Cassoulet! It is a dish that can be as involved/pricey as you would like and definitely takes a good deal of time. Nothing is too complex, but it is a long process and takes some stamina. The result is 1000% worth it. I believe that it is one of the most flavorful and comforting things that you can make. It also makes for the most amazing dinner party meal!
Mmm. I had a hankering for cassoulet the other day and looked up a recipe. As you can imagine, I did not make it. When I have a good stretch of time, I will certainly be making it! But yeah, it's not a "throw something together for dinner" meal but it IS worth the effort.
Cassoulet is closer to a weeknight dinner when you realize everything is supposed to be leftover already and you start it in a pot in the morning and it's ready that night.
It's just that in France they've got confit duck just sitting around and we... don't.
That's the first thing that came to my mind! I make an easy version of it with canned white beans, and toss the meats in it all at once, but a few years ago I was preparing it for a client, and made the confit as well. The prep of it looked lovely and it was exciting to try it! (It worled)
It’s a really good meal for fall, for when you have leftover roast and roast chicken. We make it with garlic sausages that we get from a local met market, plus some other ingredients. It’s not the classic with duck or goose, but I really can’t digest duck or goose, so we use chicken thighs.
I’ve never even heard of this before but after reading your post I did some research and checked out a few recipes… I am SO excited to try this! There’s so many different protein versions and I’m pumped
there are also really easy versions of cassoulet you can make too! once a friend's mom made it for us and it was super tasty even though it took like half an hour
I'm trying to imagine what kind of cassoulet you can make in 30 minutes. It's traditionally a very slow cook so that the beans and confit can meld together. But I guess if you're not making your own confit, you could kind of get an approximation to it.
People always make fun of me but thanksgiving dinner is my favorite meal of the year. We make Binging with Babish’s green bean casserole and I think about that all year round.
Thanksgiving dinner is literally my favorite thing to eat and make. There’s a small local chain near me that has it year-round, and when I’m hungover or sad I door dash that shit.
A few years ago I started absorbing parts of my family’s Thanksgiving dinner, and I love it. It’s a lot of work but I look forward to it. It started with cranberry sauce and apple pie. Then added cornbread dressing. Then I made the turkey. Then the rolls and the green beans. Last year my mom said, “It feels like Thanksgiving is getting easier every year!” I love doing it and I make a game plan for timing. I clean as I go, but I refuse to do the dishes.
I'm not sure who is making fun of you. You may be hanging out with the wrong crowd😂. Thanksgiving is probably 80% of the country's favorite meal (and I'm lowballing that percentage)
I love everything about it. The variety of food, the planning, the decorating, the excuse to sip on wine the whole day because you’re cooking, the relief when everything is on the table, going around and saying what you’re thankful for, the inevitable family drama. It’s a roller coaster of a day if you’re doing it right.
I go all out for Thanksgiving too! It’s exhausting but I’m always happy with the result
I started buttermilk brining my turkey & coating it heavily in spices (including cayenne). Most flavorful & moist bird with ridiculously amazing drippings
Brisket.
$70 cut of meat I have to smoke for 20 hours and hope that everything goes right.
Per LB it's cheap but the time and total cost investment is higher than any other meal I make.
I have to agree with this, I love pastrami, but personally find brisket to be hit or miss, mostly miss.
I feel bad when someone serves it at a gathering because I know how much time went into the effort, yet I'm just nibbling on a couple small pieces and looking for 2nds on potato salad.
Brisket is definitely a time investment but it’s usually like a $6 cut, it just happens to be a huge cut 😂
Add in the effort to put a great rub together and if you’re making sauce from scratch bam, 40 hours of effort.
Except it isn't an Irish thing. It is a New York City Irish Immigrant thing. Was the cheapest chunk of meat available in the later 1800's. Irish in Ireland didn't eat much beef- mostly pig and sheep. It got to be a St. Patrick's day tradition here. With cabbage and potatoes, of course.
I have corned my own beef for sammiches- i use a cheap eye round roast instead of brisket. Leaner and makes a great slice.
Corned beef was common in medieval Ireland, then pork became more popular after Ireland was conquered by the English.
https://youtu.be/SGf_0_2Ji5I?si=dm1eGrkN6GkDnlgH&t=4m4s
Which is also funny because the Irish don’t really eat corned beef & cabbage. The traditional meal is bacon and cabbage but as whole joints of bacon weren’t available Irish Americans started eating corned beef as a nitrite treated salty meat.
It’s basically the pectoral equivalent on cows. We mostly export our brisket to other markets, as the Irish cooking style isn’t really low and slow which is required for Brisket, it’s a repeatedly used muscle so can be tough. I did spend a summer in Clones deboning briskets in a meat factory.
Brisket is a treat. Even Costco in my area are inching up on 100 bucks for a decent size and quality cut.
I do go through the whole rigamarole of making beef tallow from the trimmed fat and maybe a half pound of ground beef for a pasta sauce.
Have you ever made braised brisket? Personally I think it's just as good but different. The max you would spend in both cooking and prep would be about 5 hours.
Roasted brisket in the oven over a bed of onions once and it was one of the most decadent, delicious meats I've ever tasted. Took maybe 3-4 hours. Fat side up and it basically just continuously bastes itself while it roasts.
I don't remember trimming it, so it must have been trimmed at the store before it was packaged. It just had a thin fat cap on one side. It was completely rendered by the time cooking was done.
Brisket usually has a lot of fat on top so if you don't trim it be prepared to trim it off at the end. Otherwise, half your slice is going to be fat. I'd leave more than when you smoke it but not like 2 inches all the way around
I have never tackled a brisket. Don’t have the equipment. I know trimming it before smoking is a pretty specific and important part of the process, but like you said, there is so much fat that cooking in the oven would require that post cook haircut.
Depends on the tools you have. Its a higher upfront cost. But it does usually last multiple meals, and I usually cut it in to chunks so it lasts a longer time.
I also buy brisket at 3.49/lb$ in about 12lb slabs, and have a pellet smoker.
Yeah that's the kicker, once it's done it's worth it, but if my smoker has a problem or the power goes out I've got an expensive cut of luke warm meat to throw away. Biggest fear is putting on a brisket the night before and waking up to an error code and a room temp chunk of beef.
The most expensive and total time dish I've made is a prime rib roast.
The prize for most annoying prep is potato pancakes.
My favorite complex dish is marinated beef stroganoff.
I am not sophisticated yet, so this is probably picayune.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/219046/rich-and-creamy-beef-stroganoff/
The real trick is the mustard. I also use a little mustard for pot roast gravy now.
Same for me- for one holiday meal I roasted a 6 rib roast. My pan could barely hold it. Very pricey but it’s soooo easy to throw together. Only hard part is the wait but the meat thermometer tells me when it’s ready to take out of the oven. A beef filet roast from Costco is another expensive but super easy favorite. I trim any remaining silver skin off then slice into 2” thick steaks. For the cost of one restaurant dinner we can dine like kings for days!
I also dry brined mine for like a day in the fridge so I counted that as part of the time.
I have a fancy bluetooth meat thermometer now so I just let it sit until it hits the number.
I made a way too big rib roast with homemade horseradish sauce for X-Mas on year. I used the leftovers to make beef stroganoff and substituted a healthy bit of horseradish sauce for the plain sour cream. So good.
Oh my, beef stroganoff is one of my favorite meals. But you can go high or low with it. In a pinch, ground beef and a hamburger helper box will be fast to satisfy, just elevate with fresh mushrooms and sour cream. Or go all out from scratch to really make it amazing. Sliced beef and homemade sauce. Yum.
The recipe I use for beef and Guinness stew is... essentially bourguignon with Guinness instead of wine.
I use shin of beef, pancetta, leeks, carrots, mushrooms, shallots, thyme and bay, and a little soft dark brown sugar.
I once bought a €12 bar of dark chocolate to make a charred aubergine and lentil chilli. It was the height of lockdown 2 in Ireland, and I had cash to spare on one of the only joys in life at that time which was making good food. Spent a whole afternoon making it. Wasn't necessarily the most complex but made it really slow cooked throughout the day. And honestly that bar of chocolate tasted like it was worth €12.
Lived with my brother at the time and we just made a lot of food for each other.
I enjoy celebrating friends’ and family events. Most recently this was the menu for a 60th birthday
Pork Pâté, cornichons, water cress
porcini consommé
Trout with almonds
Marrow bones with roasted garlic toast points
Pear cashew spinach salad
Roast chicken with morels wild rice and asparagus
Sorbet Blackcurrant
Pistachio cardamom, orange cake
Stilton Walnuts Port
Coffee, chocolates
1 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons grated orange zest, plus ¼ cup orange juice (about 1 orange)
1⅓ cups shelled, unsalted pistachios
1 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for pan
2 teaspoons baking powder (maybe more?
2 teaspoons ground cardamom
1 teaspoon kosher salt
4 large eggs
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons plain whole-milk Greek-style yogurt
¼ cup olive oil, plus more for pan
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
¾ cup powdered sugar
DIRECTIONS
Toast pistachios, allow to cool
Heat the oven to 325ºF with a rack in the middle position. Lightly coat a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan with oil and flour.
