/ck/ - Food & Cooking

pb&j

ramen noodle

>>4989215

It might be relatively simply but hollandaise is on my list of "I'll never choose to make this of my free will again"

>>4989294
Fucking this. Good god, the stirring, the fricking stirring.

>>4989294
>>4989301
oh, come on, it's not so bad. whisk muscle is the same as your fap muscle if you're doing it right

>>4989294
Serious Eats had a recipe for hollandaise that used a blender. Never tried it, but it has to be better than making it by hand

>>4989315
tons of chefs swear by food processor/blender hollandaise, the super secret is using a stick blender and a double boiler

>>4989215

i think it was this cake... i think it took me a week to make.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF7cvWnIHPc

I did this with a turkey over thanksgiving, not really laborious so much as waiting time. It was worth it though holy shit was it good.

>>4989215
Turkey bone broth in a pressure cooker, but that's cause I deviated from the recipe. I was suppose to cook it for 45-75 minutes after it was fully pressurized. I was under the false assumption that the bones were suppose to completely dissolve, so I cooked it for about 7-8 hours. The bones turned into crusty mush. The broth was probably the most nutrient dense food product I've ever put in my body. Felt a little weird the next day.

TL:DR: bone broth

>>4989315
I tried to make hollandaise via the blender method once. It wouldn't come together and ended up going down the garbage disposal.
>Nah I don't need a stick blender. What am I gonna do with it that I can't do with my regular blender?

>>4989319

What a culinary masterpiece.
A bowl of fruit loops and a piece of chocolate cake, topped with a strawberry straight from the 80s. 9/10

tried making biscuits once

they came out flat

>>4989352


you can't cook food in a pressure cooker for 8 hours, you will loose all the liquid and ruin the pot.


also you are an idiot for thinking that bones would dissolve.

fuck

>>4989215
> hardest
some asian beef stew type thing, I forget the name. I was unused to the condiments and it was an absolute BITCH to balance
> most laborious
uh oh. 16 kilos' worth of sweetbread loaves

I made real mac & cheese once instead of kraft. Never again.

oven ribs

1 hour's enough to cook anything in a pressure cooker, except nails and ball bearing stew. But people who cook that are noobs who always forget to turn down stove so cooker doesn't explode. Pic related.

>>4989406
biscuits are meant to be flat

that's why you roll out the dough

I turned 20 cans of beans into burgers once.

Hardest?

Probably the one time I had to dish out two different lasagnas, a meat one, and a vegetarian one. While the construction is the same, the fillings are quite different from one another, so it was hard to pull them off.

Most laborious?

Homemade pizza. Did everything from scratch, and as it was my first time, so I took my time with everything. Took my whole afternoon to put two giant different pizzas by dinner time.
My only regret is that my oven is not nearly hot enough as the proper restaurant ones, so the dough didn't came out as crispy as i wanted. Everything else, was very good. Next time i'll make smaller pizzas, crisp them up in the frying pan and them chuck them in the oven.

>>4989800
Maybe he means hockey puck flat

Genovese takes eight hours. Even false genovese takes four. Proper gulyás takes forever, too. I don't even do it anymore because beef bones are near impossible to buy in "fit for human consumption" quality where I live now.

>>4989352
Laughed.

Fucking hell, dude

>>4989215
>most labourious
some simple cookies with dulce de leche in the middle.
baking fuckload of cookies,
45 minutes of stirring the condensed milk to get the dulce de leche just right.
just to facepalm as hard as possible, because the dulce de leche was too sticky/firm, unspreadable without cracking the cookie. reheat that fucker and add some more milk, until it's just right.

very simple stuff, but just the 45-50 minutes of stirring and then assembling the cookies before the dulce de leche cools down. fuck me.

next time I'm going the slow way, and gonna try and keep it warm in a water bath or similar.

>hardest
beef wellington the first time around was a mess, but I wouldn't say hard.
As long as I follow the recipe correctly the first time around, nothing really was a problem.

I was once put in charge of making a Veal Orloff when I was working in catering. I suppose it was a nice gesture, because I was only working there for 2 months at that time and I probably left a good impression.

But, holy fucking boner of rage is this thing hard. Just making sure an entire loin of veal on the bone is done mid-rare had me pulling my own hair out.

Spice bread with caramelized poached pears and creme fraiche. You leave the spice bread out 3 days to cure it, pears are breddy easy tho and I had to make a creme fraiche substitute because I had none. Tasted amazing though. Anything involving sugar work and a thermometer can be pretty dicey and hard to clean. Also traditional lasagna where you make the bolognese and the noodles and the béchamel is going to take a while.

