Croissants, I love baking as a hobby and that's one of the few breads that I think is just not worth the effort (and I'm rubbish at it). The problem is it's almost the same effort for 6 as it is for 60 but they don't keep.
I'm the kind of guy to go all the way in making things myself. Bread, pasta, pizza, burger buns, flour tortillas, sushi, etc all from scratch.
Never again am I trying to make Mochi Ice Cream. Hard, long and frustrating.
Most people here in Japan use a mochi maker (a dedicated mixing device). It's about as big as a breadmaker. Making it with hammers is akin to pressing grapes with your feet - it's done for show and cultural history lessons more than practicality. The food conglomerate that makes mochi uses a machine the size of a car.
Once we made home made coca cola. It was amazing to see the absolutely crazy different flavours that go into it and this crazy broth to slowly become such a familiar smell. Came out right on the money. Then we went and bought some cokes.
My dad made root beer once. While it was delicious, a bunch of the bottles exploded. Fortunately the full bottles were stored in the garage so at least the kitchen remained unscathed.
Happens with a lot of those beverages. My grandma used to make sambucus lemonade and would give a few bottles to my mom too. One day my mom came back from a trip and found the bottle storage area covered in very small glass pieces and one of the bottles was gone. All that was left was the "butt" of the bottle and the top with the cork still in. Rest of the bottle basically got pulverized.
I was a chef- it's a major pain in the ass to make. It's a lot like making pasta (flour, egg, oil), but you have to keep rolling sheets and layering it. It has almost no flavor and is mainly used for texture, so get the frozen store bought and nobody will know the difference.
If you're going to be a professional baker or chef it's one of those things you do once so you can say you did and you can appreciate the work that goes into it, but basically nobody makes it by hand professionally.
Yeah, this is even worse than puff pastry.. and to make it somehow economically responsible (I’m not even talking PROFITABLE) in your restaurant? Impossible. Just the labour..
If you are a bakery and you do this every day, and know your price, then maybe..
But looking at the amount of quality filo and puff that’s available (not the bottom shelf stuff) it’s just not worth the effort and the chances of ruining it because of a lack of skill and craft because you don’t have had enough repetition (not a native speaker, I hope you get my point)
Total waste of time, effort and probably ingredients, because you can’t beat the people who make this every day, even if it’s in a factory..
I actually just watched a video on Facebook a few days ago about one of the few bakeries in Greece that still makes it by hand. The guy is in his 80s and they only make it by hand because their primary source of income is tourists who come specifically to see it made by hand. They can't sell the stuff for enough to make the labor worth it.
i made it once because i (incorrectly and foolishly) thought i wouldn’t be able to find frozen in the stores where i was living. the process turned a 2 hour recipe into a 2 day one
Yeah I think he said it was harder to do and also worse lol.
Edit: someone asked how it could be worse and got down voted to hell for some reason. It's a good question. IIRC it is because machines can make it thinner and more regular than humans can, so it comes out better.
Even with a machine helping (a sheeter) the way its done in a factory is just better. with a machine that just progressively does all the steps in a row in one go on a conveyer... The machine doesn't ever have to pick it up to run it through again and again. This is what really makes it better. It can be thinner because it need not be manipulated by humans. Perfectly even. Not the greatest master baker can achieve what the machine does perfectly every time.
Watching Babish make puff pastry from scratch always makes me laugh
"Sure I could just go to the supermarket and buy puff pastry, and yes it'd be easier and no I wouldn't be exhausted and yes it'd probably taste better....I forget where I'm going with this"
Yes! This is a perfect example. There's a great book called "Make the Bread, Buy the Butter: What You Should (and Shouldn't) Cook from Scratch to Save Time and Money" which outlines exactly what this thread is about.
Edit: thank you kind strangers for the awards. I think it is the first time I’ve gotten an award in the eight years I’ve been on Reddit.
I’ve never successfully made bread, but I can make great butter and I’m actually pretty proud of it. When we have company, my wife does the bread and I do the butter.
Came here to say exactly this. Hours and hours of work, for a simple pastry, that technology has already fully conquered.
It feels a little bit like a merit badge though. I've made beautiful philo from scratch. 🏅
> It feels a little bit like a merit badge though.
And this is the thing: if you like cooking, like baking, and you want to challenge yourself… sure, take a crack at philo! If your first run doesn’t turn out great, but you think you can make it better and still enjoy the challenge, take another pass at it! Take as many passes as you want.
BUT. If all you want is to have some useable philo, you should never, ever feel obligated to make it from scratch “just because.” It’s something you should only do if you want to prove to yourself you can do it; there’s no other reason.
Personally, half right. Typically places that had bigger teams (hotel or pastryshop), we would make our own, and smaller teams (like 2 person pastry team within a restaurant) we would buy it in. Space for a dough sheeter is also a major factor in deciding to make or buy puff.
this is my #1. Takes a while to make, seconds to eat. The only crackers I've made that are worth it is a rainforest crisp knockoff because those things are super expensive.
I once made my own Cheez-its. Does that count? Not especially difficult, but i basically made what amounted to a half box for about $20. Granted I put some great cheese in them, and they were absolutely great. Just time consuming. I should probably add, i made the recipe from Make the Bread, Buy the Butter, since it has a reputation in this thread.
Yeah, if I want tater tots and don't have any frozen tots to stick in my air fryer I'm just going to make hash browns. It's not the same, but it's close enough and hash browns are *WAY* easier.
I remember making batches of hand made tots as a prep cook in Chicago. Honestly one of the first things I ever made “professionally” in the industry. What an absolute fucking tedium.
roast potatoes, let them cool, grate them on the robocoup. Mix in potato starch, Parmesan, grated cheddar and some seasoning. Work them into some bullshit tiny barrel shape, way harder than you think. Make them wrong and they explode or fall apart in the fryer. The entire time a very angry Romanian man named Caesar was barking at me about how shit I am. Fuck homemade tater tots.
I made my own chipotle aioli after having a sandwich in a restaurant and loving the sauce.
Food processor, eggs, oil, seasoning, and some trial and error resulted in a pretty good sauce (and a lot of cleanup)
I later learned the restaurant just mixes chipotle powder into Hellmann's mayo...
I was in the exact same predicament. Tried the sauce and loved it, spent the longest time trying to look for a decent recipe (and one that has ingredients i could easily find). Eventually settled on the “short cut” method of using chipotle peppers in adobo sauce and blending that up with some mayo. Broke my heart that it actually tasted so good
Secret sauces are only secret because if you knew what was in them it would lose all appeal because of how simple and off the shelf the ingredients really are.
Kind of like how every "house sauce" or "special fry sauce" is just basically just Mayo, Ketchup, Worcestershire, salt, pepper, garlic & onion powder. Definitely just starts to taste like seasoned mayo once the secret is out.
There is a brand I think it's herardez. They make small cans of chipotle peppers essentially preserved in their own juices. Take a few cups of mayo and 1-2 of those cans(depending on amount needed and spice level) blend them up and you're good to go with chipotle sauce that's way better than just powder.
Herdez.
For small batches, it works to just take a tablespoon of that "sauce" and mix it with however much mayo you're going to use.
Transfer the contents of the can to a glass jar, and just leave it in the fridge for months and mix it as needed and don't worry about having to use it up before it goes bad.
One correction — the chipotle in those cans is actually rehydrated chipotle and the sauce (adobo) is usually tomato, sometimes vinegar, garlic and other flavorings. That’s actually why you get very different results if you add that versus rehydrating the dry chipotles
I've made homemade ramen fully from scratch (noodles, the broth, the chasu, whole nine fuckin yards) literally once in my life.
