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So I have this problem... I enjoy cooking and when my grandmother passed away, I inherited her recipe book and her Le Creuset dutch oven.
THEN I discovered I lived a short drive from a Le Creuset outlet store AND they have a mailing list that regularly delivers 30% to 70% off coupon deals.
So I'll find a pan that makes me go "Oooh!" then I look for excuses to use it.
So it's not really a lack of motivation, but rather I want people to cook for. Cooking just for me? Incredibly lazy. "More time to make and clean up than eat? I'm not making it." Cooking for OTHER people?
Chuck roast:
Shakshuka:
Chocolate hazelnut chocolate chip cheesecake:
Beef roast:
Pork loin w/ scalloped potatoes:
Ableskievers:
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Hello it's me ur friend I'm coming over for dinner
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Ableskievers
Where are you from? I didn't realize anyone outside Denmark or maybe some nordic countries made these. :)
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From Oregon, but we have a large Scandinavian population here.
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They're definitely a thing in the US
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Find a homeless shelter and cook for them? Idk, just an idea. Food looks amazing
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Cooking at scale is a much, much bigger deal. Hard to maintain quality, both in terms of ingredients and end product.
There's a good reason why school lunches are garbage. :(
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Holy fuck that chuck roast looks good
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It was really good, with bacon, veggies, braised in Malbec wine and Grand Marnier.
I found 2 recipes I couldn't decide between so I just combined them. ;)
1 pack of bacon, diced and cooked in olive oil on medium high until the edges were brown, then removed.
In the same pan, 2 diced carrots, 2 diced celery stalks, 2 diced Walla Walla sweet onions. Cooked on medium high until carmaelized, then removed.
3.37 pound boneless chuck roast. Patted dry, heavily salted and peppered, seared on one side for 5 minutes, flipped and then seared on the other side for 5 minutes and removed.
Added back 1/2 cup Grand Marnier and 2 cups of Malbec Wine. Deglazed the pan scraping up all the brown bits.
Put the bacon back in, put the veggies back in, stirred until well distributed. Added bay leaves, thyme and rosemary, several cloves of minced garlic, topped with the meat.
Brought to a boil then placed in a pre-heated 325° oven for 3 hours.
After 3 hours, beef was to temp and easily shreddable. (Finally! A reason to use the meat claws!) Resting on stove top while I cook some pasta to go with it.
Pasta was super simple. Boiled water and salt, cooked a bag of egg noodles for 8 or 9 minutes. Drained, removed, then melted a stick of butter in the pot, added a small container of heavy cream, added rosemary and thyme, brought it to a simmer then popped the pasta back in and cooked a couple of minutes.
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woah
sweet takoyaki
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Chicken Biryani. I keep getting the ingredients and making simpler things.
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Are you me? I keep doing that too
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Croissant
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This, I love, LOVE croissants, and have basically baked and made every other thing I love that much at some point or another. Flattening a giant sheet of butter again and again into a dough sheet? Ain't nobody got time for that
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You fold and flatten it like 3-4 times, each takes like 5 minutes and then it goes back in the fridge for 45 minutes.so while it takes like 4-6 hours of time to make croissants from scratch (including proofing the dough etc.), it's more like 1 hour of work. Really not as bad as people make it out to be.
effort wise I find it on par to making sourdough bread, what with all the stretching and folding of the dough dgring proofing.
and you can prepare them the day before and proof in the fridge, then bake the next morning. Actual fresh baked croissants in the morning are fucking amazing and well worth the work
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Beef Wellington.
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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.
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Croissants - 3 days prep time minimum? You have to be very precise with everything and it's just such a bother.
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Beef Wellington
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I recently tried my hand at a porc tenderloin Wellington, as a lower budget try out to see if I could make it.
It went surprisingly well and was really more delicious than I thought. So I think I'm ready to make a proper beef Wellington coming Xmas.
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I make this for xmas sometimes. Definitely a labour of love.
