A place opened up on the corner that makes the damnedest homemade fresh pasta, but the best thing about it is the loaves of baguette-shaped Italian bread. Delicious on its own, and exceptional when spread with good Irish butter or dipped in good Greek olive oil.
Too much for us to eat all at once, so I wrap leftovers in foil and refrigerate. Throw it into a 250 oven the next day for ten minutes and it’s perfectly fresh and soft and ready to make into a ham sandwich, or spread with butter and blackberry preserves for breakfast.
This happens on vacations for us. We’ll go somewhere with a kitchen, but it’s impractical to take a lot of our stuff from home, so we show up without spices or condiments. Buying what we need for a week’s worth of cooking is significantly more than what it’d be at home, because we’re buying lots of extra little things.
I was thinking about this thread tonight, when I made a couple of pizzas for dinner. Now, these weren’t restaurant-grade pizzas. I forgot to use bread flour for the crust, and my oven doesn’t get above 500 F, and I suck at stretching the dough thin enough to get a really crispy crust.
But my kids’ eyes got huge, and they snarfed it down, and THEY told me it was good enough to be at a restaurant. Because I know them, and I made it just how they like it.
IIRC, it’s tossed with corn starch to keep it from glopping back together. We buy pre-shredded cheese a lot, but it’s definitely inferior to block cheese. Sometimes that convenience is worth it.
also, restaurants tend to use a lot of weird but common shortcuts that if people knew about them probably wouldn’t eat at restaurants again
But I watch Robert Irvine’s restaurant impossible and according to him a restaurant should charge 3 dollars or 30 percent markup (whichever is more) for every dollar it takes to make a dish
Hmm, I’ve asked for a recipe from a restaurant twice. Once, the recipe for chocolate mousse turned out to be fabulously complicated, and I didn’t bother trying. The other time I made the lemon cookies and they came out exactly the same as what I’d bought. I liked them so much I made three three more times in a month.
But the lemon cookie recipe calls for a lot of zest and no juice, and I got tired of throwing away the extra lemons after zesting them and then not having any use for the rest of the lemon. I mean, even so, they were cheaper than buying the same thing… Still, it’s a delicious lemon cookie recipe. And other than the “zest 3 lemons” part, it’s very easy. I should make it again.
The OP’s claim seems bizarre, though. I mean, sure, there’s stuff that is better or cheaper from restaurants. That chocolate mousse recipe from the fancy french place that I didn’t try to replicate, for instance. Or croissants. The fancy bakery makes awesome croissants, but they don’t keep until lunch time. (I mean, they’re still edible, but they are no longer awesome.) And I don’t really want to eat more than one croissant in a day. I’m not going through all the work of making them to make one.
Or more mundanely, anything that’s deep fried. If you have a fryolator and fry stuff all day long, you will fry better than I do (more uniform temperature) and probably cheaper, because you won’t throw out a bottle of oil for a single dish, like I end up doing. I don’t make deep-fried anything at home, though, for that reasons.
But my chicken broth is way better than any I’ve bought, and I make it with leftovers I wasn’t going to eat, plus an onion, a carrot, water, and a little salt. (Leftovers are the chicken carcass and frozen leaves and stumps of celery. Oh, and if my parsley plant is alive I’ll throw in a little of that – that costs me $2 for most of a year’s worth of parsley.) So, maybe $0.70 for 3-4 quarts. And, did I mention, richer, more chickeny, and just a lot better than store bought? The bean soup I make from the chicken broth is fabulous, and also cheap. My husband’s lentil soup is better than anything I can buy, and is dirt cheap. I mean, if you bought a tiny bottle of cinnamon sticks maybe the cinnamon would be a significant cost, but since we do a lot of Indian cooking, I buy 1lb bags and a single stick is only a few cents.
I far prefer my roast chicken to what I can buy, but I have to admit that the loss-leader over-cooked rotisserie chicken is cheaper. But my veggies are better than the over-seasoned, greasy crap sold next to that rotisserie chicken, and a lot cheaper.
Even staples can be surprisingly cheap when home made. I tried making instant-pot yogurt, mostly for fun. I did a blind taste test against my favorite store brand, and to my enormous surprise, the stuff I’d made (using it as a starter) was a little better. I mean, not very different, but it tasted fresher and richer. And milk costs less than yogurt here, so it turned out to be cheaper, too.
I have a lemon tree, so they are free. But when I zest one I save the lemon for iced tea. You can also put it in some water in your microwave to freshen it.
I juiced them and added the juice to my big bottle of store-bought juice. But I just don’t use that much lemon. I dislike it in tea, for instance. I like it in marinades, but don’t marinate meat all that often.