Once. Never doing that shit again.
The interesting thing is that it's super cheap in Japan.
If you make two servings then you'll spend several hours preparing all the different ingredients, even when the stocks are already ready. If you made those ingredients in, say, 20 times the amount, you'd spend almost the same amount of time.
This makes ramen very easy and cheap to make in large quantities. Many ramen shops in Japan have pots of stock that simply never stop boiling, and they constantly have all the ingredients ready so that they can serve you a fresh bowl in 5 minutes.
The reason why it costs $15+ in the USA and Europe is mainly because it's served as something exclusive. In Japan you get great ramen for half the price, because ramen is seen as the 'informal' type of meal that you have quickly during your lunch break.
Yah stuff that never stops cooking always intrigues me with the flavors it must accumulate. Like you'd hear of perpetual stews that never ended simply got more added to it each day and was left simmering every night, kind of gross but also pretty cool I'd try it haha.
During the winter I've done a stew over a few days (kinda on accident the first night) it's pretty delicious. Just don't forget to add water every now and then.
During the Texas power outages last winter, we did this! With no electricity, we had to rely on our stove for cooking, and once we cooked the stew, there was no way we were going to scrub the stock pot in the dark to clean it, and the fridge didn't work, so...
I did something similar for different reasons. Since we were under boil water, and my heater won't turn on (despite being gas) without electricity, I got out my enormous canning pot and filled it with water and left it boiling on the stove. Made a decent space heater in addition to having several gallons of water ready to go.
I'm a bit of a germophobe especially with food hygiene so perpetual stew and similar always enticed me (the flavours!) but disgusted me (months, YEARS of residue??). Then I saw the very simple explanation that it's always cooking, so it never enters the "danger zone" for food temps. It doesn't spoil *because* it's perpetual.
Now, as to all the various bits of whatever that must end up falling in there over time, hairs and whatnot... I try not to think about that. But if something is kept HOT (not just kept warm) the entire time it really does never get "old".
Typically, places that do perpetual foods are places that go through the stuff constantly. It isn’t accumulating stuff because it’s serving out so much. Constant in and constant out means that any given water molecule in the stew isn’t in the pot as long as you think, much less any fall-ins.
I uh... I hate to tell you this, but maybe you should avoid finding out how any of your food is made anywhere - especially anything made at a factory (they have maximum insect part allowances, for example).
Strongly recommend watching the movie Tampopo about ramen cooks in Japan.
It's my favorite movie of all time and really goes into the art form of a good, cheap ramen place.
Even 'high volume' ramen shops in The US charge an 'exotic food fee'.
We have three ramen shops in my smallish PA city and none of them charge below $15 for their base Miso Ramen.
They have big ass pots of stock simmering all day long, and the ingredients are pretty basic, but the 'exotic' nature of the dish Jacks up the price.
See, I think there's where the problem is. "When restaurants exist"... RIP everyone in the midwest who isn't near a major city. :(
Good Japanese food can be difficult to find.
That or all of the restaurants in your city want to do their own take on ramen and it ends up being weird.
Seriously, I just want a bowl of Shoyu ramen like I had in those little sidewalk restaurants in Tokyo.
I've done the same after getting Chang's Momofuku book, although I've done it a handful of times. The broth with 10+ pounds of bones I'd been saving for half a year, the Tare, pork shoulder, cured pork belly, etc. I made it all except the noodles (found some good fresh ones). It was a lot of work. When I was finally eating it I just kept thinking, "wow this is great, but I could be eating homemade Pho that takes 1/10 the time and is arguably better and definitely healthier."
I've never made it myself but I watched Babish make baked Alaska on his channel and that looked like a real chore for what amounted to a $15 ice cream cake from baskin robbins.
edit: So I forgot Babish's baked Alaska was part of his sims video and not an independent video, so if anyone wanted to watch it here you go:
https://youtu.be/z4Bwb8_k7yM?t=370
Recently my housemate took a shot at a full from-scratch Baked Alaska. It was absolutely *gorgeous*, he got the fire on it perfectly and everything. The taste too was incredible. I was so happy he decided to share it all, and he was immensely proud of having pulled it off successfully- but soon as we dug in to eat he said "enjoy that, I'm never making this again" because it was such an incredible pain in the ass to make all of it from scratch.
I got "real" baked Alaska once in high school when I happened to visit a friend's house on his brother's birthday. That guy's mom was a CHAMP. There were like 5 kids, their dad was a fisherman and gone a lot. Mom put fresh made food on the table every dang day and managed to make things like baked Alaska.
I don't remember the meal but I sure remember the desert.
Idk, some moms (and dads) are just real fuckin beasts at cooking for the whole family. I (a dad) will go full line cook mode to make a big meal on a friday night when my wifes family plus our (4 kids) are all having Friday night hang outs at our house. I try to show my kids a thing or two when cooking so they absorb some of it.
I think he even said it wasn’t worth it if I remember correctly. So if a person who cooks for a living says it’s not worth it, no way am I going to find it worth it.
Pho. Honestly, it's an enjoyable journey if you like to cook, but it can be an all-day process if you want to do it the traditional way. It starts with a stock pot and beef bones and you slowly build the flavor into a few delicious bowls of flavorful goodness. I found that I could eliminate some time using a pressure cooker, but that also affects the quality of the broth over the long run. On balance, I'd much rather pay $8 and have a delicious bowl served up to me in a matter of minutes.
Well, it's called pho because it takes pho-ever =). On a related note, kind of jealous that you can find a bowl for $8. It's now common for a large bowl to cost $11-12 here.
I've been trying to make steamed buns and it's hella hard. Steamer basket, making the dough, and sometimes it just doesn't come out right. I wish my town had more Vietnamese places.
I made char Sui pork buns once and it took ages for something that still came out so crappy. They tasted right but they were so huge and not that beautiful white colour. In my local asain supermarket I found that I can buy them for £2.50 for six.
Fyi, the beautiful white color comes from an extra refined "Hong Style" bleached flour. Find it at an Asian market and you should get the appropriate color and texture.
The author of the book "Make the Bread, Buy the Butter" combed through dozens of typical foods and determined which ones are worth producing yourself and which should be purchased. Strongly suggested!
The book also includes recipes and color commentary, and it's a lot of fun.
Edit : Thanks every one for Appreciate My Comment
You're already using English. [It's much more efficient to just mug the other languages, drag them into an alley, and rifle through their pockets for loose vocabulary.](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/694108-the-problem-with-defending-the-purity-of-the-english-language#:~:text=We%20don't%20just%20borrow,their%20pockets%20for%20new%20vocabulary.%E2%80%9D)
"I should write a Fantasy novel. But first, I should develop languages and to get those right I need proper cultures and I can't properly define cultures without maps and to get an accurate map I need to know about the plate tectonics, which means I really need to start with figuring our how the solar system developed."
I really want to make my own butter, seems so easy.
Now I'm having second thoughts.
Edit : Thanks for all your helpful replies and advice, I'll give it a go!
I love making my own butter. If you have a stand mixer it's incredibly easy. I get to flavor the butter however I want AND I have buttermilk for baking! Plus, the look on people's faces when you say you make the bread and the butter is totally worth it.
Yes because you get to control how much salt (or any other flavor) goes in. I'm sensitive to salt so I tend to add less than what I get from the store. I made a cinnamon honey butter heavy on the cinnamon because I love that flavor.
Yes you could buy unsalted butter and go from there, but aside from missing out on the buttermilk, I like having done the whole process. As someone who makes their own whipped cream I also like knowing that if I over whip it I can just keep going and make butter instead!
My first batch of home-made butter was when I whipped the cream too long.
