I’ve made so much salmon in my day and have also had it out a few times (mainly trying my wife’s). I’ve only ever had it better than I can make it at home maybe twice.
My wife and I love this salmon recipe. Pretty easy to make, pretty healthy, and very tasty:
[Honey sriracha salmon rice bowl](https://www.skinnytaste.com/salmon-rice-bowls/#recipe)
Saw your post, had salmon thawed out ready to cook for dinner so we did this recipe and it was good! We didn't do it over rice, but just a salmon fillet with sides. Thanks for the dinner idea today!
Look dude, if you think you can make Avocado toast at home and save $25 then you just go right ahead and take that risk. Leave the rest of us out of it
Don't get me started on cooking filet mignon in the air fryer.
Just stick it in and push a couple buttons == freshly cooked medium rare steak
(~12-13 minutes at 400 degrees)
Try it.
Better yet, sous vide to 110 then blast a sear on it with the air fryer. You can use an instant pot to make cheesy potatoes and steam some broccoli in the rice cooker.
This may be common knowledge but I just recently found the small, sealed, individual cups of avocado they sell at Sam's. It's been awesome to have instant avocado for toast without waste, because I never can eat the whole avocado at one sitting and I can't get past the color it turns shortly after it's peeled.
I cover the uneaten half with the peel from the eaten half. Basically reassemble and hold together with a rubber band. There's a little bit of brown to scrape off when I go back for the second half but it stays pretty fresh and there's no plastic waste because I can reuse the rubber band!
If you put the other half in a Mason jar it stays fresh for four or five days. The top layer oxidizes, but I just scrape that off. Or eat it. I'm not the Queen of England over here.
The grocery store near me sells bags of tiny avocados that are like half as big as regular avocados (and half the price), highly recommend those for individual portions
If you have a vacuum sealer, which I highly recommend getting for multiple reasons, you can seal unused avocado and it holds very well. I'll generally cut the avo in half, use the half without the seed, and seal the seed half. Use a little EVOO on the exposed flesh to make sure nothing is exposed to air once sealed.
I haven't tried the cups from Sam's, but I've tried them from other places and they never taste as good as fresh. Bonus, the vacuum seal bags are recyclable. So no extra waste.
Yes, sprinkle a little lemon or lime juice on it and it saves better too. I do t even do fresh juice, just the ones that stay in the fridge for clutch times.
So use pancetta. Before people on the Internet could only maintain their self esteem by way of "AuThEnTiC" cooking, pancetta was a common regional variant within Italy for the very reason you're describing.
The obsession with authentic cooking is so annoying. BuT it's NoT AuThEnTiC!!! Okay? I'm not Italian, I'm not making "authentic" anything, nor am I claiming it is. I'm just cooking dinner with the ingredients available to me in Canada. The culinary world can't develop if you dont experiment and try new things. Even the French understand that.
I once had an Italian American on this app, talking about carbonara, tell me his grandma didn't get bombed in WW2 so people could "disrespect" carbonara. So I asked if he liked sushi, he said yes. So I told him that a Japanese guys grandma didn't get bombed at Hiroshima so he could eat a fuckin California roll. He shockingly had nothing to say after going off on everyone all over that post for like 2 days 🤣🤣
Italians are the worst with the food culture-war bullshit. I go even one lower with carbonara, “below” bacon, and I fry up tiny cubes of spam. I even prefer it to guanciale but an Italian buddy of mine freaks the fuck out. “OMG YOU CANT DO THAT!!! OMG WTF! OMG OMG OMG!!!!” Of course I can do that because I just did, and guess what, I like it more this way. “WELL YOU CANT CALL THAT A CARBONARA THEN WTF!”. The dood (and his family) get way too worked up over this stupid shit. They act like carbonara has to uphold some ancient tradition, it’s like bro that shit wasn’t even popular until the 50s, hah.
The most rumored story of origin is that Italian cooks were given American rations in WW2 to work with and created it.
So if that's our authentic dish, we can't use guanciale. Gotta be bacon. And powdered eggs.
Its first recipe in a cookbook, if Wikipedia author research is correct, was published in 1954 and included pancetta, garlic, and gruyere.
Italians fought amongst themselves for some time on whether to use cream or not.
Like. Look. Fatty salty pork + pasta + a sauce made of eggs and cheese is what we know is carbonara.
I brine my fried chicken in buttermilk and hot sauce, and put a ton of paprika in the flour mixture. Someone else might not brine at all, and use spices not including paprika in their flour mixture. They might use rice flour! So. Who made fried chicken and who didn't?
There may be a widely-accepted "best" formula for carbonara, but that's all it is. Not having a particular ingredient at my closest grocery is not tantamount to me calling an entire country's mother a whore. Btw, the spam actually sounds great for it, lol. Might try that sometime.
Italians (and fake Italians) are obnoxiously dull when it comes to food.
Imagine having all those ridiculous rules about which cutlery you're allowed to use, or refusing to try anything new, ever. Must be painfully boring.
I saw a review of a book about the development of Italian food that sounded interesting recently. IIRC the author was arguing that a lot of the famous shibboleths (no cheese on seafood dishes! No chicken with pasta! Pasta must be al dente!) are surprisingly recent in origin.
My personal opinion is that "authentic" purism regarding working-class dishes if just people's complexes bursting out.
No Italian housewife 100 years ago cared about "authentic" as long as family was fed and happy.
People have a hard time with substituting because they aren’t actually learning to cook - they’re just replicating a recipe. Thick cut bacon could work in place pancetta. Pork belly, hell a pork chop cubed and seasoned could work. Pretty much any fatty, salty meat would work. Don’t like pork? Np, find a fatty beef or dark meat chicken, cube it, salt and pepper and that’ll work too.
I know this isnt necessarily the case everywhere else, but for me pancetta is much more readily available than guanciale, and is an excellent substitute if you can find it!
We actually even tried making with guanciale once and definitely preferred the pancetta over that, though they probably don’t have the best guanciale at a Hyvee lol
I swear most of the carbonaras I see in restaurants are made with cream and pancetta, whereas at home I only use guanciale and eggs for 1/5th of the price of what I'd pay eating at a restaurant.
I have been to so many Italian restaurants and have yet to find good carbonara. Every restaurant just turns it into Alfredo by adding heavy cream.
I will say I lived in Italy for 3 years and had amazing carbonara and know how to make it rather well.
I will leave preparation of Chinese food (too many ingredients) and sushi to the pros. Procuring the appropriate fish for sushi, getting the rice right, the cool sauces, roe, it’s just too much. Also chile rellenos (the whole egg white batter thing).
Other than that, I do feel wasteful when I get breakfast, steak or pasta at restaurants when I can prepare those pretty well at home.
Seriously. I still enjoy grabbing breakfast at a diner with friends - but die a little inside seeing the prices for a plate of eggs, toast, and bacon I could easily prepare at home
Don’t even get me started on crepes
I worked with an old-school short order cook so I do know how, but here’s the thing: you really want someone else to cook them for you, so you can live in blissful denial. 1) Save all the butter left over from dinner service, keep melted on the back of the grill. 2) Shred cold leftover baked potatoes. These are best because they’re dry, thus will absorb more butter. Arrange potatoes in a hash brown shape on flattop (or skillet) and salt them. Don’t pack down. 3) Proceed to ladle a minimum of two ounces of melted butter over them. When brown on first side, turn carefully and ladle on more butter. Salt again. Brown to desired shade. Medium heat throughout. These will be perfect but are obviously drastically bad for you.
There's a fairly popular restaurant where I live, and the secret to their success is "butter it". Everything is buttered to death and no surprise, people love it.
Those sound amazing! We used potatos that had been soaking overnight and then run hit water over them until cooked in the diner I worked at in the 80s. Then I'd shred them and they'd sit out all day drying. Instead of butter the cook had a vat of coconut oil he'd baste over them and he'd set a griddle press on top.
I've also had success with leftover baked potato's, but wow, your hash browns sound rough on the body.
I wanna emphasize your step where you use cooked potatoes. This makes a huge difference from using freshly shredded, uncooked and undrained potatoes, which will brown much more slowly and poorly.
Breakfast is the meal I love to eat out. Yeah, the ingredients are cheap but it is so much work and cleanup to prepare potatoes, eggs, bacon, etc. Throw in someone else wanting a waffle or pancake and the kitchen is a disaster when you could’ve stuffed yourself for $10 at the local diner.
I think the thing is having a local diner that doesn't charge an arm and a leg nowadays. We're lucky in our area to have a delightful hole-in-the-wall breakfast/lunch place where you can definitely have a nice big American breakfast for <$10 (cash/check only so you know it's good stuff lol). But all of the other breakfast places in town are $15+ for a basic plate (2 eggs, 2 bacon, hashbrowns, 1-2 pancakes).
