Making recipes from scratch can be super rewarding, but there are just some things that are WAY too involved. Redditor u/cloud_of_fluff asked, "In your experience, what dish requires the most effort with the least amount of payoff?" Here's what people said:
1. "Deep-fried foods. You gotta faff about with breading or battering (wet hand, dry hand, etc.), and use a whole bottle of oil. Then wait for it to heat, cook in too many batches, let it drain. Not to mention any prep required before breading, and getting everything you own all greasy."
2. "Homemade sausages! They take hours of work for something that's a lot worse than getting it cheap at the butcher."
3. "Crawfish. I hate that I feel this way, especially because I live in New Orleans. But there is just soooooo little meat to them. Not worth the work."
4. "Dumplings. They are delicious, but the effort and time to make the fillings, fill the wrappers, and steaming them isn't worth the mere seconds it takes to eat them."
5. "Marinara sauce. Don't get me wrong, a proper homemade is better, but the whole pick, score, blanch, crash, peel the tomatoes for what feels like eternity, I get over it fast. Is homemade better? Yes. Is it that much better? I have a hard time thinking so."
6. "Homemade pasta. It's always too eggy for my taste."
7. "French onion soup. You have to cut up a TON of onions and then caramelize them for HOURS. And all you get out of it is...soup."
8. "French macarons. They’re time consuming and stressful to make due to the meticulousness. I only made them once and I don’t plan on making them ever again."
9. "I've never made puff-pastry personally, but everything I've read and watched said it's not worth making your own from scratch."
10. "Thanksgiving dinner. Huge turkey, tons of sides, and while yummy, there so many meals that are objectively better."
11. "Beef Wellington. I ate it twice. I made it once. It was good, in the way that a Hot Pocket filled with steak would also be good. There are better ways to eat a steak. And there are better ways to have steak in pastry. Either would be much less fussy and more tasty than making Beef Wellington."
12. "Buttermilk biscuits. I swear by the time I finish making them, my kitchen looks like a blizzard has hit."
13. "Croissants. They use SO MUCH butter. It's really expensive to make them yourself, cost more than store-bought, and don't really taste much different. Do it once for fun but, it's not worth the effort."
14. "Sushi rolls. There's lot of chopping and blanching vegetables, prepping meat if using it, and making the rice is a whole process. Then rolling them takes a while if you're not very practiced at it. Not only have I lost my appetite for it by then, but it's best when freshly made so eating it later doesn't sound great either."
15. "Bagels. I went through the whole process and never again. Store-bought is just fine, and deli ones are even better. There is no reason to go through that exercise again. But it did make me appreciate them more."
16. "For me, it must have been when I made scotch eggs. It took me almost an hour to make them, and when I did finally sit down to enjoy it, it just tasted like fried sausage and an egg. The two items didn't really become one."
17. "Unpopular opinion. Maybe. It's lasagna for me. When I make it, I make it. Homemade meat sauce, béchamel sauce, the works. I love that it makes for leftovers, I love that I can make two and put one in the freezer or share it. But it feels like every time I make it, by the time I take it out of the oven and it's time to eat, I'm totally over it."
18. "I made key lime pie from scratch once. Each key lime yielded about 1 tablespoon of juice. I spent a lot of time trying to get enough juice by hand to make a pie."
19. "Chile rellenos. Multi-step prep process. Roasting, sweating, peeling the skins, shredding, stuffing, battering (egg white frothing) frying, one at a time, then baking in a sauce that is another whole process in itself."
20. "Brownies from scratch. The Ghirardelli box mix is consistently better so why bother?"
And finally...
21. "Whatever I make my kids for dinner."
Did we miss any that you've heard? Comment down below!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.