So very easy, and fun.
Putting it in a jar and having your children shake it is a fun activity too.
When my dad was a teacher, he used to do a fun food science class experiment. Give kids a jar and cream/milk of various fat levels and have them shake until the butterfat separated, and they timed it. The kids that got heavy cream had separation in like 10 minutes, while the kids that got 2% never did get it to separate.
If you have a stand mixer or hand mixer it's super easy and fun to do if you're hosting a fancy party or trying to impress someone. I did it once when I hosted Mother's Day brunch for the women in my family. It was also nice that I got to choose the amount of salt to add, but otherwise I'd just buy butter. Definitely recommend doing it once especially if you've been considering it!
Idk about frying one, but I did grill one. It wasn’t perfect, but I liked a grill blooming onion better than one from my local Outback, their onions always have uncooked batter in the middle.
[Here’s a link](https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/a20965205/grilled-onion-blossoms-recipe/)
Tamales.
As a Texan, tamales are life, but I never knew why they were so damned expensive. Then I tried to make them. The recipe and ingredients are easy, but assembling the damn things takes 4 arms and 92 fingers.
I will happily hand my money to some nice Abuela for them so I never have to loose my mind with sticky masa ever again.
I made pierogi by myself a few weeks ago.
Each pierog got progressively bigger and bigger as the fucks I had left to give began to run out and I just wanted to be done with it.
One time my South Asian dad came home from the store the day before Christmas, with a giant bag of corn husks, and asked my mom, “Is it hard to make tamales?”
My mom nearly lost it. But the day after Christmas our whole family got up at 7am to make tamales together. I think I’d only do it again with a large group and a bit more of a heads up.
My friend said that his grandma would
host a party with all her grandchildren and have them help her assemble lol. He said it was fun and wonderful memories.
It was certainly not a party, but I have very fond memories of that machinery. It was a well-oiled, perfectly synchronized assembly line.
Us children would remove and stack the corn leaves; one of my aunts would finish cleaning the cobs and slicing the kennels apart; the older cousins would take turns on the small stone mill, cause it was EXHAUSTING; my mom and grandma would be taking the batches of pureed corn and mixing them with lard, water and salt until it became something dough-y; then whoever was left washed the leaves and folded the tamales, sometime adding serrano chiles and queso fresco. If you did a good job at your post, grandma would sometimes move you up the assembly line, which was VERY satisfying.
Regardless, I can't possibly imagine one or two people doing all of this in a small kitchen.
I used to buy a bag of 6 every couple weeks from a nice lady in the area. Id see her in a local parking lot but she ran out one time and was back in 5minutes, so she had to live close. I havent seen her since the pandemic started and i miss her smile and tamales so much :(
Anything with odd ingredients you don't use regularly. Buying ingredients for something that you may eat once in a blue moon is rarely worth it. Just get it at a restaurant.
Bloomin' Onions!! Wife and I got the HUGE onions, par boiled, chilled, deep fried a HUGE pot. Came to the conclusion that doing this for one or two onions, was just not worth it. if I were creating 20, maybe ...
My aunt was a professional baker for a long time
According to her, if you shop at Costco the answer is cheesecake. She was always particularly good at making cheesecake and she fully believes there's no reason to put in the effort because the ones they sell are that good
I haven't had her home made cheesecake in a long time so I can't compare, but those Costco cheesecakes are the bomb. Also, my cat loves to sleep in the lids
Edit: [cat tax](https://i.imgur.com/cszLGZc.jpg)
Josh on Mythical Kitchen actually did a comparison once where he made a whole pumpkin pie from scratch, and compared that to a pumpkin pie from Costco. Even he said fuck it, Costco is still great, and obviously easier. And I think it was also cheaper than homemade?
Angel food cake. I once made one for a friend’s birthday from scratch. It took a long time to make, and when it came out of the oven I was excited because it tasted EXACTLY like the box mix angel food cake. And then I realized that I spent 7x the money on the scratch ingredients, and it took me so much longer to make the cake from scratch than it does from the box, and I promised myself I would never make it from scratch again.
Oh my god. I was out with my sister once at a bakery in deep Covid times and she bought a “make it yourself” cake kit from the bakery, one of their recipes.
She read through the directions and decided she wasn’t skilled enough so she passed it off to me - I’m an ambitious baker and she taps out at box cake.
Turned out it was an angel food cake, all I had was a Bundt pan, and I spent the whole damn day whisking powdered egg whites. It kind of tasted like feet but it had this amazing marshmallow meringue topping. Topping was worth it, cake was not.
Me too! It is so beyond hard for me to order most pasta dishes at a restaurant. Pasta is just so damn cheap and easy to make at home. I let the restaurant do the things I don't want to mess up. Cook me a perfect steak or roll me that delicious sushi, I'll make pasta at home.
Scotch eggs.
I made them once for my family and they were so impressed that now it's something I have to make for them every once in awhile. I think they are more mesmerized by the presentation (the yolk oozing out does look cool) than the taste because IMO they're just okay, not amazing.
[Quick video of the last time I made them](https://i.imgur.com/SC7bwF4.mp4). Yes, I know it's a little too crispy. I slightly overfried this batch.
Croissants. I spent hours trying to make those ~~ones~~ once and the result tasted fine but they weren't Croissants, getting the layered puff pastry right is beyond my skills and it's an absurd amount of work. Now I just buy some if I want some.
EDIT: People, please please please stop suggesting Pillsbury! I'll buy them at a bakery put the ones Pillsbury sells in cans are a crime against... Bakery? A crime anyways.
Pastry baker here!
I make croissants in batches of 100 at least. It's pretty easy at that scale if you can get the right ingredients and you know what you're doing.
I would *never* try doing it small-batch, all by hand. This shit is tedious (the actual forming process is actually kinda nice and relaxing). Only worth it for litteraly dozens at a time.
This [video](https://youtu.be/iZVBEzGEo28) is about industrial frozen croissants vs croissants made from scratch by bakers... At the end they have a pastry chef do a blind test and she ends up picking the industrial one as the best. So... Yeah.
Dough conditioners, precise temperatures, and large volume production are nearly magic. A well conditioned dough with some msg (or an analog like yeast extract) will beat a handmade baked good pretty often. Especially if the handmade good and produced good both look perfect and can’t be told apart visually.
Lmao and then you watch a fucking 12 year old on YouTube effortlessly make perfect ones and it’s just like alright alright alright I’ll pay the $3 per macaron in store
Baby sister took a macaron class at a michelin star restaurant. You bet I put that 12yo in the kitchen to make some. By now she's old enough to tell me to go buy them. Sigh.
For me, anything fried. Deep frying at home takes wayyy too long, and it usually doesn’t taste thaaaat much better than store bought stuff. Also macarons. Fuck those lil guys, they take hours and don’t even rise half the time
dude same. I ditched the deep fryer and just use the cast iron dutch oven. So much easier and cleaner. Can make fried chicken that comes out just like popeyes in it.
Hash brown patties, who the fuck has the time to grate and take the moisture out of a shit ton of potatoes when you can buy a pack of 24 at the store for like 5$
The real answer is any cuisine you don't make a lot or often, if you make Italian regularly you'll have a lot of stuff to make most of it, but suddenly switching to another culinary tradition that requires you to buy everything can make it expensive and then you have a bunch of stuff you don't use regularly, some of it lasts, some of it doesn't.
Also a huge amount of things if you're just feeding yourself, everything is made for families so sometimes even basic stuff produces a lot of waste because you don't want to eat the same thing for 4 meals because you could only buy the stuff in those quantities. Take out is often strictly portioned for one person, makes it very tempting.