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Billionaire
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Gonna take a detour here and mention the time that I tried to make tofu from scratch, starting with making soy milk from dried beans that I'd ordered just for the task:
The soy milk turned out surprisingly well, with the help of a semi-automated device, but I realised on the spot that most commercial soy milk has a tonne of sugar added to it, and I didn't want to go down that route. In fact, it just about turned me off of soy milk permanently.
Anyway, I moved on to the tofu-making stage, and realised that both coagulants I tested (lemon juice and nigari powder) imparted a huge, unwanted taste to the tofu, on top of neither being all that great at coagulating the soy milk. In the end, I think I could have improved on this cooking disaster, but my motivation was gone at that point, and I wanted to move on.
There's also the fact that no matter what a versatile food tofu is, it's also a significantly processed one, and I wanted to move in the opposite direction. That said, I understand that fresh-made tofu in Japan and other places can be incredibly tasty, almost worth wolfing down straight with no cooking or spices.
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Croissants. Tasty and pretty, but a ridiculous amount of fiddly work with all the rolling and folding.
Ditto puff pastry from scratch.
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Traditional versions also contain ~50% butter by total pre-cooking weight. (Hello heart-health my old friend...)
Dunno about your area, but there's some pretty awesome frozen puff pastry sold in thin-ish sheets at most stores around here. It bakes up quick and almost magically multi-layered, and I would not for a million years be able to tell it from scratch puff pastry from une belle boulangerie.
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Yeah, frozen puff pastry is a go-to ingredient. You just won't catch me making it by hand because as my grandmother used to say, bugger that for a game of soldiers.
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All food is like that to me. I only cook because otherwise I'd die of starvation. I eat to live - food has always just been fuel for me. I don't want to put any more effort into cooking than what is absolutely necessary. If money was not an issue, then personal chef would be the first person I'd hire. Hell, if it was possible I'd hire someone to eat it for me too.
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I feel this so hard. If I could just have a pill that would properly supply my body with all the nutrients and sustenance it needs I would 100% do it and then just eat one or two actual meals a week for the flavours.
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Buying tortillas is getting kind of expensive, but making tortillas seems like such a damn pain uuugh
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Homemade flour tortillas are unbelievably good though. I don't know what it is that makes them taste so different from storebought, but it makes all the difference.
I don't have the tools or energy to make my own either though :/
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It's so hard to get a good texture too, to get a nice soft foldable one that is thin but tough enough not to rip is an art. My attempts, and I did give it a good damn few tries, were all sad failures and, well, I decided pre-packaged wraps/tortillas are worth the cost to save my sanity lol.
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Sourdough
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Sourdough is super easy though! Probably barely an hour of actual hands-on time from start to finish with no-knead methods.
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Saaaaame.
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Papa reyeñas(sp?). They're so good, it's basically mashed potatoes with ground beef mix inside, then fried/seared and baked until it sorta looks like a potato again. Then you take finely sliced red onions and soak them in lime juice for 12 hours so they get less harsh and use it like a topping
Honestly, I know how to do all off the top of my head except how long to boil the potatoes...I just would never put that much effort into my meals, so I would need a reason to cook it for others. There's also a lot of cleanup, you need a frying pan you need a frying pan you wash twice, a big bowl, a masher, an oven dish, a lime squeezer, Tupperware (or a ziplock, but I get enough plastic), a knife, a spatula, and whatever serving dishes
I don't enjoy cooking, but I'm pretty good at it when I want to be... But I have to want to be
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Sort of like a deluxe, Peruvian version of Scottish cottage pie, no?
And... gotta love those thinly-sliced red onions (and for me, habanero slices) soaked in lime juice in the fridge, overnight. I used to use them as a topping on all kinds of meals before my stomach finally gave out, lol.
