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.
Corn tortillas. It’s a lot easier to just buy some.
I disagree on this one, corn tortillas are really simple if you have a press. The dough is literally just mix masa and water. And to cook them, you just put it on a hot surface for 30 seconds. Meanwhile corn tortillas from the store are always so dry and tasteless, they’re rarely worth buying
My kids won’t even eat store bought tortillas.
I agree a lot of commercial corn tortillas are not good. I particularly don’t like the fake-soft ones that have dough conditioners and preservatives for no reason. But with as much cooking as I do, I can’t bring myself to make tortillas when I make masa - I always end up doing pupusas, arepas or tamales. My main use of corn tortillas is enchiladas casserole style so homemade ones are kind of pointless since they 75% disintegrate.
Yup I can’t find anything in the stores that compares and I don’t mind making them. Really only do this in the summer when there’s some garden ingredients though, with a ground meat or bean sauce for protein.
Part corn part wheat is the best tortilla, but I can’t buy them near me so i make them sometimes.
Sushi. I just toss all the ingredients in a bowl and be done with it, instead of bothering to roll.
Everything!
I didn’t cook/bake growing up. I couldn’t care less about doing it now. I have a handful of places that have yummy food from steak to sushi. And a great bakery. I need not to spend a moment of my time doing anything more than eating & enjoying.
Curry paste
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.
mise en place ;) demi-glace you can make a couple of times a year in bulk and just freeze the little jello cubes, to have on hand whenever.
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.
Anything with a lot of Indian spices. I just buy the paste in jars.
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)
Gaufre de liège. I made a very authentic version once, involving making a brioche type dough over a few days, giving time to rise and for the perle sugar to rest. Best waffles I’ve ever had, but so much trouble.
I haven’t found them outside Central Europe and miss them so much I have been thinking about making that dough again…
Wide rice noodles. If you’ve ever tried to make pad kee mao (drunken noodle) with dried rice noodles you know it’s essentially not even worth it. The noodles are too important to the dish and the dried ones curl up and are just awful. My wife and I eventually figured out how to make fresh wide rice noodles and while it’s very simple to do so (rice flour slurry into a cake pan, steam it) it’s very laborious and time intensive. I’ll do some laborious stuff (bake my own bread, homemade yogurt and soft cheese, pasta and red sauce etc) but damn if one of my favorite foods isn’t too much work for all but special occasions.
Thank god we found a place a mile away that sells fresh noodles. Now we can have it whenever we want.
I got a non-stick crepe pan as a wedding gift. Makes it a lot easier.
Pizza. Every time I’ve tried it’s stuck to the stone and when I just got something to cook it was no better than the local place.
did u add corn meal
Hotter oven
Drier dough
Thinner crust
Less sauce/ toppings
Flour the pizza spatula
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.
Try shaping and topping the pizza on parchment paper. After being on the hot stone for ~3 mins, you can just slide the paper out from under the pizza.
Honestly, brownies. From scratch versus box I hardly notice a difference and in some instances the box was better… And the box is a lot less work.
French fries. When I make them at home they suck.
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.
Dried pasta is superior to fresh pasta. It is impossible to make it at home.
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.
Fresh pasta cannot be al dente, it’s useless for most traditional Italian pasta dishes. And it is near impossible to make dry pasta at home.
Do you have the right equipment to make fresh pasta? If you’re doing it manually then it may as well be impossible.
Fresh pasta cannot be al dente, it’s useless for most traditional Italian pasta dishes. And it is near impossible to make dry pasta at home.
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 https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLURsDaOr8hWXz_CFEfPH2wFhIbJn9iHJY&si=5jl6Z2vwxFX4sVXF
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.
Much ranting, I know. But hopefully interesting!
You must be trolling, it’s 45s to make the dough in a food processor and the sauce actually clings to the noodles.
Fresh pasta doesn’t have proper al dente chew, it gives a cheap instant noodle mouth feel. The sauce clings the same. To any pasta.
You are making it wrong then.
What do you mean wrong? It’s just a fact.
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)…
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.