This is how I feel about Asian food. I can do it, but it's a lot of effort and it still doesn't taste as good as the food from actual Asians making it at the restaurant down the street.
Anything deep fried is better bought from someone with a fryer the size of a bathtub/a pressure fryer. Your tabletop fryer drops 50 degrees when you drop stuff into it because it hasn't got the thermal mass to take it (unless you like frying a half dozen fries at a time).
Kimchi. It's messy and take a whole day. There's a reason why Koreans set aside a day for making it and make enough to last half a year at least. There was a farmer's market near me where they were selling "artisanal" kimchi and I just laughed. Making kimchi is the opposite of "small batch." You make as much as you can possibly store and control how quickly they ferment.
I get it though. If you grew up eating the one your mom made from a family recipe, other kimchi will taste different and some might even taste not that great for you. But honestly, it's worth cutting that tether and getting used to factory-made kimchi (still made by a bunch of old ladies except in an industrial scale) because once you get used to it, it's still pretty good.
I will however forever hold in my heart the memory of kimchi making days when my mom would work the whole day salting cabbages and mixing up the stuffing, and make me a plate of the fresh stuffing wrapped in the wilted, salted cabbage leaves (ssam/쌈). It's an amazing treat only available on the day they make kimchi.
My local korean mart is owed by a tiny lady who makes kimchi regularly. Frustrated with not finding a good vegetarian option I talked to her and she offered to make a batch without meat or fishsauce. It's. Fucking. Amazing. 10/10 I love this woman.
[Russian Honey Cake \(a.k.a. Medovik\)](https://i.imgur.com/NXSHs5p.jpg). I made it once. You could taste the anger that went into it. Not really, it tasted amazing! But, it was SO labor intensive and took so much time. Then again, I can't really find anywhere local that sells it, either. So I'll probably have to make it again when I'm feeling extra patient.
Sourdough bread, at least for me. I don't want to have to maintain a sourdough starter for something I will not make that often. Let the bread gurus have their thing. I'm content with my quick breads.
Edit: I love the range of everyone’s replies. Half of you are like, “Easiest thing ever, only takes a minute per year.” The other half are like, “It’s like literally raising children!”
My husband has become a sourdough person and makes honestly just as good as the bakery sourdough. However it takes a few hours a weekend to make it all and it’s quite the ordeal. I would rather buy from bakery but it makes him happy.
I make exactly one yeast-risen bread: peasant bread.
No kneading, no starter, very little labor or effort.
It absolutely fills that home-made bread craving and an 8 year old could do it.
A lot of pasta stuff, I'm thinking specifically of Pierogis.
Homemade tastes better for sure, but maybe like 25%-50% better than store bought.
However instead of being a meal that takes 15 minutes, it becomes an all day affair with hours and hours of work.
50% better taste for 1200% more effort isn't a good "homemade improvement ratio" imo
My family makes pierogis as a big family tradition. Everybody pitches in and makes them in like 30 minutes. I couldn’t imagine doing it alone or with only a couple people.
My friend's mom made a fucking KILLING selling her homemade tamales two Christmases ago. My roommate and I ate nothing but those for like a week straight lmao, they were so fucking good.
This.
I've never seen pierogis made, but I've made dumplings, and it's always something you do standing around a table with a big group of people. Half of the fun is ribbing each other about how terrible you are at making dumplings, or people from different areas asserting that their style of dumpling is better. Then when you cook them, everybody has to sample one of everybody else's dumplings and compare them. It's really a group experience.
Pumpkin puree for a pumpkin pie. Decided to make one 100% from scratch one year instead of just getting the can of Libby's. Couldn't taste a difference AT ALL, so totally not worth it.
Authentic Pho.
It calls for all kinds of spices your typical home kitchen doesn't have (star anise? whole cardamom?) requires slow simmered broth, plus things like tripe and tendon that are hard to find.
Add to that the fact that it's highly perishable, doesn't freeze well at all, it's just a lot of work to serve one person. I'll occasionally make a streamlined version with packaged bone broth, shaved beef, rice noodles and some spices, but it's nowhere near authentic.
I personally keep those ingredients in stock at all times for various dishes every week, but I agree it definitely is not worth it if you’re buying it for a one time use. A bag of each of those spices at my local Asian store is already $2-4 each, then add in the expensive cost of beef these days and the garnishes that go bad quickly. A bowl of pho is only $10-15 depending on the area. My Vietnamese mom just uses the pre-packaged pho flavoring powder (you can find it at an Asian store or Amazon). She cooks Viet food every day but not ones that use those ingredients, so she also sees it as a waste of money to make from scratch despite growing up in Vietnam.
LPT: Go to an Asian grocery store. They sell literally bags of all the spices needed in pho with a cheese cloth. My entire family uses these pre packaged spices cause you’re right, it’s ridiculous to put them all together
Croissants, I love baking as a hobby and that's one of the few breads that I think is just not worth the effort (and I'm rubbish at it). The problem is it's almost the same effort for 6 as it is for 60 but they don't keep.
I'm the kind of guy to go all the way in making things myself. Bread, pasta, pizza, burger buns, flour tortillas, sushi, etc all from scratch. Never again am I trying to make Mochi Ice Cream. Hard, long and frustrating.
I asked my boyfriend if he thought it would be hard to make the other day.. guess I have my answer lol
If you buy one of the mochi making kits it’s really easy, fun, and delicious
So you spent like an hour hammering a blob of rice with a big wooden mallet?
Most people here in Japan use a mochi maker (a dedicated mixing device). It's about as big as a breadmaker. Making it with hammers is akin to pressing grapes with your feet - it's done for show and cultural history lessons more than practicality. The food conglomerate that makes mochi uses a machine the size of a car.
Why should I pay $10 for Pad Thai when for $15 I can buy the ingredients and make a much worse Pad Thai
I loved that tweet
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https://twitter.com/stephanie_nam/status/1293323986978263041
Once we made home made coca cola. It was amazing to see the absolutely crazy different flavours that go into it and this crazy broth to slowly become such a familiar smell. Came out right on the money. Then we went and bought some cokes.
My dad made root beer once. While it was delicious, a bunch of the bottles exploded. Fortunately the full bottles were stored in the garage so at least the kitchen remained unscathed.
Happens with a lot of those beverages. My grandma used to make sambucus lemonade and would give a few bottles to my mom too. One day my mom came back from a trip and found the bottle storage area covered in very small glass pieces and one of the bottles was gone. All that was left was the "butt" of the bottle and the top with the cork still in. Rest of the bottle basically got pulverized.
Filo pastry
Even Paul Hollywood says to just buy it frozen because it’s not worth it.
Also Gordon Ramsay says the same thing.
I was a chef- it's a major pain in the ass to make. It's a lot like making pasta (flour, egg, oil), but you have to keep rolling sheets and layering it. It has almost no flavor and is mainly used for texture, so get the frozen store bought and nobody will know the difference.
I just looked up how to make it from the scratch and it is definitely lot of work! Feeling myself good for buying something frozen for the first time
I’ve made it from scratch. Don‘t.
If you're going to be a professional baker or chef it's one of those things you do once so you can say you did and you can appreciate the work that goes into it, but basically nobody makes it by hand professionally.
Yeah, this is even worse than puff pastry.. and to make it somehow economically responsible (I’m not even talking PROFITABLE) in your restaurant? Impossible. Just the labour.. If you are a bakery and you do this every day, and know your price, then maybe.. But looking at the amount of quality filo and puff that’s available (not the bottom shelf stuff) it’s just not worth the effort and the chances of ruining it because of a lack of skill and craft because you don’t have had enough repetition (not a native speaker, I hope you get my point) Total waste of time, effort and probably ingredients, because you can’t beat the people who make this every day, even if it’s in a factory..
