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> This conforms with the Chinese eating culture: there are foods that should be left to restaurants. Why? Are they too complex for people to make at home?

j7ake 2y ago
Japanese and Chinese cuisine is often characterised by a split between home style and restaurant style cooking. If you buy a recipe book or watch a cooking show from Japan or in China, you will see many recipes that are probably unrecognisable to westerners who did not grow up in an Asian household. The split is mostly some ideology that certain foods are not worth the effort to recreate at home. A lot of it is tool and stove constraints in a home kitchen versus restaurant kitchen (for example some fried noodle recipes require a hot stove). The other is a belief that some skill is involved. Such as nigiri is not something made in a Japanese home, but eaten at a restaurant by a professional chef. To try at home would be a waste of ingredients, and a hubris of skill.
- resolutebat 2y ago
  Nigiri are also a pain in the ass to make. In Japanese homes sushi usually means DIY temaki, which outsources the making process to the eaters, accounts for preferences in ingredients, wasabi strength etc and also ensures the nori stays crispy until the last second.
resolutebat 2y ago
Approximately nobody makes eg dim sum from scratch at home. Too many dishes, too many ingredients, very fiddly recipes, it's just not worth it when you can go out and get them from a restaurant that has specialized in dim sum for decades.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  the eating format of dim sum also lends itself to not making it at home. dim sum eating culture is around ordering many small plates to get a variety. any individual plate may have as few as three or four bite sized pieces on it. it is quite annoying for a family of four to make like twenty different dishes consisting of four bites each.
triceratops 2y ago
It's probably some combination of equipment, ingredients or fixed time cost that only makes sense amortized over a large number of units. I don't make fish and chips or deep-fried chicken at home. I know my kitchen will be smoky and greasy, and I'll have a ton of leftover oil. Croissants, or their cousin puff pastry are a pain in the ass unless you're making a big batch to freeze or sell. Making a dozen buns in a batch is not so bad, but it's hardly worth the effort to make only a dozen croissants. Paella tastes best made in a paella pan, and naan is best when it's hot from a tandoor oven. Who's going to keep all that gear around for the one time a year you make paella or naan?
stevenwoo 2y ago
My father ran a Chinese restaurant for a few years and some dishes like dim sum we made at home only when we had every available family member pitching in assembly line style, we usually had recipes that called for enough filling to make X number of dim sum, where X was the number of rice paper dough wraps in a single package. People can eat a lot of dim sum and it's manual intensive labor. Some other things like stir frying doesn't work as well with most home ranges and one can only make one or two servings at a time, even though cooking time is very short. Even with the home made dim sum we took shortcuts besides using the pre made wraps, for the ones with barbecue pork fillings we bought the pork already cooked from the Chinese grocery.
bobthepanda 2y ago
some dim sum cooking techniques are too fiddly. one for example is hand mincing; a fair amount of dim sum dishes are prepared by mincing meat using two cleavers, repeatedly, and sometimes kind of throwing it against a surface until it becomes springy in texture. there isn't really a mechanical equivalent for the home; a food processor completely makes the wrong texture, and so does buying pre-ground meat from the store. dim sum is also similar to tapas where you are supposed to order a large variety of small dishes as a sort of feast. it is quite annoying for a family to make a dozen or twenty dishes consisting of four bites each.

j7ake 2y ago

Japanese and Chinese cuisine is often characterised by a split between home style and restaurant style cooking. If you buy a recipe book or watch a cooking show from Japan or in China, you will see many recipes that are probably unrecognisable to westerners who did not grow up in an Asian household. The split is mostly some ideology that certain foods are not worth the effort to recreate at home. A lot of it is tool and stove constraints in a home kitchen versus restaurant kitchen (for example some fried noodle recipes require a hot stove). The other is a belief that some skill is involved. Such as nigiri is not something made in a Japanese home, but eaten at a restaurant by a professional chef. To try at home would be a waste of ingredients, and a hubris of skill.

resolutebat 2y ago
Nigiri are also a pain in the ass to make. In Japanese homes sushi usually means DIY temaki, which outsources the making process to the eaters, accounts for preferences in ingredients, wasabi strength etc and also ensures the nori stays crispy until the last second.

resolutebat 2y ago

Approximately nobody makes eg dim sum from scratch at home. Too many dishes, too many ingredients, very fiddly recipes, it's just not worth it when you can go out and get them from a restaurant that has specialized in dim sum for decades.

bobthepanda 2y ago
the eating format of dim sum also lends itself to not making it at home. dim sum eating culture is around ordering many small plates to get a variety. any individual plate may have as few as three or four bite sized pieces on it. it is quite annoying for a family of four to make like twenty different dishes consisting of four bites each.

triceratops 2y ago

It's probably some combination of equipment, ingredients or fixed time cost that only makes sense amortized over a large number of units. I don't make fish and chips or deep-fried chicken at home. I know my kitchen will be smoky and greasy, and I'll have a ton of leftover oil. Croissants, or their cousin puff pastry are a pain in the ass unless you're making a big batch to freeze or sell. Making a dozen buns in a batch is not so bad, but it's hardly worth the effort to make only a dozen croissants. Paella tastes best made in a paella pan, and naan is best when it's hot from a tandoor oven. Who's going to keep all that gear around for the one time a year you make paella or naan?

stevenwoo 2y ago

My father ran a Chinese restaurant for a few years and some dishes like dim sum we made at home only when we had every available family member pitching in assembly line style, we usually had recipes that called for enough filling to make X number of dim sum, where X was the number of rice paper dough wraps in a single package. People can eat a lot of dim sum and it's manual intensive labor. Some other things like stir frying doesn't work as well with most home ranges and one can only make one or two servings at a time, even though cooking time is very short. Even with the home made dim sum we took shortcuts besides using the pre made wraps, for the ones with barbecue pork fillings we bought the pork already cooked from the Chinese grocery.

bobthepanda 2y ago

some dim sum cooking techniques are too fiddly. one for example is hand mincing; a fair amount of dim sum dishes are prepared by mincing meat using two cleavers, repeatedly, and sometimes kind of throwing it against a surface until it becomes springy in texture. there isn't really a mechanical equivalent for the home; a food processor completely makes the wrong texture, and so does buying pre-ground meat from the store. dim sum is also similar to tapas where you are supposed to order a large variety of small dishes as a sort of feast. it is quite annoying for a family to make a dozen or twenty dishes consisting of four bites each.