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Yes and no... They're very similar conceptually and ingredients wise, but the experience is very different. Frying the outside really firms it up like a French fry, and you get that flavor and texture all around. They also sometimes will add weird things like olives and raisins to it, which is still good, but I don't particularly like those to start with so I might be biased
You've got the right idea of what it is, but you really have to experience it for yourself - a lot of South and Central American countries have their own versions that are very similar, so if you go to a Latino restaurant that isn't Mexican or Peruvian chicken, you'll probably be able to find it.
I've never tried adding jalapenos to the onion topping though... That sounds delicious. I might have to make that, it is a great topping and adding some heat to it sounds even better
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Lasagne. And I hate Mondays.
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Skillet lasagna is the answer you seek! Maybe.
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And if you're really feeling lazy, cook up some ravioli, put it in the skillet with the meat sauce, cover it with mozzarella, and throw it in the oven for a few minutes. Voila! Psuedo-lasagna
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Doughnuts. I made doughnuts by hand recently, and kneading the dough. For. 30. Minutes. By. Hand. Fuck, never again. I usually don't mind kneading dough by hand, but this was the first time I wish I had a mashine for it
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Do you like that? I had it once and, meh, I don't think I would spend any amount of energy into doing that. It's not that it was disgusting or anything like it, but it just, yeah, well... maybe it's not for me.
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I have made some fussy dishes, including sourdough puff pastry. I'm pretty motivated to make food homemade.
Baklava is the one I'd like to make but never will, even if I bought the dough - layering phyllo sheets one by one would kill me.
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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.
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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.
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I bet there's a few Instant Pot recipes, too.
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I don't really lack for motivation, I'll take on some pretty wild culinary adventures, but occasionally I run into things that I just can't logistically make happen.
For example, nowhere in my house has the right sort of temperature/humidity to cure my own salami and such (I've checked,) and I just don't have the space to squeeze in another fridge with humidity controls and such to make a curing chamber.
I've made my own bacon, various kinds of sausages (including smoking my own kielbasa, andouille, and hot dogs) I've helped butcher chickens, I've made beef Wellington, sushi, I've baked bread and cakes in a Dutch oven in a fire pit, I've made ice cream, homemade pierogies.
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Homemade pizza. Making the dough creates a mess and requires delicate manual labor in several steps at precise times over more than 24 hours. Looks great on YouTube but that's just not me.
Edit: thanks for the suggestions, guys. Who knows, maybe one day... 😉
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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!
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The pizza dough tastes better when allowed to rest and rise slowly in the fridge. Using a ton of store bought yeast for a quick rise is fine, but planning out the dough the night before is better.
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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.
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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.
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That's what I always do since there are decent options available nowadays.
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Proper paella. I enjoy making it in the sense that it's simpler to cook and is more like a risotto, but to make an actual paella as close to the way the dish should be made takes so much effort, the correct ingredients and equipment I have neither the time nor the money for.
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Lamb Vindaloo.
God I wanna be good at making that. And veggie samosas
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I have the Ladurée macaron cookbook and I look at it frequently, and then go buy a lesser version of the cookie and pretend I’m happy.
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Mianjin (seitan) or vegan ramen. Both super time consuming and hard but awesome!
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I too am afraid to attempt seitan. I got all the ingredients and now they sit doing nothing.
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I made it three times and 2/3 were awesome
Here’s the video I followed: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yY2YN6krVtk&t=44s&pp=ygUTUG90IHRoaWNrZW5zIHNlaXRhbg%3D%3D
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https://www.kitchentreaty.com/40-cloves-of-garlic-soup/
I made it once for Thanksgiving years ago. Everyone loved it. It was a pain. Especially since I didn't have an immersion blender.
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Looks pretty easy, assuming you have the blender. I'm not even sure how you'd make this without a blender of some sort. How did you do it?
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Cooled, in batches in a standing blender, then reheated.
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As much as I love barbecue I don't and won't own a smoker.
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Khao soi
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The only reason i do any cooking at all is because it's too expensive to buy food.