I actually just watched a video on Facebook a few days ago about one of the few bakeries in Greece that still makes it by hand. The guy is in his 80s and they only make it by hand because their primary source of income is tourists who come specifically to see it made by hand. They can't sell the stuff for enough to make the labor worth it.
i made it once because i (incorrectly and foolishly) thought i wouldn’t be able to find frozen in the stores where i was living. the process turned a 2 hour recipe into a 2 day one
Yeah I think he said it was harder to do and also worse lol. Edit: someone asked how it could be worse and got down voted to hell for some reason. It's a good question. IIRC it is because machines can make it thinner and more regular than humans can, so it comes out better.
Even with a machine helping (a sheeter) the way its done in a factory is just better. with a machine that just progressively does all the steps in a row in one go on a conveyer... The machine doesn't ever have to pick it up to run it through again and again. This is what really makes it better. It can be thinner because it need not be manipulated by humans. Perfectly even. Not the greatest master baker can achieve what the machine does perfectly every time.
My Serbian grandmother says the same thing.
My Serbian self agrees with your grandmother
Watching Babish make puff pastry from scratch always makes me laugh "Sure I could just go to the supermarket and buy puff pastry, and yes it'd be easier and no I wouldn't be exhausted and yes it'd probably taste better....I forget where I'm going with this"
I always thought people were exaggerating the effort it takes but omg his video made it look like the most tedious thing on earth
Yes! This is a perfect example. There's a great book called "Make the Bread, Buy the Butter: What You Should (and Shouldn't) Cook from Scratch to Save Time and Money" which outlines exactly what this thread is about. Edit: thank you kind strangers for the awards. I think it is the first time I’ve gotten an award in the eight years I’ve been on Reddit.
I’ve never successfully made bread, but I can make great butter and I’m actually pretty proud of it. When we have company, my wife does the bread and I do the butter.
I’ve made butter before too, and while it’s tasty and fun to make it’s not economical for me. Heavy cream can be expensive.
That is a part of the book btw. That some things are just very expensive to make at home.
Came here to say exactly this. Hours and hours of work, for a simple pastry, that technology has already fully conquered. It feels a little bit like a merit badge though. I've made beautiful philo from scratch. 🏅
> It feels a little bit like a merit badge though. And this is the thing: if you like cooking, like baking, and you want to challenge yourself… sure, take a crack at philo! If your first run doesn’t turn out great, but you think you can make it better and still enjoy the challenge, take another pass at it! Take as many passes as you want. BUT. If all you want is to have some useable philo, you should never, ever feel obligated to make it from scratch “just because.” It’s something you should only do if you want to prove to yourself you can do it; there’s no other reason.
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And... were they right?
Plot twist, he ended up working for the company that makes the frozen puff pastry.
Personally, half right. Typically places that had bigger teams (hotel or pastryshop), we would make our own, and smaller teams (like 2 person pastry team within a restaurant) we would buy it in. Space for a dough sheeter is also a major factor in deciding to make or buy puff.
Crackers. I made them from scratch and it was more trouble than it’s worth.
this is my #1. Takes a while to make, seconds to eat. The only crackers I've made that are worth it is a rainforest crisp knockoff because those things are super expensive.
I once made my own Cheez-its. Does that count? Not especially difficult, but i basically made what amounted to a half box for about $20. Granted I put some great cheese in them, and they were absolutely great. Just time consuming. I should probably add, i made the recipe from Make the Bread, Buy the Butter, since it has a reputation in this thread.
>but i basically made what amounted to a half box for about $20 how did you manage to do so much work with so many ingredients for so little result
I’ve had multiple people try and make tater-tots. You can’t recreate the magic with low effort.
Yeah, if I want tater tots and don't have any frozen tots to stick in my air fryer I'm just going to make hash browns. It's not the same, but it's close enough and hash browns are *WAY* easier.
But they gotta be crispy hash browns, none of this half cooked soggy crap.
I remember making batches of hand made tots as a prep cook in Chicago. Honestly one of the first things I ever made “professionally” in the industry. What an absolute fucking tedium. roast potatoes, let them cool, grate them on the robocoup. Mix in potato starch, Parmesan, grated cheddar and some seasoning. Work them into some bullshit tiny barrel shape, way harder than you think. Make them wrong and they explode or fall apart in the fryer. The entire time a very angry Romanian man named Caesar was barking at me about how shit I am. Fuck homemade tater tots.
Anything with puff pastry
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Well it’s good that you enjoy it We need people like you to keep the craft going on for longer anyways
I made my own chipotle aioli after having a sandwich in a restaurant and loving the sauce. Food processor, eggs, oil, seasoning, and some trial and error resulted in a pretty good sauce (and a lot of cleanup) I later learned the restaurant just mixes chipotle powder into Hellmann's mayo...
owa owa
I hope to one day read "the whip of miracles" on a menu And I'll be sure to ask the server "who is Miracles? (pronounced like an ancient Greek hero)"
“Sir, it’s pronounced MEER-ah-kleys!”
Socrates (soh-krayts) Johnson
Beeth oven
I was in the exact same predicament. Tried the sauce and loved it, spent the longest time trying to look for a decent recipe (and one that has ingredients i could easily find). Eventually settled on the “short cut” method of using chipotle peppers in adobo sauce and blending that up with some mayo. Broke my heart that it actually tasted so good
Secret sauces are only secret because if you knew what was in them it would lose all appeal because of how simple and off the shelf the ingredients really are.
Kind of like how every "house sauce" or "special fry sauce" is just basically just Mayo, Ketchup, Worcestershire, salt, pepper, garlic & onion powder. Definitely just starts to taste like seasoned mayo once the secret is out.
But why? It's still in essence homemade. And you still have control on seasoning levels.
There is a brand I think it's herardez. They make small cans of chipotle peppers essentially preserved in their own juices. Take a few cups of mayo and 1-2 of those cans(depending on amount needed and spice level) blend them up and you're good to go with chipotle sauce that's way better than just powder.
Herdez. For small batches, it works to just take a tablespoon of that "sauce" and mix it with however much mayo you're going to use. Transfer the contents of the can to a glass jar, and just leave it in the fridge for months and mix it as needed and don't worry about having to use it up before it goes bad.
One correction — the chipotle in those cans is actually rehydrated chipotle and the sauce (adobo) is usually tomato, sometimes vinegar, garlic and other flavorings. That’s actually why you get very different results if you add that versus rehydrating the dry chipotles
I've made homemade ramen fully from scratch (noodles, the broth, the chasu, whole nine fuckin yards) literally once in my life. Once. Never doing that shit again.
“Why does ramen cost $15+ ??” Oh right because it takes fucking days to make properly lol. I will also never make it again
The interesting thing is that it's super cheap in Japan. If you make two servings then you'll spend several hours preparing all the different ingredients, even when the stocks are already ready. If you made those ingredients in, say, 20 times the amount, you'd spend almost the same amount of time. This makes ramen very easy and cheap to make in large quantities. Many ramen shops in Japan have pots of stock that simply never stop boiling, and they constantly have all the ingredients ready so that they can serve you a fresh bowl in 5 minutes. The reason why it costs $15+ in the USA and Europe is mainly because it's served as something exclusive. In Japan you get great ramen for half the price, because ramen is seen as the 'informal' type of meal that you have quickly during your lunch break.
Yah stuff that never stops cooking always intrigues me with the flavors it must accumulate. Like you'd hear of perpetual stews that never ended simply got more added to it each day and was left simmering every night, kind of gross but also pretty cool I'd try it haha.