You can also run them through the kitchen disposal to freshen it, which works well. It just seems wasteful at some point.
I can’t really think of anything I’ve had in a restaurant that I can’t make better/cheaper at home. If such a dish exists it’s because I haven’t found the right recipe.
I’m sure there is some fancy 5-star French dish that takes professional training but I’ve never ordered such a dish.
I can think of a lot of things restaurants do better than we do. Not just fancy stuff, also anything fried, and anything that works better if you have a specialized machine to do parts of the job. But there are tons of things I do better, including some fairly fancy stuff, like flourless chocolate cake, and basics, like pancakes. Lots of stuff comes out essentially the same, like steaks or boiled eggs or bacon, or toast. No, I take that back, my toast is brown enough (I like it dark) and I get to eat it fresh and crispy from the toaster. But if I try to make pale toast, I can reproduce the restaurant stuff.
Since Mr VOW’s heart attack (1-17-2020), he’s on a VERY restricted sodium diet. Fast food was the first thing that flew out the window. And I really doubt any restaurant will prepare food using NO salt.
So all of us are eating better. The household has gotten used to no salt in the food. But hey, Grandma is busy-busy-busy preparing fresh food every day.
There’s no choice involved: this is literally life or death. And Mr VOW has been surprisingly compliant. He even compliments me on the food.
~VOW
I agree; unfortunately, I try to fry a burger in my little house and everything reeks of burger for the next day. So restaurant it is, unless I can grill outdoors.
Also, anything deep fried. I’m not all that skilled with it, do not have a FryBaby or anything like that, and again the “stink up the house” factor. We did go through a phase of making cream cheese puffs and egg rolls at home, but they were so putzy (not only making them, but cleaning up afterwards) it was decided the little restaurant a few block away was worth it.
Only 30% markup? That seems a little low to me. The general rule of thumb I learned (when I briefly worked in the industry at a couple of different places) was somewhere around 3x-ish raw ingredients cost. This site, for example says 3 times cost.
It varied by dish, of course. Cheaper dishes might get higher markup, and more expensive dishes would get a lower markup, but generally somewhere around 3x ingredients cost was a starting point. Even on the expensive dishes, I don’t remember getting anywhere near as low as a 30% markup.
Or here’s a Forbes breakdown of hamburgers and other items at sit-down restaurants. They cite closer to a 350% markup for a hamburger. Yes, those markups will be lower at a fast food joint. But the conclusion is:
I think this is another case where “markup” gets conflated with “food cost should be about 30% of the price”, which is roughly the same as a 300% markup. Same thing happens with “markup” and “margin”.
I guess the OP realized his PSA was about as accurate as Reefer Madness, as she has chosen not to back up his words.
For the record, I make lots of things better than restaurants, I make lots of things cheaper than I can get in restaurants, but I’ll admit not all that I make can I make better or cheaper (at least when one factors in waste from esoteric ingredients I won’t find a use for anywhere else). I posit this is the same as most who (a) like to cook and (b) like to learn how to cook properly.
I was just thinking (and I apologize if this has already been covered) but while I can make better dishes at home I can’t make better pre-made ingredients. Like peanut butter or ketchup.
Now I suppose it’s possible but for the convenience of just picking some up I’m not about to make my own tomato paste or miso.
Lemons are hellishly expensive here, so I buy one at a time. But I find equal parts hot water, Dawn dish detergent and lemon juice (or vinegar) sprayed on a soap scummy bathtub clean it like magic. Better than any scrubbing bubbles or magic erasers.
I haven’t tried to make ketchup (or even catsup), but peanut butter is very easy to make with a good processor. Spiced peanut butter is over $10 a jar, but I can make it with about $2 of oeanuts and less than $1 worth of spice. It is also more convenient since you don’t have to stir it unless it sits at room temp for more than a week.
Recipe:
Put peanuts in processor. Run on high for 10 minutes or until desired consistency. Salt and spice to taste.
Yeah, that kind of stuff isn’t worth the trouble for me. I do know people who make their own peanut butter, but it’s not something I personally care about. Most condiments and similar I leave to the “let other people do 'em” category. Sometimes I do like a proper spicy English mustard, so I’ll whip up some Colman’s and water, and I like to make my own barbecue sauce for when I smoke meats, but I’m not going to bother with homemade ketchup. Even homemade mayonnaise, as much as I like it, I’m just not going to go through it quickly enough before it spoils vs. a big jar of Duke’s (my current brand) or Hellman’s (my other brand) which lasts longer and I actually prefer for most uses. I will make it every once in a while for specific dishes but for slathering on sandwiches or in salads, I’m happy with the commercial stuff.