For me, crepes ain’t worth the stress to make fresh. Just buy a little pack from store and focus on filling is my go to.
Mashed potatoes.
The “just add hot water” things are just as good, if not better since they come in all sorts of flavors.
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. :)
They’re literally just dehydrated potatoes cut into flakes. Nothing is lost.
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.
This is just a thesis…
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?
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.
I challenge you to do it this week.
https://youtu.be/wnga8dGIdZ0?si=lL7yIyK63ssY2gym
https://www.pbssocal.org/food-discovery/food/weekend-recipe-crepes-with-sugar-and-lemon
Corn tortillas. It’s a lot easier to just buy some.
Part corn part wheat is the best tortilla, but I can’t buy them near me so i make them sometimes.
Ravioli, pierogies, wontons. Basically anything small that’s wrapped up like that. Huge PITA and the quality improvement usually isn’t worth it.
Maybe something worth doing in a social setting with a group though. Have some beers and BS while assembling everything.
Gotta disagree on the pierogi front. I don’t make them often, but homemade is so much better than the boxed stuff that occasionally making a huge batch and freezing a bunch is totally worth it.
I 100% endorse this comment and am glad to see someone here representing. Anyone who says store bought pirogi’s are almost as good has not had good homemade ones. They are next level.
If it’s not from scratch it’s not good.
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.
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.
Baklava. I love it. When my aunts make it it’s always amazing. But holy crap if it isn’t the most tedious, fiddly, obnoxious stuff to make. And that’s if you’re not also making your own phyllo dough… all like six miles of it that goes in a batch one vapor thin layer at a time.
That seems like one of those cases where the production is only worth it if it’s a group/family tradition to get together and enjoy everyone’s company while you do it.
Like…no part of my family makes baklava, but if I had a friend whose Greek or Turkish family met up once a year and made it, I would love to come help, as much for the experience as to learn about how to make it.
In my area where I grew up (if not my actual family) that food is pierogi: families will get together and make massive quantities of pierogi, usually with the grandmas of the families directing the process. Everyone goes home with dozens and dozens for the freezer.
From what I gather, it’s not worth making like…one dozen for a meal, but if you’re going to go through the process, you might as well make hundreds.
Almost anything that involves phyllo dough. Banitsa is worth occasionally doing homemade only because you can’t really find it anywhere, but anything else is just not worth it.
Bubble tea. I’ve made everything from scratch before, but it’s so much easier to just buy one and let someone else cook the boba.
Tbh, not much.
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.
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.
i have depression and adhd so it varies between every food and no food based on the rng going on in the ol’ endocrine
Sometimes brain say making gnocchi is no big deal.
Other times, grill cheese too much.
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.
Cheese
This 100%…
It is so expensive/time consuming/finicky for a product that best case scenario is comparable to store bought.
Gyoza/potstickers/dumplings
I will inhale plates of em and the time it takes to wrap em made me both appreciate the food much more and appreciate the premade ones so so much more
In the same line, gnocchi.
Xiao long bao (aka soup dumpling). Also, made from scratch Tonkotsu Ramen.
Tried making them both. So much work.
Croissants. Only really good when an independent coffee shop makes someone come in at 4am to start making them. Even the industrial ones at the big chains or supermarkets are pretty meh and it’s way too complex and time consuming to do myself but made right they are one of the best foods.