This is in the Midwest as well, I can't imagine what big-city areas have to pay.
$0.50 for the eggs and $0.75 for 2 slabs of Danish pork belly. That's roughly $1.25 and then some toast and thyme if you're feeling fancy. It cooks while I listen to WSJ's What's News as I empty the dishwasher and take a dump. Coffee in tow, that's another $0.10 + electricity cost from a Zojirushi kettle.
There is a diner near me that does crispy pancakes. I haven't figured out their secret yet, so I go there for pancakes, plus it's $5 for a short stack with bananas.
> There is a diner near me that does crispy pancakes. I haven't figured out their secret yet
Lots of butter. More than you can imagine.
Stop now before you see the horrible truth.
I made some this morning. 5 pancakes used a stick of butter.
The griddle guy at one of my state's top 10 diners told me the key to great pancakes is to keep the batter refrigerated between batches. The crispy comes from being ladled into a little puddle of butter/oil. Gives the perimeter edge a funnel cakiness.
I get it, but once you get the ingredients, they tend to last forever and you can make so many meals. I grew up in an isolated place so there was nowhere to get anything. When I moved to a big city I had to hit three stores and do research to find stuff, hard to find the right kind of vinegar when the label is in Chinese.
That said I've been using the same bag of Sichuan peppercorns etc for over a year. Once you can make a dish or two, the rest come much easier.
People are always blown away when I make thai or Chinese food. A lot of it is pretty quick and easy once you know what's up though. My mom was just saying she can't wait for me to visit so she can have laab and mapo tofu. I've offered to show her and she gets intimidated, when honestly the recipes aren't hard.
All sorts of fan-favorite Indian food too. Yeah, getting all of the spices can seem daunting upfront, but I've found that if you get them whole and in bulk they're so affordable long term. You want to lean towards whole spices for longevity of flavor as well as it's usually cheaper by weight.
I've even impressed my Indian/Pakistani/Nepalese friends with my cooking, and none of them are slouches in the kitchen. Once you know the basic formulas for a couple recipes, you can also just cook things off the cuff based on whatever you have available (like a vindaloo style base with chicken, shrimp, whatever veg canned or frozen).
I'm interested too! I'd also love some recommendations for online recipes that are specifically szechuan. Any good dishes you'd recommend to a cook beginning in this cuisine?
https://www.chinasichuanfood.com/
This one gets pointed to a lot. Also recommend Fuchsia Dunlop's cookbooks; Sichuan Cuisine is big and has a ton of great info on technique and flavor profile, though her Every Grain of Rice is what I'd call the "beginner" book.
Also https://www.youtube.com/@ChineseCookingDemystified is *the* source for me. Some of the recipes are not simple (though some are), but I can usually make it once and then simplify it.
I can't speak to like really authentic regional cuisine but if you want like "Chinese abroad" food you only need a handful of ingredients and you can reuse them for a ton of dishes.
Rice (obviously), toasted sesame oil, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, vinegar, sesame seeds, corn starch (vital), eggs, msg.
Give me a protein, some onion, and a vegetable or two and I can make you like 80% menu of your local Western-Style Chinese restaurant. Hell, give me some sugar and we can skip the oyster sauce (it's basically sweet soy sauce with oyster juice and sugar). And I'm white AF.
I make fried rice, pepper steak, sweet & sour pork, orange chicken (and General Tso's), Mongolian Beef, chop suey. Whatever.
I love Chinese food (read that as american Chinese food) but I just cant figure it out for some reason. I'm not good at sauces in general though, that's probably most of it.
Should check out Aaron and Claire on YouTube. Dude nails the ingredients and it's super accessible to the home cook. They're Korean but also do a fair bit of (American) Chinese food as well as Japanese
I love The Woks of Life website. They owned chinese restaurants and that's the kind of food they have recipes for.
[https://thewoksoflife.com/](https://thewoksoflife.com/)
Yes. I've got a handful of recipes I'd put up against most Chinese restaurants around here (Boise, Idaho -- admittedly not known for Asian grub). Great thing about it too is once you figure out the basic stir fry process, you can pretty much throw something together with whatever is in the fridge.
I make a lot of lazy American Chinese food. It’s basically just a stir fry and I cheat and buy a premade sauce. After that it’s mainly just rice/noodles, veggies and a protein.
Nigiri is very accessible to a home cook! There's a weird reverence over such a simple dish, I think mainly because it's only been widely eaten in north america for a relatively short period of time so it hasn't had time to migrate from exotic to casual. Yeah it might take a couple tries to get the rice right but not the mythical years of training - home cooking doesn't need to be artistic perfection just taste good and most cooks should achieve that on their first try. Also fish sourcing isn't available at regular grocers but that's a cultural chicken and egg problem more than anything.
When I make it the cost is about 15% of restaurant prices, and that's using the highest grade fish from my local distributor who is the source for all the sushi restaurants in town. Luckily they open their warehouse to the public for a couple hours on certain mornings. Most people in towns over 100k should have access to the fish it just might take some searching. The price factor has taken it from a special occasion thing to a regular meal for me.
I really recommend more people to try it out! Ahi tuna nigiri is a good place to start as it's a common and safe fish. Standard grocers sell the rest of the ingredients (calrose rice, rice vinegar, prepared wasabi, soy sauce).
My answer, too.
Where I live, the cost of steak in a restaurant matches four I could buy at Costco. Plus a few extra wee pieces, but those are scraggly bits.
My friend group did a trip together and one of the guys bought some steaks from Costco. They really were high quality and were perfect served rare. That was the first time any of us had Costco steaks and we were shocked at how good they were.
Steakhouses are about the full experience. Getting cuts that aren't normally available - the side dishes and appetizers, cocktails. Getting dressed up and going out with your friends to share the ambience and not have to cook.
Yeah, you probably can do better than a steak at any middle of the road restaurant, but a proper steakhouse is about the whole package, not just the beef.
There’s a steakhouse in Tampa I visit every single time I’m there and I mostly go because they have the best French onion soup I’ve ever had. The steaks are a bonus too, of course
If anyone wants to really level up the at home steam game: plan ahead, salt it a day in advance, and let it sit in your fridge on a wire rack until you’re ready to cook. The fridge will draw out a lot of the moisture and create perfect conditions for a restaurant quality sear, I’ve also found the texture is far better.
This is it. Salting a day in advance also greatly improves the flavour and texture of the meat.
From Samin Nosrat's Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat:
> Think of a protein strand as a loose coil with water molecules bound to its outside surface. When an unseasoned protein is heated, it denatures: the coil unravels, releasing water molecules out of the protein matrix, leaving the meat dry and tough if overcooked. By disrupting the protein structure, salt prevents the coil from densely coagulating, or clumping, when heated, so more of the water molecules remain bound. The piece of meat remains moister, and you have a greater margin of error for overcooking.
This should be done with literally any cut of meat, not just steak. From your thanksgiving turkey to your weeknight pork chops, a dry brine a day or 2 in advance will always make it better.
>This should be done with literally any cut of meat, not just steak.
I started doing this with salmon last year, and I am blown away about how much better it is.
Yes, I've pan fried steaks at home and like mine cooked medium. It smells up the whole house! I've stopped cooking them. I'd k!ll for a nice, grilled steak and a salad with sliced avocado.
I agree, but as a qualifier, there *ARE* restaurant steaks that are much more difficult to recreate at home, mainly high end steakhouse steaks. Any place that uses a salamander for searing their steaks is going to have a major advantage over a home cook. It's also more difficult to get similar quality meat as most steakhouses without having a relationship with an actual butcher. My local Publix has prime grade steak but it's definitely not the same as what you can get at a good steakhouse. I won't get a $30 steak at a restaurant, but a $100 steak is probably going to be better than what I can make (and I'll be very upset if it isn't).
I never order steaks when at a restaurant. When I go out to eat I want someone to cook for me. A steak hardly qualifies. It's just meat, fire and some salt. You could train a pigeon to make one. There's only one challenge to making a great steak at home and that's ventilation. The smoke from getting a good sear can overwhelm a home kitchen and set off fire alarms. But if you're prepared to put a box fan in a nearby window, it's the easiest thing ever.
Work dinners, that’s where restaurant steaks shine. I’d never order an $80 steak on my own. Manager retreat? Yes sir and let’s wash it down with a really nice bourbon.
Ordering steak at a good steakhouse is worth it. Give me that wedge salad followed by some oscar style with hollandaise and a fully loaded baker.
To recreate that at home, I’ll basically spend what I would at the restaurant between ingredients and labor so imo, a top choice for a night out.
Most Italian American dishes. These were all originally served in American kitchens by recent Italian immigrants who were doing their best to recreate traditional recipes with the ingredients available at hand.