I hate cooking. It takes so much effort. -
Pavlova.
Working in the kitchen requires good coordination and an intuition I will never have in my current setting because it's not the form of intuition I was raised on. The ability to cook to precision without everything spelled out comes off to me as almost psychic, and I don't have that. So I will never be making myself my favorite dish.
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Pavlova is almost boringly simple, though.
Beat eggwhites and sugar for ages with a little vinegar along the way, dump onto a parchment lined baking sheet, bake - then turn off the oven, leave the door open a crack and leave a few hours to slowly cool.
Instead of making a big intricate arrangement with the fruit, go rustic with it - bowl of sugared berries, bowl of whipped cream, dollop of each on each slice.
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Spring rolls. They are so much work. If you wanna do them right you have to start the night before. So many ingredients, the sauce. But they're soooo good.
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Cooking in general
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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.
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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!
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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.
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I think they are called Topfenknödel in German, i remember my family making them as well, served with jam, they are delicious!
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I live in a different city and often find myself wishing for my mother's Portuguese Salted Cod Casserole. It was out typical sunday family dinner when I still lived in the same city as them. Not a cultural tradition, just because it was my favourite dish.
But the nature of it ensures that I'll never ever ever have the patience to do it myself, considering that step one is soaking the dried salted cod in cold water that you repeatedly replace for up to 48 hours in order to get the salt out.
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Thanks for mentioning this. Just found a recipe!
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This is the one I found closest to my mothers. She herself doesn't ever write down HER particular measurements.
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So it's... unsalted?
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Nope. It retains enough salt to add to the unique taste. It just has to be dried and preserved in salt that then has to be removed. It gives the cod it's ability to break apart into the casserole.
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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.
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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.
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Ramen, but it takes so God damn long to make.
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Sourdough
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It's honestly not hard at all.
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Do you have a reliable starter recipe?
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Ice cream
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My dad bought me a $300 ice cream maker - it actually churns out really delicious soft serve style ice cream with barely any work. The issue is it's about 100 lbs, the size of a small HVAC unit, and I put it away in our basement storage area. At this point it's less effort to just buy the damn ice cream.
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There are some really simple recipes and some cheap machines available though, the ones that use a drum you pre-freeze are like $60-80 new and really cheap used. You can make ice cream with milk, cream, sugar, a flavor of choice and a bit of something alcoholic and it's fantastic. I never buy ice cream anymore, and it's so much better (and cheaper) than store bought.
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mainly foods that have a key ingredient that I would only use for that dish and not very often. an example being something that needs a cup of flour. can't buy a cup of flour, gotta buy the whole goddamn 3 pounds.
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you really don't have flour? how do you make roux-baseed sauces?
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Get in the habit of making bread. It's not tough, especially when you get a system that works for you and your kitchen. There are few things in life as satisfying and wholesome as a fresh baked loaf!
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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.
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It’s not that hard to get the stock to solidify. You just need to reduce it enough and pop it in the fridge.
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You're right. I must've been thinking about something else lol
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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.
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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.
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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?
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Demiglace. Way too much work.
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I like to do a bunch of baking for the holidays, and usually do a mix of easy/familiar recipes, plus some new/challenging recipes. I made caramels, and while I was pretty happy with them, I never heard one person comment on them, and they were a lot of effort compared to things like chocolate chip cookies, so I've never made them again.
Edit: Another is pumpkin pie from fresh pumpkins. I've done it, it's not that difficult, but it's also not any cheaper or better tasting than just buying good canned pumpkin.
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Cake. Orange cake.
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protip : you can cook anything. maybe you don't cook it well the first time. but if you're not completely freeballin it, and are following an established well reviewed recipe, once you cook it poorly or not to your taste, you can always make notes, and adjust the next time. be fearless in your experiments, there's a lot of freedom (and cost savings) in learning how to cook what you like to eat, the way you like to eat it, at home.