>>4989700
What? BBQ ribs in the oven are so damn easy compared to smoking them.

>>4989317
You could just add artificial emulsifiers to your hollandaise bought online or even a little mustard or an extra egg yolk, I never use a double boiler anymore.

>>4989964
I forgot yeah from being a line cook. Meat on the bone to temp without a proper thermometer is hell. Especially if you like have to make a complicated sauce at the same time.

>Most laborious
200 lbs merguez sausage. Took me about a week to do, being still somewhat of a novice in making sausages. Didn't help that I had to use dull grinding plates that necessitated freezing the meat and a semi-broken stuffer.

Honorable mention for macarons... because they never come out the same for me, ever; even in the same fucking batch!

>hardest
Probably terrines. Lots of careful inlaying, mousse making(requiring you to pass it through a fine mesh tamis), poaching said mousses to check texture/flavor... not a walk in the park.

>>4989215
I've never had beef wellington. Is it good?

>>4989215
I made a Boston Cream Pie for Thanksgiving for a friend of mine who said it was the only pie she really liked.

It was my own personal Vietnam. First I'm trying to get the egg whites to peak, but they wont, then I read that if your whisk has any kind of residue on it at all the eggs likely wont peak. So I ditch those, wash my whisk extra well, and start over. Then, the cream part called for like 7 egg yolks, so I'm saving the whites in a little tupperware for whatever later, and I knock them over, seriously at least 10 egg whites all over my counter, FML.

Then it's time to make the Ganache, Never made it before. I pour the hot cream over the chocolate and start stirring, it doesn't melt all the way, so I stir it on a double boiler for a good 5-7 minutes, getting all the lumps out, it was beautiful, perfect, the most delicious thing I've ever tasted.

I have to wait for the cake and the cream to cool completely before I pour the Ganache over the top, so I put some seran wrap over the top of the Ganache and stick it in the oven which is off, since I don't want it to cool too much.

To celebrate a job well done I have a couple shots of Bourbon, and watch an episode or two of The Sopranos. Then I go into the Kitchen, the cake isn't cooled yet, but I realize I have a couple Pumpkin pies to bake so I Turn on the oven.

20 minutes later I go to put the pies in the oven and see the Ganache in there, with the fucking Seran wrap melted into it. FML. Down the sink it goes.

So the next day I have to go buy more chocolate, but the store by my house doesn't have the same brand of chocolate I bought from the WinCo when I did my Big Shopping, oh well.

I go home to re-make the ganache, and I can't get all the fucking lumps out no matter what I do. Well, fuck it, that's as good as it's getting.

On the plus side, my friend said the Boston Cream Pie was the best she's ever had, better than Marie Calendars. So it was a win for me.

>>4990053
Seconding terrines.
Holy mother of fuck, I barely have the patience for that. I haven't made one in several years now, even though I've had a few requests, because I just can't bring myself to do it again, lol.
>mfw

>>4989343
Wow, that looks quality. Don't think I have enough room to do that in my oven though.

>>4989215
the hardest food i ever made was my dick when i was fucking your mom

>>4990902
You literally were the only post in 4 hours. Was it worth it?

>>4990907
>someone finally replies to me on 4chan
y-yes

>>4990918
I notice you, anon-chan. :3c

>>4990918
>>4990924
You guys are too cute.

Hardest:
Baklava
FUCK filo dough. I love it, but I hate it.

Most Laborious:
Smoked Brisket.
Wake up at 4AM to toss it into the shitty smoker I have, and take tabs on it every 15-20 minutes and feed it more wood chips or open the flue a little more to keep the temperature in the right range.

16 fucking hours of smoking.

Carnitas

Making bread from scratch sucks shit.

Measuring everything super precisely and kneading, it's such a fucking chore that I can't even be arsed to enjoy the finished product.

>>4990984
really? I make bread every week, and I never measure anything. it's very forgiving. Plus i love kneading it, it's kind of therapeutic.

beer can chicken but only because alcohol is illegal here

>>4991119

Making bread was frustrating at times, but eventually (years later) I can almost guarantee it'll turn out. And it's VERY SATISFYING. Plus pie crust, biscuits... people love that kind of home baked stuff, and armed with a scale and thermometer, you can do it, too.

It would sure have helped to have had someone to SHOW ME what it was supposed to look like. There's only so much you can learn from books. Then it's trial and error.

