I was thinking about this since last Saturday when I was making a grocery run, and asked Mrs. solost what she felt tlike for dinner that night, so I could pick up any ingredients we’d need. She said “you haven’t made Paella in awhile, but if it’s too complicated to make, don’t worry about it”. But it really isn’t that complicated-- it’s just a mix of rice, veggies, meat and various flavorings and spices. The most complicated, time-consuming part is when I add mussels to the paella-- cleaning, removing beards, and making sure they all are closed when uncooked and opened when cooked is kind of a pain in the adductor muscle. But I usually skip the mussels these days and just add some combo of shrimp, scallops, chorizo and chicken.
I’ve made plenty of stuff that takes a long time, but I wouldn’t describe it as that complicated: BBQed pork shoulder or brisket that I’ve gotten up at 4am to start; spicy Beef Rendang that takes 4 hours to bake on low to properly evaporate the liquid in the coconut milk. But that’s more keeping an eye on things than constant prep work and coordination. Probably, to me, the most complicated meal I make is when I cook our family’s traditional British Sunday Dinner for Christmas: roast beef, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, a veg (usually ‘Swedes’-- mashed rutabaga), and gravy, coordinated so that everything is warm and ready at once. Our Grandma used to make it all the time, but I take turns with my sister on Christmas so I only do it every 2 years.
So, whaddaya got? I’m kind of looking for a challenge while it’s still indoor weather. Recipe links or descriptions will be welcome if you feel like sharing. I’m thinking maybe Beef Wellington? I heard that’s a challenge, and one of Gordon Ramsey’s test dishes to sample if a restaurant serves it.
I don’t know about complicated, but the most labor intensive meals I’ve ever made usually involved making pasta. Ravioli, lasagna, potstickers, wonton, etc.
If I had to pick one, it would probably be wonton. It takes all day, or at least the better part of an afternoon. Make the wrappers, make the filling, make the wontons from the wrappers and the filling, make the broth. Can’t really be “mass produced” in a big sheet like ravioli then cut apart, they have to be filled and folded individually.
Yeah, that’s a good one. Anything involving dough in general is complicated for me because I don’t usually do it. Like the Yorkshire pudding I mentioned in the OP.
My younger son got into a pasta making kick for awhile, and when he was just starting out I helped him and it is indeed very complicated and time-consuming. We had like half a dozen cookie sheets with strands laid out separately so they wouldn’t stick together. Buying a decent quality pasta maker made things easier. I thought about getting a pasta tree but haven’t yet.
Years ago when my extended family visited, I decided to treat them to a tasty homemade Japanese meal for dinner. I never made Japanese dishes before, but I figured it looked simple enough, so why not?
I decided on a menu of miso soup, shrimp and calamari tempura, sauteed vegetables, and a variety of sushi rolls with sauces. I bought all the necessary ingredients and tools, including a bamboo sushi roller.
I planned to take the family site-seeing in St. Augustine for the day, so I began prepping the meal in the morning, then I’d finish up when we returned and we could eat.
Well, the prep turned out to be much more difficult than I anticipated, so I told the family to go site seeing on their own, then I’d have dinner ready for them upon their return.
They returned around dinnertime, but I still wasn’t finished prepping the food. We didn’t eat until late that night. It was good, but after that, if I want Japanese food, I go to Kazu Japanese Restaurant.
Oxtail Soup, probably. My gf’s recipe takes several days, so when we make it we make a huge pot. The flambé step has to be done in batches, and cannot be rushed, or you get a “boom” instead of pretty flames.
A Thanksgiving dinner, probably, with many sides and pies, none of which are excessive in themselves…
Otherwise, I once made miso ramen with homemade noodles, and that definitely stands out as a high-effort meal, with a variety of toppings including pickled eggs and some special simmered pork roast.
My Mexican aunt’s enchilada recipe is also high effort, since each tortilla has to be separately dipped in sauce and then pan fried.
This story reminded me of when I tried to duplicate the 'Ethiopian Feast" from one of our favorite restaurants, the Blue Nile. It consists of a large number of different sides and a couple meat dishes, served with a flatbread called injera. I limited mine to spicy beef and for the sides, cabbage and red lentils. For the injera, I used buckwheat pancake mix which I read online is a fair substitute if you don’t have the grain called teff. It turned out well but was a lot of work even for my limited version of the feast.
