I just finished some leftover lasagne - I’d made it for dinner last night and brought a hunk of it for lunch today. As anticipated, it tasted better today than it did right out of the oven. Same with spaghetti sauce, beef stew, and stuffed cabbage - they gotta sit overnight to permit the sublime comingling of ingredients.
What do you make that’s ALWAYS better the next day? Have you ever made something deliberately a day in advance so your first taste would be the aged delicacy?
mmmmm - stuffed cabbage - haven’t made that in a while… <drool>
Kiki, probably the same thing - a meat/rice/onion/seasoning mixture wrapped in a cabbage leaves and cooked with chunks of potato. At least that was my grandmother’s recipe…
Mmmmmm. . .homemade lasagna. Definitely better the second day.
As are red gravy (“spaghetti sauce” to those of you who ain’t lucky enough to be Italian and from Fluffya, Pee-Ay), chili and roast beef. Once it’s cold and the juices have soaked back in for awhile, it’s heaven.
My mom makes this traditional Polish dish called kapusta (Polish for cabbage) that ages very well. It’s got onions, corned spare ribs, sauerkraut, and tons of cabbage. Cook for several hours and it becomes this brownish nirvana. Also useful for driving away small rodents and pesky neighbors due to the pungent smell it produces (both before and after). It’s quite good on the first day, but it you let age for a couple of days, it just knocks your socks off.
The stuffing sounds exactly like mine except I put the stuffed cabbages in a pan and pour tomato soup over them and bake them. If I ever get to make them again I’ll try it with the potatoes… that sounds good too. My SO doesn’t like cabbage so I haven’t made cabbage rolls for almost 3 years. Ahhh, the sacrifices we make for love.
Ditto on the vegetable soup and beef stew! Also, coq au vin is heavenly the following day. As is jambalaya and cornbread dressing (stuffing for you northerners).
I may be the only person in the world who thinks this one is true, but I much prefer yellow cake with chocolate frosting the second day. It seems moister to me - something about the frosting having time to seep into the cake.
Pizza and lo mein, especially homemade. Not sure why; it’s probably because I don’t heat it up all the way the second time, so all the fat doesn’t melt off. Yum, fat.
As someone else mentioned, soup is almost always better the second day. But that is especially true of chowders (clam, fish, or corn). Clam chowder is the only dish I purposely make a day ahead, but I often can’t help but eat it up as soon as it’s finished cooking.
I just remembered, my mom makes a pound cake that is infinitely tastier if it “rests” a day. I think I have the recipe. I think maybe I need to make one…
There is a velveeta and macraroni salad I make that gets better and better over the course of a week. When I make, I make a ton of it so it will last a while.
Real, homemade cheesecake should not have the first bite taken out of it until it has been aged 10 days.
Chili and the veggie dip that my friend Judy gave me the recipe too. Its easy stuff, but it needs to age for about three days before the flavor really starts kicking. And then it is addicitive.
Ahhh, the sacrifices we make for love. 