My mom would give me shit every time I’d order chicken parm when we were out eating, citing she could make that at home. She never made it at home though 🤷🏻♀️
Funny, I can make that but I actually do from time to time.
However, my kids prefer to take a shortcut and use breaded circular chicken patties instead of doing it all from scratch. I would not abide this sacrilege except I'm fond of them.
> However, my kids prefer to take a shortcut and use breaded circular chicken patties instead of doing it all from scratch.
WTF, why didn't I ever think of that??? I even have some chicken patties in my freezer right now! My least favorite part of making chicken parm (and the reason why I've only made it at home once) is all the mess and dishes needed when breading and frying foods. Sorry (not sorry), but I'm going to make sure to perpetuate your kids' lazy habits the next time I make chicken parm!
If you want to level this idea up by one hundred, use the JUST BARE chicken breast fillets, they sell them at Costco and a bunch of other grocery stores.
Yes! Actually, sometimes I've used the Bare nuggies (or Costco's generic brand of them) and put them in some sauce with the cheese over the top like little chicken parm poppers, and they mix in with the noodles almost like meatballs 🤤
Chicken Parm is the first thing I saw in this thread that I would rather buy at a restaurant. I love chicken parm but I just don’t think the work is worth the payoff. It always tastes better to me when I don’t have to cook it.
Yeah low key many Italian restaurants don’t actually use fresh pasta but definitely charge like they do. Like why am I paying $25 for Barilla and some sauce? I don’t know why there aren’t any counter service Italian restaurants for a lower price point. I’d definitely fuck with some grab and go spaghetti bolognese for $12
You're describing the Fazoli's chain restaurants! It was(is?) a fast casual Italian counter-order place. Pretty cheap, basic pasta and subs options. They would bring garlic bread sticks to the table kind of like olive garden, but at least 50% cheaper. We used to go all the time when I was growing up in North Carolina. Not sure how far the chain spread to.
There used to be a Fazolis where I live and the franchise left probably in 2011. The absolute worst thing ever. I still think about those breadsticks and the creamy broccoli bake 😥 Now it was taken over by El Pollo Loco. Only thing here that sells 'fast pasta' is Spaghetti By The Bucket and that place is an abomination and should be burned.
Not actually cooking but both caprese salad or lettuce wedges. After priced at $15 or more. Ridiculous. Can easily make for a few dollars at home.
I refuse to order pasta dishes either. Although I do like a nice lasagne eating out.
The only pasta dishes I'll order out are ones I know for a fact I won't make at home due to cost or skill. For instance, it's more cost effective for me to get seafood pasta dishes (frutti di mare, linguine Alle vongole) as a single person because I won't be able to use up the ingredients before they go bad. I also don't have the skill to make filled pasta so I'll go for that or something with a unique ingredient I haven't tried or made at home like cured egg yolk.
Lasagna is pretty much the only pasta dish I will order, because most of the time I can't be bothered to make it at home in the quality I want to eat. And yes, caprese is just crazy.
Can get a bag of frozen breaded chicken fingers, some provolone and mozzarella, and jar of good sauce and for a few bucks more or less than the one plate you can make a meal with leftovers. Did this a lot when I was single.
This is what I think of as the happy median. It's at home, but packaged foods, so it's more accessible. You don't have to make everything from scratch on a Wednesday night. You can cut a corner and still save 50%+ what it would cost at a restaurant
The only times I order pasta when eating out is when I'm eating out solely for calories -- for a day of travel/work....not eating out for a special occasion.
Pasta is hard to fuck up, it's high calorie, and it's fairly tasty -- even when it's plain. Most things go well with pasta -- vegetables, chicken, beef, seafood. Many sauces pair well with it -- from soy-based to cream to tomato.
Most importantly, I know when I get done with that meal, I'll at least be *full* and *not hungry*.
As I've been getting older, fried stuff...especially deep fried breaded items...strongly disagree with me. There's only so much salads I can tolerate, especially since most of them are sprayed with preservatives that are disagreeable. And dairy...well, lactose intolerance is a fickle mistress.
And I used to be *strongly* in the camp of "if I'm eating out, it'll be stuff that's unique or that I normally don't make". Nah, not anymore. I don't "eat out" for the fun of it -- haven't for a long while now. So if I'm out for an entire day traveling and didn't have the opportunity to make something beforehand to bring with me, pasta has now become one of my go-tos.
My supermarket steams lobster for free. You do have to pay the slightly higher tax rate for prepared food items ( as in prepared to order). Besides, I want to be able to slobber over the nooks and crannies for all the lobster meat in the privacy of my own home, be able to clean off the fishy salt water from my face and hands
I will pay the money for dishes that take time or specific ingredients that I do not want to invest in for just one dish. Like Pho, Indian dishes, and the like.
I spent a shit ton on spices and ingredients for Indian food. It was like $60 for the spices
And other ingredients. I made it. It wasn’t as good. At all.
Idk what takeout Indian food does, but I can do it. I even made my own naan.
Use ghee. Whizz up your garlic and onion base into a puree at the start. Toast your spices in a dry pan.
With your breads, blast em for 15 secs in the microwave when you're ready to serve and they go soft and warm.
Highly recommend The Curry Bible by Madhur Jaffey. It's like she's given away the secrets.
I had the same experience. I love Indian food, and wanted to learn how to make basic dishes, but the time and money it took to make a couple - it was exhausting and rather disappointing in the end. (And I’m not a bad cook really). Restaurant Indian food is always so much better!
Look up crab boils next. You can easily do them at home and not have to worry about putting on real clothes to go outside. It's my new favorite thing to do at home. Also, if you have a Costco membership, they have good deals on seafood, too.
Big time on the Costco. Got a double pack of mussels last week, fed 3 adults for two dinners, although I probably could've eaten them all myself lol. Think it was like 20 bucks cdn
Not to mention, no beards to clean out.
I think going out is more so for the sake of doing something fun or because youre feeling lazy vs not being competent enough to make it
That being said, any pasta dish is NOT worth paying money for. Just boil some noodles at home and call it a day!
Yeah, the thing about restaurants is that you're not just paying for the food but also the experience and not having to cook for yourself. Most things at restaurants I can make at home but sometimes I just don't want to. Or I want to eat with friends and I don't want to make enough for a gathering.
Salads!!
Why the heck are we paying $15-25 for a salad?
An entire head of lettuce is $3 at the grocery store (let alone wholesale)? Even with seafood on it (and most don't) it's not going to come to anywhere near half that price.
Salads; soup & salad; sandwich & salad; sushi & salad = biggest money makers on the menu!
Make them at home, folks!
Salads are somewhat expensive, labor-intensive, and annoying to make, imo, especially if you're only making them for one person and/or aren't experienced with meal prepping. A good salad usually has multiple greens, veggies, fruits, and/or toppings + dressing. It's a lot of stuff to wash, slice, dice, and prep. If you're only making one salad, you then have to pack away and store everything like half a tomato, etc. Stuff can go bad quickly despite best efforts (I love spring mix, for example, but it can turn so fast sometimes), so unless you plan very carefully, you can lose $5 worth of veg before you know it.
Yeah. These people don't understand restaurants. They don't operate for free, employee people without wages, occupy the space for free, or get utilities for free. Everyone is missing the point of the question. It is obviously easy to make a salad. Cost want part of the question. These are the people who order a beer and say "but a 12 pack is &15!"
For some people, it's less about being able to make it at home and more about whether or not it's worth the effort. It's also possible that dietary restrictions or preferences come into play as well.
For example, I can easily make myself a good shrimp and grits dinner. However, my wife absolutely does not like grits. That means that if I want to make it for myself, I'm making a separate dish for her. My wife also cannot have anything even remotely spicy, including black pepper. If I wanted sausage and peppers on a grinder, again, I'd be making her something completely different.
While I can definitely do all that (and have), it's not a level of effort that I want to put forth every night. So, when we're going to go out, the things I order are things that she can't have. On the plus side, it also cuts down on her stealing from my plate... :-)
Friggin SPAGHETTI. I never understood why someone would order spaghetti at a restaurant when it's so simple to make at home, weather you're taking the easy route by doctoring up a jar of sauce or making your own from fresh tomatoes. It can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be.
A lot of people order fajitas at Mexican restaurants without realizing how simple they are to make at home. All you need is some seasoned meat, bell peppers, onions, and tortillas. Sear the protein, sauté the veggies, and wrap it all up. It's a quick, tasty meal that's way cheaper than eating out
No one's ordering fajitas because they're fancy. They're ordering fajitas so they can be the most popular person in the restaurant. All eyes are on you when that sizzling plate's a-comin'.