I actually bought some teff awhile back meaning to make real injera, but it takes about a week because the mix needs to be fermented, and I keep forgetting to start it early. Anyway, like you say, it’s so much easier just to go to the Blue Nile.
Cool. How did your noodles turn out? What was your technique; did you give them an alkaline treatment? My younger son makes ramen-style noodles occasionally-- he gives them an alkaline bath, but he just uses a pasta maker to make linguini-style noodles. I’ve wanted to try making ramen the authentic way, by stretching, folding and stretching until I have a lot of thin noodles, but I have not been brave or motivated enough to make the attempt yet.
This is another thing I’ve wanted to attempt. Would you be willing to share your gf’s recipe?
I’d vote for that because the complication is with one oven, how do you rotate the food around so everything is hot and fresh at the same time.
In terms of the highest complicated/end product ratio it would be fresh pasta. I’m not an Italian grandmother so with all that work my results are not better than what I could buy at a store.
Interesting how one’s “complicated” dish is another’s “I just threw this together” dish. I’ve done two threads on entree’s considered complicated by many, but are of the “threw this together” variety for me.
The chicken thread pretty much contains instructions on how to make chicken my way - dry breading, cast iron skillet, open air (I don’t even do a mesh grease catcher - they change the consistency of the crust for the worse). I even go into how to clean the skillet! Really, the biggest complication for fried chicken is that, given that I open-air fry it in a cast iron skillet, you have to tend to it constantly, never leaving it for longer than a bathroom break.
Many years ago we bought one of those countertop roaster ovens. It only gets used on Thanksgiving, to roast the turkey. That frees up the oven for all the other things.
I also have a two pan buffet warmer, so I can do the cooked carrots and mashed potatoes earlier and just keep them warm until dinnertime.
Other than Thanksgiving, the most complicated meal I do on a regular basis is probably stir fry. There’s half a dozen different veggies to prep, chicken to cut up, sauce and glaze I have to make, then I have to time it right so the stir fry is done at the same time as the rice.
Thanks for the thread reminder! I meant to try your fried chicken recipe back when I first read the thread.
Good one! A ridiculous amount of ingredients, many of which you won’t find at your local general purpose grocery store, and a ton of prep work involved. Even if I was to make it, closely following those instructions, I’d have no idea if I was anywhere close to how it’s supposed to taste, because I don’t think I’ve ever had authentic mole in a restaurant.
So, have you actually made it, and if so how did it turn out for you?
This is easy. During lockdown, I was given the cookbook for the Hand & Flowers (a 2x Michelin starred pub in southern England). We figured we had time on our hands, so decided to tackle a full four course meal. Each dish used up two double page spreads of instructions in the cookbook. I’m not exaggerating when I say between the cod-salting, the jus reductions, marinations and God know what else, it took two of us THREE DAYS to make the meal.
Needless to say, by the time it was ready, we couldn’t face eating it. It’s a very pretty cookbook though.
I haven’t tried making it myself but someone that I was talking to once said that she wouldn’t make sushi at home, ever, because it just wasn’t worth the time investment to do yourself. Other than that, she’d make anything under the sun.
Really? If I make something complicated and time-consuming for the first time, I am damn sure ready to try it after all that work. I mean, you did actually bring yourself to eat it, right, and were you happy with the result?
I get that; I have noticed there is something weirdly subjective in general to your experience of eating your own prepared meals. Sometimes I think 'wow, I really knocked this out of the park!" but probably more often I’m all like “is this good? IS this good? I can’t really tell.”
I lived for a while in London as a lodger with an Indian family. I have often talked about the delicious food my landlady used to make and in a moment of madness, decided to have a go myself. This was pre-COVID and I was cooking for six.
I found a recipe online and went shopping for a list of ingredients as long as my arm - I still have some of the spices, untouched since that day, on my rack. I don’t remember what it was called, but it was vegetarian and started with soaking chickpeas overnight, then cooking them with a tea bag.
Really, the biggest complication for fried chicken is that, given that I open-air fry it in a cast iron skillet, you have to tend to it constantly, never leaving it for longer than a bathroom break.