>>4991131

Are you in Iran or Saudi Arabia?

>>4989307
why is everybody on every board on 4chan obsessed with masturbating?

>>4991190
Alcohol is technically illegal in Iran but quite easy to obtain.

>>4990984
I'm with.>>4991119

I do it by eyeball and it comes out a little different 3very time but still good. I also use a seriously prehistoric receipe:Flour, honey yeast, salt, water. Pound it down and let it rise three times then bake. It's popular and everyone askes if it is Mediterranean or something.

For a friends party I said I'd make potato skins.
Never again. Also tip if you don't like cooking and chopping all that fucking bacon for stuff, get a thing of bacon bits. I think the same saved is worth it.

Gumbo.

It's amazing how easy it is to fuck up a gumbo.

>>4991201

lol an aunt and uncle of mine took over the still from somebody in Saudi Arabia back in the 60s when they were working there. Made a fucking MINT. Passed it on to somebody else when they came back home.

>>4991542
>It's amazing how easy it is to fuck up a gumbo.

lol all the dishes you think are simple and easy to prepare and the ones you sweat over the most... it's why cooks revere old grandmothers, who have endless experience and can produce recipes that would reduce most first-timers to tears...

>>4989839

You'd eat a biscuit that's fatter than a hockey puck?!

>mfw murica

>>4991640
Ahah, I see the confusion. Your biscuits are cookies to us. Our biscuits are much different, see attached picture.

>>4991604
>it's why cooks revere old grandmothers, who have endless experience and can produce recipes that would reduce most first-timers to tears...
I'm one of these people.

>>4991604
>tfw one grandmother didn't into cooking food

seriously? really just didn't like it or was burned out.

>>4989215
making chocolate mousse from scratch (lol.. i know)

i hand whipped the egg whites (really not a small task)

and you have to melt the chocolate over boiling water which is slightly more complex.

and finally fold both in just right.

shit was gooood

>>4991666

That right there's a scone my friend

>>4991687
Nigga get an electric mixer and some cocoa powder, that shit will take like 10 minutes and no effort

>>4991697

nah son this is a scone

>>4989215
French macaron, bleh...

>>4989215
Most laborious single dish was homemade butternut squash ravioli. Took a couple hours of solid work, not counting the time to cook the squash and let it cool..

Most work for a meal was thanksgiving dinner last year, but I had 2 days and my wife's help for that one.

Longest was smoked pork shoulder. Took about 14 hours but most of that was just waiting around.

>>4991714
That looks dreadful. Do Brits actually eat this?

>>4991666
Those are just savoury scones aren't they?

I made a chèvre cheese cake with dehydrated maple meringue and ice cider jelly last year. Longuest I've ever spent working on a single plate. So many tiny, precise steps.

Enchiladas.

I made practically everything from scratch. Only thing I bought as crema. Spent all day cooking.

>>4991729

Nope. Pretty sure an amerifat posted that.
A scone to a britfag, is what a biscuit is to a amerifat

>>4991196

Profiteroles.

Would have been fine if I'd remembered I'd lent my whisk to someone a few days earlier. Whipping that chantilly cream up with a fork was a total pain in the arse.

>>4990974
Phyllo dough is just better of bought ready made in my opinion. A pain to make and the premade stuff can be really quite good.

childrne

Large quantities of stiff dough when the only spoon I had was metal and had painful edges.

>>4989343
Oh my god I have to make this.

>>4989343
Hipster overload but jesus fuck stained Christ that meat looks good.

>>4989215
The dish in your pic. Not even kidding. Fuck that.

>hardest

Gotta go with risotto milanese, with added difficulty of getting all needed ingredients in my shithole (and I still got it wrong, fuck.)

>most labourous

Lasagna. Second place goes to some weird tomatoes filled with meat, ham and cheese with Bechamel sauce recipe, too much trouble for so little.

>>4992562
>Weird tomatoes:
WTF is all that shit? just make some good stuffed red bell peppers. I simmer a mix of cooked rice, parmesan, cheddar, spicy italian sausage, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, red wine, hungarian paprika and diced onion in a pan for a while (I like it when the whole thing starts to bubble) and then i stuff it into a parboiled pepper half (Skinning is recommended) Broil it until the stuffing is golden brown on top, and voila, awesome comfort food.

>>4992565

Because I eat stuffed peppers on somewhat common basis.

Turtle Soup, from scratch, with actual turtles. Whoever was assigned with prepping it was pretty much tied up for the whole shift.