Most of the answers here don't answer the question. People know they can "easily" make salads, alfredo, sandwiches etc., at home. They don't go to restaurants and order them because they don't realize they can easily cook it themselves at home. People eat these foods at restaurants because they want to.
The difference between a home cook and a professional chef: a chefs favorite meal is the one he doesn't have to cook.
You don't pay for food because you can't make it, you pay for food because somebody else is making. I can also change my own oil, but I still go to a shop because I don't want to do it.
Yeah and if you go to a restaurant chances are everyone is ordering something different. Yes I can make pasta, risotto, steak, etc, but I'm not making them all on the same night at home.
Going to a restaurant isn't just about having them cook for you. It's about going out, a labour free meal, trying something new, eating something my partner hates so I don't bother cooking at home.
Lets go more with the reverse question: What foods are too hard to make at home that are better at restaurants/supermarkets?
Croissants or any other multilayered laminated pastry/breads.
Most hard cheeses, some soft
Chocolate from scratch
Specialty fermented things (soy sauce, Tabasco, Sriracha)
Legally restricted things (Hard Liquor)
Otherwise most things are doable without too much “fancy equipment”. Remember folks, most recipes were made with low tech and terrible conditions. Technology just makes it even easier.
Anything with a high level of execution to get right. Meringue, hollandaise, risotto, mousse, I've seen people saying these and those are things that professional chefs train YEARS to get right consistently. Very few people can do them.
Foods that take a long time, you CAN do them but that time and effort is more valuable. Again, risotto needs constant attention to get right. You can't walk away. Lasagna is one for me. It's theoretically easy to make, but has such a long prep time to put all together and you have to make so much to be worth it that it becomes a chore, so I'll order that.
Things that need small amounts of a lot of components that you're not going to be able to buy and use in useful proportions.
Things that are portable, convenient, etc. Sandwiches are a big one. Yeah, you can make them. But that little bit of time is something we don't always have at home, so you grab it on your way.
Pasta
Add some garlic, olive oil, and parsley & you have a great dish for a fraction of the cost of the same in a restaurant
And it's easy to dress up pasta with whatever vegetables or protein you like
Honestly, most any type of sandwich. I'm always amazed at the number of people who spend a small fortune ordering a simple sandwich for lunch. That goes for burritos, too, especially breakfast burritos. My gosh, the amount of money people waste buying breakfast burritos!
I live alone. If I buy all the ingredients for an Italian sandwich i will not be saving money and food will be wasted. Depends on situation. Plus local deli has better ingredients anyway.
This is how I feel about Reubens. I love them, but making them at home requires a minimum of $10 worth of ingredients(more if I spring for the fancy corned beef), and then I have extra ingredients for days. I just want one sandwich. (Sure maybe I’d have TWO if I had the ingredients on hand but I’m not over here having Reubens every day for a week.)
Exactly this. As a single person, 90% of this thread is hard to get cost effective because of the food waste associated with a large ingredient list. Unless you will eat the same thing for a week or you can prep and freeze stuff, a complex item can be justifiable to order as a one-off. Big exceptions are most Mexican food staples since it's often a combo of tortilla/rice/cheese/beans/protein + salsa, and basic pastas which are quick and easy and non-perishable
After making beef and broccoli the other night, I'm gonna say beef and broccoli and some other simple "Chinese food" type stir frys. It cooked in the time it took the rice to cook and was super filling.
When I lived alone I didn’t cook often because I always had too much left over. I would either eat the same thing over and over or get tired of it and it would go to waste. If I froze it, it never tasted the same.
99% of the time I agree, but one of the best things I’ve ever eaten at a restaurant was a grilled cheese sandwich. They had fresh bread from a local bakery served with local artisanal cheeses inside and paired with a tomato soup. While I could definitely recreate it myself, the ingredients were fairly expensive and I’d probably end up with stale bread/moldy cheese before I could use it all.
Ironically, the worst grilled cheese I've ever tasted was also the most expensive one (some small cafe in Muir National Park, tasted like cardboard). They are very inexpensive and easy to make. It's one case where going fancy on the ingredients makes it worse not better.
Pizza. My crust recipe is killer and not hard to make. Sauce can easily be made from scratch or bought in a jar at the store. I shred my own cheese but you can buy it pre-shredded. Lots of toppings come pre-sliced in the store.
You do need a pizza stone, but I've had mine for a decade and it gets used often.
So much tastier and cheaper than delivery. Plus, making pizza is kind of fun.
Burrata anything. I make myself something like burrata, heirloom tomatoes, mixed greens with olive oil and balsamic glaze, sometimes with prosciutto- for like $3 a serving
Sometimes I use melon instead, or grilled peaches, always tastes fancy
We all KNOW we can make these things at home, yes. But the whole point of going out is to be lazy, and sometimes we don't feel like making things. I know I don't at times.
95% of all food, but I live in a place with a lot of different markets to find ingredients.
Pad Thai is one exception. Tried it twice and can’t seem to get it right.
And most fried food just isn’t worth the mess to clean up.
Burgers.
Seriously you could teach a 10 year old to make burgers better than 90% of places in half an hour.
There is practically 0 skill involved and you will never buy a burger from a restaurant again when you realise how much of a rip off some of them are
Steak.
The best steaks I’ve ever had were cooked at home. There are so many factors involved (timing with other dishes, how busy the cook is, control over the cut/marbling, how long it rests). If you know how to cook a steak, you’re better off paying $30+ for an amazing dry aged or prime cut from a good butcher and cooking it yourself. You’ll come out ahead cost wise and it will be so delicious.
Salmon is a lot cheaper and better at home
I’ve made so much salmon in my day and have also had it out a few times (mainly trying my wife’s). I’ve only ever had it better than I can make it at home maybe twice.
brine the salmon half an hour before and then pan fry it
What is your recommended brine?
just salt. check this out https://youtu.be/6VhD5QyDEh4?si=HP6J6-OVttdKr0T7
Solid. I haven’t even tried this and am still disappointed by most restaurants. Will have to try it.
[удалено]
My wife and I love this salmon recipe. Pretty easy to make, pretty healthy, and very tasty: [Honey sriracha salmon rice bowl](https://www.skinnytaste.com/salmon-rice-bowls/#recipe)
Saw your post, had salmon thawed out ready to cook for dinner so we did this recipe and it was good! We didn't do it over rice, but just a salmon fillet with sides. Thanks for the dinner idea today!
Look dude, if you think you can make Avocado toast at home and save $25 then you just go right ahead and take that risk. Leave the rest of us out of it
Our friend clearly likes to live on the precipice.
Don't get me started on cooking filet mignon in the air fryer. Just stick it in and push a couple buttons == freshly cooked medium rare steak (~12-13 minutes at 400 degrees)
Wait are you being serious or ...?
Try it. Better yet, sous vide to 110 then blast a sear on it with the air fryer. You can use an instant pot to make cheesy potatoes and steam some broccoli in the rice cooker.
This may be common knowledge but I just recently found the small, sealed, individual cups of avocado they sell at Sam's. It's been awesome to have instant avocado for toast without waste, because I never can eat the whole avocado at one sitting and I can't get past the color it turns shortly after it's peeled.
Cut them in half, eat the side without the pit, then cover the side with the pit with cling wrap. It will actually stay fresh for a day or so.
I cover the uneaten half with the peel from the eaten half. Basically reassemble and hold together with a rubber band. There's a little bit of brown to scrape off when I go back for the second half but it stays pretty fresh and there's no plastic waste because I can reuse the rubber band!
I eat the other half at same time as the first half. Stays just as fresh…… Anyways, my weight loss journey is taking a little while
If you put the other half in a Mason jar it stays fresh for four or five days. The top layer oxidizes, but I just scrape that off. Or eat it. I'm not the Queen of England over here.
You can squeeze lemon juice on top before putting it in the jar, stops the top layer from oxidising
The grocery store near me sells bags of tiny avocados that are like half as big as regular avocados (and half the price), highly recommend those for individual portions
If you have a vacuum sealer, which I highly recommend getting for multiple reasons, you can seal unused avocado and it holds very well. I'll generally cut the avo in half, use the half without the seed, and seal the seed half. Use a little EVOO on the exposed flesh to make sure nothing is exposed to air once sealed. I haven't tried the cups from Sam's, but I've tried them from other places and they never taste as good as fresh. Bonus, the vacuum seal bags are recyclable. So no extra waste.
Yes, sprinkle a little lemon or lime juice on it and it saves better too. I do t even do fresh juice, just the ones that stay in the fridge for clutch times.
That sounds like the devil's deal, either waste food or add plastic waste to the world.
It's not. Food turns into compost very quickly.
Carbonara
It's hard as fuck to find guanciale in some places though
So use pancetta. Before people on the Internet could only maintain their self esteem by way of "AuThEnTiC" cooking, pancetta was a common regional variant within Italy for the very reason you're describing.