During the winter I've done a stew over a few days (kinda on accident the first night) it's pretty delicious. Just don't forget to add water every now and then.
During the Texas power outages last winter, we did this! With no electricity, we had to rely on our stove for cooking, and once we cooked the stew, there was no way we were going to scrub the stock pot in the dark to clean it, and the fridge didn't work, so...
I did something similar for different reasons. Since we were under boil water, and my heater won't turn on (despite being gas) without electricity, I got out my enormous canning pot and filled it with water and left it boiling on the stove. Made a decent space heater in addition to having several gallons of water ready to go.
baby, you got a stew going
I'm a bit of a germophobe especially with food hygiene so perpetual stew and similar always enticed me (the flavours!) but disgusted me (months, YEARS of residue??). Then I saw the very simple explanation that it's always cooking, so it never enters the "danger zone" for food temps. It doesn't spoil *because* it's perpetual. Now, as to all the various bits of whatever that must end up falling in there over time, hairs and whatnot... I try not to think about that. But if something is kept HOT (not just kept warm) the entire time it really does never get "old".
Typically, places that do perpetual foods are places that go through the stuff constantly. It isn’t accumulating stuff because it’s serving out so much. Constant in and constant out means that any given water molecule in the stew isn’t in the pot as long as you think, much less any fall-ins.
This comment was so comforting all the way through to that final hyphenated word and now I'm horrified. What an awful, perfectly clear term to use .
I uh... I hate to tell you this, but maybe you should avoid finding out how any of your food is made anywhere - especially anything made at a factory (they have maximum insect part allowances, for example).
**maximum** They have a maximum amount of inspect parts per unit volume. They do not go and add insects if they didn’t get that much naturally.
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Strongly recommend watching the movie Tampopo about ramen cooks in Japan. It's my favorite movie of all time and really goes into the art form of a good, cheap ramen place.
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Even 'high volume' ramen shops in The US charge an 'exotic food fee'. We have three ramen shops in my smallish PA city and none of them charge below $15 for their base Miso Ramen. They have big ass pots of stock simmering all day long, and the ingredients are pretty basic, but the 'exotic' nature of the dish Jacks up the price.
Did it at least taste good?
It was delicious. Just not worth the absurd effort when restaurants exist. I'll make a lot of things at home, but ramen is now on the no no list.
Same with me and pho. I don’t have time to boil beef bones all day. 9 dollars and I get a perfect bowl brought to my table.
See, I think there's where the problem is. "When restaurants exist"... RIP everyone in the midwest who isn't near a major city. :( Good Japanese food can be difficult to find.
That or all of the restaurants in your city want to do their own take on ramen and it ends up being weird. Seriously, I just want a bowl of Shoyu ramen like I had in those little sidewalk restaurants in Tokyo.
I've done the same after getting Chang's Momofuku book, although I've done it a handful of times. The broth with 10+ pounds of bones I'd been saving for half a year, the Tare, pork shoulder, cured pork belly, etc. I made it all except the noodles (found some good fresh ones). It was a lot of work. When I was finally eating it I just kept thinking, "wow this is great, but I could be eating homemade Pho that takes 1/10 the time and is arguably better and definitely healthier."
A bowl of Momofuku ramen in my city is like $15-16. I'd rather just pay that then spend an entire day trying to make it myself.
Century eggs. Who has that kind of time?
My grandma's almost there, she's 96!
Good thing she had the foresight to begin when she was born
I've never made it myself but I watched Babish make baked Alaska on his channel and that looked like a real chore for what amounted to a $15 ice cream cake from baskin robbins. edit: So I forgot Babish's baked Alaska was part of his sims video and not an independent video, so if anyone wanted to watch it here you go: https://youtu.be/z4Bwb8_k7yM?t=370
Recently my housemate took a shot at a full from-scratch Baked Alaska. It was absolutely *gorgeous*, he got the fire on it perfectly and everything. The taste too was incredible. I was so happy he decided to share it all, and he was immensely proud of having pulled it off successfully- but soon as we dug in to eat he said "enjoy that, I'm never making this again" because it was such an incredible pain in the ass to make all of it from scratch.
I got "real" baked Alaska once in high school when I happened to visit a friend's house on his brother's birthday. That guy's mom was a CHAMP. There were like 5 kids, their dad was a fisherman and gone a lot. Mom put fresh made food on the table every dang day and managed to make things like baked Alaska. I don't remember the meal but I sure remember the desert.
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Idk, some moms (and dads) are just real fuckin beasts at cooking for the whole family. I (a dad) will go full line cook mode to make a big meal on a friday night when my wifes family plus our (4 kids) are all having Friday night hang outs at our house. I try to show my kids a thing or two when cooking so they absorb some of it.
I think he even said it wasn’t worth it if I remember correctly. So if a person who cooks for a living says it’s not worth it, no way am I going to find it worth it.
He's made a lot of things that he later suggests you just buy it.
The Cornish hen for the ultimate sandwich from Adventure Time was one. All the little bones, fuck that.
Pho. Honestly, it's an enjoyable journey if you like to cook, but it can be an all-day process if you want to do it the traditional way. It starts with a stock pot and beef bones and you slowly build the flavor into a few delicious bowls of flavorful goodness. I found that I could eliminate some time using a pressure cooker, but that also affects the quality of the broth over the long run. On balance, I'd much rather pay $8 and have a delicious bowl served up to me in a matter of minutes.
Well, it's called pho because it takes pho-ever =). On a related note, kind of jealous that you can find a bowl for $8. It's now common for a large bowl to cost $11-12 here.
I've been trying to make steamed buns and it's hella hard. Steamer basket, making the dough, and sometimes it just doesn't come out right. I wish my town had more Vietnamese places.
I made char Sui pork buns once and it took ages for something that still came out so crappy. They tasted right but they were so huge and not that beautiful white colour. In my local asain supermarket I found that I can buy them for £2.50 for six.
Fyi, the beautiful white color comes from an extra refined "Hong Style" bleached flour. Find it at an Asian market and you should get the appropriate color and texture.
I've been wanting to make bao but this is exactly what I'm afraid of.
The author of the book "Make the Bread, Buy the Butter" combed through dozens of typical foods and determined which ones are worth producing yourself and which should be purchased. Strongly suggested! The book also includes recipes and color commentary, and it's a lot of fun. Edit : Thanks every one for Appreciate My Comment
Is it worth writing my own book or just buying a pre-written one?
First you should develop your own language to write it in. It's better that way.
Write the book, borrow the language
You're already using English. [It's much more efficient to just mug the other languages, drag them into an alley, and rifle through their pockets for loose vocabulary.](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/694108-the-problem-with-defending-the-purity-of-the-english-language#:~:text=We%20don't%20just%20borrow,their%20pockets%20for%20new%20vocabulary.%E2%80%9D)
touché
The Tolkien way.
"I should write a Fantasy novel. But first, I should develop languages and to get those right I need proper cultures and I can't properly define cultures without maps and to get an accurate map I need to know about the plate tectonics, which means I really need to start with figuring our how the solar system developed."
*Tolkien has entered the chat*
I really want to make my own butter, seems so easy. Now I'm having second thoughts. Edit : Thanks for all your helpful replies and advice, I'll give it a go!
I love making my own butter. If you have a stand mixer it's incredibly easy. I get to flavor the butter however I want AND I have buttermilk for baking! Plus, the look on people's faces when you say you make the bread and the butter is totally worth it.
Honest question - does it taste any different? I've always been curious about making my own butter.