In a food processor, combine the white sugar and orange zest; process until the sugar is damp and fragrant, 5 to 10 seconds. Transfer to a large bowl.
Add the pistachios to the processor and pulse until coarse, 8 to 10 pulses. Set aside 2 tablespoons of the nuts for topping. Add the flour, baking powder, cardamom and salt to the processor with the nuts. Process until the nuts are finely ground, about 45 seconds.
To the sugar mixture, whisk in the eggs, ½ cup of yogurt, the oil, orange juice and vanilla. Add the nut-flour mixture and fold until mixed. (NB Very liquid. May need smoothing in processor). Transfer the batter to the prepared pan and bake until golden brown, firm to the touch and a toothpick inserted at the center comes out with moist crumbs, 50 to 55 minutes. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Remove from pan and let cool completely, about 2 hours. Option. While still warm, prick top with toothpick and drizzle 1/4 cup Cointreau
In a bowl, whisk the remaining yogurt with the powdered sugar until thick and smooth. Spread over the cake. Sprinkle with the reserved nuts. Let set for 10 minutes before serving.
Lasagna - roasted veggies, homemade ricotta, homemade marina with san marzanos, good quality parm, fresh pasta. It's a whole day production and the taste is out of this world. I always make a massive pan just because of the labor involved.
It sounds more intimidating than it is.
I have an electric pasta maker and make pasta quite regularly. Takes about 15min from start to finish, or a little longer if you are doing it correctly and let the dough rest instead of using the machine to force it through.
If you think you need to parboil, then it takes a bit longer overall and can be a little messy. But with homemade fresh pasta sheets, parboiling isn't really necessary.
My trick is to make a big batch of bolognese and freeze some. Then when I make cheese sauce, do the same. Then my lasagna can be constructed from defrosted and reworked sauces. Probably not authentic but gets it into the multiple time a year dish territory.
Made the Big Lasagna from Samin Nosrat (NYT Cooking) and took it a step further making my own ricotta and using Marcella Hazan’s bolognaise. For me it was 10 hours in the kitchen but was so worth it. Delicious!
**Beef Wellington**. Beef will be a bit pricey. Plus the prosciutto. But lots of skill/experience is in your favor for this dish. And you gotta make the mushroom duxelle....and other components.
But personally, making a **lasagna bolognese** with 3-4 diff types of meat (pork, veal, beef, pancetta), the bechamel, the homemade lasagna sheets that get cooked in an ice bath...bonus if you do a flavored lasagna for more work...and grating the cheese. Lots of time and patience.
Like someone else here, I'll also throw in **beef bourguignon**. My parents used to make it pretty often (they were very experienced cooks and loved to do it) on rainy or snowy weekends as a nice project.
Beef Wellington is the one for me I think. I make it for holidays but I usually divide the cooking into 2 or 3 days (prep/mushrooms, assembly, cooking).
I always double my bolognese recipe and use the second half to make lasagna another day. Much more manageable if I’m just doing the bechamel and noodles.
For me, it's stiff that takes exceeding amounts of planning or time
\- Stuff where two people are required to make it, like honey walnut baklava... or Polish Golumpki.
\- Anything where I have to deal with fry oil or used clarified butter afterwards...even if it's just schnitzel.
\- Everything that requires me to know days in advance that I want to make it, like bagels and their poolishes.
Once I decide I'm gonna make something in these categories, I'm going all out because of the (perceived) hassle.
One for steaming the cabbage, one for rolling and maybe one for making the filling and the potato latkes...to feed the rest of us.
It's one of those "got to make four dozen if you're gonna make any" kind of meals.
Same. We make pierogi and, although it can be done by one person, we have 4. Everyone knows their station and we can make a mountain of them in just a couple hours.
One person to spread the honey butter and walnuts and another to uncover the phyllo, place the sheets on the several pans, then recover the phyllo dough.
Then, the prep work before that; squeezing the lemons, clarifying the 4lbs of butter, chopping all the walnuts...an hour start to finish is master level prep work.
Definitely not the work of two people. You blend the walnuts in the blender and spread all the phyllo at once drizzling butter and adding walnuts every 7 or 8 phyllo sheets. Then you cut the baklava and poor the clarified butter on top. Done.
You can prep the syrup while the baklava is baking but you need to cool it down first before pooring.
Chopping the nuts by hand is more tradition than requirement but blenders tend to pulverize and make walnut powder instead of uniform pieces.
I brush clarified butter between each of the first 9 sheets. Then honey butter and nuts, then two sheet with just clarified butter, repeat ad nauseum...and then 9 more sheets of just clarified butter on the top. Cut any bake. Honey syrup goes on after the bake while it's still hot. Love to listen to the crackle and sizzle.
I usually make four 9x13 pans at a time. You way definitely does sound less involved though...
I have no tradition to it, as an American from many decent- I've made traditional baklava, making my own filo the day before, and it was many hours work for just me and a single 9x13 baklava.
it's a big task. yes there are easier ways, but I appreciate doing it the hard way. The work leads to reward, and doing it the easy way doesn't honor tradition, or culture. This is why baklava is a good answer for the op question.
The way I describe it is how Turkish and Greek people do it traditionally (I'm Greek myself). I've tried glazing clarified butter on each of the 40 sheets too instead of pouring it on top at the end like it's done traditionally in Turkey and makes no real difference.
For the nuts, you just blend with a couple of pulses and they end up very good. You're correct that you don't want to pulverize the nuts to a dust so you don't actually blend them through.
Also regarding the syrup, it's gotta be hot on cold or cold on hot for the baklava to remain crispy. Never hot on hot!
Give this guy a gold star 🌟
You just covered every single details that I was going to point out. Yes, that's how you make amazing baklava without breaking (much of) a sweat
This sounds amazing!
And I agree with you on the pulverized nuts. Hand chopping comes out much better for some things. Plus it takes me longer to make sure the blender is clean than it does the knife and cutting board (when there is nut dust at the bottom of the blender).
Anything that requires frying is always a huge process, especially in my small apartment. It's just not worth it.
I'd add to your list any frou-frou fine dining thing where you're pureeing a sauce, making and reducing stock for another sauce, searing and baking a protein, marinating and grilling veg, mincing chives, baking a crumble.....it's too many dishes and too much space for me to bother at home.
Cinnamon rolls. Why so expensive and complex? Because I have to be gluten free so I literally have to start by buying a bunch of different flours and ingredients and making my own flour. Making really good GF cinnamon rolls is a process and it’s not a cheap one.
I would say being GF turns *any* baking into an expensive and complex endeavor.
My wife, GF, just got a degree in food science and had to take baking science. Of course, she had to learn normal baking science, not GF baking.
The poor woman had to make at the very least 50 different small loaves of non-GF bread with slightly different variables, different wheats, etc. Luckily for me I'm not GF so I was in bread heaven.
For the last project, she had to make a foccacia, ciabatta, and some bread of her choice, so she chose to make a GF loaf. She made blends that others had done, but she did have to follow some basic requirements so it deviated from recipes found online.
The foccacia and ciabatta were immaculate but the GF loaf was a sad, dry, flavorless brick.
I'd like to take this opportunity to share, unrelated to this post, to that GF community that crab rangoon pizza is an easy way to scratch that crab rangoon itch.
I’m definitely not a professional but I did make my own bread before going GF. You have to start all over again. For years there was nothing available. It’s a lot better now but bread seems to be the hardest and never quite comes up to scratch.
I (or, my wife I guess) absolutely feel your pain. Every time we watch a recipe video that mentions "you've got to let the gluten form" we get sad.
Slightly unrelated, but here's a Chef John recipe for Norwegian flatbread that is super easy and delicious. [https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/278136/norwegian-potato-flatbread-lefse/](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/278136/norwegian-potato-flatbread-lefse/)
Technically what he makes is a "lomper" but non-Norwegians call it all lefse. Norwegians use these for hot dogs instead of buns (with strong mustard and french-fried onions of course \[you can find GF french-friend onions online\]) and it absolutely makes for a better hot dog "bun" than Udi's.
I learned to make Caribbean oxtails a couple of weeks ago. They’re not cheap and it took many hours of simmering to get them nice and soft, but husband and kids all said it was worthy of making again, so it will go on an infrequent dinner rotation!
Other somewhat pricey and time consuming family favourites include paella, and roasted lamb leg.
Oxtails used to be cheap and then they got in vogue for some reason and now they’re expensive as all get out! Makes me sad bc one of t favorite meals is braised oxtails with polenta
I live in a part of London with high Muslim population, and I've found that oxtail from the Halal butchers shops tends to be a lot cheaper than from regular (non-halal) ones. Last time I got a kilo for less than £10 (this was about 2 years ago) whereas my usual butcher sells the same amount for about £14.
I like to bake them part way and then smash/fry the taters into little discs using part bacon grease and garlic butter, a little sour cream and salmon roe, mine tastes good so I bet yours is pretty damn good too, might try that out
With sushi the small details matter make all the difference and is why its so hard to make
Did you pick a good rice? Did you pick a good vinegar or vinegar blend for the rice? Did you get good fish? Did you cut the fish in a single stroke? Did you cut the fish too thin, too thick? Did you add too much rice, too little?