The obsession with authentic cooking is so annoying. BuT it's NoT AuThEnTiC!!! Okay? I'm not Italian, I'm not making "authentic" anything, nor am I claiming it is. I'm just cooking dinner with the ingredients available to me in Canada. The culinary world can't develop if you dont experiment and try new things. Even the French understand that. I once had an Italian American on this app, talking about carbonara, tell me his grandma didn't get bombed in WW2 so people could "disrespect" carbonara. So I asked if he liked sushi, he said yes. So I told him that a Japanese guys grandma didn't get bombed at Hiroshima so he could eat a fuckin California roll. He shockingly had nothing to say after going off on everyone all over that post for like 2 days 🤣🤣
Italians are the worst with the food culture-war bullshit. I go even one lower with carbonara, “below” bacon, and I fry up tiny cubes of spam. I even prefer it to guanciale but an Italian buddy of mine freaks the fuck out. “OMG YOU CANT DO THAT!!! OMG WTF! OMG OMG OMG!!!!” Of course I can do that because I just did, and guess what, I like it more this way. “WELL YOU CANT CALL THAT A CARBONARA THEN WTF!”. The dood (and his family) get way too worked up over this stupid shit. They act like carbonara has to uphold some ancient tradition, it’s like bro that shit wasn’t even popular until the 50s, hah.
The most rumored story of origin is that Italian cooks were given American rations in WW2 to work with and created it. So if that's our authentic dish, we can't use guanciale. Gotta be bacon. And powdered eggs. Its first recipe in a cookbook, if Wikipedia author research is correct, was published in 1954 and included pancetta, garlic, and gruyere. Italians fought amongst themselves for some time on whether to use cream or not. Like. Look. Fatty salty pork + pasta + a sauce made of eggs and cheese is what we know is carbonara. I brine my fried chicken in buttermilk and hot sauce, and put a ton of paprika in the flour mixture. Someone else might not brine at all, and use spices not including paprika in their flour mixture. They might use rice flour! So. Who made fried chicken and who didn't? There may be a widely-accepted "best" formula for carbonara, but that's all it is. Not having a particular ingredient at my closest grocery is not tantamount to me calling an entire country's mother a whore. Btw, the spam actually sounds great for it, lol. Might try that sometime.
Italians (and fake Italians) are obnoxiously dull when it comes to food. Imagine having all those ridiculous rules about which cutlery you're allowed to use, or refusing to try anything new, ever. Must be painfully boring.
I saw a review of a book about the development of Italian food that sounded interesting recently. IIRC the author was arguing that a lot of the famous shibboleths (no cheese on seafood dishes! No chicken with pasta! Pasta must be al dente!) are surprisingly recent in origin.
The concept of Italy isn’t even as old as people think it is.
My personal opinion is that "authentic" purism regarding working-class dishes if just people's complexes bursting out. No Italian housewife 100 years ago cared about "authentic" as long as family was fed and happy.
People have a hard time with substituting because they aren’t actually learning to cook - they’re just replicating a recipe. Thick cut bacon could work in place pancetta. Pork belly, hell a pork chop cubed and seasoned could work. Pretty much any fatty, salty meat would work. Don’t like pork? Np, find a fatty beef or dark meat chicken, cube it, salt and pepper and that’ll work too.
If you’re looking for just the flavor you can go the poor man route and used baked ham or bacon!
I was going to ask, where are these people getting guanciale?
I know this isnt necessarily the case everywhere else, but for me pancetta is much more readily available than guanciale, and is an excellent substitute if you can find it! We actually even tried making with guanciale once and definitely preferred the pancetta over that, though they probably don’t have the best guanciale at a Hyvee lol
Just use bacon. It's tasty and widely available.
Pancetta is really easy to find too.
It's not worth it imo. Any piece of fatty pork is fine
I doubt every single restaurant uses guanciale. The average Joe is not able to tell anyhow
Came here to say the same. Game changer was good quality free range egg yolks & guanciale.
Adding an above average freshly ground black pepper takes it to another level
I swear most of the carbonaras I see in restaurants are made with cream and pancetta, whereas at home I only use guanciale and eggs for 1/5th of the price of what I'd pay eating at a restaurant.
What's wrong with pancetta? Before cringey people got up their own but with food orthodoxy, pancetta was perfectly common within Italy for the recipe.
I have been to so many Italian restaurants and have yet to find good carbonara. Every restaurant just turns it into Alfredo by adding heavy cream. I will say I lived in Italy for 3 years and had amazing carbonara and know how to make it rather well.
Alfredo shouldn’t even have heavy cream either. This is blasphemy.
I will leave preparation of Chinese food (too many ingredients) and sushi to the pros. Procuring the appropriate fish for sushi, getting the rice right, the cool sauces, roe, it’s just too much. Also chile rellenos (the whole egg white batter thing). Other than that, I do feel wasteful when I get breakfast, steak or pasta at restaurants when I can prepare those pretty well at home.
Seriously. I still enjoy grabbing breakfast at a diner with friends - but die a little inside seeing the prices for a plate of eggs, toast, and bacon I could easily prepare at home Don’t even get me started on crepes
If the restaurant has hash browns I'm usually in heaven. I've been trying for years but nothing comes close to a good diner's hash browns.
I worked with an old-school short order cook so I do know how, but here’s the thing: you really want someone else to cook them for you, so you can live in blissful denial. 1) Save all the butter left over from dinner service, keep melted on the back of the grill. 2) Shred cold leftover baked potatoes. These are best because they’re dry, thus will absorb more butter. Arrange potatoes in a hash brown shape on flattop (or skillet) and salt them. Don’t pack down. 3) Proceed to ladle a minimum of two ounces of melted butter over them. When brown on first side, turn carefully and ladle on more butter. Salt again. Brown to desired shade. Medium heat throughout. These will be perfect but are obviously drastically bad for you.
There's a fairly popular restaurant where I live, and the secret to their success is "butter it". Everything is buttered to death and no surprise, people love it.
Anthony Bourdain famously revealed this secret in Kitchen Confidential and it totally makes sense! Butter is divine elixir.
Those sound amazing! We used potatos that had been soaking overnight and then run hit water over them until cooked in the diner I worked at in the 80s. Then I'd shred them and they'd sit out all day drying. Instead of butter the cook had a vat of coconut oil he'd baste over them and he'd set a griddle press on top. I've also had success with leftover baked potato's, but wow, your hash browns sound rough on the body.
I wanna emphasize your step where you use cooked potatoes. This makes a huge difference from using freshly shredded, uncooked and undrained potatoes, which will brown much more slowly and poorly.
Used to make rolled up crepes and cut up raw fruits and vegetables for my kids when their father was coming home late--it was so quick and easy.
Breakfast is the meal I love to eat out. Yeah, the ingredients are cheap but it is so much work and cleanup to prepare potatoes, eggs, bacon, etc. Throw in someone else wanting a waffle or pancake and the kitchen is a disaster when you could’ve stuffed yourself for $10 at the local diner.
I think the thing is having a local diner that doesn't charge an arm and a leg nowadays. We're lucky in our area to have a delightful hole-in-the-wall breakfast/lunch place where you can definitely have a nice big American breakfast for <$10 (cash/check only so you know it's good stuff lol). But all of the other breakfast places in town are $15+ for a basic plate (2 eggs, 2 bacon, hashbrowns, 1-2 pancakes). This is in the Midwest as well, I can't imagine what big-city areas have to pay.
$0.50 for the eggs and $0.75 for 2 slabs of Danish pork belly. That's roughly $1.25 and then some toast and thyme if you're feeling fancy. It cooks while I listen to WSJ's What's News as I empty the dishwasher and take a dump. Coffee in tow, that's another $0.10 + electricity cost from a Zojirushi kettle.
There is a diner near me that does crispy pancakes. I haven't figured out their secret yet, so I go there for pancakes, plus it's $5 for a short stack with bananas.
> There is a diner near me that does crispy pancakes. I haven't figured out their secret yet Lots of butter. More than you can imagine. Stop now before you see the horrible truth. I made some this morning. 5 pancakes used a stick of butter.
The griddle guy at one of my state's top 10 diners told me the key to great pancakes is to keep the batter refrigerated between batches. The crispy comes from being ladled into a little puddle of butter/oil. Gives the perimeter edge a funnel cakiness.
I’d give my right nut to have a real wok burner and deep fryer at home. Just not worth it, let the restaurant take care of it.
If you have a yard you can get one of those gas ring burners people use to ~~burn down their house~~ fry turkeys on.
https://www.seriouseats.com/outdoor-wok-burner-review $+120ish and it works great. Just got one.
