A lot of French cuisine. Not talking about laminated dough here which I’ve done many times. More so the complete modern French meal involving multiple reductions and real demiglace and all the techniques that seem to require a full restaurant process. It’s the one style of food I will go to a restaurant and happily pay for once in a while, I understand why it’s expensive to make and respect the skill it takes.
The other style I food I do this with is the very opposite, shitty fast food I can’t make at home.
I don’t have enough meat scraps and carcasses coming through to make proper demi-glace or stock in the quantity I use so I prefer a dehydrated powder used in restaurant service for home use. My scraps usually end up in a single soup recipe.
And yeah I love making French stews and all that, and I make components of French meals, but I’m talking like a full contemporary French menu from appetizer to dessert. To me that’s a very simple menu, some basic ingredients of exceptional quality, each prepared in a way that makes them taste as good as they can using techniques it takes a lot of experience to get good at, with some experimental or playful element that isn’t too pretentious, then plated and presented in a creative way. That type of meal I will gladly pay for because it’s almost the fact someone else has imagined it and made it real that makes it worth it, like I wanna see what kind of tricks they’re doing that I wouldn’t have thought to do. Not only that but everything has to come together perfectly for it to work, and even if I know I can technically do it all, can I do it all at once by myself as a home cook? That’s why I respect the restaurant process for this style of food.
100%. I’m still going to TRY making homemade for a challenge eventually, but when Costco sells perfectly good ones… Why would I make them other than as a project?
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
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.
There’s a lot, most of which I make anyway for sake of cost/volume ratios, but in no particular order…
Tomato paste (love to use, can’t be arsed to make my own), sriracha (like it but don’t use enough for the amount I make), waffles (don’t crave them nearly as much as I used to), scotch eggs (love 'em, hate making 'em), pickled asparagus (which really sucks because they’re so good), lotus root chips (maybe if I had a fry daddy, air fried just doesn’t do it), chicarrones (lots off local places make 'em fresh and cheap), horchata (same), meat pies (there’s a local Brit shop that sells 'em), falafel (lots of local vendors), jalebi (way too much work)…
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.
These are great, done them about 10 times now, realized I didn’t hate making cinnamon buns I just hated the recipes. I dunno what it is with the standard “just like grandma’s” cinnamon bun recipes but it seems like an excuse for making it overly complicated.
The date puree for the filling I make extra and use it as a spread, so good. It’s still a process but it’s not a lot of work at once and cleans easy. The creator of this recipe is really good at teaching the indicators and not just measurements which is why I love this one in particular.
Stuffed vine leaves. I made them once for a gathering I had and they took me about 3 hours in all. Everyone loved them but for the time they took me, and how much of a pain in the arse they were to make, it wasn’t worth it. The ready made ones in tins are just fine.
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.
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.
There was a Chinese restaurant in town when I was growing up that used pork stock and I’ve never had hot and sour soup as good as his. Sadly he retired in 2015 and shut down the restaurant.
I just don’t get enough scraps for how much I cook with stock. I’ll have a couple ziplocks of bones and veg and roast them, then boil, deglaze the roasting pans into the pot, boil, boil, reduce, reduce… great now I can make… a few servings of soup, a cup of concentrate for sauces.
My broth/stock hack is to just get a bulk canister of dehydrated stock powder marketed to restaurants, you can find perfectly acceptable quality-wise for any use at home and its consistent. I do save things for making soups but come on… you’re not gonna get a quantity that’s worth all the effort if you’re just going through the food you’d eat at home. These ingredients how they’re used today were basically invented through restaurant processes where you have large quantities of ingredients and importantly, meat scraps like trimmings bones and carcasses coming through daily on a predictable schedule.
You can get really good powdered stocks too, if they were shitty that would be another story but if you find a restaurant supplier with specialty foods in bulk they likely have a good stock option. I got a pail of dehydrated mushrooms from the same supplier here in Canada and they have the fancy spices and all that too, different saffron varieties even.
There are a couple of things that make this easier :
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.
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.
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.
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!
I find frozen fries from the grocery store that are either air fried or deep fried are pretty good. My fries from scratch have always been disappointing or an ordeal.
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)
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