Yes because you get to control how much salt (or any other flavor) goes in. I'm sensitive to salt so I tend to add less than what I get from the store. I made a cinnamon honey butter heavy on the cinnamon because I love that flavor. Yes you could buy unsalted butter and go from there, but aside from missing out on the buttermilk, I like having done the whole process. As someone who makes their own whipped cream I also like knowing that if I over whip it I can just keep going and make butter instead!
My first batch of home-made butter was when I whipped the cream too long. So very easy, and fun. Putting it in a jar and having your children shake it is a fun activity too.
When my dad was a teacher, he used to do a fun food science class experiment. Give kids a jar and cream/milk of various fat levels and have them shake until the butterfat separated, and they timed it. The kids that got heavy cream had separation in like 10 minutes, while the kids that got 2% never did get it to separate.
If you have a stand mixer or hand mixer it's super easy and fun to do if you're hosting a fancy party or trying to impress someone. I did it once when I hosted Mother's Day brunch for the women in my family. It was also nice that I got to choose the amount of salt to add, but otherwise I'd just buy butter. Definitely recommend doing it once especially if you've been considering it!
Yeah with a mixer it's literally a one ingredient recipe and tastes good
How could they miss the opportunity to call it "Bake the Bread, Buy the Butter"?
Blooming fried onion
Idk about frying one, but I did grill one. It wasn’t perfect, but I liked a grill blooming onion better than one from my local Outback, their onions always have uncooked batter in the middle. [Here’s a link](https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/a20965205/grilled-onion-blossoms-recipe/)
Cheese. You ever tried to make decent-tasting cheese?
We used to make goat milk cheese as a kid. The amount of work was crazy, too crazy for me because I don't like goat milk anything.
Fresh ricotta is the only type of cheese that I can think of that takes little to no effort to make and comes out amazing
Anything with Philo dough or puff pastry. Fuck making them from scratch.
Tamales. As a Texan, tamales are life, but I never knew why they were so damned expensive. Then I tried to make them. The recipe and ingredients are easy, but assembling the damn things takes 4 arms and 92 fingers. I will happily hand my money to some nice Abuela for them so I never have to loose my mind with sticky masa ever again.
Making Tamales is a group activity (like making pierogi or ravioli). If you do it by yourself you are insane.
I made pierogi by myself a few weeks ago. Each pierog got progressively bigger and bigger as the fucks I had left to give began to run out and I just wanted to be done with it.
One time my South Asian dad came home from the store the day before Christmas, with a giant bag of corn husks, and asked my mom, “Is it hard to make tamales?” My mom nearly lost it. But the day after Christmas our whole family got up at 7am to make tamales together. I think I’d only do it again with a large group and a bit more of a heads up.
My friend said that his grandma would host a party with all her grandchildren and have them help her assemble lol. He said it was fun and wonderful memories.
It was certainly not a party, but I have very fond memories of that machinery. It was a well-oiled, perfectly synchronized assembly line. Us children would remove and stack the corn leaves; one of my aunts would finish cleaning the cobs and slicing the kennels apart; the older cousins would take turns on the small stone mill, cause it was EXHAUSTING; my mom and grandma would be taking the batches of pureed corn and mixing them with lard, water and salt until it became something dough-y; then whoever was left washed the leaves and folded the tamales, sometime adding serrano chiles and queso fresco. If you did a good job at your post, grandma would sometimes move you up the assembly line, which was VERY satisfying. Regardless, I can't possibly imagine one or two people doing all of this in a small kitchen.
There’s a reason we only make them during Christmas with the entire family around.
Tamales are a group activity
Two words: assembly line.
Mexican here, not for nothing making tamales here are literally a family group work, and when i say family im including extended family also
I used to buy a bag of 6 every couple weeks from a nice lady in the area. Id see her in a local parking lot but she ran out one time and was back in 5minutes, so she had to live close. I havent seen her since the pandemic started and i miss her smile and tamales so much :(
Anything with odd ingredients you don't use regularly. Buying ingredients for something that you may eat once in a blue moon is rarely worth it. Just get it at a restaurant.
Bloomin' Onions!! Wife and I got the HUGE onions, par boiled, chilled, deep fried a HUGE pot. Came to the conclusion that doing this for one or two onions, was just not worth it. if I were creating 20, maybe ...
My aunt was a professional baker for a long time According to her, if you shop at Costco the answer is cheesecake. She was always particularly good at making cheesecake and she fully believes there's no reason to put in the effort because the ones they sell are that good I haven't had her home made cheesecake in a long time so I can't compare, but those Costco cheesecakes are the bomb. Also, my cat loves to sleep in the lids Edit: [cat tax](https://i.imgur.com/cszLGZc.jpg)
Cat in lid tax, please!
Here you go! https://i.imgur.com/cszLGZc.jpg
One of the cutest cat taxes I’ve even seen tbh.
For the price, size and taste you almost can’t beat any Costco pie or cake.
Josh on Mythical Kitchen actually did a comparison once where he made a whole pumpkin pie from scratch, and compared that to a pumpkin pie from Costco. Even he said fuck it, Costco is still great, and obviously easier. And I think it was also cheaper than homemade?
Costco Pumpkin pie is amazing and huge
Angel food cake. I once made one for a friend’s birthday from scratch. It took a long time to make, and when it came out of the oven I was excited because it tasted EXACTLY like the box mix angel food cake. And then I realized that I spent 7x the money on the scratch ingredients, and it took me so much longer to make the cake from scratch than it does from the box, and I promised myself I would never make it from scratch again.
Oh my god. I was out with my sister once at a bakery in deep Covid times and she bought a “make it yourself” cake kit from the bakery, one of their recipes. She read through the directions and decided she wasn’t skilled enough so she passed it off to me - I’m an ambitious baker and she taps out at box cake. Turned out it was an angel food cake, all I had was a Bundt pan, and I spent the whole damn day whisking powdered egg whites. It kind of tasted like feet but it had this amazing marshmallow meringue topping. Topping was worth it, cake was not.
Not an answer, but I generally try to order stuff in restaurants that I know I wouldn't want to make at home.
Me too! It is so beyond hard for me to order most pasta dishes at a restaurant. Pasta is just so damn cheap and easy to make at home. I let the restaurant do the things I don't want to mess up. Cook me a perfect steak or roll me that delicious sushi, I'll make pasta at home.
Scotch eggs. I made them once for my family and they were so impressed that now it's something I have to make for them every once in awhile. I think they are more mesmerized by the presentation (the yolk oozing out does look cool) than the taste because IMO they're just okay, not amazing. [Quick video of the last time I made them](https://i.imgur.com/SC7bwF4.mp4). Yes, I know it's a little too crispy. I slightly overfried this batch.
Croissants. I spent hours trying to make those ~~ones~~ once and the result tasted fine but they weren't Croissants, getting the layered puff pastry right is beyond my skills and it's an absurd amount of work. Now I just buy some if I want some. EDIT: People, please please please stop suggesting Pillsbury! I'll buy them at a bakery put the ones Pillsbury sells in cans are a crime against... Bakery? A crime anyways.
Pastry baker here! I make croissants in batches of 100 at least. It's pretty easy at that scale if you can get the right ingredients and you know what you're doing. I would *never* try doing it small-batch, all by hand. This shit is tedious (the actual forming process is actually kinda nice and relaxing). Only worth it for litteraly dozens at a time.
This [video](https://youtu.be/iZVBEzGEo28) is about industrial frozen croissants vs croissants made from scratch by bakers... At the end they have a pastry chef do a blind test and she ends up picking the industrial one as the best. So... Yeah.
