Pho. I have a killer recipe for the instant pot but it basically works out to the same price as just buying it from our local takeout. And they’re Vietnamese.
1 packet of vietnamese meatballs (these cook separately to the other meat)
CHARRED VEG
1 root of ginger (around 3 inches long), unpeeled, cut in half lengthways
1 onion, skinned and cut in half
FLAVORS
10 pieces of star anise (aniseed)
1 tablespoon coriander seed
1 cinnamon stick
1 tablespoon salt
1 clump of rock sugar
6 tablespoons of fish sauce
MSG (? amount)
TOPPINGS
Fresh Cilatro
Culantro (sawtooth, big leafy shit)
Basil
Green onion
Lime
Sliced onions
Bean sprouts
Hoisin Sauce
Sriracha
OTHER
Rice Noodles
Bring a big pot of water to the boil and drop the meat (except the meatballs and flank) into the boiling water. Furiously boil for 10 minutes. Drain and wash the meat under the tap.
Turn on the broiler, put the ginger and onion in, cut side up, until nicely charred.
Fill the instant pot to 1 inch below full line (12 cups/3 quarts or a little more). Add the washed meat (not the meatballs, not the flank) to the water and adjust water if overfilled. Then add the charred veg and the flavor ingredients.
Lid on, pressure cook button and set to 1 hour and 30 minutes. Prep toppings. Add the noodles to cold water and soak for at least 30 minutes. Let the pressure cooker depressurize naturally when done. During this time, prepare a pot of boiling water for the meatballs and noodles.
Once the Instant Pot beeps finished, boil the meatballs in water for 10 minutes. When these are done, remove, and leave the water boiling ready for the noodles. When ready to serve, dip the noodles in the boiling water for 1-2 minutes and remove immediately.
Open Instant Pot and remove meat to cut and plate. Strain the broth. If you have time, strain it a second time through a piece of kitchen towel to remove extra impurities. Return broth pot to Instant Pot and turn to low saute - taste and adjust seasonings as needed.
Plate up the food, starting with noodles, then meat, flank, broth, then toppings and sauce. Get slurpy.
You do you, but those are not difficult to make IMHO. I make a ton of batter and keep it in a squeeze bottle so I can easily make my kid pancakes in the morning
For me it’s macarons and most baked goods
I still make lasagna from scratch but that’s because I have to use gluten free pasta. All the pre made versions are awful
Significantly? One is thick and fluffy due to a couple of extra ingredients and one is thin and light. They’re basically the same thing base ingredients, prep and cooking method wise.
Macarons are one I picked up a few years back. I’d be damned if I’m paying almost $3 for a cookie after my niece asked for some at the store. I went home, compared recipes and had a few dozen in front of her that night. They’re time consuming, but much of the time is waiting for them to set, which is perfect for my ADHD ass cause I just forget about them for 30 mins to a couple hours. It’s a skill that has definitely paid off, and I love giving them to everyone who has never tried one because of the price.
Pumpkin pie filling. The real stuff takes forever and it’s stringy. It also doesn’t taste quite the same. Libby does it so well it’s not worth making your own.
My wife says pie dough. Pillsbury’s is almost as good and a lot less effort. I prefer pie dough with a ton more butter but she doesn’t.
Gods! Making it from raw pumpkin takes so fucking long. You can get rid of the strings, but you’re still going to be putzing with it forever. I don’t like wasting food, so I end up doing it every Halloween, but if I’m doing pumpkin recipes any other time of year, and that has run out, I’m buying canned.
I swear, every year I have an argument with myself to just throw the scraped out stuff in the yard for the birds. They end up getting the jack o lanterns anyway so what’s the big deal? But both sets of my grandparents grew up in the depression, so wasting anything is kinda impossible lol.
Jack o lantern pumpkins are not good for pies, in part because they are too stringy. A sugar pumpkin is the way to go if you want to do it from scratch.
Very true indeed. But sugar pumpkins are horrible for jack o lanterns lol. Well, if you do them the way we do. It’s kind of a big thing for us. We do that fancy shit and have a line of them on the porch. Actually, this year we didn’t go all out and only had five, with only one being fancy.
