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.
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.
Lamb Vindaloo.
God I wanna be good at making that. And veggie samosas
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.
Sourdough
It’s honestly not hard at all.
Do you have a reliable starter recipe?
Croissants - 3 days prep time minimum? You have to be very precise with everything and it’s just such a bother.
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.
Croque Monsieur.
So pretty. So tasty. So finicky.
Cooking in general
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.
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.
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!
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
Beef Wellington.
I was thinking about making this to surprise ans impress my wife. Watched a video on how to make it and decided that there are easier ways to impress her.
I made one for new years and while there are alot of steps, but the steps themselves are very doable. I prepped mine the day before and just had to cook in the oven on the day.
As much as I love barbecue I don’t and won’t own a smoker.
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.
It’s not 14 hours of effort. It’s 14 hours of letting shit boil.
I highly recommend getting slow cooker if you don’t have one. You can do stocks and broths without having to keep an eye on them. I let my bone broths go for two days.
I bet there’s a few Instant Pot recipes, too.
Khao soi
My mom makes these cottege cheese and bread crumbs dumplings that she boils until they float and then you cut them in half and drizzle melted butter and brown sugar on them.
I could never pronounce or spell the name of the dish but she claims it’s a traditional German dessert.
I tried explain it to chat gpt and it had no clue what the hell I was talking about. It kept telling me about Turkish dishes that have the right ingredients but look nothing like the baseball sized dumplings she would make.
It could easily be a family recipe. It looks like riffs on this theme are pretty common. Maybe it was a Hungarian recipe? Sounds like a great mystery!
I think they are called Topfenknödel in German, i remember my family making them as well, served with jam, they are delicious!
She responded immediately. It’s called “Quark Klöße” according to her.
Looks like the specific ingredients and prep are a family thing, but that’s definitely what it’s based on.
Now I can rest easy. It was gonna drive me crazy if I couldn’t remember the name of the food. Haha
This seems pretty close to what you described: https://www.chefkoch.de/rezepte/166041072019596/Suesse-Quarkkloesse.html
It sounds good / I’m thinking about giving them a go. If you find a better recipe let me know.
I think my mom’s recipe is all in her head. I do know that she tends to add some lemon peel zest into the dumpling mix which gives it just the faintest citrus smell/taste prior to the butter and brown sugar being added at the end.
Bed of luck. Let me know how you like em.
Will do, thanks! I totally get having the tweaks in your head or written into the family recipe book with a pen. Our better homes cookbook has tons of notes/tweaks written into it now.
I should probably ask my mom to write down her recipes for posterity sake at some point. I think my sister knows some of them .
That Hungarian dish looks visually the closest but it was definitely made with wet cottage cheese.
I am absolutely going to butcher the name/spelling but it was called “cvlockclusa” in my house. I’ll ask my mom how it’s spelt.