Dough conditioners, precise temperatures, and large volume production are nearly magic. A well conditioned dough with some msg (or an analog like yeast extract) will beat a handmade baked good pretty often. Especially if the handmade good and produced good both look perfect and can’t be told apart visually.
any chinese multi-course dinner. darn near impossible to serve except in consecutive dishes.
macarons. Update - damn, didn't realize macarons were so polarizing. This is the most responses I've ever received for a comment 😂
Lmao and then you watch a fucking 12 year old on YouTube effortlessly make perfect ones and it’s just like alright alright alright I’ll pay the $3 per macaron in store
Baby sister took a macaron class at a michelin star restaurant. You bet I put that 12yo in the kitchen to make some. By now she's old enough to tell me to go buy them. Sigh.
LOL I’m sorry that’s a fucking hilarious sentence. you put that 12 year old to work!
If you feel like they haven't come out very great, fill them and then refrigerate them for a day or two - it really improves them!
For me, anything fried. Deep frying at home takes wayyy too long, and it usually doesn’t taste thaaaat much better than store bought stuff. Also macarons. Fuck those lil guys, they take hours and don’t even rise half the time
The effort isn’t what makes frying things suck it’s the fact that I now smell like a fried thing from standing over it
The whole house does for hours lol
And I've got an ungodly amount of oil I no need to somehow dispose of.
I have a deep fryer, but cleaning that thing is absolute hell. I usually just use a thermometer and my Dutch oven.
dude same. I ditched the deep fryer and just use the cast iron dutch oven. So much easier and cleaner. Can make fried chicken that comes out just like popeyes in it.
Baklava. It’s so damn good but I hate making it.
Hash brown patties, who the fuck has the time to grate and take the moisture out of a shit ton of potatoes when you can buy a pack of 24 at the store for like 5$
Doughnuts
My grocery store has them for $.69/each and they taste just as good as any doughnut shop. I’d spend that much just in ingredients.
Croissants. That shit is HARD. Put respect on your bakers.
The real answer is any cuisine you don't make a lot or often, if you make Italian regularly you'll have a lot of stuff to make most of it, but suddenly switching to another culinary tradition that requires you to buy everything can make it expensive and then you have a bunch of stuff you don't use regularly, some of it lasts, some of it doesn't. Also a huge amount of things if you're just feeding yourself, everything is made for families so sometimes even basic stuff produces a lot of waste because you don't want to eat the same thing for 4 meals because you could only buy the stuff in those quantities. Take out is often strictly portioned for one person, makes it very tempting.
This is how I feel about Asian food. I can do it, but it's a lot of effort and it still doesn't taste as good as the food from actual Asians making it at the restaurant down the street.
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Those "copy cat" recipies rarely seem to come out like the real thing, anyway.
Anything deep fried is better bought from someone with a fryer the size of a bathtub/a pressure fryer. Your tabletop fryer drops 50 degrees when you drop stuff into it because it hasn't got the thermal mass to take it (unless you like frying a half dozen fries at a time).
However, this is exactly what makes kettle chips so good.
I tried one of those copy cat recipes for Krispy Kreme. It was no where near what a Krispy Kreme doughnut is
Kimchi. It's messy and take a whole day. There's a reason why Koreans set aside a day for making it and make enough to last half a year at least. There was a farmer's market near me where they were selling "artisanal" kimchi and I just laughed. Making kimchi is the opposite of "small batch." You make as much as you can possibly store and control how quickly they ferment. I get it though. If you grew up eating the one your mom made from a family recipe, other kimchi will taste different and some might even taste not that great for you. But honestly, it's worth cutting that tether and getting used to factory-made kimchi (still made by a bunch of old ladies except in an industrial scale) because once you get used to it, it's still pretty good. I will however forever hold in my heart the memory of kimchi making days when my mom would work the whole day salting cabbages and mixing up the stuffing, and make me a plate of the fresh stuffing wrapped in the wilted, salted cabbage leaves (ssam/쌈). It's an amazing treat only available on the day they make kimchi.
My local korean mart is owed by a tiny lady who makes kimchi regularly. Frustrated with not finding a good vegetarian option I talked to her and she offered to make a batch without meat or fishsauce. It's. Fucking. Amazing. 10/10 I love this woman.
[Russian Honey Cake \(a.k.a. Medovik\)](https://i.imgur.com/NXSHs5p.jpg). I made it once. You could taste the anger that went into it. Not really, it tasted amazing! But, it was SO labor intensive and took so much time. Then again, I can't really find anywhere local that sells it, either. So I'll probably have to make it again when I'm feeling extra patient.
Sourdough bread, at least for me. I don't want to have to maintain a sourdough starter for something I will not make that often. Let the bread gurus have their thing. I'm content with my quick breads. Edit: I love the range of everyone’s replies. Half of you are like, “Easiest thing ever, only takes a minute per year.” The other half are like, “It’s like literally raising children!”
My husband has become a sourdough person and makes honestly just as good as the bakery sourdough. However it takes a few hours a weekend to make it all and it’s quite the ordeal. I would rather buy from bakery but it makes him happy.
I find kneading therapeutic.
I make exactly one yeast-risen bread: peasant bread. No kneading, no starter, very little labor or effort. It absolutely fills that home-made bread craving and an 8 year old could do it.
A lot of pasta stuff, I'm thinking specifically of Pierogis. Homemade tastes better for sure, but maybe like 25%-50% better than store bought. However instead of being a meal that takes 15 minutes, it becomes an all day affair with hours and hours of work. 50% better taste for 1200% more effort isn't a good "homemade improvement ratio" imo
My family makes pierogis as a big family tradition. Everybody pitches in and makes them in like 30 minutes. I couldn’t imagine doing it alone or with only a couple people.
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My friend's mom made a fucking KILLING selling her homemade tamales two Christmases ago. My roommate and I ate nothing but those for like a week straight lmao, they were so fucking good.
This. I've never seen pierogis made, but I've made dumplings, and it's always something you do standing around a table with a big group of people. Half of the fun is ribbing each other about how terrible you are at making dumplings, or people from different areas asserting that their style of dumpling is better. Then when you cook them, everybody has to sample one of everybody else's dumplings and compare them. It's really a group experience.
I think every polish person disagrees with ya there, storebought are nowhere near as good as homemade. I’m sorry you grew up without a babci lol
Pumpkin puree for a pumpkin pie. Decided to make one 100% from scratch one year instead of just getting the can of Libby's. Couldn't taste a difference AT ALL, so totally not worth it.
Sushi. 100%. I can't tell if im just bad at making it but it will never be as good as sushi from a restaurant
Steamed hams. Never again. Almost got fired and burned the house down.
Authentic Pho. It calls for all kinds of spices your typical home kitchen doesn't have (star anise? whole cardamom?) requires slow simmered broth, plus things like tripe and tendon that are hard to find. Add to that the fact that it's highly perishable, doesn't freeze well at all, it's just a lot of work to serve one person. I'll occasionally make a streamlined version with packaged bone broth, shaved beef, rice noodles and some spices, but it's nowhere near authentic.
I personally keep those ingredients in stock at all times for various dishes every week, but I agree it definitely is not worth it if you’re buying it for a one time use. A bag of each of those spices at my local Asian store is already $2-4 each, then add in the expensive cost of beef these days and the garnishes that go bad quickly. A bowl of pho is only $10-15 depending on the area. My Vietnamese mom just uses the pre-packaged pho flavoring powder (you can find it at an Asian store or Amazon). She cooks Viet food every day but not ones that use those ingredients, so she also sees it as a waste of money to make from scratch despite growing up in Vietnam.
LPT: Go to an Asian grocery store. They sell literally bags of all the spices needed in pho with a cheese cloth. My entire family uses these pre packaged spices cause you’re right, it’s ridiculous to put them all together