But if I’m making pumpkin pie filling from scratch, you’re dead on. I’m not messing with scraping one out, I’m just cutting it up, baking it and going from there.
I haven’t bought canned pumpkin in 20 years. It’s not bad to process and freeze it, and with good pie pumpkins, it’s unparalleled. Plus you get home roasted pumpkin seeds as a bonus.
I’m with you on this one. It’s one of the few things I refuse to make from scratch on Thanksgiving. I don’t know how or why, but every time I’ve tried to make them from scratch they get fucked up and turn into an inedible mess. I consider myself a decent cook and so does everyone else I’ve ever cooked for, but I cannot make mashed potatoes from scratch.
In terms of nutritional value it's actually quite a huge difference, with homemade mashed potatoes being a lot better for you. Something about food being healthier when it's less processed.
Still, the powder one is not the worst thing, and boiling up potatoes takes too long some days. I like keeping some texture though, so for me it's homemade whenever I feel like having it. :)
It's more recent science, but it seems every step of processing food (boiling, mashing, drying etc) breaks down cell structures, and that this in turn can make it harder for the body to take up nutrition. So you end up eating more but getting less nutritional value.
Research is still ongoing though, and of course mashed potatoes from powder is obviously still much better than ultra-processed food.
If homemade mash tastes exactly like the box to you, you’re doing something wrong when you make them. I’m not saying instant is bad to have in a pinch, but having the dehydrated potatos in flakes immediately makes them starchier and have a more gluey consistency. Plus, there are tons of additives that definitely make it taste different from freshly cooked potatoes.
If your flakes come out gluey, you’re not using enough liquids to rehydrate it. I feel like everyone disagreeing here likes lumpy potatoes. One person already admit they don’t even remove the skin when they make theirs. Gross. They’re supposed to be smooth and creamy.
That’s me! This has to be a fundamental difference in what we consider mashed potatoes. You are going for something textureless and processed like whipped potato porridge, I like them to be, well, mashed potatoes. Recognizably potatoes, mashed up and seasoned. The pressure cooked ones are fluffy as hell, they yield to a gentle fork smash.
My stepson, the first time I was around for his birthday, asked me specifically for “mashed potatoes made from potatoes”. I don’t think most people would agree with you on this one. Instant pot whole potatoes, mash with milk and butter, salt and pepper. I never peel them. So good and so easy.
Santa (aka my credit card) brought me an instant pot for Christmas. Do you have pressure and times for the potatoes? I didn’t even think of cooking them in there and then mashing.
Peeling, boiling, mashing, mixing taking like 30-60 minutes, depending on how much you’re making vs 3 minutes boiling water in a microwave and mixing a bag of flakes in for the same starch paste.
Any differences are marginal and so not worth the effort and time it takes.
I am not peeling nor boiling, have never peeled a potato. Boiling them in chunks I agree won’t yield something so much better than dehydrated powdered potatoes - that puts too much water into the equation and makes them similarly gluey. You can microwave chunked potatoes and mash them if you don’t have a pressure cooker or instant pot.
Yes it takes longer than boiling water but in the context of cooking other things it’s easy and potatoes pressure cooked whole are so fluffy and easy to mash.
I have used the flakes for potato bread, they are useful like dry milk is. But just like dry milk, or instant coffee, something is lost in drying and rehydration.
This is a very subjective prompt though - if the marginal time savings are worth it to you, they are. I don’t usually have an urgent timeline for mashed potatoes so letting them cook while I do other stuff works out.
I don’t peel, wait to boil, or even mix. I’ll literally throw whole garlic cloves in at once, and between the heat and the mashing they’ll take care of themselves. It also helps a lot of you have an actual potato masher and you’re not just using a spoon or something. Unlike this gif I found though, I just mash them in the pot as they cook. https://media.tenor.com/6A0aFauRdZ8AAAAM/super-recipes-foodie.gif
Yeah, flavor wise, there’s not any significant difference. Texture wise, that’s where scratch cooked excels. But if you’re going to rice it or cook it down all the way anyway? Dehydrated is going to be as tasty once finished.
But making mashed potatoes from scratch is so easy and has way better texture.
