So I started dinner for tonight at 1:00 PM. I just now put it in the oven. It will be done in the oven in 45 minutes, then have to sit for awhile before I can cut it.
It’s lasagna - my husband’s favorite - and after making it this afternoon, I remembered why I hardly ever do. Gah - I’m ready for a darn nap!
Are there any meals (other than holiday ones of course) that you just love, but don’t make often just because they take for ever to make?
I’m sure this has been done but don’t feel like zombie hunting to raise an old one.
I love to make Ethiopian food, but between making the spice paste, cooking injera bread by hand and whipping up a couple of main dishes, I rarely manage to do it any more.
Ditto homemade Indian food, but that’s more because nobody else in my family likes it as much as I do.
My homemade Hot & Sour soup served with Barbecued Pork Fried Rice gets made only on traditional family holidays when the kids are home to enjoy it. It’s a big hit at Thanksgiving, Easter, & Xmas. But it’s pretty labor intensive for me.
Hm, I make one of the Cooks Illustrated 90 minute lasagne recipes - Simple Lasagne with Hearty Tomato-Meat Sauce. It really does take roughly 90 minutes even with making the sauce. We do it about once a month, it is great for freezing, and we typically make a double batch so we can take one up to my mothers house for she and my brother.
I adore making cassoulet d’isigny - I toss leftover duck and lamb and roast beef in the freezer whenever I make them so I don’t worry about going out and getting stuff specially - I do admit I cheat and do not make the duck legs in confit - I take chicken legs and cook them in olive oil to confit them and use keilbasa as the sausage component. I get smoked pork neck bones, and hit up my favorite butcher for various pork products for the stock and they have a hard core thick cut bacon that is to die for. Cooking the beans is done on one day, and compiling and baking it is done the next day - I tend to only want to make it in the winter though, but it gets made 4 or 5 times over the winter.
I do like making ‘christmas cookies’ - usually a combination of springerles, classic iced sugar cookies, spritzes and other stuff as people ask for them, but it is a lot of work [i don’t have a recipe that only makes 1 dozen of anything] and I usually only make 2 runs of cookies. Anything after that gets storeboughten.
Gumbo. I make an excellent chicken and sausage gumbo, but it takes forever. I’m much more likely to prepare it if I have someone playing sous-chef, peeling and dicing stuff, though.
Lasagna’s another one. I love it, but I almost never make it for myself. I only make it when I can share it. Once I’m making it, I might as well make a lot, since it’s not really much more trouble.
When I was making lasagna for friends (for a yearly tree-decorating night), my sister advised me to make it the night beforehand, and just reheat it the next day.
I probably have a lower threshold for “too long” than many other people, but there’s a really long list of things I love but flat-out won’t make on a weeknight (and rarely on weekends, to be honest) because they take too long and/or are too complicated:
Lasagna
Quiche
Stuffed Bell Peppers
Split Pea Soup
Spaghetti and Meatballs (if I don’t have sauce pre-made and frozen)
Enchiladas (ditto)
Huevos Rancheros (also ditto)
Pizza
There are things that take a long time that I don’t mind making, though - swiss steak, stew, roasts - anything that I can just toss in a crockpot or oven and leave as long as there’s not too much chopping and other preparation beforehand.
I do generally make the sauce the day before–I believe it’s actually better that way, in addition to spreading out the work–but that doesn’t really change the total time involved.
There’s a recipe I got on here for pork chile verde. It is DIVINE. I only make it about every 3-4 months, because it’s a ton of work between handling the sticky tomatillos, roasting the peppers for the verde, and cubing the pork. There are some tactics to cut down on the labor, but it’s not as good that way.
I also find lasagna tedious. And my mom does the paleo thing since my brother moved in with her. For her birthday, I made her a zucchini-noodle lasagne with cauliflower “ricotta”. It’s actually really really delicious- but I have not made it since May because again, sooo much work. She asked for it yesterday. I told her to shave the zucchini and I’d come over and do the rest for her.
Dandelion salad. It takes about an hour to harvest enough, but that’s not so bad, because it’s kind of fun. The really tedious part is that you then have to clean it, and that takes several hours.
As it happens, though, it’s also a seasonal dish, so I’d only be making it once a year anyway.
The first thing I thought of was lasagna. It’s such a PITA to make that I’ve just given up on the real stuff and now make a version with frozen ravioli that takes only half an hour and a single pan.
The second thing I came up with is potica. It’s my favorite pastry of all time, but the preparation is so time-consuming that I’m actually better off driving all the way to the Italian Bakery up north (almost 250 miles each way) to buy it. Fortunately, I can just order it online now :D.
