Homemade takeout

Steel Kitten has blogged about learning how to make her own kebab meat for homemade donner kebabs and it’s made me think about how we’ve slowly been replacing takeout dinners.

I’ll be honest – we still do eat quite a bit of takeaway/delivery food – but it is less than it used to be. When we lived in Leeds, we were in a prime spot for takeout – we were in the overlapping bit of four different takeout areas so had a huge variety of places to choose from. It was mostly junk food takeout (but done well) but there were a few more better quality places (eg Box Pizza – who when they first started out did fancy burgers too) and restaurants that delivered too. Lots of tasty temptation.

Since moving, we’ve become disillusioned with the takeaway options around here but still have takeout cravings/the urge for lazy comfort food at dinnertime so have started making more of our own takeout favourites at home:

Curries

We are curry fiends. In West Yorkshire, it’s almost rude not to be – there are so many excellent restaurants around. We still eat curries out of the house about once a fortnight but we also make them a lot. A few years ago, we went on a cookery course taught by one of the head chefs of a local restaurant chain and it vastly increased John’s cooking confidence so he’s the one that tends to cook them at home. He blogged a few of our favourite recipes from that course (lamb achar; lemon rice; chicken jalfrezi) but he’s tweaked them over the years so next time he makes them, I’ll document the new versions (especially the keema & chickpea version of the achar – that’s my favourite :) ).

We used to have daal a lot when we were veggie – with rice as a main dish rather than just the side dish it’s relegated to a lot over here. I used this recipe for tarka daal, and this for a yellow split pea one.

Obviously just about the best thing about curry is that it’s one of those foods that tastes better the next day and it freezes really well too. We always cook curries in large quantities (one of the few things we batch cook) so we can have a homemade ready meal/homemade takeout when we’re feeling lazy — healthier and far cheaper than ordering in. Daal doesn’t freeze as well (or rather, whole pulses don’t defrost well in my experience) but wetter soup-y style ones don’t suffer as badly as they’re already mostly/entirely broken down.

Cost per portion: (some sort of meat curry)
take-out/delivery – about £5-6 a dish, plus extra for rice/chapatis from some places
homemade – (made with organic & local meat) about £2, including rice
Time to make: 1hour+ – but can be batch made and frozen (then takes about 10 mins)

Cost per portion: (some sort of veggie daal)
take-out/delivery – about £4-5, plus extra for rice/chapatis from some places
homemade – no more than £1, including rice
Time to make: about half an hour

Kebabs

I’ve actually never eaten donner meat – I’ve avoided it for the same reasons as Steel Kitten – but we do eat desi kebabs about once every six weeks or so (usually when we’re around John’s mum & dad’s house at dinner time, as they live near an awesome grill place). They’re nothing like post-pub dirty kebabs – essentially barbecued marinaded chunks of meat or fillets of fish (or whole chops/wings), cooked on a skewer with veg and served with salad.

While we do marinade meat at home and cook it on skewers from time to time, we’ve not really tried replicating desi kebabs at home yet. I do sometimes fry some fish in a dry spice rub, like some of the fish kebabs we’ve had over the years – something I should probably write-up as it’s lovely and quick.

Cost per portion: (for the fish)
take-out/delivery – about £5, served with salad & in a naan
homemade – about £2-3, served with salad or rice (depending on the fish)
Time to make: About 15 mins

Pizzas

We’ve made our own pizzas off and on for a while but it’s only lately that I’ve started bulk making bases, part baking them then freezing them. Doing that means we can have homemade pizza in about 15mins when we get pizza pangs – far faster than getting some delivered.

I use this pizza dough recipe from (sigh) Jamie Oliver’s website and cook the bases for about 10 mins, until they’ve risen and are just starting to very slightly brown on the bottom. I then take them out, let them cool then wrap them in aluminium foil before freezing them. Since they’re thin, they don’t take any time at all to defrost when we want to eat them – I maybe lift them out few minutes before we want to start decorating them while the oven is preheating, then add the sauce & toppings and bake for ten minutes ish until the cheese is melted.

I will admit that my dough isn’t perfect yet – my shaping needs a lot of improvement – but our toppings are far tastier than takeaway ones.

Cost per portion:
take-out/delivery – £5 per pizza
homemade – about £2 per pizza, depending on toppings (we have lots!)
Time to make: A couple of hours (inc rising time) to make the dough but only about 15 mins when using frozen bases after that.

East Asian/Chinese

We hardly every used to have Chinese takeout when we lived in Leeds – we knew such good restaurants that the takeout seemed very mediocre – but the restaurants have shut down for various reasons and we actually live near a good takeout place now so it’s probably our favourite take-in option at the moment — and not something we often replicate at home.

We do cook stir-fries (with marinaded meat) and fried rice dishes quite a bit but they don’t totally quench the desire for steamed pork dumplings or something in a peppery, spicy Szechuan sauce. We’re both big fans of the curry-flavouring of “Singapore noodles” and John’s working on perfecting that, using this recipe as a rough base (but not usually include all the different meats). But aside from that, we’ve not really been trying to make our own — if anyone has any recipe suggestions for Westernised takeout-style meals, I’d love to hear them.

Cost per portion: (for the Singapore noodles)
take-out/delivery – about £5
homemade – about £2-3, depending on the amount/types of meat used
Time to make: About 15-20 mins

Other things

I’m too scared by vats of hot oil to make our own fish’n’chips at home and while buying frozen pre-battered fish & oven chips from the supermarket would be cheaper than buying from the chippy, I think I’d rather have it less often than make that compromise. Homemade non-battered fish & potato wedges are nice but just not fish’n’chips.

On occasion, I do quite like the odd piece of southern fried chicken but don’t think I’d make it at home – if I’m making marinated chicken at home, I prefer something with more flavours & less salt. And again, the vats of hot oil fear thing.

I used to make burgers from scratch all the time but for some mysterious reason haven’t made one for about a decade. We buy pre-made patties from the butcher/supermarket etc these days and because we get the premium sort rather than frozen ones (more akin to takeaway “dirty burgers”), they’re the one homemade takeaway option that is almost as expensive to cook as home as get delivered. They’re a lot nicer though.

Do you recreate your takeout favourites at home? Do you have any recipe suggestions for homemade burgers or Chinese takeout style meals? Any other tips or advice for speeding things up – to make homemade takeout as easy/quick as picking up the phone?

Other posts you might like:

Homemade dog treats: drying offal in a dehydrator Using our homemade olive oil soap Payment for eggs? Or homegrown veg / homemade crafts? This week’s meal plans: enter the wild garlic