Btw when you say “they come in all sorts of flavours”, what does that mean? Like strawberry or something? I have never seen flavoured mashed potatoes. Is it an American thing?
That being said, spaghetti sauce. Yeah, home made is better, but “doctoring” a jarred sauce gets 95% as good without hours of work. You can’t fix the canned shit, but I’ve not found a jarred sauce that I can’t tweak with fresh herbs and some quickly sweated aromatics and end up with something that people love. It also satisfies my picky ass. Now, I will say that fucking ragu is pretty shit overall, and doctoring it only goes so far. But it is still good enough that making sauce from scratch ain’t happening.
Edit:
There seems to be a lot of range in spaghetti sauce recipes. It’s also important to note that I’m not talking about marinara.
So, the real time involved is split between prep and simmering.
Here’s how we do it. Remember this is an american talking here, so don’t redirect expect something traditionally Italian. And I’m a southerner that’s mostly german and Scots-Irish, so don’t expect any new York style stuff lol.
You take your tomatoes, skin them however you prefer. I use a quick dip in boiling water, aka blanching.
You give those peeled tomatoes a rough chop into nice size chunks. Now, the kind of tomato matters for that because something like a roma e isn’t gong to need as many chops as a beefsteak. You’d usually be using something like a roma anyway, but if your neighbor drops off a giant bucket of tomatoes, you can only use what you got, you know?
You chop up an onion, maybe two. You mince some garlic, maybe half a bulb if you really like garlic. I love garlic, so I go heavy.
Now, that’s your usual start. Most people in my family don’t add anything else in the way of veggies. Me? I like to char a couple of red or yellow bell peppers, skin them, and get them in there too. If I’m feeling frisky, I might have zucchini, eggplant, or whatever else cut up and ready to add at the appropriate time too, but that’s optional.
You get the onions sweating. While they’re starting, you feet your herbs together. Idgaf about fresh vs dried, each has benefits for flavor, you do what you prefer. I do oregano, basil, marjoram, a little thyme, and that’s it. I’m simple.
A little black pepper, a little salt (you really don’t need much, maybe a teaspoon for a big batch; salt your damn pasta water instead) to taste.
Once the onions are almost ready, I add the peppers since the quick char and steam to peel them tends to get them halfway cooked anyway.
This is around a half hour of work for most people. For me, it’s closer to an hour. Yay disability!
Then you add your tomatoes, herbs, and any optional veggies. Bring to boil, reduce to simmer.
After that, it’s patience. You’re making sure any veggies added are tender, and after that it’s cooking things down and letting the flavors develop. And, I promise you, anything under a half hour of simmering isn’t going to taste right, and will be super runny. You’ll usually have what amounts to chunky tomato water until close to the hour mark. For a big pot (my biggest is 6 quarts, and it starts damn near full when I do it) an hour and a half is bare minimum for the right thickness.
Now, if you’re going to jar that up, you’re done except for that part, which isn’t involved in what I originally said.
If you’re going to add meat, you’ll want to start browning it off about a half hour ahead of when the thickness will be right. You add the cooked meat in and let it simmer for 15 minutes at minimum. Do yourself a favor and deglaze the pan used with a nice, semisweet red wine, add that to the pot and go at least a half hour after adding it.
Now, exactly how long it needs to simmer is variable because you’re dealing with tomatoes, and the water content varies between varieties, time of year, weather conditions, etc. But I’ve never had a full sized batch take less than an hour and a half counting from the initial bring-to-boil stage.
I dunno, maybe there’s time savers I’ve never thought of. Maybe the folks saying it’s a half hour are doing a different version of “from scratch”, or whatever. But that’s how we do it, and it’s pretty much what the typical recipes I’ve seen online do (I went and checked because I wondered if I was crazy lol), plus or minus some details that don’t really change simmer time.
I’ve had some batches need a full two hours of simmering. And, yeah, you don’t have to stand over the pot the whole time, but chances are you’ll still be in the kitchen cleaning, keeping an eye on things stirring occasionally, adding any herbs or spices to adjust taste as it goes, etc. So it isn’t like you can just pop down to the local pub (or equivalent in your location) and go by time alone. You’ll still be in the general vicinity, with the added heat and humidity from cooking.