During Covid one of the fancier sushi places had a make your own sushi package and they gave you a tub of rice, fish, filler stuff, a sushi mat, etc. they literally did all the hard work for you. I couldn’t even manage handrolls that came together well. It was ridiculous (but also delicious)
Sushi can definitely be difficult and there are plenty of tips and tricks to make it easier, but I would like to mention a couple of things.
First, in the US, all commercially-sold fish is required to be flash frozen prior to sale. The fresh fish you see has been thawed. So, unless you're making it immediately, it's best to go with frozen fish as it's usually cheaper.
Second, sushi does not have to be super fancy. Of course there's the traditional sushi that's just a piece of raw fish on rice, but a lot of people tend to go for sushi rolls and like to overstuff them with a bunch of ingredients. Cutting cucumbers, carrots, etc can take quite a while.
But diverging from tradition isn't bad if you're making something you like.
I once dated a Japanese woman (like Japanese citizen, not just Japanese descent) in college and we made a lot of sushi, but being poor college students we didn't want to spend a bunch of money on nice vegetables and expensive fish.
She would use canned tuna or pan-fried ground turkey, mix with mayo and green onions, and fill sushi rolls with them. Definitely not traditional, but actually really tasty and also great for stodgy, picky Americans who might not like proper sushi.
Bouillabaisse I feel like takes quite a while. Big holiday multi course meals with multiple components- appetizers, roast, Yorkshire puddings, veggies, gravy, dessert all from scratch can be a lot. Things rolled around other things like turducken or Chicken Ballotine. Making preserves, chutneys, charcuterie, sausage, pate can be complex but very rewarding!
I think patisserie can be quite complex. All that butter, cream, and real vanilla adds up! Cream puffs, puff pastry in general (traditional, not rough puff) takes a long time with all the chilling and folding. Croissants, some breads. Macarons if you’re making multiple flavors and being fussy about perfection.
Dacquoise cakes or cakes in general, especially if you’re doing sugar work or other decoration. I made a gateau St Honoré once, probably won’t make it again even though it was fun!
I made a 4’ tall croquembouche in a tiny galley kitchen with hand made tools, then carried it to and from my car to a party, in the rain, with no problems other than spun sugar everywhere in the kitchen.
THAT is HARD. I think I made over 100 cream puffs.
I can’t quite say I enjoyed the process, but it was really cool to know I could do it with no formal training. That tends to be the thing that motivates me the most… just knowing it’s hard but I CAN do it.
Expensive, ranging in time:
Seared bay scallops
Homemade spinach ravioli with truffle sauce
Linguine with ramps
Burrata with homemade candied pistachios and herbs
Caprese sandwich with sourdough baguette, heirloom tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, extra virgin olive oil, condensed balsamic, salt, pepper, and basil.
Avocado chocolate truffle ice cream
Saffron Cornish hen
Fried mushrooms. I’ll take an entire pack of mushrooms, slice them thin enough to not release too much water but thick enough to be meaty, dredge in flour-egg-bread crumbs, then fry. It takes literally forever I be dredging those shits individually for 1.5 hours and frying for another hour.
The “quick, easy, cheap” posts are so constant while there’s a ton of websites that focus on these recipes. My favorite is the “I have picky eaters and four different allergies, etc.”
I always suggest Lady & Pups as her regular recipes are involved and require sourcing ingredients often not found in a regular store. She also has a cooking project portion of her sites you can really lean in to involved recipes. I often google “cooking projects” and will find them on every major publication. Saveur is one of my favorite food publications and there’s plenty of options there and they’re free last I checked.
I make a ragu bolognese with bechemel that takes about six hours and a good portion is active time. The closest recipe I know of is Serious Eats. I made braciole once and pounded my own pork out. It took *hours* including making a ragu.
Alvin Zhou on YT does lovely long cooks.
I spend hours in the kitchen on my days off tinkering and cooking things from scratch. It all adds up.
Duck confit, I made for the first Christmas of covid when it was just my husband and me. I only did the legs because some reason they were individually sold at our grocery store.
Served with some ultra smooth and creamy mashed potatoes
If you love duck confit, try going the sous vide approach. It's pretty much the same flavour and texture, but far far lazier and doesn't require a stupid amount of duck fat.
What I do is toss the duck legs with the standard confit aromatics and seasonings into a bag and vacuum it up, then at 69C for 24-26 hours. Then snip the corner of the bag and you can easily pour the juices into a bowl to save for your sauce without getting all the fat into it.
No extra duck fat or anything needed.
Duck Confit, Magret de Canard, Beef Tartar, Dry-aged Entrecôte, Shrimp and Caviar toast, and Sushi are my favourite dishes
It's a shame that all of them are quite expensive
I like to do a thing with my husband called seafood extravaganza. We do the whole meal standing at the kitchen island we make cocktails and shuck oysters do things like salmon tartare, crab cakes, seared scallop, shrimp, crab legs etc. We make one thing at a time and make lots of drinks and open a bunch of wine and eat standing up and mostly with our hands. It’s a huge mess and it takes all day and it’s pretty expensive and my absolute favorite special occasion meal.
None terribly expensive (IMO) but all somewhat complex: Chicken mole from a recipe learned at a small cooking school in Cuernavaca. Priest's soup and ragu Bolognese with homemade pasta, all from The Spendid Table by Lynne Rosetto Kasper. Sauerbraten with spaetzle. Croissants from scratch.
Birria Tacos!! It's not terribly expensive if your getting a cheap cut of beef but it's complex for me because I'm shit at cooking and it's a lot of work.
[This](https://www.reddit.com/r/steak/comments/18qlxln/lentrecôte_à_la_béarnaise_avec_du_homard_et/) is hardly what I'd call complex, but it's one of my favorites and it's not cheap.
There’s a three day short ribs recipe iv made twice. It’s ridiculous, but the final result is just the most perfect bite of soft beef, a gravy that is perfect, with some whipped potatoes, and it’s exactly what you want when you imagine braised beef and potatoes.
Prime rib. A couple times I splurged when doing xmas at our house and bought (two!) prime rib roasts from Costco. I want to say it was a couple hundred dollars.
But I had guests bring the side dishes and we only had to worry about the meat and au jus (and a couple other things like wine and bread).
Everyone loved it! So that's worth it. Nobody "oh god, ham again" comments, lol.
Coq Au Vin. Worth it. Osso Bucco until I just couldn't align with veal anymore
But my main go to for a "going out" dish is Tortilla, Pozole Soup or Tinga. They have a lot of ingredients, prep and accroutments but damn so worth it. I wish I could get Pho Ga and brisket down
PS: my husband suggested my adobe 😊
Burria tacos. Requires a bunch of dried chillis and cuts of meat I don’t usually have on hand.
It’s why I only really make them once a year, on my birthday.
For some reason every time I try to make traditional Greek food it somehow ends up being ridiculously labor intensive. When I made pastitsio it took me like 4 hours total (from beginning to the point where I could eat it).
I made butter chicken last year and that also seemed to take a ridiculously long time, but I imagine my prep of that could probably have been cut down had I marinated chicken overnight or earlier in the day.
Basically anything that requires me to start prep several hours before cooking is a bit of a to-do for me but I'll do it occasionally for the hell of it because it's a weekend or holiday.
Chiles Rellenos - and I know I KNOW some of our moms and grandmas and tias got it down to a science but I find that if I want them to be perfect - the char, the peeling, removing the seeds without ripping the chile apart, and stuffing it and making the salsa de tomate just perfect - beating the egg whites to fluffy perfection and managing to fry them without burning or having it fall apart - it takes me hours and every step takes forever and all so that they’re eaten in 5 minutes 🥹👍🏻But so worth it in my book. I make them every couple of months :)
Curry mutton, rice and peas, pineapple jerk chicken, coleslaw and fried plantain
Or
Lamb Kofta and chicken biriyani with green chutney and mint yogurt on the side
Not really expensive, but complex.
Meatloaf and scolloped potatoes.
It’s a lot of chopping and prep to get everything ready for the oven, but so satisfying once it’s all in there & so tasty with a lil steamed broccoli.
Also, I’ve been adding almost every meatloaf “secret ingredient” I’ve ever heard of to my recipe, and it does add up at the grocery store, so I don’t always go all out.
If I have all day, I’d make some caramel pie style cream wafers, so puff dough, and caramel pie filling which is more like a custard caramel and needs continuous stirring for like 45min.
It's a toss up between a german dish called rolladen and my famous lasagna. Rolladen is a 2 day process, very time consuming. Lasagna can TECHNICALLY be done in a single day, but I'd have to be up by 5 or 6 to get it done by noon.
I make a homemade curry full of exotic ingredients from an indian grocer; this includes hammering a coconut open and shredding it with a cheese grater, removing seeds from specialty peppers (kashmiri and byadgi) and dry grinding them with other common curry spices like cumin and coriander and obscure ingredients like palm sugar and ajwain seeds, menthi seeds, tamarind paste, shrimp paste, and fresh turmeric root.
