Surprised to see a few dishes here our fellow HOs pull off regularly.
Ramen? √
Duck confit? √
Short rib? √
Croissants and deep-fried stuffed olives do sound like a major PITA. And we also rarely fry because of the stank it leaves in the house.
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Duck confit is really hands-off, I’m not sure it’s much more work than spaghetti and meatballs. (I do wonder how much perceptions of difficulty and hassle, in a context like this, are affected by so many people in food media living in large cities with small kitchens. On the hassle scale, “get stuff to make duck confit” is, for me, somewhere between going to the car wash and getting the oil changed.)
Turducken … I’ve made a turducken roulade before, but it’s hard to go from turducken as something you can get at the campus dining hall to turducken as something you either spend $200 on or fuss with all day. It’s not a big enough deal for me. If I were doing it because someone else really wanted it, or because I had an interesting idea, I guess it’d be fine. (That said, while it’s expensive to order one … it’s not that much more expensive than making one yourself! If you’re really desperate to try it, splurging on one is probably comparable to getting a wild turkey or something from D’artagnan.)
What I won’t do again:
Stuff strawberries
Debone and stuff chicken wings
Cure a country ham
… fuck, I need to get the oil changed.
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I must be doing my short ribs wrong … I still am doing them, occasionally 
. Frying - nope. Too much wasted space and oil for the frequency.
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How are braised short ribs “too high-effort and low-yield”?
And the one who said “no deep frying” lives in a studio apartment. Well, YEAH. 
ETA: And a turducken has never EVER been something I’d want to try, or even eat. Absolutely no interest. Give me my duck and my chicken separate so I get all the crispy skin.
Now I want duck.
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I attempted croissants once. They turned out OK, but it was a lot of work.
Small apartment kitchens are not conducive to complex pastry making.
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A friend and aMAZing baker made the most incredible bagels and croissants. Unfortunately she moved to Maine a few years ago. Sadz.
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I could make a turducken if I had more counter space to do the prep. I have the knowledge and knife skills to pull it off, but a co-worker once ordered one years ago for Thanksgiving and found it underwhelming. It’s a neat parlor trick, but she wasn’t impressed with the final product.
I don’t have a problem with braised short ribs, and I’m not sure why SE editors think they’re not worth the effort for the payoff. I think exactly the opposite. As for the rest of the list, yeah. Not gonna do any of that shit.
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This is a very strange list coming from Serious Eats editors. It makes me question Serious Eats now . . or is it just click bait for the site? Any “list” gets people all worked up.
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I think the relative effort-to-payoff ratio for anything braised depends on where you are during the day. I can see my oven from my desk, if I lean over … okay, if I lean over and move that Campari bottle out of the way. I got used to braising things as a broke kid because the braising cuts were cheapest, so sometimes the only thing I could afford. It’s one of my default kitchen activities. (When I moved into my fourth apartment, the first thing I made was oxtail, which was an idiotic thing to do when I had just moved boxes of books—practically the only things I owned—up and down stairs all day. In July. In New Orleans.)
But if you’re out of the house all day, if you’re commuting home, braising becomes a project, if only because you have to plan your day around it or eat late.
Considerations like that are more biographical than anything else, though; they don’t really say anything about the actual difficulty of the dish.
I think that site is a shadow of its former self, TBH.
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I agree.
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None of these sites pay much of anything anymore (I don’t know what SE’s rates are, since no one has reported anything to Who Pays Writers in over a decade), and eventually the kids writing “for exposure” realize what a bullshit model that is.
I got contacted once by some outfit called The Tasting Table asking if I wanted to create content. When I saw what they paid (next to nada) I politely declined.
Sure would be great to make some extra $$$ with food writing, but I think that market is saturated, and as you say, nobody wants to pay enough to make it worth anyone’s time.
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Yeah, it’s like with fiction: the more someone enjoys writing it, or enjoys having written it, or enjoys being able to have a byline they can tell their aunt about, etc.—the more non-financial reward the writer gets from it—the less they can get away with paying. I’ll get paid more this week for copy editing quizzes about The Very Hungry Caterpillar for third graders than I could from any market currently taking freelance pitches for food writing. They have to pay you for the stuff no one will do for free. Food writing paid more when fewer people were impressed if you told them it’s what you did.
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I more or less agree with the list on that idea those are difficult things to master (minus short ribs), low or unpredictable reward for a lot of work or it’s something that can be made better elsewhere.
I could made duck confit and short ribs but for guests, probably make something else. I’d call them semi-fancy comfort food, as in have to source them and no longer cheap. Mostly a minor hassle and not the usual.
I could roast a turducken but I have no interest in butchering and tying together 3 birds. Roasting a pre-rolled turducken would be easy, assembly not so much.
Not going to buy the gear to deep fry a turkey. Croissants, fried olives and the pastry…way too much work and I doubt I could get close to store bought. Also, why make them…low or questionable result for a lot of work.
Ramen is a funny one because people often reference instant stuff…but good ramen takes a lot of work (24 hr broth) and to have all those ingredients and topping around for single meal would be nuts; ramen egg, char siu, slice of fish cake, etc.
My main reason for dining out is to have things I either don’t have the time, skills, energy, or equipment to make at home. And I’m totes OK with that.
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The son of a friend of mine has mastered deep frying a turkey; my friend says it’s exquisite and there are never leftovers. He lives about 1 ½ hours away by freeway from me so I’ve never had a taste.
I know I’d like it. I also know I’m never going to attempt this.
(I’ve watched those turkey on fire videos.)
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Me,too. It’s logical.
I once made wontons. They were great and got eaten in a fraction of the time it took to make them. Never again!