But that’s why I rarely go from scratch. I can pick up a jar of whatever, add some herbs, extra garlic and/or onions, brown any meat and then the deglaze and be done in under an hour from start to finish, including prep. The taste isn’t the same, nor is the texture, but it’s still yummy.
I came here to hard disagree, especially with the crepes example, but egg on my face and apologies all around: I am with you regarding spaghetti sauce.
I just don't consider any of that an answer to the question. For the most part, nobody is expecting every individual ingredient of a meal to be made from the raw ingredients (I don't actually think sauce is a lot of hands on work, but I don't usually bother to make it either). While I have a pasta maker and love fresh homemade pasta, if I make a lasagna from store bought noodles, jarred sauce, and store bought ricotta, nobody is going to yell at me for calling it homemade. The version with fresh pasta, homemade sauce, and homemade ricotta is going to be better (OK, I haven't done ricotta so I might make it gross), but the first one still counts.
I’m the exact opposite on spaghetti sauce. I find an incredible sauce is very easy to make heaps of with San Marzano tomatoes and tastes almost zero effort, just lots of time. But then I have like ten spaghettis’ worth and it’s wrecks shop on any jar sauce!
Italian scratching his head here. I can think of only one particular type of ragu that takes a few hours to make properly and is obviously not what’s being discussed here due to jars, doctoring sweating and general confusion.
Mate putting together a tomato sauce from scratch for some spaghetti shouldn’t take longer than the time it takes to the water to boil plus the 9 or so minutes that it takes to cook the pasta you are overthinking it
I’m American, and do use jarred sauce if I have it, but more often what I have is tomato paste, a half bottle of wine hanging out in the refrigerator and some garlic or olive oil and butter. Anchovies. Usually have canned peeled tomatoes too, but those do have to cook awhile to taste good.
I guess I don’t set out to replicate jarred sauce, generally speaking, but can quickly dress pasta for supper with something good.
I learned from America’s Test Kitchen to look at the ingredients. If the first ingredient is tomato paste or tomato concentrate, pass. If it is tomatoes, it will probably be fine. Although usually this means a more expensive jar, there are plenty of expensive/fancy looking jars that don’t pass this test.
That said, Del Grosso’s has a premium line with “Aunt Mary Anne’s Marinara”. It is our go-to and far and away the best I’ve tried.
I’m a huge fan of Rao’s sauce, but the price jumped from about $4 a jar to $10 last year and I just can’t justify that. I sometimes find it on sale for under $5 and def grab it, but it’s rare these days.
I used to doctor storebought sauces too. Recently though, I’ve just been buying those cans of cento crushed tomatoes. They’re a blank slate, and probably better quality tomatoes too.
If you preheat the Stone and send the pizza off a wooden peal (which will take some practice, granted), the dough will start to crisp right away and it shouldn’t be stuck at all when you go to turn it in a few minutes. You don’t even need oil. Cooking cold pizza from a cold stone though, that makes sticking much more likely. Also like that other guy said, use a little bit of cornmeal and flour under the pie, or I hear you can use semolina flour, which is courser apparently.
French Fries. For those who don’t know, when starting with a potato, you have to fry them twice. Once at a low temp to cook through, then again at a high temp to crisp up and brown. The frozen fries at the grocery have already had the first fry.
The double frying is just too much effort when the frozen stuff is just as good, even in an air fryer. So long as they’re hot, the drive thru can compete with anything you make at home.
I used to feel the same way about egg rolls, but the product you get from scratch is superior to frozen or even take out.
I’d rather make Kenji’s crispy potatoes instead now. You add baking soda and boil potatoes for 10 mins, it get the outside super mushy, you toss in a bowl with oil and they get covered in this potato paste, then oven high heat until cwispy.
Try letting them soak in water for a while after cutting them. Then dry them off before coating in oil and frying them. We do them in the air fryer that way. Not the same as deep fried but it’s good and close enough for us while being little effort.
I literally made 15 10-inch crepes for my family this morning. Using 2 pans it took about 30-40 minutes. Made some raspberry sauce before getting the crepes going. All told, the whole process took less than an hour and was awesome.
