Learning how to cook your own dishes from scratch can be a cost-effective, rewarding thing. But there are some meals out there that just aren’t worth trying to cook .
The people of Reddit decided to warn others about the meals and desserts they’d made from scratch that they came to regret . Sometimes, getting takeout or premade meals is the better option.
There are definitely easier potato dishes.
“One of my biggest accomplishments in the kitchen was home made tater tots. You do a quick fry of the potatoes, shred them once they cool, mix in any herbs or spices you’d like, then form them into tots and fry a second time.
“They turn out well and are super tasty, but I’ll be damned if they aren’t 99% identical to the frozen ones you get at the store.”
A difficult dessert, but kind of (?) worth it.
“Baklava. I mean home made baklava is the best. Just get it from someone else.”
Other commenters clarified that the baklava itself is easy, but the phyllo pastry is the hard part (which you should just get from the store).
Whoever CAN make it is probably a genius.
“Puff pastry. It really is better, but unless you have a walk in refrigerator it’s a huge pain.”
From experience (yes, I tried making puff pastry before), this is true. Just buy the stuff.
Have you ever tried making crackers?
“Apparently crackers are never made from scratch because I have never in my life encountered a home-made cracker, or even come across one in a cookbook.”
Another commenter added, “Chef here. I’ve worked in a few places where we’ve made them from scratch. I dislike it. I find it tedious, unnecessary and a giant waste of money, time and my life in general.”
Pad Thai is the ultimate takeout food for a reason.
“Why would I order delivery pad Thai when I can spend $45 on ingredients to make a worse pad Thai?”
Yeah… it’s really hard to make it taste as good as a restaurant’s.
Curry is way harder to make than it should be.
“Curry paste. A number of my legit Thai cookbooks have the recipes for them and straight up tell you it’s not worth it, and that store bought is just as good.”
People who make their own condiments must be on a different wavelength.
“Ketchup. Heinz is magic.”
Another added, “Yep, I made my own before and it was definitely not worth it.”
The answer to a question I feel like very few of us were asking.
Some things taste better out of a can (like coconut milk).
“Canned coconut milk. I tried making it from scratch to make an authentic Indonesian dish and all the Indo cooks in the family laughed at me. They all use canned coconut milk.”
You have to hand it to the sushi chefs of the world.
“Sushi. I think it’s a pain in the ass, to properly cook and season the rice, to obtaining all the ingredients (avocados here are notoriously expensive), the fish is pricey.”
“I’d rather pay the $50 to go to a decent place.”
“And I’m of the mind that I don’t ever want to pay for anything that I can make better at home and I love discovering new sushi and Japanese joints, so we trust the guy who spent 2 years of his sushiprenticeship just washing and seasoning rice to be our master.”
Shawarma probably isn’t worth making at home unless you have the right tools.
“Shawarma, it really needs to be cooked on the vertical spike. And I’m sure most people don’t have that. They’re super cheap at the restaurants too.”
Box cake tastes just like cake from scratch.
“Some of them are significantly better from scratch, like red velvet. But some of them are perfect from a box , like white cake or devil’s food cake.”
The thing about cake is, they mostly have the same ingredients. Box mix saves you a lot of time (but making a cake from scratch is fun, too).
Pho takes a long time to make, and is too hard for a lot of people.
“Vietnamese pho. You could spend 2 full days and about $100 dollars making your own bowl at home, or just go get a bowl made for you for $10-15 at a pho restaurant. Not worth it to make yourself.”
Deep frying, aka too much hot oil everywhere.
“Deep fried anything. You’ll spend far more time cleaning up than you will cooking or eating whatever you’ve deep fried. There are but a few notable exceptions to this.”
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Making ice cream is fun, until it isn’t.
“Ice Cream. Unless you’re doing it as a group activity, you’ll spend way more money and time than just going to the store and buying some.”
Though, some people argued that making ice cream from scratch is worth it. I guess it just depends on how you like your ice cream.
S’mores will never be the same.
“Marshmallows!!! Omg the clean up and they stick to EVERYTHING.”
“I just made my first mallows last week and they are delicious and I love them but holy [expletive] it’s a crazy mess,” another user added.
Is pie crust really that hard?
“I feel this way about pie crust. I usually make an apple pie for holidays with the Pillsbury frozen dough. One year I made it myself and no one could tell the difference except that I kept telling everyone I made it from scratch lol.”
I might be biased here, but I’ve never had a store bought pie crust that was better than the kind I make from scratch.
Soup in general is deceptively hard.
“Stock. Unless you make a lot of the foods to make the stock, then it isn’t really worth the effort. I do agree that adding the left over broth from a roast enhances a store bought stock, though.”
Mac n’ cheese is an art.
“Mac and cheese from scratch. I spent a LOT of time making the best recipe I could find. My partner walked in, took a bite and said “why did you get Stouffers, I thought you were making it tonight”. I was so crestfallen.”
To be fair, though, it’s very hard to make mac n’ cheese taste bad. So, there’s that.
It probably helps if you have the right kind of oven.
“Pizza. I live close to a good pizzeria so with 5 euros and 5 minutes I can have a pizza that is way better than whatever I can make.”