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.
Fried chicken.
It’s soo good but not worth the hassle of dealing with all the oil.
Although, I’ve since found that air-fried, if done right, can be just as good.
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!
Oh man same.
Dealing with having to deep fry for a single meal is such a pain.
Any air fryer method you would recommend?
- Fry at 360⁰F for 12 mins
- Flip them and fry again at 360⁰F for 12 mins
- Flip again and fry for 6 mins at 400⁰F
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.
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
Even I can make crepes lol. Have one of those small pans. Make the batter, open the butter, get cracking.
Let the batter sit for 30 mins in the fridge
I have a mental block against making things one by one that have like 20 calories in them.
Brain says small things bad unless can make a million at a time.
And yeah screw making those things 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.
Cheese
This 100%…
It is so expensive/time consuming/finicky for a product that best case scenario is comparable to store bought.
Croissants, or any other layered flaky pastry. Like, there should be a robot for this by now.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
