21 Things People Love To Order At Restaurants, But Just Aren't Worth The Effort Of Making At Home
"Eating it when you go out makes it better when it's someone else's mess."
Recently, home cooks shared meals they love to order when they're out at restaurants, but couldn't stand making at home. Here are just a few more stories:
1. "Oh man, ravioli… My brother and I attempted to make homemade ravioli for Mother’s Day one year. We assumed it would be fine to stack them in layers if we put flour in between to keep them from sticking. Surprise — they still stick! It was one huge mass of noodles and cheese fused together. We ended up just pouring the sauce over the whole thing and popping it in the oven, and it came out kind of like a shitty lasagna. At least it made for a good story; years later, we still laugh about the time we had 'Mother’s Day pie.'"
2. "I've had a ravioli disaster, too. I attempted to make homemade ravioli for my family for dinner one night. From SCRATCH, including the sheets and all. The sauce turned out well, and so did the filling and sheets. Everything was going okay up until I put the ravioli in the boiling water, at which point all of them burst open and left an awful mess in the water, with the filling coming out and all. Thankfully, I had some pasta dough and the sauce left, so I was able to throw something together for dinner that night, but I was so disappointed."
3. "Any breads that need the bath, like pretzels and bagels."
4. "Sushi. Once you buy all the ingredients (if you’re making rolls), you wind up spending more than just buying your favorite rolls from a sushi restaurant, and the prep work alone is a pain in the ass before you even get to assembly. It’s worth the price for someone else to make it for me."
5. "Eggplant Parmesan. What a hassle. Eating it when you go out makes it better when it's someone else's mess."
6. "During the pandemic, I was baking cookies for a charity that distributed them to healthcare workers. I got to try recipes that I probably wouldn’t have tried otherwise. One cookie that I will NEVER make again is Hot Chocolate Cookies. They were so labor intensive with the chilling and then having to place individual miniature marshmallows on top of the cookie. Then adding sprinkles. They were visually appealing, but after all that work, I wouldn’t even try one."
7. "Fried chicken for sure. It's always better when we order out and a lot less cleanup."
8. "I feel like this one doesn't get mentioned often: really complicated salad, especially ones with multiple frou-frou ingredients that you would pay, like, $20 for at a restaurant. You think, 'DAMN, $20 for a SALAD? It tasted good, but it was a SALAD!' There was a specific one I had once and loved that was a special that never came back, so eventually, I did my own spin at home. My kitchen was hipster critical mass: I sous vided and seared tri-tip, quick-pickled red onions in a blood orange brine, cooked quinoa, shredded carrots, chopped Kalamata olives, broiled and cut halloumi croutons, shook up a lemon miso za'atar tahini yogurt dressing...and used store-bought greens and honey-roasted almonds, because of course, honey-roasting my own almonds would be a step, too."
"All these ingredients came together into many AMAZING salads that I enjoyed thoroughly, but oh damn. I hit multiple stores and spent, like, a literal entire day preparing ingredients...for SALAD. Maybe just order it."