A lot of the time homemade is better, but what have you come across that made you say something like “I could have got the exact same thing from the shops for way less effort”?
What foods are just not worth making from scratch?
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A lot of the time homemade is better, but what have you come across that made you say something like “I could have got the exact same thing from the shops for way less effort”?
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filo pastry
Crumpets
Pasta
“If you can buy it better than you can make it, buy it” – Marco Pierre White.
Beef Wellington can be really time consuming and risky.
Mayo is a right chew on to make from scratch
Custard
Pasta, pastry and mayo.
Anything that involves flour
Edit – not because of the taste just because it’s a pain the arse.
Pastry.
I just can’t be arsed.
Bread, I haven’t got time for that.
Used to make sushi at home for friends but at the end my kitchen looked like the Somme, it was loads of work, hard to do well, cost a shit load of money each time and the end result was rarely as good as you could get from a sushi place.
Sushi!
Meat
Puff & filo pastry I’ll always buy – just so much work. Choux, shortcrust etc. I’ll make.
Butter & clotted cream is easier to buy and generally tastes better.
Pasta – buy, unless it’s doing something like a special occasion ravioli and then you may as well make it.
Lemon curd is a buy while jam is a make
Pickled onions – I don’t think I’ve ever beaten a good shop one when I make them, but I do better gherkins (all styles)
Indian Chutneys & pickles – I’ve never come close to making a commercial quality lime pickle. I can reliably beat Branston’s though in other chutneys
Filo Pastry – far too complicated and not worth the effort.
I spent about 3 hours making pumpkin soup last autumn. It was lovely but it was gone in 5 minutes and you could probably just chuck some seasoning in a supermarket tub and get something similar.
(TBF a better cook than me could probably knock it out a lot quicker.)
Pesto. The cost of the amount of basil, olive oil and Parmesan to make even just a small batch is not worth it at all and the taste difference is negligible.
puff pastry
Butter. Ribena.
Doughnuts! £1 for 5 to buy
Puff or filo pastry, most chefs don’t bother, just buy good quality premade
Puff pastry. Most chefs don’t even bother to make it themselves
If you’ve ever seen noodles made you’ll know it’s massively labour intensive to do by hand and it really lends itself to automation
Pasta is lower effort but still it’s one of those things where it’s difficult to make one portion but easy to make a hundred so lends itself to being bought
Mexican moles can be a massive pain to make taking hours. Think a long the lines of a curry but with a lot more steps
Digestive biscuits and jaffa cakes.
Pasta, no one has time to make it from scratch just to get the same as in the shops.
Jaffa cakes.
Beans in tomato sauce
Probably pastry, especially filo flaky pastry, even pro chefs say its a pain in the arse and takes too long making that from scratch when the store bought ones are just as good. Even Ramsey and Jamie have said to just buy it ready made.
Chocolate bar
I can never find the willpower to make stocks. I’m pretty sure they’d be amazing if I did, but they also seem like quite a bit of work.
Butter, Cottage Cheese, Cheese, Cream Cheese,
Swiss roll for sure
Nut/seed butter. Total faff and ended up being dry as hell even though I added tons of oil.
For me, puff pastry, hummus, and pesto. The last two, it just costs way more for all the ingredients, and I also can’t be arsed.
Hot cross buns
Butter
Dumpling wrappers. Making the dumplings themselves is long enough, never mind making the wrappers as well
I love short bread biscuits and wanted to make them myself. Basically there’s no point. The ingredients are so basic that’s there’s really no room to elevate them in the home kitchen and they’re relatively cheap, and obviously delicious, just bought from the supermarket.
Also crispy duck. The process to make that is insane
Butter.
Filo pastry. Life is too short
croissants, they may taste better homemade but the 2 day prep time isn’t worth it
Butter. A full day of milking, patting(?)and churning for a single block of the stuff.
Pastry
Whisky. It just takes too long to get it right.
Puff pastry
Puff Pastry.
Opened the post to reply this. See that it’s already been done a few times. Comment anyway.
Puff pastry is a pain to make.
I used to make a lot of stock and then realised in most meals I don’t think I notice any difference. Only if it’s really brothy. Considering how easy it is to crumble an oxo cube I’m not sure I’ll bother again. Also croissants I would never even try and make
Most basic prepared ingredient:
Ghee, paneer, butter, flour, dried pasta, tomato puree, cheese
Things that are hardb or impossible to make at home:
Ice-cream, chocolate, biscuits, crumpets
It’s not the case for everyone but for me it’s hummus 🥲
I consider myself a pretty good cook but I can never get hummus to taste as good as it does from a supermarket 😭 …and I hate cleaning the food processor 😂🤦🏻♀️
Anything involving globe artichoke. Boiling and peeling those fuckers just to extract a less-than-golfball sized heart isn’t worth your energy
Doughnuts. Went on a doughnut making course bought as a thoughtful gift. Takes forever, multiple tasks, pain in the arse all to produce a doughnut that is worse than the £1 bag of 5 from Tesco. Not recommended.
Fish cakes. So much mess and effort
This is a repost from a few days ago:
>Ravioli. I once made ravioli from scratch as a project with my daughters (aged 7 and 9).
>First we minced the pork filling, sliced and fried onions, added herbs, and then cooked the mixture on the stove. We then made the pasta by hand, mixing flour and eggs until it became a paste and then rolling it out with a pasta machine until it was silky and smooth.
>I had a suitable mould so we rolled the pasta out, filled the tray with spoonfuls of the meat and then cooked the now-prepared ravioli in boiling salted water. In the meantime we had cooked some more onions and herbs from the garden and added 1kg of tomatoes from the vegetable plot. This we then sieved and reduced to make a thick tomato sauce.
>Finally we grated some parmesan, added the ravioli to the sauce and served the result to the rest of the family. Time taken: about five hours from start to finish, including the washing up.
>Verdict: really good, tasted just like Lidl or Heinz’s best canned produce.
It was good fun to do and I could show my daughters what goes into some apparently simple dishes. There’s no shame in taking short cuts. But I’d not try it again for such a basic dish. Maybe for truffled lobster or a sweet ravioli that we can’t get easily here.
Ferrero Rocher
Hash browns
Anything that requires deep frying. Half the kitchen gets covered in batter
a couple of years ago we subscribed to Hello Fresh, we subscribe every now and again when they give us offers as it’s not really worth the full price.
we had a meal that was absolutely fucking lovely, it was a minted lamb shank with red wine jus and all the trimmings…but jesus wept it was a torturous hour or so making it. it used every pan and bowl we owned, the instructions sheet ought to have come with a project manager and a gantt chart and it was a hugely stressful experience in general to produce a plate of tears and sadness.
in their defence it did taste really good but would not recommend.
I feel like I might expose my cooking abilities if I were to say that there’s nothing that I have ever made myself that has felt like it’s worth the effort compared to just buying it.
Cheesecake
For the price of the ingredients needed when I make my own I could’ve bought 5 pre-made cheesecakes that taste damn good