>>4992574
fair enough. Any advice for someone that loves the taste of cooked tomatoes and raw tomatoes in salsa but hates them raw and "plain" by chance?

>>4992562
Im not sure I can agree with lasanga. I mean for you maybe, and I assume that was scratch made dough you used. But lasanga forgives, almost like chili in that its hard to mess up as oomg as youve approached it with the right ingredients.

Hardest thing ive ever made was A series of thai dishes, using coriander root, galangal, Fish sauce, shrimp paste, kaffir leaves...you end up using many robust ingredients and have to work out th bwlance.

>>4990285

not op, but I made beef wellington last year around x-mas time. honestly not that difficult and was one of the best things i've ever made.

10 thousand cookies in one day, we had one electric whisk, 3 toaster ovens and a 18 inch metal bowl we scavenged from a rice cooker.

And then re realized someone replaced our chocolate chops with blocks if cooking chocolate. Had to improvise by melting the chocolate and pipe out chocolate chips on our own.

>>4992674
.... w-why was this a thing?

>>4992674
Go to bed Robert Irvine.

>>4989215
Thai or Malaysian curry when I take the time to crush up the spices in a mortar and pestle. Same with chile really, crushing up all the chile peppers takes some time to do it right.

>>4992716
**
I sit on the floor, put a decent movie or something on without commercials, put a phone book down, put the mortar on the phone book and get to crushing and grinding. The results are always pretty awesome, so the time spent is worth it.

>>4992720
**
The point of putting it on a phone book is so that absorbes the sounds and I don't annoy my neighbors below me, at least from where I used to live.

I don't know why people think beef Wellington is so difficult/laborious to make. Is it the idea of pastry that intimidates them?

>>4992722
>>4992720
Wow thanks for that information.

Once you learn to let the pestle do the work, it's just time, not laborious really. Just pick it up and target the stuff that needs targeting. Let it fall, the weight of the pestle will do the crushing, then there's some grinding, but that's easy too. I don't know if any of it's laborious to me. It's not really laborious and since it's not professional it's for me and or a girlfriend, it's in fun. If I had to do it for money I'd likely consider it laborious.

Sorry, I was yammering there.

These 3 things would have to be the most "hardest or most labourious" food i've made, i'm a patisserie student and these would probably be the hardest things i made. first is the Entermet which i had to design myself, flavours, looks, texture, recipe you name it. it was our end of year assignment so was pretty hard but fun. (ill explain the layers if someone wants to hear :D) underneath is my first ever gingerbread house, i got a little excited on this and spent a long time planing it out and even adding the LED lights inside the house. next to that is what punished me the most, the french wedding cake - the croquembouche.13hour class and 2nd degree burns later i had this lovely thing lol :D

>>4992811
Weird. I can't do fancy cakes because my spatial skills sucks but people used to pay me as a kid to make croquembouches for their holiday parties. I never have had issues with them they just take a while. Choux puffs are super easy and I learned how to make proper pastry cream at a young age so I guess that helps.

>>4992821
yeah the choux pastry and creme patisserie is simple, the assembly with the hot sugar was the hardest part.

macarons
ramen from scratch

any type of asian noodle, the broth is a bitch to make right

>>4992838
>the broth is a bitch to make right
Not really. You just need the right ingredients and time to allow the flavor profile to develop.

>>4989215
>hardest
Gonna go with the other guys and say hollandaise.

>labor intensive
Like 8 pounds of mashed potatoes I made at a friend's cookout. Normally mashed potatoes aren't so formidable but this guy only had a big plastic spoon for mixing. You may not know this, but a plastic spoon dunked into a pot of scalding hot potatoes loses all rigidity and thus all effectiveness very quickly. It was like trying to mix concrete with a wet noodle.
>struggle with it for ten minutes, out of breath
>okay let's give it a taste
>need to mix in more salt
>fffffffuuuuuuuuuu-

>>4992839

This. The broth isn't difficult in the slightest, but it does take a long time.

>>4989215
gnocchi, just because in our restaurant we make huge batches and it takes for fucking ever. 4 hours at the least.

>>4991697
>>4991763
>>4991730
They look similar, but scones and American biscuits use completely different ingredients.

>>4989315
>>4989307
>>4989301
>>4989294


Are you fucking plebs serious? hollindaise takes like 5 minutes to make

>>4992883
You can drain potatoes without a colander and mash them with a fork if need be. I've done it. Its not that hard. Heat your milk and butter in a separate pan with all the salt, pepper, and herbs you will be adding, and any roasted garlic or other aromatics you want on low heat so they don't cool the potatoes. You do not need a fancy potato mashed to make god-tier mash. Just remember butter adds flavor and milk adds nice fat but dilutes potatoey flavor.