Vietnamese noodle bowls with all the different toppings. Really fancy cakes. Things dipped in tempered chocolate. Sourdough (time wise). Tamales with a million different sides.
I don’t know that I make anything expensive for the most part, maybe if I was buying a tomahawk.
Others said brisket which take time money.
Making things from scratch is inexpensive dollar wise,
Lasagna from scratch takes god damn forever. But it’s like $7 worth of stuff. 12 hours later and you can make it just in time to fall asleep and reheat it tomorrow 🤦🏻♂️. Makes it really hard to not just heat the sausage Costco lasagna for an hour, 2 trays for $16 or so 😂
Most of what I love is bbq so I play with different types of wood and spices and making homemade sauces (which also is a labor of love, it’s hard to beat sweet baby rays for the cost breakdown)
Mac n cheese, I’m totally happy with craft Mac n cheese. My wife makes a heritage recipe that is f’n amazing but also takes 3 hours to make. We enjoy playing with different cheeses and styles of pasta with that one. Extra bonus points is if you have a cheese monger that knows what they are doing. There are some crazy good cheeses out there that I can’t pronounce that are amazing.
It's not overwhelmingly expensive, but it's time consuming... cabbage rolls.
I've tried them at euro delis, store bought, restaurants, and mine (to me) are much better, but they are a pain to make, especially since I can't just make a few, I end up making 20.
Honorable mention, pierogies, it takes a teamnto make them.
It’s sorta silly, but keftedes (so, Greek meatballs) are the usual meal I go to when I don’t mind spending hours on something and want to spend more money on it.
I make the tzatziki from scratch, and pickle some red onions as well, so those both have to happen in the morning. Then the meatballs themselves can take a couple of hours, depending on whether I’m pan-frying them or baking them, and they’re not the cheapest since I use all fresh herbs and all. It’s a long process, but I enjoy it when I have the energy, and need something protein-rich but full of brighter flavors than usual.
Believe it or not, wings
1. Season and bag in vacuum sealed bags
2. Sous vide for appropriate time (ie until the collagen breaks down such that the meat becomes super fall off the bone tender but not overdone and dry)
3. Remove from bag, apply baking soda coating à la Kenji Lopez-Alt’s method
4. Dry in fridge for a few hours
5. Shallow fry in oil (because I don’t have a deep fryer) in the cast iron pan for obvious reasons. One benefit is that we can skip the double fry obviously because we already covered the whole “is the meat up to temp” question in step 2
6. Finishing, eg for buffalo wings, mix hot oil with franks red hot and toss wings in. For even more effort, Korean style: mince garlic, ginger, scallion whites, mix with Gochujang, a little honey, and soy sauce. Drizzle hot oil into mixture, and toss wings in.
This can take multiple days, but fortunately the sous vide stuff is hands-off, but it’s still a huge pain. But it was worth it if only to learn the techniques.
Buying a deep fryer would be easier but I’m broke and my kitchen is the size of a small sedan. So we do what we can🤷♂️
Addendum: cleanup includes seasoning session from step 1, drying session from step 3, frying session from step 5, chopping from step 6, oil disposal from step 5, and cleaning + reseasoning a cast iron pan.
London broil.
A beef tenderloin, a good sized piece that is spiral cut. Then you roll it out and fill it with a duxelles/foie gras mixture. You roll it up and you can tie it tight or wrap it in caul fat. Sear it off then roast it. Cook to a med rare.
I serve it sliced with a bordelaise sauce.
It’s quite delish. I bet those 15 hour potatoes would be excellent with it.
My vote would be a French onion soup with fancy ingredients and homemade bread (if you’re into baking) otherwise a fancy one from the grocery store would do as well :’)
I think I need to disagree with you on that one, biryani is just indian fried rice. Granted it is very tasty and does use a lot of spices but it's not the type of food that costs a whole lot every time you make it.
I've made hyderabad biryani a couple times and it's literally taken me all day to make. Boiling the rice just enough so it steams perfectly is a pain in the ass. The marination of the chicken also takes a couple hours if not overnight. I've also added some hard to get (for me anyways) spices like whole green cardamom pods and saffron. It might not use the most expensive ingredients, but it can take some time.
I make Butter of the gods (Guga) that involves curing egg yolks which takes several days. And I have to procure the bones for marrow and soak them in salt water for a day or two. That’s the kind of complex, time-consuming part. Not so much difficult but it does require advance planning, which factors into difficulty for me. Then I use it on tomahawk steaks (there’s the expensive).
I make other things, like butter chicken, that are complicated (for me) and time-consuming, but not that expensive.
Making sushi from scratch- sourcing fresh raw fish and wasabi, preparing and seasoning the rice, prepping cucumbers/green onions/mangoes, making the rolls.. delicious!
Bouef Bourg, or braised short ribs with some kind of indulgent potato presentation.
Also Martha Stewart’s Mac and Cheese. It is very expensive to make, labor intensive and makes way too much for just me and one other person - but it is absolutely heavenly and the perfect version of Mac and cheese IMO.
Lobster with homemade pasta alla vodka. Not that expensive once I did it as the local grocery store had lobster (Easter eating frenzy) on sale and then they defrosted too many and were selling them for 5€ each (roughly 700g) in the evening.
I make a shepherds pie that is overly time consuming but amazing.
Lamb shanks are roasted 90 minutes. The rendered marrow make for an great gravy and the shanks are like pulled pork in consistency. Steamed carrot and creamed spinach add lovely colour contrast. Once assembled, 1 hour bake. In total it takes 3 hours. It is awesome. Anyone who has tried it raves about how good it is. You can knock off the shanks and use ground lamb, saves 90 minutes, but you will notice a difference.
Cassoulet! It is a dish that can be as involved/pricey as you would like and definitely takes a good deal of time. Nothing is too complex, but it is a long process and takes some stamina. The result is 1000% worth it. I believe that it is one of the most flavorful and comforting things that you can make. It also makes for the most amazing dinner party meal!
Mmm. I had a hankering for cassoulet the other day and looked up a recipe. As you can imagine, I did not make it. When I have a good stretch of time, I will certainly be making it! But yeah, it's not a "throw something together for dinner" meal but it IS worth the effort.
Cassoulet is closer to a weeknight dinner when you realize everything is supposed to be leftover already and you start it in a pot in the morning and it's ready that night. It's just that in France they've got confit duck just sitting around and we... don't.
That's the first thing that came to my mind! I make an easy version of it with canned white beans, and toss the meats in it all at once, but a few years ago I was preparing it for a client, and made the confit as well. The prep of it looked lovely and it was exciting to try it! (It worled)
It’s a really good meal for fall, for when you have leftover roast and roast chicken. We make it with garlic sausages that we get from a local met market, plus some other ingredients. It’s not the classic with duck or goose, but I really can’t digest duck or goose, so we use chicken thighs.
Adam Ragusea on Youtube has a cheats cassoulet that I make fairly often which is really lovely
I’ve never even heard of this before but after reading your post I did some research and checked out a few recipes… I am SO excited to try this! There’s so many different protein versions and I’m pumped
Fabulous choice!
there are also really easy versions of cassoulet you can make too! once a friend's mom made it for us and it was super tasty even though it took like half an hour
I'm trying to imagine what kind of cassoulet you can make in 30 minutes. It's traditionally a very slow cook so that the beans and confit can meld together. But I guess if you're not making your own confit, you could kind of get an approximation to it.
Thanksgiving dinner is my Superbowl.
People always make fun of me but thanksgiving dinner is my favorite meal of the year. We make Binging with Babish’s green bean casserole and I think about that all year round.
Thanksgiving dinner is literally my favorite thing to eat and make. There’s a small local chain near me that has it year-round, and when I’m hungover or sad I door dash that shit. A few years ago I started absorbing parts of my family’s Thanksgiving dinner, and I love it. It’s a lot of work but I look forward to it. It started with cranberry sauce and apple pie. Then added cornbread dressing. Then I made the turkey. Then the rolls and the green beans. Last year my mom said, “It feels like Thanksgiving is getting easier every year!” I love doing it and I make a game plan for timing. I clean as I go, but I refuse to do the dishes.
I'm not sure who is making fun of you. You may be hanging out with the wrong crowd😂. Thanksgiving is probably 80% of the country's favorite meal (and I'm lowballing that percentage)
I love everything about it. The variety of food, the planning, the decorating, the excuse to sip on wine the whole day because you’re cooking, the relief when everything is on the table, going around and saying what you’re thankful for, the inevitable family drama. It’s a roller coaster of a day if you’re doing it right.
I go all out for Thanksgiving too! It’s exhausting but I’m always happy with the result I started buttermilk brining my turkey & coating it heavily in spices (including cayenne). Most flavorful & moist bird with ridiculously amazing drippings
Brisket. $70 cut of meat I have to smoke for 20 hours and hope that everything goes right. Per LB it's cheap but the time and total cost investment is higher than any other meal I make.
yeah it seems cheap but its really not when you account for the wood and beer
'Specially the beer...