I get it, but once you get the ingredients, they tend to last forever and you can make so many meals. I grew up in an isolated place so there was nowhere to get anything. When I moved to a big city I had to hit three stores and do research to find stuff, hard to find the right kind of vinegar when the label is in Chinese. That said I've been using the same bag of Sichuan peppercorns etc for over a year. Once you can make a dish or two, the rest come much easier. People are always blown away when I make thai or Chinese food. A lot of it is pretty quick and easy once you know what's up though. My mom was just saying she can't wait for me to visit so she can have laab and mapo tofu. I've offered to show her and she gets intimidated, when honestly the recipes aren't hard.
All sorts of fan-favorite Indian food too. Yeah, getting all of the spices can seem daunting upfront, but I've found that if you get them whole and in bulk they're so affordable long term. You want to lean towards whole spices for longevity of flavor as well as it's usually cheaper by weight. I've even impressed my Indian/Pakistani/Nepalese friends with my cooking, and none of them are slouches in the kitchen. Once you know the basic formulas for a couple recipes, you can also just cook things off the cuff based on whatever you have available (like a vindaloo style base with chicken, shrimp, whatever veg canned or frozen).
I'm interested too! I'd also love some recommendations for online recipes that are specifically szechuan. Any good dishes you'd recommend to a cook beginning in this cuisine?
https://www.chinasichuanfood.com/ This one gets pointed to a lot. Also recommend Fuchsia Dunlop's cookbooks; Sichuan Cuisine is big and has a ton of great info on technique and flavor profile, though her Every Grain of Rice is what I'd call the "beginner" book. Also https://www.youtube.com/@ChineseCookingDemystified is *the* source for me. Some of the recipes are not simple (though some are), but I can usually make it once and then simplify it.
I can't speak to like really authentic regional cuisine but if you want like "Chinese abroad" food you only need a handful of ingredients and you can reuse them for a ton of dishes. Rice (obviously), toasted sesame oil, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, vinegar, sesame seeds, corn starch (vital), eggs, msg. Give me a protein, some onion, and a vegetable or two and I can make you like 80% menu of your local Western-Style Chinese restaurant. Hell, give me some sugar and we can skip the oyster sauce (it's basically sweet soy sauce with oyster juice and sugar). And I'm white AF. I make fried rice, pepper steak, sweet & sour pork, orange chicken (and General Tso's), Mongolian Beef, chop suey. Whatever.
I love Chinese food (read that as american Chinese food) but I just cant figure it out for some reason. I'm not good at sauces in general though, that's probably most of it.
Should check out Aaron and Claire on YouTube. Dude nails the ingredients and it's super accessible to the home cook. They're Korean but also do a fair bit of (American) Chinese food as well as Japanese
I love The Woks of Life website. They owned chinese restaurants and that's the kind of food they have recipes for. [https://thewoksoflife.com/](https://thewoksoflife.com/)
Try recipe tin eats website for some easy at home, pretty good basics
Trade the oyster sauce for chili bean sauce (touban djan) and you’re pretty much there. And make sure the vinegar is rice vinegar. And Shaoxing wine.
Yes. I've got a handful of recipes I'd put up against most Chinese restaurants around here (Boise, Idaho -- admittedly not known for Asian grub). Great thing about it too is once you figure out the basic stir fry process, you can pretty much throw something together with whatever is in the fridge.
I make a lot of lazy American Chinese food. It’s basically just a stir fry and I cheat and buy a premade sauce. After that it’s mainly just rice/noodles, veggies and a protein.
Nigiri is very accessible to a home cook! There's a weird reverence over such a simple dish, I think mainly because it's only been widely eaten in north america for a relatively short period of time so it hasn't had time to migrate from exotic to casual. Yeah it might take a couple tries to get the rice right but not the mythical years of training - home cooking doesn't need to be artistic perfection just taste good and most cooks should achieve that on their first try. Also fish sourcing isn't available at regular grocers but that's a cultural chicken and egg problem more than anything. When I make it the cost is about 15% of restaurant prices, and that's using the highest grade fish from my local distributor who is the source for all the sushi restaurants in town. Luckily they open their warehouse to the public for a couple hours on certain mornings. Most people in towns over 100k should have access to the fish it just might take some searching. The price factor has taken it from a special occasion thing to a regular meal for me. I really recommend more people to try it out! Ahi tuna nigiri is a good place to start as it's a common and safe fish. Standard grocers sell the rest of the ingredients (calrose rice, rice vinegar, prepared wasabi, soy sauce).
Steaks
My answer, too. Where I live, the cost of steak in a restaurant matches four I could buy at Costco. Plus a few extra wee pieces, but those are scraggly bits.
Those Prime rib eyes from Costco...oooh la la.
My friend group did a trip together and one of the guys bought some steaks from Costco. They really were high quality and were perfect served rare. That was the first time any of us had Costco steaks and we were shocked at how good they were.
Steakhouses are about the full experience. Getting cuts that aren't normally available - the side dishes and appetizers, cocktails. Getting dressed up and going out with your friends to share the ambience and not have to cook. Yeah, you probably can do better than a steak at any middle of the road restaurant, but a proper steakhouse is about the whole package, not just the beef.
There’s a steakhouse in Tampa I visit every single time I’m there and I mostly go because they have the best French onion soup I’ve ever had. The steaks are a bonus too, of course
Berns, right? I live in Tampa and I just went this year for the first time. Out of this world experience.
If anyone wants to really level up the at home steam game: plan ahead, salt it a day in advance, and let it sit in your fridge on a wire rack until you’re ready to cook. The fridge will draw out a lot of the moisture and create perfect conditions for a restaurant quality sear, I’ve also found the texture is far better.
This is it. Salting a day in advance also greatly improves the flavour and texture of the meat. From Samin Nosrat's Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: > Think of a protein strand as a loose coil with water molecules bound to its outside surface. When an unseasoned protein is heated, it denatures: the coil unravels, releasing water molecules out of the protein matrix, leaving the meat dry and tough if overcooked. By disrupting the protein structure, salt prevents the coil from densely coagulating, or clumping, when heated, so more of the water molecules remain bound. The piece of meat remains moister, and you have a greater margin of error for overcooking. This should be done with literally any cut of meat, not just steak. From your thanksgiving turkey to your weeknight pork chops, a dry brine a day or 2 in advance will always make it better.
>This should be done with literally any cut of meat, not just steak. I started doing this with salmon last year, and I am blown away about how much better it is.
Yes, I've pan fried steaks at home and like mine cooked medium. It smells up the whole house! I've stopped cooking them. I'd k!ll for a nice, grilled steak and a salad with sliced avocado.
I agree, but as a qualifier, there *ARE* restaurant steaks that are much more difficult to recreate at home, mainly high end steakhouse steaks. Any place that uses a salamander for searing their steaks is going to have a major advantage over a home cook. It's also more difficult to get similar quality meat as most steakhouses without having a relationship with an actual butcher. My local Publix has prime grade steak but it's definitely not the same as what you can get at a good steakhouse. I won't get a $30 steak at a restaurant, but a $100 steak is probably going to be better than what I can make (and I'll be very upset if it isn't).
I never order steaks when at a restaurant. When I go out to eat I want someone to cook for me. A steak hardly qualifies. It's just meat, fire and some salt. You could train a pigeon to make one. There's only one challenge to making a great steak at home and that's ventilation. The smoke from getting a good sear can overwhelm a home kitchen and set off fire alarms. But if you're prepared to put a box fan in a nearby window, it's the easiest thing ever.
Work dinners, that’s where restaurant steaks shine. I’d never order an $80 steak on my own. Manager retreat? Yes sir and let’s wash it down with a really nice bourbon.
Ordering steak at a good steakhouse is worth it. Give me that wedge salad followed by some oscar style with hollandaise and a fully loaded baker. To recreate that at home, I’ll basically spend what I would at the restaurant between ingredients and labor so imo, a top choice for a night out.
Most Italian American dishes. These were all originally served in American kitchens by recent Italian immigrants who were doing their best to recreate traditional recipes with the ingredients available at hand.
My mom would give me shit every time I’d order chicken parm when we were out eating, citing she could make that at home. She never made it at home though 🤷🏻♀️
Funny, I can make that but I actually do from time to time. However, my kids prefer to take a shortcut and use breaded circular chicken patties instead of doing it all from scratch. I would not abide this sacrilege except I'm fond of them.
Fond of which? The chicken patty parmesean or the kids?
The just bare chicken breast filets make a decent chicken Parm.
> However, my kids prefer to take a shortcut and use breaded circular chicken patties instead of doing it all from scratch. WTF, why didn't I ever think of that??? I even have some chicken patties in my freezer right now! My least favorite part of making chicken parm (and the reason why I've only made it at home once) is all the mess and dishes needed when breading and frying foods. Sorry (not sorry), but I'm going to make sure to perpetuate your kids' lazy habits the next time I make chicken parm!