I grew up making crepes, or whatever the Mennonite equivalent is, and it’s one of the easiest things in the world to me. I have a ziplock full of crepes in my freezer right now.
Honestly? Ramen. There are way too many ingredients that all needs to be cooked differently, and even the broth itself is a nightmare amount of effort for what you get at the end.
I spent 2 days cooking my first ramen broth, the tare, the marinated eggs and the garlic oil. It’s definitely a case of tripling the batch and freeze it because it takes a lot of work regardless of the quantity.
I don’t know if there is anything special about Ramen broth, but once you get used to the process, homemade bone broth is absolutely worth it.
I get pork knee joints from the Asian market, bake them at about 400 for an hour, and simmer on the stove top for a couple of days. That broth is my winter staple.
I’d say a lot of my favorite Asian dishes follow this pattern. Most of them are pretty challenging to recreate due to the amount of ingredients and types of cooking involved. Guess there’s a reason they taste so good
I made homemade General Tso’s and it is absolutely worth the effort. The recipe I used stayed crispy for days even with sauce on it. I could control the flavor. It was so good.
You can kind of use a simplified method to get a good broth with a pressure cooker, because from what I read, the key to getting something good seems to be a sustained hard boil with lots of collagen and fat on the meat.
They should come out super crispy but still very juicy on the inside.The one drawback is that it takes a total of 30 mins and you can only make as much as fits in your frier. You really want to have only one layer of wings and not have them laying on top of each other. My frier is fairly small so it’s not something I can make for a whole bunch of people.
I got a deep fryer that goes on the countertop and has a temperature deal. The lid fits over the basket so I don’t have to get anywhere near the oil when it’s hot. When I’m done frying, there’s a temperature-sensitive mechanism to drain the oil into a box below to store it until next time (it can be reused a few times). The part that holds the oil when frying gets wiped out and tossed in the dishwasher. The only thing I really have to deal with washing is the heating element. It turns deep frying from absolutely not worth trying to deal with the mess/temperature/hot oil/cleanup to something I’m willing to do more than once a year. Don’t let your fry dreams be dreams!
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)
Crepes? Jesus, they’re one of the easiest things you can cook. Anyway, to answer your question: croissants! I’ve made them from scratch before and it definitely wasn’t worth it. Took half a day and weren’t a patch on the real thing
Do you means from absolute scratch? Here in the Netherlands it is common to buy a can of pre-made dough for croissants. You have to roll and bake them yourself, and adding some egg is also a great idea. But it is technically not entirely from scratch.
They taste way better than the pre-baked ones that you have to re-heat. Absolutely worth the minimal effort.
What you describe is not making from scratch at all. Those are premade save the final couple of steps, no different than a frozen pizza from the grocery store. No one gets a frozen pizza and says they made it from scratch.
A crepe is like 100 calories and you can pour like 5 in less than 10 minutes. But anyway, to reach their own. personally I hate chopping stuff even if it takes 1 minute.
I was surprised by this too! I mean I can understand thinking that crepes will be hard because they’re pretty dainty and might be delicate, but they’re surprisingly easy to do.
Fresh pasta and dried pasta are two different ingredients that serve different purposes. It’s impossible to get a fresh pasta al dente and unlikely that most home chefs have an extruder to get round shapes. The tougher texture allows it to stand up against hearty sauces.
Fresh pasta, however, has it’s own merits such a delicate texture that pairs well with delicate sauces. That delicate, silky texture isn’t achievable with dried pasta which would become mushy when trying.
I agree that they’re two different ingredients, but most Italian pasta dishes require dried pasta. The biggest exception is probably gnocchi, they’re always fresh.
It’s hard for me to say what is most dishes. I’ve never been to Italy and haven’t studied pasta making deeply, so it’s hard to say. From my limited understanding you pair cream sauces with fresh egg pastas. And in my opinion, stuffed pastas are also enjoyable when fresh.
