them, I never heard one person comment on them, and they were a lot of effort compared to things like chocolate chip cookies, so I’ve never made them again.
Edit: Another is pumpkin pie from fresh pumpkins. I’ve done it, it’s not that difficult, but it’s also not any cheaper or better tasting than just buying good canned pumpkin.
Most of them. They require not only the right ingredients and even the right brands. But the amount of tools you would have to go out and get, just to make that thing. I currently am struggling to make homemade butterbeer, from harry potter, because I spent like a combined $30+ in materials and ingredients and that’s only by one recipe. Which is another thing, recipes vary and have their own way of doing things which again is going to require having to spend more just to make it.
It’s a no-brainer why people would rather have take out or go out to restaurants.
You really don’t need a ton of tools to cook most dishes. And once you have the tool, you have it for the next dish that needs it. You think ingredients are expensive? Restaurants use the same ones and up charge you.
Ordering or eating out for every meal? In this economy?
Let me know when grocery shopping is cheaper than ordering or eating out. Then we’ll talk.
Guess I’m in for a long wait then if all you did was downvote.
What? Right now. Even fast food is like 12 bucks for a shitty burger and fries. What does everyone currently complain about? The price of eggs. 7 bucks for 12. That’s four three egg omelets for almost half the price of a fucking happy meal. What are you talking about?
Cooking in general
Soup dumplings. The broth for the soup has to be make in a specific way to solidify and I think there’s also a complex method of incorporating the soup into the meat and veggies in the dumplings. It’s just a very time consuming process all around. It’s sucks tho because I love soup dumplings and being able to make a huge portion of them would be amazing.
It’s not that hard to get the stock to solidify. You just need to reduce it enough and pop it in the fridge.
You’re right. I must’ve been thinking about something else lol
Sourdough
It’s honestly not hard at all.
Do you have a reliable starter recipe?
Homemade pizza. Making the dough creates a mess and requires delicate manual labor in several steps at precise times over more than 24 hours. Looks great on YouTube but that’s just not me.
Edit: thanks for the suggestions, guys. Who knows, maybe one day… 😉
A middle ground I do often is buy frozen pizzas and then add my own extra toppings. They’re usually so cheap and skimp anyhow that I look at it like buying a starter pizza shell.
That’s what I always do since there are decent options available nowadays.
It takes me an hour to make pizza from scratch at home. I’ll grant it’s messy but it’s pretty easy!
- Prepare dough following steps 1-8 in the dough recipe above
- While your dough is rising, prepare the pizza sauce
- Liberally dust your pizza peel with corn meal (use more than you think you need!)
- Transfer the rolled-out dough onto the pizza peel and pinch the edges to form a crust
- Assemble and cook the pizza following steps 10-12 in the dough recipe above. I tend to use about 1/2 cup of pizza sauce, 4oz grated mozzarella, fresh basil leaves, and pepperoni, but the sky’s the limit really
- Enjoy!
The pizza dough tastes better when allowed to rest and rise slowly in the fridge. Using a ton of store bought yeast for a quick rise is fine, but planning out the dough the night before is better.
Well it depends on what you want to achieve. Because there is also the oven, which os important, and your ingredient.
I love making pizza since I was a teenager and I learned slowly. Internet was great for learning cold fermentation or about different type of pizza.
But you can make a decent pizza quite easily.
Maybe try focaccia first it’s super fun. This is the recipe I use.
A ceramic stone in the oven has been a gamechanger for my pizzas.
Yep, if you make pizza in a home oven it’s really important to have a stone plate.
I really like my lodge cast-iron one, but when I’ve used stones they seem to work just as well for New Haven style
Ramen. Like true, 14+ hrs of effort tonkotsu broth.
It’s been a dream of mine for a long time, but fuck is that a long time.
As much as I love barbecue I don’t and won’t own a smoker.
Croissant
This, I love, LOVE croissants, and have basically baked and made every other thing I love that much at some point or another. Flattening a giant sheet of butter again and again into a dough sheet? Ain’t nobody got time for that
You fold and flatten it like 3-4 times, each takes like 5 minutes and then it goes back in the fridge for 45 minutes.so while it takes like 4-6 hours of time to make croissants from scratch (including proofing the dough etc.), it’s more like 1 hour of work. Really not as bad as people make it out to be.
effort wise I find it on par to making sourdough bread, what with all the stretching and folding of the dough dgring proofing.
and you can prepare them the day before and proof in the fridge, then bake the next morning. Actual fresh baked croissants in the morning are fucking amazing and well worth the work
I love homemade croissants, and make them, mostly because with sourdough starter in there the flavor is incredible but while I am a reasonably neat- handed person, you are understating the difficulty of laminated dough. It wants to tear, the dough and butter have to each be at the perfect magical temperature, can’t overwork it, dough is delicate and butter is tough. It’s fussy as fuck.
I mean, yes, i takes some practice. I was more commenting in terms of time+effort, which imo is not that much actual time spent doing stuff compared to e.g. just making regular sourdough bread. which also takes practice if you want nice big bubbles. In my experience, getting a pretty sourdough bread with high hydradation dough actually took more practice (in terms of handling the sticky dough) than getting good croissants.
And even the first couple of croissants turned out pretty good when i started. Not on par with bakery ones but still tasty. So it’s not like practice results need to go in the bin
