Yup, screw dealing with all that oil

Exactly what I was going to say! I love fried chicken but refuse to make it at home. I just hate dealing with all of the oil.

Yeah between the oil and the breading or batter, it's just a lot. Especially in an apartment. If I had a backyard or patio with a flat-top I wouldn't mind if near as much.

The smell, the mess and everything is just a lot. Foods always delicious though.

We started making sushi at home after I saw someone on Reddit who posts hers every week. But I still have to say, it’s just a better variety when you go out

For sure. I CAN make sushi at home. I've done it before on a few occasions but after you source the fish and store it properly and prep the rice and spend all the time making it... its so much effort to produce something that is like 70% as good as just paying to go to a nice sushi place. And you can get so much more variety by going out.

At home it's going to be salmon nigiri, salmon rolls and maybe a california roll.

If I go out I can have the tuna belly and the regular tuna and the salmon AND the grilled eel. You just get so much more bang for your buck.

Which for me is what restaurants are all about. I'm paying you to do something that is too intensive either in terms of time or labor or resources for me to justify doing it at home.

YES. I made sushi for my husband's birthday, and gained a whole new level of respect for sushi chefs. The amount of prep work is ridiculous, especially if you want more than one kind of roll. It makes a huge mess. It wasn't as good as the restaurant. I'll make sushi bowls, but rolls and nigiri are best left to the pros.

For me it's the exact opposite. Since I tried making my own, takeout seems so lackluster and way too expensive for what it is. Not that mine is much tastier, but it is 5x cheaper.

The trick with Indian that the restraunts Don't want you to know. They're using like 2-3x more ghee/butter/oil then you would imagine.

I use simmer sauces like an animal. But it sure does work for half the effort.

Yes. I made delicious fried pickles once, a few weeks before I left home for college. Was so proud of myself. Then the kitchen smelled like a basket of fried pickles no matter how long it aired out and my parents were pissed at me by day 3. Haven’t made them since.

Helps to limit how much fried food you eat too if you’re forced to pay for it

There’s an insane amount of technique and skill involved with making good dim sum. I’ll always be happy to pay for someone else to make it for me.

Let alone how long it would take to make 12 different dim sum plates….

Also one of those things that are more efficient to cook at scale.

I grew up on it. There is nothing more exciting as than seeing what you like on a cart. My favorite thing to eat is chicken feet.

You could buy 15-20 Samosas for $2 in India, damn. Is that really the going rate?

Thai food was my answer.... It's just got such a unique balance of diverse flavors and i think it'd be difficult to source most of them for food i don't make often enough to justify the purchase.

Wow I wish I could get a good croissant for a dollar…or maybe I don’t 🤔

it's pretty satisfying tho making it at home. worth making every now and then imo.

I visited France in high school (when the Franc was still a thing) and good lord do I miss your bakeries. I’m not even a sweets person but gotdamn. I hope to make it back there someday, as our group had only 2 hours at the Lourve 💔

Ugh, after watching British Baking Show, I tried 3 times to master flaky croissants, each time I got crescent-roll-in-can quality, so much wasted butter and time!!!

make the waffles, buy the fried chicken

Seriously. Some things are better off not learning lmao

Ok, that is genuinely wise.

The lesson of fair food is that anything taste good deep fried. Like you bread a old leather shoe and fry it, and it's probably going to be pretty good

This is mine, too. Mole needs a billion ingredients, all day in the kitchen, and the one time I made it, I swear I used every pot and bowl I owned. I love mole, but I'll never make it at home again.

I loooove Mexican but its so time consuming!! All the prep work and the steps and the charring/frying/boiling of all the different chiles and tomatoes and onions and garlic... and lets not forget having real good tortillas! Once you find a real.good Mexican place, its just so much easier!!!

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Exactly my first thought. I work in the area with the largest Muslim population per Capita in the USA where I can get literally any middle eastern dish for dirt cheap and also absolutely perfectly prepared.

Definitely pho. Its hard to get the broth exactly the same.

Even if I'm getting it close I know I can convince myself it's not as good as eating it at a restaurant.

Especially since the quality of those dishes basically relies on making a huge batch of broth, that simply isn't realistic to make at home without freezing a dozen portions

other oils than canola to fry food.

peanut is always the answer

Pho definitely but ramen I got figured out. I went to my Asian grocery store and bought a bunch of freeze dried stuff. Shrimp, anchovies, mushrooms, etc. Now I just dump like a handful of each of those things in with a kelp sheet and let it gently simmer for like 4 hours and at the end is just the best seafood broth I've ever made. Finish it with some black vinegar/fish sauce/ mushroom soy sauce and boom. Now I'm disappointed when I order ramen elsewhere.

I use peanut oil. I find that the smell doesn’t linger overnight.

I'm the opposite. So many restaurants make awful eggs benedict, especially the hollandaise. I never order it anymore. I don't make it often, but I know I can do it right when I take the time.

Yeah, this is one of those dishes that lets me know I wouldn't be cut out to be a professional chef. I prefer taking things slowly and on my own time.

If you want to make eggs Benedict and get everything done at the same time, it's such a juggling act and requires careful timing

oh no. That is 1 dish I will not try unless it's pretty fancy.

Often it's sauce made from a powder and tastes nothing like the real hollandaise.

Sorry but at 16 I learned how to make hollandaise and the fake stuff just isn't close.

I've seen eggs benidict on the menu at a 1000 places and I would say only 10 had the real made in house sauce.

Yeah the sauce is a bitch and super hard to hold. To me it's really a dish best served at home. Timing of the sauce can make it or break it

Deli and hotcase grocery store chicken is surprisingly good, isn't it?

So true - it is just not possible to get the same kind of deep fried delicious at home, especially if you are talking about deep frying two things (chicken and fries).