If you want to level this idea up by one hundred, use the JUST BARE chicken breast fillets, they sell them at Costco and a bunch of other grocery stores.
Yes! Actually, sometimes I've used the Bare nuggies (or Costco's generic brand of them) and put them in some sauce with the cheese over the top like little chicken parm poppers, and they mix in with the noodles almost like meatballs 🤤
We can buy crumbed chicken breast at the butcher... Is that not a thing in America?
Chicken Parm is the first thing I saw in this thread that I would rather buy at a restaurant. I love chicken parm but I just don’t think the work is worth the payoff. It always tastes better to me when I don’t have to cook it.
Yeah low key many Italian restaurants don’t actually use fresh pasta but definitely charge like they do. Like why am I paying $25 for Barilla and some sauce? I don’t know why there aren’t any counter service Italian restaurants for a lower price point. I’d definitely fuck with some grab and go spaghetti bolognese for $12
You're describing the Fazoli's chain restaurants! It was(is?) a fast casual Italian counter-order place. Pretty cheap, basic pasta and subs options. They would bring garlic bread sticks to the table kind of like olive garden, but at least 50% cheaper. We used to go all the time when I was growing up in North Carolina. Not sure how far the chain spread to.
There used to be a Fazolis where I live and the franchise left probably in 2011. The absolute worst thing ever. I still think about those breadsticks and the creamy broccoli bake 😥 Now it was taken over by El Pollo Loco. Only thing here that sells 'fast pasta' is Spaghetti By The Bucket and that place is an abomination and should be burned.
Not actually cooking but both caprese salad or lettuce wedges. After priced at $15 or more. Ridiculous. Can easily make for a few dollars at home. I refuse to order pasta dishes either. Although I do like a nice lasagne eating out.
The only pasta dishes I'll order out are ones I know for a fact I won't make at home due to cost or skill. For instance, it's more cost effective for me to get seafood pasta dishes (frutti di mare, linguine Alle vongole) as a single person because I won't be able to use up the ingredients before they go bad. I also don't have the skill to make filled pasta so I'll go for that or something with a unique ingredient I haven't tried or made at home like cured egg yolk.
I Love ravioli. But I will not take the time to make, fill, and cook it. I know how, I just prefer a good dish from a great place.
Lasagna is pretty much the only pasta dish I will order, because most of the time I can't be bothered to make it at home in the quality I want to eat. And yes, caprese is just crazy.
I'll eat any fresh, filled pasta out cause I'm not good enough yet
Ah, good point. Forgot about filled pasta. Yeah, that's a treat. Pity a lot of the portion sizes tend to be so small...
I find that Lasagna in a restaurant doesn’t taste as good as homemade one, but the effort it takes to make it…
I always make two at a time and freeze one because the effort to make two is about the same as making one.
I've found that baked ziti is much quicker to make and just as tasty.
I feel like unless the restaurants are making the pasta in house (obvi not the case most of the time), they are making a HUGE profit lol.
Yeah…. I love chicken parm but once the plate arrives at my table I realize I just paid ~$26 for some spaghetti and breaded chicken
Can get a bag of frozen breaded chicken fingers, some provolone and mozzarella, and jar of good sauce and for a few bucks more or less than the one plate you can make a meal with leftovers. Did this a lot when I was single.
This is what I think of as the happy median. It's at home, but packaged foods, so it's more accessible. You don't have to make everything from scratch on a Wednesday night. You can cut a corner and still save 50%+ what it would cost at a restaurant
Same with the Lasagna!!! I could not be bothered to ever make it, but a local pizza place has some of the best lasagna ive ever had
The only times I order pasta when eating out is when I'm eating out solely for calories -- for a day of travel/work....not eating out for a special occasion. Pasta is hard to fuck up, it's high calorie, and it's fairly tasty -- even when it's plain. Most things go well with pasta -- vegetables, chicken, beef, seafood. Many sauces pair well with it -- from soy-based to cream to tomato. Most importantly, I know when I get done with that meal, I'll at least be *full* and *not hungry*. As I've been getting older, fried stuff...especially deep fried breaded items...strongly disagree with me. There's only so much salads I can tolerate, especially since most of them are sprayed with preservatives that are disagreeable. And dairy...well, lactose intolerance is a fickle mistress. And I used to be *strongly* in the camp of "if I'm eating out, it'll be stuff that's unique or that I normally don't make". Nah, not anymore. I don't "eat out" for the fun of it -- haven't for a long while now. So if I'm out for an entire day traveling and didn't have the opportunity to make something beforehand to bring with me, pasta has now become one of my go-tos.
Lobster - steam or boil and it’s table-ready. Some butter, lemon. Guests will rave.
My supermarket steams lobster for free. You do have to pay the slightly higher tax rate for prepared food items ( as in prepared to order). Besides, I want to be able to slobber over the nooks and crannies for all the lobster meat in the privacy of my own home, be able to clean off the fishy salt water from my face and hands
I will pay the money for dishes that take time or specific ingredients that I do not want to invest in for just one dish. Like Pho, Indian dishes, and the like.
I spent a shit ton on spices and ingredients for Indian food. It was like $60 for the spices And other ingredients. I made it. It wasn’t as good. At all. Idk what takeout Indian food does, but I can do it. I even made my own naan.
Use ghee. Whizz up your garlic and onion base into a puree at the start. Toast your spices in a dry pan. With your breads, blast em for 15 secs in the microwave when you're ready to serve and they go soft and warm. Highly recommend The Curry Bible by Madhur Jaffey. It's like she's given away the secrets.
I had the same experience. I love Indian food, and wanted to learn how to make basic dishes, but the time and money it took to make a couple - it was exhausting and rather disappointing in the end. (And I’m not a bad cook really). Restaurant Indian food is always so much better!
Crab legs
TIL. 🤯 I honestly had no clue but just looked up some recipes…..and how much crab legs cost at the grocery store …… Thank you!
Look up crab boils next. You can easily do them at home and not have to worry about putting on real clothes to go outside. It's my new favorite thing to do at home. Also, if you have a Costco membership, they have good deals on seafood, too.
Big time on the Costco. Got a double pack of mussels last week, fed 3 adults for two dinners, although I probably could've eaten them all myself lol. Think it was like 20 bucks cdn Not to mention, no beards to clean out.
Pasta. $25 for cacio e Pepe? Hell no.
Literally cheese and pepper. Same for aglio e olio. It's certainly about the technique, but I'd argue most restaurants don't even get that right.
Avocado toast. And another vote for steaks and burgers.
I feel like avocado toast is a brunch item that people buy when they're really there to socialize or do business, and not actually about the food.
A lot of the reasons why we go to restaurants instead of cooking food, doesn't actually have to do with the food
I think going out is more so for the sake of doing something fun or because youre feeling lazy vs not being competent enough to make it That being said, any pasta dish is NOT worth paying money for. Just boil some noodles at home and call it a day!
Yeah, the thing about restaurants is that you're not just paying for the food but also the experience and not having to cook for yourself. Most things at restaurants I can make at home but sometimes I just don't want to. Or I want to eat with friends and I don't want to make enough for a gathering.
Salads!! Why the heck are we paying $15-25 for a salad? An entire head of lettuce is $3 at the grocery store (let alone wholesale)? Even with seafood on it (and most don't) it's not going to come to anywhere near half that price. Salads; soup & salad; sandwich & salad; sushi & salad = biggest money makers on the menu! Make them at home, folks!
Especially breakfast sandwiches. I make way better ones at home.
I feel like breakfast is almost always a convenience issue. It’s why I meal prep
Those $15 or $20 arugula salads that are basically a bag of arugula emptied into a bowl and tossed with vinaigrette....
Salads are somewhat expensive, labor-intensive, and annoying to make, imo, especially if you're only making them for one person and/or aren't experienced with meal prepping. A good salad usually has multiple greens, veggies, fruits, and/or toppings + dressing. It's a lot of stuff to wash, slice, dice, and prep. If you're only making one salad, you then have to pack away and store everything like half a tomato, etc. Stuff can go bad quickly despite best efforts (I love spring mix, for example, but it can turn so fast sometimes), so unless you plan very carefully, you can lose $5 worth of veg before you know it.
Yeah. These people don't understand restaurants. They don't operate for free, employee people without wages, occupy the space for free, or get utilities for free. Everyone is missing the point of the question. It is obviously easy to make a salad. Cost want part of the question. These are the people who order a beer and say "but a 12 pack is &15!"
I’ve been buying the salad kits from Costco because it really takes me forever to make a salad otherwise
And once you learn the basics of homemade salad dressing, salads are so good at home. You can add exactly what you want!