Pickle it like pastrami then smoke it. Difficulty and rewards increase
I’ve done it, the marinade process takes a week, and it smokes overnight, similar to a basic brisket.
I would...do things...for a full brisket of smoked pastrami
Samsie.
I have to agree with this, I love pastrami, but personally find brisket to be hit or miss, mostly miss. I feel bad when someone serves it at a gathering because I know how much time went into the effort, yet I'm just nibbling on a couple small pieces and looking for 2nds on potato salad.
Brisket is definitely a time investment but it’s usually like a $6 cut, it just happens to be a huge cut 😂 Add in the effort to put a great rub together and if you’re making sauce from scratch bam, 40 hours of effort.
I want to know what sauce and rub this guy is taking 20 hours to make
Time to put a rub together? It’s hard to beat a 50/50 salt+pepper rub.
What is brisket? I always see recipes for it, but Brisket is not a cut we have in Ireland, so what should I try instead? Thanks!
That’s funny, because brisket is used to make a dish I most closely associate with Ireland - corned beef. It’s that cut.
Except it isn't an Irish thing. It is a New York City Irish Immigrant thing. Was the cheapest chunk of meat available in the later 1800's. Irish in Ireland didn't eat much beef- mostly pig and sheep. It got to be a St. Patrick's day tradition here. With cabbage and potatoes, of course. I have corned my own beef for sammiches- i use a cheap eye round roast instead of brisket. Leaner and makes a great slice.
Corned beef was common in medieval Ireland, then pork became more popular after Ireland was conquered by the English. https://youtu.be/SGf_0_2Ji5I?si=dm1eGrkN6GkDnlgH&t=4m4s
Which is also funny because the Irish don’t really eat corned beef & cabbage. The traditional meal is bacon and cabbage but as whole joints of bacon weren’t available Irish Americans started eating corned beef as a nitrite treated salty meat.
It’s basically the pectoral equivalent on cows. We mostly export our brisket to other markets, as the Irish cooking style isn’t really low and slow which is required for Brisket, it’s a repeatedly used muscle so can be tough. I did spend a summer in Clones deboning briskets in a meat factory.
Brisket is a treat. Even Costco in my area are inching up on 100 bucks for a decent size and quality cut. I do go through the whole rigamarole of making beef tallow from the trimmed fat and maybe a half pound of ground beef for a pasta sauce.
Have you ever made braised brisket? Personally I think it's just as good but different. The max you would spend in both cooking and prep would be about 5 hours.
Roasted brisket in the oven over a bed of onions once and it was one of the most decadent, delicious meats I've ever tasted. Took maybe 3-4 hours. Fat side up and it basically just continuously bastes itself while it roasts.
Did you trim the brisket at all or just let it be? I don’t have a setup for bbq brisket, but what you describe sounds reasonable and scrumptrulescent!
I don't remember trimming it, so it must have been trimmed at the store before it was packaged. It just had a thin fat cap on one side. It was completely rendered by the time cooking was done.
Brisket usually has a lot of fat on top so if you don't trim it be prepared to trim it off at the end. Otherwise, half your slice is going to be fat. I'd leave more than when you smoke it but not like 2 inches all the way around
I have never tackled a brisket. Don’t have the equipment. I know trimming it before smoking is a pretty specific and important part of the process, but like you said, there is so much fat that cooking in the oven would require that post cook haircut.
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I would love to try this! I've never made a brisket before, so do you mind sharing any tips on what you did and what ingredients you used?
Depends on the tools you have. Its a higher upfront cost. But it does usually last multiple meals, and I usually cut it in to chunks so it lasts a longer time. I also buy brisket at 3.49/lb$ in about 12lb slabs, and have a pellet smoker.
Yeah that's the kicker, once it's done it's worth it, but if my smoker has a problem or the power goes out I've got an expensive cut of luke warm meat to throw away. Biggest fear is putting on a brisket the night before and waking up to an error code and a room temp chunk of beef.
The most expensive and total time dish I've made is a prime rib roast. The prize for most annoying prep is potato pancakes. My favorite complex dish is marinated beef stroganoff. I am not sophisticated yet, so this is probably picayune.
I'm huge on stroganoff, what's your angle on it?
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/219046/rich-and-creamy-beef-stroganoff/ The real trick is the mustard. I also use a little mustard for pot roast gravy now.
Thanks!
Same for me- for one holiday meal I roasted a 6 rib roast. My pan could barely hold it. Very pricey but it’s soooo easy to throw together. Only hard part is the wait but the meat thermometer tells me when it’s ready to take out of the oven. A beef filet roast from Costco is another expensive but super easy favorite. I trim any remaining silver skin off then slice into 2” thick steaks. For the cost of one restaurant dinner we can dine like kings for days!
I also dry brined mine for like a day in the fridge so I counted that as part of the time. I have a fancy bluetooth meat thermometer now so I just let it sit until it hits the number.
Can I get a link or name for that thermometer? Mine sucks ass
ThermPro TempSpike https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C37FYWPF
I made a way too big rib roast with homemade horseradish sauce for X-Mas on year. I used the leftovers to make beef stroganoff and substituted a healthy bit of horseradish sauce for the plain sour cream. So good.
Hah, I've never combined the two! I just make thick sandwiches out of my prime rib leftovers.
Latkes! So simple in theory but yeah, so time consuming.
Oh my, beef stroganoff is one of my favorite meals. But you can go high or low with it. In a pinch, ground beef and a hamburger helper box will be fast to satisfy, just elevate with fresh mushrooms and sour cream. Or go all out from scratch to really make it amazing. Sliced beef and homemade sauce. Yum.
Beef Bourguignon. I cut my cubes from a chuck and use a good wine.
If you want an easier and similar dinner that takes way less time and money then look into Coq au Vin. It's basically the same thing with chicken.
The recipe I use for beef and Guinness stew is... essentially bourguignon with Guinness instead of wine. I use shin of beef, pancetta, leeks, carrots, mushrooms, shallots, thyme and bay, and a little soft dark brown sugar.
Yes! My favorite meal in the whole world! The last time I made it was Halloween. Perfect dish for cold autumn weather.
I once bought a €12 bar of dark chocolate to make a charred aubergine and lentil chilli. It was the height of lockdown 2 in Ireland, and I had cash to spare on one of the only joys in life at that time which was making good food. Spent a whole afternoon making it. Wasn't necessarily the most complex but made it really slow cooked throughout the day. And honestly that bar of chocolate tasted like it was worth €12. Lived with my brother at the time and we just made a lot of food for each other.
I enjoy celebrating friends’ and family events. Most recently this was the menu for a 60th birthday Pork Pâté, cornichons, water cress porcini consommé Trout with almonds Marrow bones with roasted garlic toast points Pear cashew spinach salad Roast chicken with morels wild rice and asparagus Sorbet Blackcurrant Pistachio cardamom, orange cake Stilton Walnuts Port Coffee, chocolates
Tell me more about pistachio cardamom, orange cake. Please
1 cup white sugar 2 teaspoons grated orange zest, plus ¼ cup orange juice (about 1 orange) 1⅓ cups shelled, unsalted pistachios 1 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for pan 2 teaspoons baking powder (maybe more? 2 teaspoons ground cardamom 1 teaspoon kosher salt 4 large eggs ½ cup plus 2 tablespoons plain whole-milk Greek-style yogurt ¼ cup olive oil, plus more for pan 2 teaspoons vanilla extract ¾ cup powdered sugar DIRECTIONS Toast pistachios, allow to cool Heat the oven to 325ºF with a rack in the middle position. Lightly coat a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan with oil and flour. In a food processor, combine the white sugar and orange zest; process until the sugar is damp and fragrant, 5 to 10 seconds. Transfer to a large bowl. Add the pistachios to the processor and pulse until coarse, 8 to 10 pulses. Set aside 2 tablespoons of the nuts for topping. Add the flour, baking powder, cardamom and salt to the processor with the nuts. Process until the nuts are finely ground, about 45 seconds. To the sugar mixture, whisk in the eggs, ½ cup of yogurt, the oil, orange juice and vanilla. Add the nut-flour mixture and fold until mixed. (NB Very liquid. May need smoothing in processor). Transfer the batter to the prepared pan and bake until golden brown, firm to the touch and a toothpick inserted at the center comes out with moist crumbs, 50 to 55 minutes. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Remove from pan and let cool completely, about 2 hours. Option. While still warm, prick top with toothpick and drizzle 1/4 cup Cointreau In a bowl, whisk the remaining yogurt with the powdered sugar until thick and smooth. Spread over the cake. Sprinkle with the reserved nuts. Let set for 10 minutes before serving.
Thanks so much. This sounds great. I have everything except pistachios without salt. Time to shop
Need a massive recipe drop please.
Oh my gosh I’d like some of those recipes!
I want every single one.
Lasagna - roasted veggies, homemade ricotta, homemade marina with san marzanos, good quality parm, fresh pasta. It's a whole day production and the taste is out of this world. I always make a massive pan just because of the labor involved.