Well, I’ve been to Italy many times and I have Italian friends, one of them actually worked in a restaurant in Italy. Most Italian dishes use dried pasta and they use it for a reason. You can learn more about dried pasta here youtube.com/playlist?list=PLURsDaOr8hWXz_CFEfPH2w…
Okay. First, apologies. I see my intent wasn’t clear in my initial posting. I posted that under your response because I saw many responses that confused fresh pasta as being a direct replacement to dried pasta. Instead of replying to each instance of confusion, I figured I’d put a response under your initial reply. I should have been more clear when responding.
It’s surprising to hear that there’s not too many dishes that use fresh pasta. I always assumed there would be a fair amount of both dried and fresh. Thanks for the info.
I appreciate the link to the playlist. I really like Alex’s videos.
No worries, we’re just having a civil discussion here (:
As for dried pasta popularity, according to many internet sources, it became popular somewhere around 14th and 15th century, I guess Italians had plenty of time to adjust their cuisine. Dried pasta also has a benefit of long storage, which was important in their warm climate before the invention of an affordable domestic refrigerator in 20th century.
I remember coming across an early (either 12th or 13th century) pasta recipe. It was a simple fresh noodle in a delicately spiced broth, and, importantly, delicious.
What facinstes me is the status of fresh pasta in the American gastronomical context. It has achieved an ascendent status as demonstrated in this video. I’m sure many of the shapes are dried and I see this video as primarily entertainment and not necessarily an achievable thing for most home cooks. But it shapes an ideal for the viewing population.
I suspect that pasta will become one thing in America and another in Italy if it hasn’t already. I think looking at pizza in America, NYC in particular, vs pizza in Italy could provide an anthropological template.
This is wild. I even thought lasagna was worth the minimal effort before, but I just got KitchenAid attachments for Christmas and it’s insanely easy. You mix the dough in the bowl, and then flatten a couple times, run through the slicer, put in the water and it boils way faster than dried. It’s also so so much better than dried.
I’m with you on like, ravioli though. Also we occasionally made wide rice noodles from scratch for Thai cooking and while they’re not technically hard, they’re very labor intensive and time consuming. The problem is the difference between them and dried is night and say - dried wide rice noodles arent even really worth eating. Finally found a shop that sells them fresh though so we are golden.
I just remind myself that I once thought it was a good idea to make an entire thanksgiving dinner for 3 people using a college dorm kitchen, and then the idea of frying a cheese sandwich doesn’t seem that daunting.
Tip though for grilled cheese is butter the pan not the bread.
Seriously it’s the perfect way to do it. You know your pan is hot enough. The butter is nicely browned. I do find a small pan is the right way to keep a good layer but if you have a slightly larger pan using a spatula to keep the butter contained to one space and then put in the grilled cheese while the butter’s still a little solid works too. It’s probably been more than a decade since I last buttered the bread not the pan and I’m not even 30 it’s just the best way.
Chinese food. The common fast food type here in the US. Yeah, I can spend a bunch of time, work, and money to make orange chicken, boneless spare ribs, crab rangoon, teriyaki, coconut shrimp, and pork fried rice. Or, I can go 5 minutes up the street, and pay my favorite restaurant $20 for a big plate with all of that, with absolutely no work on my part, and it all tastes way better.
First time, can be. After that not so much. I’m cheating making my own five spice and having about a decade and a half experience in Chinese kitchens, so I know their recipes.
I agree with everything on your list except the fried rice. True, If you’re trying to recreate the take away recipe exactly from scratch you’re going to have a bad time. But, with a big pan (if you don’t have a wok) that you can get real hot it’s just a leftovers dish. Leftover rice, leftover protein, frozen veggies, egg, vegetable oil, and soy sauce. It’s not usually worth my time unless I already have the leftovers. The hardest part is not over loading your pan with ingredients or oil. You’ve also got to have everything ready when you start because it all comes together very fast if the pan is hot enough. Sure, I probably still can’t beat the economy of scale of the restaurant, but the point is that I’m using up my own leftovers instead of throwing them out.
I had to laugh when I read this, since it’s apparently impossible for me to make the correct amount of rice for a meal. I’ve never once in my life not had leftover rice haha.
For me, it usually becomes tomorrow’s breakfast: reheated in the pot on the stove with a bit of water, then put it in a bowl, crack a raw egg on it, and drizzle with soy sauce and sprinkle on a few toasted sesame seeds.
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