Homemade salad dressing has ruined restaurant salads for me.
For some people, it's less about being able to make it at home and more about whether or not it's worth the effort. It's also possible that dietary restrictions or preferences come into play as well. For example, I can easily make myself a good shrimp and grits dinner. However, my wife absolutely does not like grits. That means that if I want to make it for myself, I'm making a separate dish for her. My wife also cannot have anything even remotely spicy, including black pepper. If I wanted sausage and peppers on a grinder, again, I'd be making her something completely different. While I can definitely do all that (and have), it's not a level of effort that I want to put forth every night. So, when we're going to go out, the things I order are things that she can't have. On the plus side, it also cuts down on her stealing from my plate... :-)
Friggin SPAGHETTI. I never understood why someone would order spaghetti at a restaurant when it's so simple to make at home, weather you're taking the easy route by doctoring up a jar of sauce or making your own from fresh tomatoes. It can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be.
A lot of people order fajitas at Mexican restaurants without realizing how simple they are to make at home. All you need is some seasoned meat, bell peppers, onions, and tortillas. Sear the protein, sauté the veggies, and wrap it all up. It's a quick, tasty meal that's way cheaper than eating out
No one's ordering fajitas because they're fancy. They're ordering fajitas so they can be the most popular person in the restaurant. All eyes are on you when that sizzling plate's a-comin'.
I hear that plate a comin', It's sizzlin' down the aisle, And I ain't seen my server In such a goddamn while
Those sizzlin cast iron serving dishes are legit.
You forgot the water bottle and hot cast iron to take it to your table sizzling.
There is some kind of perfect sauce that comes with it, the only thing I could never redo so far
Isn’t everything pretty much cheaper at home
ITT: Pretty much everything
Turns out I don't go to restaurants because they can make something I can't
Fettuccine Alfredo. It’s just pasta tossed with butter, Parmesan cheese, and plenty of the pasta cooking water.
Most of the answers here don't answer the question. People know they can "easily" make salads, alfredo, sandwiches etc., at home. They don't go to restaurants and order them because they don't realize they can easily cook it themselves at home. People eat these foods at restaurants because they want to.
The difference between a home cook and a professional chef: a chefs favorite meal is the one he doesn't have to cook. You don't pay for food because you can't make it, you pay for food because somebody else is making. I can also change my own oil, but I still go to a shop because I don't want to do it.
Yeah and if you go to a restaurant chances are everyone is ordering something different. Yes I can make pasta, risotto, steak, etc, but I'm not making them all on the same night at home. Going to a restaurant isn't just about having them cook for you. It's about going out, a labour free meal, trying something new, eating something my partner hates so I don't bother cooking at home.
Right? We ALL know we can make pasta and grilled cheese at home 😂
Lets go more with the reverse question: What foods are too hard to make at home that are better at restaurants/supermarkets? Croissants or any other multilayered laminated pastry/breads. Most hard cheeses, some soft Chocolate from scratch Specialty fermented things (soy sauce, Tabasco, Sriracha) Legally restricted things (Hard Liquor) Otherwise most things are doable without too much “fancy equipment”. Remember folks, most recipes were made with low tech and terrible conditions. Technology just makes it even easier.
French fries. Or anything fried really. I don’t eat them often, but I have no interest in deep frying anything in my kitchen.
Sushi. Sorry but everyone's homemade sushi looks bad lol
Anything with a high level of execution to get right. Meringue, hollandaise, risotto, mousse, I've seen people saying these and those are things that professional chefs train YEARS to get right consistently. Very few people can do them. Foods that take a long time, you CAN do them but that time and effort is more valuable. Again, risotto needs constant attention to get right. You can't walk away. Lasagna is one for me. It's theoretically easy to make, but has such a long prep time to put all together and you have to make so much to be worth it that it becomes a chore, so I'll order that. Things that need small amounts of a lot of components that you're not going to be able to buy and use in useful proportions. Things that are portable, convenient, etc. Sandwiches are a big one. Yeah, you can make them. But that little bit of time is something we don't always have at home, so you grab it on your way.
Risotto.
I have yet to have a risotto at a restaurant that is better than what I can do at home. Granted, I’ve only had a few but they were solid restaurants.
Burgers
chicken parm like. if you're lucky you find one that's 20$and you'll still end up paying more
Pasta Add some garlic, olive oil, and parsley & you have a great dish for a fraction of the cost of the same in a restaurant And it's easy to dress up pasta with whatever vegetables or protein you like
Scallops!! A super-hot pan can be preheated in a 500F degree oven before you put the pan on a grill or burner.
Honestly, most any type of sandwich. I'm always amazed at the number of people who spend a small fortune ordering a simple sandwich for lunch. That goes for burritos, too, especially breakfast burritos. My gosh, the amount of money people waste buying breakfast burritos!
I live alone. If I buy all the ingredients for an Italian sandwich i will not be saving money and food will be wasted. Depends on situation. Plus local deli has better ingredients anyway.
This is how I feel about Reubens. I love them, but making them at home requires a minimum of $10 worth of ingredients(more if I spring for the fancy corned beef), and then I have extra ingredients for days. I just want one sandwich. (Sure maybe I’d have TWO if I had the ingredients on hand but I’m not over here having Reubens every day for a week.)
Exactly this. As a single person, 90% of this thread is hard to get cost effective because of the food waste associated with a large ingredient list. Unless you will eat the same thing for a week or you can prep and freeze stuff, a complex item can be justifiable to order as a one-off. Big exceptions are most Mexican food staples since it's often a combo of tortilla/rice/cheese/beans/protein + salsa, and basic pastas which are quick and easy and non-perishable
After making beef and broccoli the other night, I'm gonna say beef and broccoli and some other simple "Chinese food" type stir frys. It cooked in the time it took the rice to cook and was super filling.
Agreed. My mom taught me how to make beef and broccoli and it was life changing.
Most foods, honestly, but I live alone and hate cooking for myself. Right now I’m eating Mexican leftovers.
When I lived alone I didn’t cook often because I always had too much left over. I would either eat the same thing over and over or get tired of it and it would go to waste. If I froze it, it never tasted the same.
Grilled cheese. Why this is even on restaurant menus is beyond me. The only instance I could maybe understand is on a kid's menu, but still.
99% of the time I agree, but one of the best things I’ve ever eaten at a restaurant was a grilled cheese sandwich. They had fresh bread from a local bakery served with local artisanal cheeses inside and paired with a tomato soup. While I could definitely recreate it myself, the ingredients were fairly expensive and I’d probably end up with stale bread/moldy cheese before I could use it all.
Ironically, the worst grilled cheese I've ever tasted was also the most expensive one (some small cafe in Muir National Park, tasted like cardboard). They are very inexpensive and easy to make. It's one case where going fancy on the ingredients makes it worse not better.
Pizza. My crust recipe is killer and not hard to make. Sauce can easily be made from scratch or bought in a jar at the store. I shred my own cheese but you can buy it pre-shredded. Lots of toppings come pre-sliced in the store. You do need a pizza stone, but I've had mine for a decade and it gets used often. So much tastier and cheaper than delivery. Plus, making pizza is kind of fun.
recipe?
Same lol. I make a mean Chicago style thin crust pizza
Burgers. Resturaunts are charging $25 for a burger and fries. Fuck that, I've got a pan and an oven at home
Butter chicken
Not a meal, but creme brûlée is crazy easy to make.
Burrata anything. I make myself something like burrata, heirloom tomatoes, mixed greens with olive oil and balsamic glaze, sometimes with prosciutto- for like $3 a serving Sometimes I use melon instead, or grilled peaches, always tastes fancy
We all KNOW we can make these things at home, yes. But the whole point of going out is to be lazy, and sometimes we don't feel like making things. I know I don't at times.
95% of all food, but I live in a place with a lot of different markets to find ingredients. Pad Thai is one exception. Tried it twice and can’t seem to get it right. And most fried food just isn’t worth the mess to clean up.
Burgers. Seriously you could teach a 10 year old to make burgers better than 90% of places in half an hour. There is practically 0 skill involved and you will never buy a burger from a restaurant again when you realise how much of a rip off some of them are
Hollandaise sauce. Chocolate mousse.
Steak. The best steaks I’ve ever had were cooked at home. There are so many factors involved (timing with other dishes, how busy the cook is, control over the cut/marbling, how long it rests). If you know how to cook a steak, you’re better off paying $30+ for an amazing dry aged or prime cut from a good butcher and cooking it yourself. You’ll come out ahead cost wise and it will be so delicious.
Call me uncultured but I refuse to sit down and pay $20 a plate (or more) for pasta
Fresh pasta. Paparadelle in particular. You don't even need any special equipment.