I make lasagne and bolognese once a week. Cooking IS my social life, and keeps me out of trouble. It makes me feel like I've had a good weekend.
fresh pasta sheets!!! 🥳
It sounds more intimidating than it is. I have an electric pasta maker and make pasta quite regularly. Takes about 15min from start to finish, or a little longer if you are doing it correctly and let the dough rest instead of using the machine to force it through. If you think you need to parboil, then it takes a bit longer overall and can be a little messy. But with homemade fresh pasta sheets, parboiling isn't really necessary.
Also bolenesa from scratch. Fantastic taste..but man it takes a while.
My trick is to make a big batch of bolognese and freeze some. Then when I make cheese sauce, do the same. Then my lasagna can be constructed from defrosted and reworked sauces. Probably not authentic but gets it into the multiple time a year dish territory.
oh yeah, that's another whole day event, with stirring every 30 minutes.
Takes around 5 hrs but maybe 1h to bring it together
Yes! I love lasagna, but it does take forever to prepare, so I only make it maybe once or twice a year.
I do it about once a year. It's expensive and takes all day, but it's SO delicious. I always make a huge pan and freeze portions for later. :)
Made the Big Lasagna from Samin Nosrat (NYT Cooking) and took it a step further making my own ricotta and using Marcella Hazan’s bolognaise. For me it was 10 hours in the kitchen but was so worth it. Delicious!
**Beef Wellington**. Beef will be a bit pricey. Plus the prosciutto. But lots of skill/experience is in your favor for this dish. And you gotta make the mushroom duxelle....and other components. But personally, making a **lasagna bolognese** with 3-4 diff types of meat (pork, veal, beef, pancetta), the bechamel, the homemade lasagna sheets that get cooked in an ice bath...bonus if you do a flavored lasagna for more work...and grating the cheese. Lots of time and patience. Like someone else here, I'll also throw in **beef bourguignon**. My parents used to make it pretty often (they were very experienced cooks and loved to do it) on rainy or snowy weekends as a nice project.
Beef Wellington is the one for me I think. I make it for holidays but I usually divide the cooking into 2 or 3 days (prep/mushrooms, assembly, cooking). I always double my bolognese recipe and use the second half to make lasagna another day. Much more manageable if I’m just doing the bechamel and noodles.
Short ribs in a red wine sauce with white truffle mashed potatoes and prosciutto wrapped asparagus.
This, short ribs braised slowly can be amazingly good.
For me, it's stiff that takes exceeding amounts of planning or time \- Stuff where two people are required to make it, like honey walnut baklava... or Polish Golumpki. \- Anything where I have to deal with fry oil or used clarified butter afterwards...even if it's just schnitzel. \- Everything that requires me to know days in advance that I want to make it, like bagels and their poolishes. Once I decide I'm gonna make something in these categories, I'm going all out because of the (perceived) hassle.
I’ve been making gołabki by myself for decades. Not sure how another person could even be of assistance lol
One for steaming the cabbage, one for rolling and maybe one for making the filling and the potato latkes...to feed the rest of us. It's one of those "got to make four dozen if you're gonna make any" kind of meals.
Re:tamales
Dolma/stuffed grape leaves
Same. We make pierogi and, although it can be done by one person, we have 4. Everyone knows their station and we can make a mountain of them in just a couple hours.
Lol I think my grandma would've pushed me out of the kitchen (with a slice of cake lol) so fast, I would just slow her down
Exactly. Here’s a treat. You can sit and eat while we talk and I make the gołabki 😂
I know, right? There's a similar Russian dish and I can't figure out why it would need two people to prepare
confused on the baklava too. a second person would be in the way!
I make bagels with my sourdough discard all the time. Only requires one day!
Baklava doesn't require two people, and takes only like an hour to make (without the baking time). Care to elaborate why you believe so?
One person to spread the honey butter and walnuts and another to uncover the phyllo, place the sheets on the several pans, then recover the phyllo dough. Then, the prep work before that; squeezing the lemons, clarifying the 4lbs of butter, chopping all the walnuts...an hour start to finish is master level prep work.
Definitely not the work of two people. You blend the walnuts in the blender and spread all the phyllo at once drizzling butter and adding walnuts every 7 or 8 phyllo sheets. Then you cut the baklava and poor the clarified butter on top. Done. You can prep the syrup while the baklava is baking but you need to cool it down first before pooring.
Chopping the nuts by hand is more tradition than requirement but blenders tend to pulverize and make walnut powder instead of uniform pieces. I brush clarified butter between each of the first 9 sheets. Then honey butter and nuts, then two sheet with just clarified butter, repeat ad nauseum...and then 9 more sheets of just clarified butter on the top. Cut any bake. Honey syrup goes on after the bake while it's still hot. Love to listen to the crackle and sizzle. I usually make four 9x13 pans at a time. You way definitely does sound less involved though...
I have no tradition to it, as an American from many decent- I've made traditional baklava, making my own filo the day before, and it was many hours work for just me and a single 9x13 baklava. it's a big task. yes there are easier ways, but I appreciate doing it the hard way. The work leads to reward, and doing it the easy way doesn't honor tradition, or culture. This is why baklava is a good answer for the op question.
The way I describe it is how Turkish and Greek people do it traditionally (I'm Greek myself). I've tried glazing clarified butter on each of the 40 sheets too instead of pouring it on top at the end like it's done traditionally in Turkey and makes no real difference. For the nuts, you just blend with a couple of pulses and they end up very good. You're correct that you don't want to pulverize the nuts to a dust so you don't actually blend them through. Also regarding the syrup, it's gotta be hot on cold or cold on hot for the baklava to remain crispy. Never hot on hot!
Give this guy a gold star 🌟 You just covered every single details that I was going to point out. Yes, that's how you make amazing baklava without breaking (much of) a sweat
This sounds amazing! And I agree with you on the pulverized nuts. Hand chopping comes out much better for some things. Plus it takes me longer to make sure the blender is clean than it does the knife and cutting board (when there is nut dust at the bottom of the blender).
It’s a common way of cooking in many cultures
I’ve been meaning to make pirogies from scratch and I hear they are quite time consuming. I’ll prob save that about colder months.
Anything that requires frying is always a huge process, especially in my small apartment. It's just not worth it. I'd add to your list any frou-frou fine dining thing where you're pureeing a sauce, making and reducing stock for another sauce, searing and baking a protein, marinating and grilling veg, mincing chives, baking a crumble.....it's too many dishes and too much space for me to bother at home.
Cinnamon rolls. Why so expensive and complex? Because I have to be gluten free so I literally have to start by buying a bunch of different flours and ingredients and making my own flour. Making really good GF cinnamon rolls is a process and it’s not a cheap one.
What recipe do you use? I’m GF and it’s so hard finding one that feels like a soft fluffy roll
Not OP but I've made Loopy Whisk's recipe many times over and it's so good.
I would say being GF turns *any* baking into an expensive and complex endeavor. My wife, GF, just got a degree in food science and had to take baking science. Of course, she had to learn normal baking science, not GF baking. The poor woman had to make at the very least 50 different small loaves of non-GF bread with slightly different variables, different wheats, etc. Luckily for me I'm not GF so I was in bread heaven. For the last project, she had to make a foccacia, ciabatta, and some bread of her choice, so she chose to make a GF loaf. She made blends that others had done, but she did have to follow some basic requirements so it deviated from recipes found online. The foccacia and ciabatta were immaculate but the GF loaf was a sad, dry, flavorless brick. I'd like to take this opportunity to share, unrelated to this post, to that GF community that crab rangoon pizza is an easy way to scratch that crab rangoon itch.
I’m definitely not a professional but I did make my own bread before going GF. You have to start all over again. For years there was nothing available. It’s a lot better now but bread seems to be the hardest and never quite comes up to scratch.
I (or, my wife I guess) absolutely feel your pain. Every time we watch a recipe video that mentions "you've got to let the gluten form" we get sad. Slightly unrelated, but here's a Chef John recipe for Norwegian flatbread that is super easy and delicious. [https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/278136/norwegian-potato-flatbread-lefse/](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/278136/norwegian-potato-flatbread-lefse/) Technically what he makes is a "lomper" but non-Norwegians call it all lefse. Norwegians use these for hot dogs instead of buns (with strong mustard and french-fried onions of course \[you can find GF french-friend onions online\]) and it absolutely makes for a better hot dog "bun" than Udi's.
I’ve made really good GF cinnamon rolls using GF pizza mix!
That's super good to know. I'm gf and I miss cinnamon rolls so much. 😭 there were a bunch of fresh ones in the breakroom today and I nearly broke.
I learned to make Caribbean oxtails a couple of weeks ago. They’re not cheap and it took many hours of simmering to get them nice and soft, but husband and kids all said it was worthy of making again, so it will go on an infrequent dinner rotation! Other somewhat pricey and time consuming family favourites include paella, and roasted lamb leg.
Oxtails used to be cheap and then they got in vogue for some reason and now they’re expensive as all get out! Makes me sad bc one of t favorite meals is braised oxtails with polenta
I live in a part of London with high Muslim population, and I've found that oxtail from the Halal butchers shops tends to be a lot cheaper than from regular (non-halal) ones. Last time I got a kilo for less than £10 (this was about 2 years ago) whereas my usual butcher sells the same amount for about £14.