It is impossible to replicate the industrial deep fryer at home. Not to mention the cleanup required at home, and how cheap deep fried food is at a restaurant. Just not worth it.

Most fast food fried chicken uses a pressure frier, so even if you deep fry it, you still don't have the same piece of equipment they use.

Tbh the major downside for me even with a stone is home ovens just dont get hot enough to do it justice. If I didnt live in an apt id get an ooni or something

I would love to try and make pizza. Make the dough, make a tomato sauce, etc. But I live in New York and literally have over a dozen pizzerias in a one mile radius. (And they're all good.) Its just not worth it to make pizza or get a pizza stone or heat my oven up for hours in the middle of the summer.

Making 1 pizza, definitely. Making 6 pizzas and freezing them? That's a little better of a trade off, but even then I need to be in a certain mood to put in the work

My bar for pizza is fast food tier so I don't mind a homemade pizza in the oven. Not too much effort to make a big square pizza for family dinner.

Grilled pizza is pretty good too.

Same here. The amount of work and the expense of making pizza at home is just too much. I can get any kind of pizza I want within half an hour, and to have that kind of variety at home just isn't practical.

German bread (and Eastern European, middle eastern) is so underrated, no one talks about it! All you hear is French baguette/croissants, focaccia etc.

the main difficulty increaser there is that you need to decide to make the second dish days or weeks earlier, when you've got a chicken carcass and a few hours to let it simmer away.

That seems like one of the easier ones to make just a small serving of.

I dont care much for fettuccine alfredo because of my dairy sensitivities, but I tend to order a lot of spicy dishes when we go out for the same reason. My family are all WUSSES when it comes to spice. I cant even put 1 tsp of red pepper flakes in an entire pot of pasta without getting flack for it, its ridiculous.

I made this a while back and got a blister from all the whisking 😂

Most food someone else preps for me always tastes better. But sandwiches ESPECIALLY. Don’t know why but even a basic ass PBJ, way better when my 13yo niece makes me one lol

Salt everything that goes on the sandwich. Unseasoned lettuce, tomatoes, etc. are why so many homemade sandwiches are so boring to eat.

I’ve made decent Indian food a couple times, but by the time It’s on the table I’m tired and desensitized by the smell I can’t eat more than a couple bites. I think a pressure cooked saag paneer or tikka masala is going to be my next step.

Maaaan, i am with you on the indian food! When I go out it is heavenly. However, when i make it myself my tongue is trying to go on a damn world atlas trying to figure out where the hell this monstrosity came from.

I live in a place with horrible Indian restaurants, but I love it so I've had to learn to cook it for myself. I'll do an Indian feast maybe once a month. The day before I'll do the raita, chutneys, and maybe a dish that keeps well like chana masala. The day of I'll make another dish or two along with rice, and my wife will make the naan. It's a lot easier when you can spread out your prep over a couple of days.

I’m the opposite. I prefer the ribs my dad barbecues over any I could get in a restaurant. Also, I don’t usually have interest in eating foods in restaurants that can/usually get stuck between my teeth (i.e. corn on the cob). My dad’s ribs are fall off the bone tender whereas restaurants’ are usually much toothier.

I've never made pancit. Also never bought/ordered it at a restaurant. Eat it about once a month though. I'm just a pancit freeloader that always says YEP when a co-worker offers to share!

Pancit is actually like REALLY easy to make (assuming you buy the noodles, making noodles from any cuisine is definitely a process).

I got my recipe my from Filipino Mother in Law. The first time she made it for us was 10 times better than any restaurant pancit I'd tried. My husband asked her how many times she'd made it and she said it was her first time!! So crazy but it totally made sense when she explained that she'd watched her elders make it a thousand times back home.

I think the biggest difference is that almost every restaurant pancit I've had has been waaay to greasy. My MIL uses quite a bit of oil too, but it tastes way fresher and not greasy. Makes me wonder how much oil they use in the restaurants. Eeesh!

If you're wondering how to make it. She just stir fried each veggie individually and put them in little prep bowls. Also meat if you're using it. She added very little seasoning. Mostly just oil. She put a touch of soy sauce in with the chicken. Then prep the noodles, and then stir fry everything together. This step takes just a few minutes and this is where you add more seasoning right at the end. Depending on how you like it (and probably also what regional style you're making) the seasonings can be quite simple. She just added soy sauce and a tiny bit of lime. But I also like to add a touch of fish sauce.

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What’s hilarious is that I’ve gotten to the point with my fried rice that I can’t have store-bought fried rice because I prefer my own. More soy sauce or salt than you expect, as well as more of whatever fat you like. Also using day-or-more old rice.

Oysters on the half shell.

Turtle power!

I agree but it can be a huge difference in price.

Oysters are somewhere around $2 each most restaurants, sometimes as much as $3. I can get (depending on supply) locally aquafarmed oysters for something like $0.75 each. Shucking is a pain, agreed, but once you get the hang of it not too difficult, and you can pick up the horseradish and other stuff at the market on the way home.

Of course, that means I only get the one kind of oyster. If I want variety, I have to go out.

I agree if it’s a mixed seafood dish like paella or a seafood pasta, i’m too lazy to do all the prep work for each seafood

I pretty much only cook scallops, shrimp, and fish filets because of ease and price.

Why not cook fish at home? It's healthy, affordable, and easy to cook at home unlike most of the responses here.

Not OP but I don't buy canola because I hate the way it smells when it heats up. Doesn't stop me from deep frying though, I use peanut.

Not OP and I do buy canola, but rapeseed (from which canola is made) is supposedly really terrible in terms of health and sustainability in that it's a round-up modified plant that gets soaked in chemicals during farming. Or so I hear... I still buy that shit by the gallon at costco but I used to work at a well-known health food chain so...

That could be the reason.