Chefs Are Confessing The Dishes They Absolutely Hate Making, And I'm Sorry If Your Favorite Food Is On This List
A while ago, Redditor u/ShylocksBloodyBond asked the chefs of Reddit, "What is that one dish on the menu you absolutely hate making?" Here are some of their most shocking confessions:
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Note: Some responses are submissions from the BuzzFeed Community from this post.
1.Customized cakes
"I worked at a baker for a while, and it's a lot of work to make a cake and decorate it with customizations. And then people think it should cost $20 and no more."
2.Ravioli, meatballs, and anything else repetitive
"Obviously, you prep beforehand in large batches, and some hands/chefs like doing it, but I could never enjoy it. It's just mind numbing. I remember filling thousands of profiteroles when I was young."
3.Boiled eggs...
"We would have to use a separate pot to boil your single egg in for 8–13 minutes on a burner that we could be using to cook multiple orders on in that span of time. We can’t just drop the egg in our poaching pot because poaching and boiling require different temperatures. Kitchens are small and our burners are limited."
4....and eggs in general
"Former chef here. Some of the simplest dishes are the most annoying. I always hated working breakfast rushes; people are very particular about eggs, and it's very easy to accidentally break a yolk."
5.Fried cheese curds
"Fried cheese curds were the absolute worst. Find the big chunks, toss them in flour, toss them in batter...then ONE BY ONE swim each damn piece into the fryer. Annoying AF."
6.Bacon
"I hated cooking bacon. It's not that it's difficult — it's just such a popular food item that it was all I would end up cooking. First thing in the morning, even before mise en place, start cooking bacon. Try and get three batches done before the buffet opened in order to give ourselves some cushion. Once service started, it was nothing but bacon, bacon, bacon. Lay out dozens of pieces of bacon on a several sheet pans. Stick in the oven and bake for 18 minutes. Send out to the buffet. Immediately start another batch because the bacon would be emptied out in minutes. Repeat ad nauseum for four hours. Literally, one person would just handle bacon while the rest would be able replenish all the other food items. Go home covered in bacon grease. Take a shower, and the bacon smell gets aerosolized. It's been almost three years since I worked there, and I still can't stand the sight, smell, or taste of bacon."
7.Crêpes
"I used to help run brunch, and crêpes to order ARE tedious to make. When you host breakfast, it’s often a request, and it’s just standing in front of a stove, pouring and flipping for almost 45 minutes to make sure everyone has enough — but they are delicious."
8.Anything catered
"I worked for a hotel company that would host and cater huge parties. I had to do things like make 1,200 — yes, 1,200 — crêpes. Three per person for 400 people. Or 36 pies. One of the touristy treats was a Rice Krispies treat cut in the shape of the mountains and dipped in chocolate, but you had to hand-cut each treat with a knife. The ones that weren't so bad were the orders for, like, 120 muffins, though large-batch cobbler was an absolute breeze. I learned quickly that consumer large-batch was NOT for me!"
9.Nutella, peanut butter, and anything else with allergens
"Oh man. I used to make milkshakes at a late-night bakery, and any time someone ordered a Nutella or peanut butter shake I would die inside. It would splash everywhere, and it was ALWAYS during rushes."
10.Charcuterie boards
"Stuff falls off all over the place."
11.Roast beef
"People occasionally specified how done they wanted their roast beef at Arby's. Those roasts take hours to cook; you aren't getting them custom. The only thing we could do was microwave it for well-done orders until it was dry."
12.Soufflés
"Soufflés. We make the crème pâte in advance, but when it’s ordered, the process is: warm crème pâte over a double boiler, and while that is warming, you need to hand-whip a fresh meringue. Once the crème is warm, you have about three minutes to fold in the whites and then fill your molds to make sure you don’t touch the edges (as it makes them rise crooked). Into the oven for three minutes, open the oven, and rotate for two minutes. In those five minutes, you have to plate the rest of the table's desserts, which all have 8–10 components. Soufflé comes out to a waiting waiter and has to go to the table immediately or deflates.