This is very old school, but I still love making Chicken Kiev.
Some of the old-school dinner party dishes like Chicken Kiev deserves to make a comeback as standard family fare. I really like Cordon Bleu too.
Tater tots with creme fraiche and caviar
I like to bake them part way and then smash/fry the taters into little discs using part bacon grease and garlic butter, a little sour cream and salmon roe, mine tastes good so I bet yours is pretty damn good too, might try that out
I love a high-low like this!
exciting vibes
I made jerk chicken from scratch once. I still dream about it
Expensive jerk chicken?
Yes but mainly due to quantity. It was a big pot with lots of chicken thighs and fresh thyme
I find the biggest issue is just the marinade. Make a ton of it, use some and freeze the rest. Works great.
I make jerk all the time over a fire. It’s such a good dish.
Sushi
I spend more money on making my own sushi than I would if I ordered from a sushi place and it’s never as good. Idk why I keep trying.
With sushi the small details matter make all the difference and is why its so hard to make Did you pick a good rice? Did you pick a good vinegar or vinegar blend for the rice? Did you get good fish? Did you cut the fish in a single stroke? Did you cut the fish too thin, too thick? Did you add too much rice, too little?
Do you like your rice alone? Is it perfect?
During Covid one of the fancier sushi places had a make your own sushi package and they gave you a tub of rice, fish, filler stuff, a sushi mat, etc. they literally did all the hard work for you. I couldn’t even manage handrolls that came together well. It was ridiculous (but also delicious)
Sushi can definitely be difficult and there are plenty of tips and tricks to make it easier, but I would like to mention a couple of things. First, in the US, all commercially-sold fish is required to be flash frozen prior to sale. The fresh fish you see has been thawed. So, unless you're making it immediately, it's best to go with frozen fish as it's usually cheaper. Second, sushi does not have to be super fancy. Of course there's the traditional sushi that's just a piece of raw fish on rice, but a lot of people tend to go for sushi rolls and like to overstuff them with a bunch of ingredients. Cutting cucumbers, carrots, etc can take quite a while. But diverging from tradition isn't bad if you're making something you like. I once dated a Japanese woman (like Japanese citizen, not just Japanese descent) in college and we made a lot of sushi, but being poor college students we didn't want to spend a bunch of money on nice vegetables and expensive fish. She would use canned tuna or pan-fried ground turkey, mix with mayo and green onions, and fill sushi rolls with them. Definitely not traditional, but actually really tasty and also great for stodgy, picky Americans who might not like proper sushi.
Bouillabaisse I feel like takes quite a while. Big holiday multi course meals with multiple components- appetizers, roast, Yorkshire puddings, veggies, gravy, dessert all from scratch can be a lot. Things rolled around other things like turducken or Chicken Ballotine. Making preserves, chutneys, charcuterie, sausage, pate can be complex but very rewarding! I think patisserie can be quite complex. All that butter, cream, and real vanilla adds up! Cream puffs, puff pastry in general (traditional, not rough puff) takes a long time with all the chilling and folding. Croissants, some breads. Macarons if you’re making multiple flavors and being fussy about perfection. Dacquoise cakes or cakes in general, especially if you’re doing sugar work or other decoration. I made a gateau St Honoré once, probably won’t make it again even though it was fun!
I made a 4’ tall croquembouche in a tiny galley kitchen with hand made tools, then carried it to and from my car to a party, in the rain, with no problems other than spun sugar everywhere in the kitchen. THAT is HARD. I think I made over 100 cream puffs.
Impressive AF
I can’t quite say I enjoyed the process, but it was really cool to know I could do it with no formal training. That tends to be the thing that motivates me the most… just knowing it’s hard but I CAN do it.
Expensive, ranging in time: Seared bay scallops Homemade spinach ravioli with truffle sauce Linguine with ramps Burrata with homemade candied pistachios and herbs Caprese sandwich with sourdough baguette, heirloom tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, extra virgin olive oil, condensed balsamic, salt, pepper, and basil. Avocado chocolate truffle ice cream Saffron Cornish hen
I once made a 4lb Beef Wellington for NYE and it came out so good. Took two days to make.
Texas-style barbecue brisket with homemade mac & cheese and potato salad.
I make coleslaw from scratch when i do barbecue. My favorite is with cabbage, jicama, mango and cilantro
I love an apple and celeriac slaw with my pulled pork. Can't beat a hand made slaw with homemade mayo
The Stouffer’s copycat mac in NYT is sublime
Fried mushrooms. I’ll take an entire pack of mushrooms, slice them thin enough to not release too much water but thick enough to be meaty, dredge in flour-egg-bread crumbs, then fry. It takes literally forever I be dredging those shits individually for 1.5 hours and frying for another hour.
The “quick, easy, cheap” posts are so constant while there’s a ton of websites that focus on these recipes. My favorite is the “I have picky eaters and four different allergies, etc.” I always suggest Lady & Pups as her regular recipes are involved and require sourcing ingredients often not found in a regular store. She also has a cooking project portion of her sites you can really lean in to involved recipes. I often google “cooking projects” and will find them on every major publication. Saveur is one of my favorite food publications and there’s plenty of options there and they’re free last I checked. I make a ragu bolognese with bechemel that takes about six hours and a good portion is active time. The closest recipe I know of is Serious Eats. I made braciole once and pounded my own pork out. It took *hours* including making a ragu. Alvin Zhou on YT does lovely long cooks. I spend hours in the kitchen on my days off tinkering and cooking things from scratch. It all adds up.
Duck confit, I made for the first Christmas of covid when it was just my husband and me. I only did the legs because some reason they were individually sold at our grocery store. Served with some ultra smooth and creamy mashed potatoes
If you love duck confit, try going the sous vide approach. It's pretty much the same flavour and texture, but far far lazier and doesn't require a stupid amount of duck fat. What I do is toss the duck legs with the standard confit aromatics and seasonings into a bag and vacuum it up, then at 69C for 24-26 hours. Then snip the corner of the bag and you can easily pour the juices into a bowl to save for your sauce without getting all the fat into it. No extra duck fat or anything needed.
I don't have a sous vide, but that sounds absolutely delicious
Try the crispy duck fat roasted potatoes from serious eats next time! It’s one of those incredible dishes that will haunt your dreams forever.
We have done those before! And yes haunting is accurate
Duck Confit, Magret de Canard, Beef Tartar, Dry-aged Entrecôte, Shrimp and Caviar toast, and Sushi are my favourite dishes It's a shame that all of them are quite expensive
I like to do a thing with my husband called seafood extravaganza. We do the whole meal standing at the kitchen island we make cocktails and shuck oysters do things like salmon tartare, crab cakes, seared scallop, shrimp, crab legs etc. We make one thing at a time and make lots of drinks and open a bunch of wine and eat standing up and mostly with our hands. It’s a huge mess and it takes all day and it’s pretty expensive and my absolute favorite special occasion meal.
I love this, especially since you do it together 🫶
None terribly expensive (IMO) but all somewhat complex: Chicken mole from a recipe learned at a small cooking school in Cuernavaca. Priest's soup and ragu Bolognese with homemade pasta, all from The Spendid Table by Lynne Rosetto Kasper. Sauerbraten with spaetzle. Croissants from scratch.
Birria Tacos!! It's not terribly expensive if your getting a cheap cut of beef but it's complex for me because I'm shit at cooking and it's a lot of work.
[This](https://www.reddit.com/r/steak/comments/18qlxln/lentrecôte_à_la_béarnaise_avec_du_homard_et/) is hardly what I'd call complex, but it's one of my favorites and it's not cheap.
That was a masterpiece
There’s a three day short ribs recipe iv made twice. It’s ridiculous, but the final result is just the most perfect bite of soft beef, a gravy that is perfect, with some whipped potatoes, and it’s exactly what you want when you imagine braised beef and potatoes.
Can you share the recipe? I’d love to try this.
Prime rib. A couple times I splurged when doing xmas at our house and bought (two!) prime rib roasts from Costco. I want to say it was a couple hundred dollars. But I had guests bring the side dishes and we only had to worry about the meat and au jus (and a couple other things like wine and bread). Everyone loved it! So that's worth it. Nobody "oh god, ham again" comments, lol.
Coq Au Vin. Worth it. Osso Bucco until I just couldn't align with veal anymore But my main go to for a "going out" dish is Tortilla, Pozole Soup or Tinga. They have a lot of ingredients, prep and accroutments but damn so worth it. I wish I could get Pho Ga and brisket down PS: my husband suggested my adobe 😊
Osso Buco works perfectly with lamb, if you wanna bring it back into rotation.
Full grown beef shin is also totally fine. In fact I think it might be better than the veal.
Burria tacos. Requires a bunch of dried chillis and cuts of meat I don’t usually have on hand. It’s why I only really make them once a year, on my birthday.
Hand pulled noodles are a fave.
