What Food/Dish Do You Hate To Prepare?

TastyReuben

TastyReuben

Nosh 'n' Splosh
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Is there a food or dish that you just hate making, but you do anyway?

For me, it's salad. You may notice we try to eat a salad every other day or so, mainly as an easy meal solution, a quasi-healthy meal, and a good way to clear the fridge of things nearing their peak freshness.

But the peeling...and chopping, and slicing and dicing and shredding! It makes me tired just thinking about it. Salads seem to have the highest level of work in comparison to the finished dish.

Anyone else have a dish you don't really like making, but make anyway?
 
I can't think of one, off hand. If I hate making it, I don't make it. That is especially true if I can get it at a restaurant. For me, however, it is not so much the effort that goes into making something, but the mess it makes that defines something hard to cook. Bibimbap is a top example. It not only takes a lot of work to prepare, it makes a big mess to clean up. I can get bibimbap at a local restaurant that is very good, and all I have to do is eat it.

CD
 
I suppose it might be homemade pasta, especially if it´s filled. I´ve got a great pasta machine and we all ADORE pasta... but making your own is just such hard work.
Last year I decided to make a sort of filled ravioli (later discovered they were called agnolotti).
Made the dough. Pounded and kneaded the hell out of it (whilst singing " Heigh ho, heigh ho in my Covent Garden Opera voice).
Let it rest ( me too). Cracked open a beer.
Set up the pasta machine in the most uncomfortable place in the kitchen.
Put the pasta through Mark 1, then Mark 2, then Mark 3, then Mark 4, until it was thin enough.
Finally gave in to temptation and cracked another beer.
Painstakingly cut out around 80 circles with a pastry cutter, until my brain hurt.
Sod the beer - Italians drink wine. Cracked open a bottle of red.
Feverishly placed a tiny bit of pumpkin filling on each circle and delicately painted the edge of each with egg wash.
Damn! These Italians drink so fast!!:hyper::hyper:
Placed the tops on the agnolotti, crimped the edges with a fork, and carefully placed on a floured baking tray (or was it three?) to let them dry a bit before cooking.
Melted the butter to make sage/butter sauce.
Collapsed in a heap in front of the TV and ordered Sushi. I´d only been there 4 hours.
77786
 
Dispatching, cleaning and prepping live seafood like urchin, geoduck, scallops, crab, lobster. Among other things, you can still feel muscle twitches, especially when thinly slicing for something like a crudo or ceviche.
 
I hate making food for my oldest stepson. Not because I don't care for him, but because he has ARFID ( Avoidant restrictive food intake disorder ) . So that means in his case, he only eats one meal. Nothing else. He eats plain mashed potatoes with spinach thats been boiled to death mashed through it, served with hotdogs and copious amounts of mayonaise.
No herbs or spices, no variety and it has to be exactly the same every time. He won't eat it even if a different type of potatoes is used to the one he's used to. No different brands of hotdogs or mayo either. And he eats lots of it, making it necessary to cook it every two days at least when he's with us. I had to make this at least 320 times the first two years I lived with my husband.

Aside from that one meal he also eats crackers with peanut butter or chocolate spread, apples (thank heavens) , potato chips, chocolate and on occasion french fries but only from Mcdonalds. That's his entire diet, no matter what, no matter where. And he's 21.

It's very stressful to deal with when you have more people to care for. And lets not talk about how he eats. I'll just remark that everything gets mayonaise on it in a 5 metre square around him.
 
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The Velvet Curtain said:
Curry, the Indian kind, so much faff and it never tastes as good as a restaurant one. On the other hand, I love cooking Thai curries and I always have great results.
Click to expand...

I love cooking Indian curries. Thai curries don't really appeal to me so I don't cook them.

The dish I hate cooking is lasagne. It never turns out how it should when I make it (too sloppy) and its too much work to justify the end result, when I can buy a very good pre-made fresh lasagne 'ready-meal' for less money than the individual ingredients would cost me.

Its also almost impossible to make a lasagne look good on the plate.
 
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karadekoolaid said:
I suppose it might be homemade pasta, especially if it´s filled. I´ve got a great pasta machine and we all ADORE pasta... but making your own is just such hard work.
Last year I decided to make a sort of filled ravioli (later discovered they were called agnolotti).
Made the dough. Pounded and kneaded the hell out of it (whilst singing " Heigh ho, heigh ho in my Covent Garden Opera voice).
Let it rest ( me too). Cracked open a beer.
Set up the pasta machine in the most uncomfortable place in the kitchen.
Put the pasta through Mark 1, then Mark 2, then Mark 3, then Mark 4, until it was thin enough.
Finally gave in to temptation and cracked another beer.
Painstakingly cut out around 80 circles with a pastry cutter, until my brain hurt.
Sod the beer - Italians drink wine. Cracked open a bottle of red.
Feverishly placed a tiny bit of pumpkin filling on each circle and delicately painted the edge of each with egg wash.
Damn! These Italians drink so fast!!:hyper::hyper:
Placed the tops on the agnolotti, crimped the edges with a fork, and carefully placed on a floured baking tray (or was it three?) to let them dry a bit before cooking.
Melted the butter to make sage/butter sauce.
Collapsed in a heap in front of the TV and ordered Sushi. I´d only been there 4 hours.
View attachment 77786
Click to expand...

That's hysterically funny! :roflmao:
 
Morning Glory said:
I love cooking Indian curries. Thai curries don't really appeal to me so I don't cook them.

The dish I hate cooking is lasagne. It never turns out how it should when I make it (too sloppy) and its too much work to justify the end result, when I can buy a very good pre-made fresh lasagne 'ready-meal' for less money that the individual ingredients would cost me.

Its also almost impossible to make a lasagne look good on the plate.
Click to expand...
I'm with you on the lasagne, some dishes just aren't worth attempting at home because the effort to reward is so out of balance.
 
The Velvet Curtain said:
I'm with you on the lasagne, some dishes just aren't worth attempting at home because the effort to reward is so out of balance.
Click to expand...
I think lasagne is super easy, but maybe I am doing it wrong? Or maybe my pro experience makes me biased 🤨

Its even a favorite of mine because it lends itself well for leftovers.

I agree it never looks very pretty, but I was a catering Cook anyway so big trays are more my thing than plating.. as you all well know 😄
 
I hate prepping chicken and I do it frequently, some months I do it once a week. I buy whole chickens that the butcher cuts into smaller pieces, but the pieces of chicken are left full of tiny bones, bits of blood, blobs of fat and whatnot. Getting the chicken properly cleaned is a real pain. Monetarily, it's totally worth it. Chicken usually sells for 1,78€/kg here in Portugal. It's the cheapest protein I can buy and it's super versatile.
 
The Velvet Curtain said:
Curry, the Indian kind, so much faff and it never tastes as good as a restaurant one
Click to expand...
I prepare real Indian food at least twice a week. Using individual spices instead of some bland curry powder has been the norm for the past 40 years, with a huge (positive) difference in flavour.
I agree that lasagna is complicated - but well worth it!
 
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