While it’s not the most difficult thing in the world, when you’re busy and have 4–6 on order, and each one needs to pass a three-finger test (height above the rim of the mold or it gets sent back, and you need to restart), it can get quite hard and demoralizing when they don’t work."
13.Wood-fired pizza
"To be fair there is nothing wrong or difficult about making this dish. The product was delicious when done right. The problem was the place I worked for had a full-on kitchen but chose to put the pizza oven on the outdoor patio; the place was poorly run and we never had the amount of business to justify having someone outside manning the pizza oven at all times. On Friday and Saturday nights when we got busy, if there was more than one or two pizzas going at once, it became unmanageable. Imagine trying to cook a full-line on a busy night — and you are understaffed — and someone needs to run outside to the patio every three minutes or so in order to not burn the pizzas..."
14.Marshmallows...and tempering chocolate
"I'm a pastry chef. I HATE making marshmallows (the worst texture for touching, tasting, preparing, and cleaning) and tempering chocolate (fickle, frustrating, and expensive). I’ll happily flambé you a goddamn bananas Foster if it means I don’t have to make marshmallows or filled chocolates."
15.Hollandaise sauce
"Hollandaise. As much as I love eating it, it's such a hassle making it. Like 20 minutes of whisking."
16.Sautéed shrimp
"Sautéing shrimp pretty much blows. They release a lot of water, which explodes when it hits the hot oil, so you get a lot of burns. Sometimes oil hits you in the face. It sucks, but whatever. You cook the shrimp and get on with it."
17.Anything puréed
"I was a chef at a nursing home, and anything pureed for people who are on that dietary restriction was gross to me. I literally had to take whatever meal I made, throw it in a blender, and put it in a bowl. I always felt so bad."
18.Calamari
"Calamari. If you worked in a restaurant cleaning them and prepping them to cook, you would know. They come with all kinds of crap in them, and they smell terrible when spoiled raw. Never again."
19.Off-menu orders
"I worked at a restaurant that had a few local 'celebrities' and business owners who would order off-menu. It always felt like it was for show. A power move designed to let others know how important they thought they were. I heard that they stopped letting them order off-menu with the new manager. In a busy steakhouse restaurant on a Friday night, they would order things like an omelet. It wasn't impossible to do, but rather inconvenient."
20.Customized soups — and other already-prepared dishes
"Customizing the soups. I used to work at a Michelin star restaurant. WE ALREADY HAVE THE SOUPS PREPARED BEFORE YOU WALK IN. I can't just take out the shrimp taste of a paella soup that I prepped before you walked in here."
21.Cinnamon buns
"Baker here. Cinnamon buns are the majority of our business, but so time-intensive. And while the finished product comes out SO good, they take three days to make between dough, proofing, and baking. By the time the customer gets them (warm), I swear they owe me much more than $5 a bun. Exhausting."
22.Pierogi
"I hand-make pierogi for my food truck. ... Making one or two batches is annoying, but making enough for a commercial operation completely sucks. The dough I use doesn’t have water in it, just egg and sour cream, so the gluten doesn’t form into very strong bonds. That means that I can’t use a pasta roller to make sheets of dough to cut into dumpling skins. I have to hand-roll everything with a rolling pin, and my work surface isn’t big enough to roll out an entire batch."
And finally:
23.Well-done steak
"People ordering filet steak cooked well-done. They will always send it back because it's like a 'rubber boot' or 'too tough.' Well DUH, what do you expect? Filet is not the right cut to be served well-done in the first place. Takes a good 30–45 minutes to butcher the steak without burning the outside; order a thinner cut if you would like well-done. It's my job, so I still fulfill the requests as that's what I am paid to do, but I die inside when I see that on the ticket."
Which one of these surprised you? And fellow chefs, which dishes do you hate making? Let us know in the comments below!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