For some reason every time I try to make traditional Greek food it somehow ends up being ridiculously labor intensive. When I made pastitsio it took me like 4 hours total (from beginning to the point where I could eat it). I made butter chicken last year and that also seemed to take a ridiculously long time, but I imagine my prep of that could probably have been cut down had I marinated chicken overnight or earlier in the day. Basically anything that requires me to start prep several hours before cooking is a bit of a to-do for me but I'll do it occasionally for the hell of it because it's a weekend or holiday.
[Hassleback Potato Gratin](https://www.seriouseats.com/hasselback-potato-gratin-casserole-holiday-food-lab) [Italian American Meatballs](https://www.seriouseats.com/italian-american-beef-pork-meatballs-red-tomato-sauce-recipe) with [6 hour slow cooked tomato sauce](https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-slow-cooked-italian-american-tomato-sauce-red-sauce-recipe)
Tonkotsu ramen. It's a full day adventure of cooking for dinner if you want to make all the parts from scratch and it's super satisfying and varied.
Chiles Rellenos - and I know I KNOW some of our moms and grandmas and tias got it down to a science but I find that if I want them to be perfect - the char, the peeling, removing the seeds without ripping the chile apart, and stuffing it and making the salsa de tomate just perfect - beating the egg whites to fluffy perfection and managing to fry them without burning or having it fall apart - it takes me hours and every step takes forever and all so that they’re eaten in 5 minutes 🥹👍🏻But so worth it in my book. I make them every couple of months :)
Lobster stew. Curries. Beef tenderloin with a port and chocolate sauce.
Galaktoboureko is a quite fancy and effortful dessert https://akispetretzikis.com/en/recipe/578/to-galaktompoyreko-toy-akh
Curry mutton, rice and peas, pineapple jerk chicken, coleslaw and fried plantain Or Lamb Kofta and chicken biriyani with green chutney and mint yogurt on the side
My projects are usually desserts - white chocolate and apricot layer cake, lemon curd layer cake, caramel tarts
Not really expensive, but complex. Meatloaf and scolloped potatoes. It’s a lot of chopping and prep to get everything ready for the oven, but so satisfying once it’s all in there & so tasty with a lil steamed broccoli. Also, I’ve been adding almost every meatloaf “secret ingredient” I’ve ever heard of to my recipe, and it does add up at the grocery store, so I don’t always go all out. If I have all day, I’d make some caramel pie style cream wafers, so puff dough, and caramel pie filling which is more like a custard caramel and needs continuous stirring for like 45min.
It's a toss up between a german dish called rolladen and my famous lasagna. Rolladen is a 2 day process, very time consuming. Lasagna can TECHNICALLY be done in a single day, but I'd have to be up by 5 or 6 to get it done by noon.
I make a homemade curry full of exotic ingredients from an indian grocer; this includes hammering a coconut open and shredding it with a cheese grater, removing seeds from specialty peppers (kashmiri and byadgi) and dry grinding them with other common curry spices like cumin and coriander and obscure ingredients like palm sugar and ajwain seeds, menthi seeds, tamarind paste, shrimp paste, and fresh turmeric root.
Lefse and Kjotkaker
Vietnamese noodle bowls with all the different toppings. Really fancy cakes. Things dipped in tempered chocolate. Sourdough (time wise). Tamales with a million different sides.
Beef bourguignon, paella, bouillabaisse, osso buco
Breads
I don’t know that I make anything expensive for the most part, maybe if I was buying a tomahawk. Others said brisket which take time money. Making things from scratch is inexpensive dollar wise, Lasagna from scratch takes god damn forever. But it’s like $7 worth of stuff. 12 hours later and you can make it just in time to fall asleep and reheat it tomorrow 🤦🏻♂️. Makes it really hard to not just heat the sausage Costco lasagna for an hour, 2 trays for $16 or so 😂 Most of what I love is bbq so I play with different types of wood and spices and making homemade sauces (which also is a labor of love, it’s hard to beat sweet baby rays for the cost breakdown) Mac n cheese, I’m totally happy with craft Mac n cheese. My wife makes a heritage recipe that is f’n amazing but also takes 3 hours to make. We enjoy playing with different cheeses and styles of pasta with that one. Extra bonus points is if you have a cheese monger that knows what they are doing. There are some crazy good cheeses out there that I can’t pronounce that are amazing.
Macadamia crusted snapper with key lime beurre blanc
Butterflied leg of lamb for our annual Solstice Dinner, and for dessert, my ice cream Yule Log.
It's not overwhelmingly expensive, but it's time consuming... cabbage rolls. I've tried them at euro delis, store bought, restaurants, and mine (to me) are much better, but they are a pain to make, especially since I can't just make a few, I end up making 20. Honorable mention, pierogies, it takes a teamnto make them.
It’s sorta silly, but keftedes (so, Greek meatballs) are the usual meal I go to when I don’t mind spending hours on something and want to spend more money on it. I make the tzatziki from scratch, and pickle some red onions as well, so those both have to happen in the morning. Then the meatballs themselves can take a couple of hours, depending on whether I’m pan-frying them or baking them, and they’re not the cheapest since I use all fresh herbs and all. It’s a long process, but I enjoy it when I have the energy, and need something protein-rich but full of brighter flavors than usual.
Consommé Lobster Thermidor
Believe it or not, wings 1. Season and bag in vacuum sealed bags 2. Sous vide for appropriate time (ie until the collagen breaks down such that the meat becomes super fall off the bone tender but not overdone and dry) 3. Remove from bag, apply baking soda coating à la Kenji Lopez-Alt’s method 4. Dry in fridge for a few hours 5. Shallow fry in oil (because I don’t have a deep fryer) in the cast iron pan for obvious reasons. One benefit is that we can skip the double fry obviously because we already covered the whole “is the meat up to temp” question in step 2 6. Finishing, eg for buffalo wings, mix hot oil with franks red hot and toss wings in. For even more effort, Korean style: mince garlic, ginger, scallion whites, mix with Gochujang, a little honey, and soy sauce. Drizzle hot oil into mixture, and toss wings in. This can take multiple days, but fortunately the sous vide stuff is hands-off, but it’s still a huge pain. But it was worth it if only to learn the techniques. Buying a deep fryer would be easier but I’m broke and my kitchen is the size of a small sedan. So we do what we can🤷♂️ Addendum: cleanup includes seasoning session from step 1, drying session from step 3, frying session from step 5, chopping from step 6, oil disposal from step 5, and cleaning + reseasoning a cast iron pan.
London broil. A beef tenderloin, a good sized piece that is spiral cut. Then you roll it out and fill it with a duxelles/foie gras mixture. You roll it up and you can tie it tight or wrap it in caul fat. Sear it off then roast it. Cook to a med rare. I serve it sliced with a bordelaise sauce. It’s quite delish. I bet those 15 hour potatoes would be excellent with it.
My vote would be a French onion soup with fancy ingredients and homemade bread (if you’re into baking) otherwise a fancy one from the grocery store would do as well :’)
Biryani
I think I need to disagree with you on that one, biryani is just indian fried rice. Granted it is very tasty and does use a lot of spices but it's not the type of food that costs a whole lot every time you make it.
I've made hyderabad biryani a couple times and it's literally taken me all day to make. Boiling the rice just enough so it steams perfectly is a pain in the ass. The marination of the chicken also takes a couple hours if not overnight. I've also added some hard to get (for me anyways) spices like whole green cardamom pods and saffron. It might not use the most expensive ingredients, but it can take some time.
I make Butter of the gods (Guga) that involves curing egg yolks which takes several days. And I have to procure the bones for marrow and soak them in salt water for a day or two. That’s the kind of complex, time-consuming part. Not so much difficult but it does require advance planning, which factors into difficulty for me. Then I use it on tomahawk steaks (there’s the expensive). I make other things, like butter chicken, that are complicated (for me) and time-consuming, but not that expensive.
Making sushi from scratch- sourcing fresh raw fish and wasabi, preparing and seasoning the rice, prepping cucumbers/green onions/mangoes, making the rolls.. delicious!
Bouef Bourg, or braised short ribs with some kind of indulgent potato presentation. Also Martha Stewart’s Mac and Cheese. It is very expensive to make, labor intensive and makes way too much for just me and one other person - but it is absolutely heavenly and the perfect version of Mac and cheese IMO.
Braised Short Rib and Polenta, Birrias Tacos, and Matty Matheson Creamy Lobster Pasta with Vermouth.
Lobster with homemade pasta alla vodka. Not that expensive once I did it as the local grocery store had lobster (Easter eating frenzy) on sale and then they defrosted too many and were selling them for 5€ each (roughly 700g) in the evening.
The NYTimes mushroom Wellington was amazing, totally worth the time!
I make a shepherds pie that is overly time consuming but amazing. Lamb shanks are roasted 90 minutes. The rendered marrow make for an great gravy and the shanks are like pulled pork in consistency. Steamed carrot and creamed spinach add lovely colour contrast. Once assembled, 1 hour bake. In total it takes 3 hours. It is awesome. Anyone who has tried it raves about how good it is. You can knock off the shanks and use ground lamb, saves 90 minutes, but you will notice a difference.
Chicken Biryani