>>4990053
>>4990313

Terrines are easy, just keep throwing gelatine at that shit. I've made a confit rabbit terrine in a day, sounds like a bitch but its not that hard if you are used to the work. Also I never pass my mousse throw a tammy, get a better blender or use more butter

>>4992714

Top Lel

>>4992928

You think thats bad? I make my entremetier make potato gnocchi, sweet potato gnocchi, and parsni gnocchi all for one dish. But we only seat 50 so Im sure where you are you had to make it like 10 kilos at a time.

>>4992989
pretty much, when i make it, it's made in 25 pound batches

I made beef wellington once. It was the most difficult thing I've made definitely, but I don't often make complicated meals so that's not saying much. It wasn't particularly hard just time consuming.

And expensive. Very expensive.

>>4992989
And this is why I quit my line cook job and went to uni. I cook for myself and I don't need to have everything evenly minced before touching it and make stocks from scratch and all that jazz.

>>4993026
passion. not everyone has it for cooking. Some days, my job absolutely sucks with the long hours and ridiculous expections, but i wouldn't want any other job, because the days where its a good day, its the best fucking job ever.

>>4993015

Yeah I used to come in my days off years ago at a busy restaurant just to make gnocchi and ravioli at a relaxed pace.

Doing 5 kilos of gnocchi on top of regular service prep is a killer lol

>>4993041
I have it for cooking. I just prefer to cook in my own style for family and friends and I used to do some catering work. I can still make all the shit you can, I just do it at home with less fancy appliances.

>>4993026

Oh I tell all my guys that rough bruinoise is totally acceptable. hell some times the shallots are just cut on the mandoline for service, I'm not so picky about that, must of been all the peeled asparagus and turned vegetables in my life lol

Two Mexican dishes. Tamales because it took two fucking days. Menudo because I didn't think the smell would ever come out of my house again. I also don't smoke briskets as much anymore since pulled pork takes way less effort to make it come out right.

chicken bastilla
there's like, 4 separate parts to it and then you assemble it in phyllo
it was crazy, took all day
very tasty though

>>4993054
OH GOD HAVING TO PEEL ASPARGUS. Second only to having pit cherries by hand as tasks from hell as a line cook. I do not peel asparagus when I make it at home and that is the way God intended.

>>4993089
I made matzoh bastilla a number of years back during passover. It was in a Sephardic cookbook. That was insane to make.

pizza from scratch.

and i mean FROM SCRATCH

home made dough (duh)
home made sauce (with home grown tomatoes)
home made cheese
home made sausage

served with home made beer

>>4993218
>having assburger

>>4989821
get a stone, don't do weird shit to your food

>people saying making pizza is the hardest food to make

Damn, America, why?

>>4993218
like you prepared the flour and milked the cows and everything?

then its not from scratch

>>4991604
> tfw my grandmother put the love of cooking into me
> tfw she was constantly inventing recipes because the standards just came too easy to her and she was bored
> tfw she doesn't cook anymore (she's 95)
> tfw my other grandmother was the goddess of pastry and she's dead

>>4991739
ice cider jelly
what?

>>4992588
oh god galangal
that stuff is harder to handle than fucking nitroglycerin

>>4992726
duxelles. fuck that shit
also, most people can't into blind-baking so it always comes out nasty and soggy on the bottom

>>4993456
Did he create the universe? If he didn't, it isn't made from scratch

>>4991542
Just drink some beers went making the roux for gumbo. I've patted down my shrimp gumbo. Making a tasty broth is key.

Worst way I fucked up gumbo was not stirring in the broth SLOWLY. It was the darkest roux I had made, too.

Tie between homemade bagels from scratch, baklava, homemade lasagna, or a whole 20 lb turkey.

>>4991837
>poignant.jpg

>>4993467
Ice cider = cider (the alchool kind) made from frozen apples... Or pressed juice left outside overwinter to freeze if you are going for the cheaper ones. It concentrates the sugars, makes it into a sweeter more liqueur like drink.

Ice cider jelly = heating the ice cider, whisking in some agar agar, cooling down then either cutting pretty shapes from the now solid cider or blending down until smooth and serving as a quenelle.

>>4991729
no, it looks delish!

>>4992932
Fat, flour and some sort of protein/moisture like egg or milk are completely different.