32 People Shared The One Food Item They Never Order In A Restaurant, Because It Tastes Way Better At Home

We all get lazy about cooking sometimes, which leads to one of two options: going to a restaurant or ordering takeout. But Reddit user u/possum_player pointed out something very important: Certain foods are just better when you whip them up in your own kitchen. They asked Redditors, "What dish do you just never order in a restaurant anymore, because the version you make at home is so good that you know you'll be disappointed?" Here are 32 top-rated responses:

1."Scrambled eggs. It seems nearly every place is just serving a semi-dry, unseasoned, and empty omelette. I've had good scrambled eggs at a couple of really great restaurants, but I'd say 95% of them have been terrible."

Here is Ina Garten's "perfect scrambled eggs" recipe:

2."Salmon. It's a ridiculously forgiving fish, but for some reason, restaurants always under-season and/or overcook it."

Here's Giada De Laurentiis' pan-seared salmon recipe:

3."Brownies. They're usually a crappy piece of cake in actuality."

Here's Alton Brown's homemade brownie recipe:

4."Steak. Unless I'm at a place known for their steaks and someone else is paying, the price I pay per pound of quality beef just doesn't justify steakhouse prices."

Here's Geoffrey Zakarian's grilled rib-eye recipe:

5."Cornbread. I don't know what the fuck these restaurants are doing, but I do know they ain't using enough butter."

Here's Alex Guarnaschelli's cast iron skillet cornbread recipe:

6."Salads. When I make a salad, I chop up everything into bite-size pieces and load it with a ton of ingredients. At restaurants, you get giant chunks of lettuce, whole cucumber slices, and two cherry tomatoes."

Here's Ina Garten's Cape Cod chopped salad recipe:

7."Eggs Benedict. I spent a year obsessively making it and taking notes — my wife basically hates it now."

Here's Bobby Flay's eggs Benedict recipe:

8."Carbonara. I only started making it myself after I had a poorly cooked restaurant one (even the pasta was all gluggy and stuck together)."

Here's Geoffrey Zakarian's bucatini carbonara recipe:

9."Any kind of lemony pasta. I definitely like acid more than most people, but the Pasta al Limone — or other pastas with lemon you get in any restaurant — basically taste like a lemon rolled by while they were cooking, and that's it."

Here's Ina Garten's lemon capellini recipe:

10."Any stir-fry. It's too expensive, and always really small portions that just don't fill me up (I'm in the UK). It's also quite bland compared to what I can make at home. I have to buy several sides just so I don't leave hungry. While at home, I can add more veggies, and the ingredients are a lot fresher."

Here's John Zang's beef stiry-fry recipe:

11."Crab cakes. I feel like all restaurants use 50/50 crab meat to filler. I prefer 90/10."

Here's Kardea Brown's crab cake recipe:

12."Matar paneer. It’s the Indian cheese cubes and peas in tomato gravy. I make it the way my mom does, and it’s both healthier and more flavorful than what I get in a restaurant. I can't find the recipe right now, but the key is to not use cream, and use ground cashews in the sauce. We also hugely reduce the fat and increase the spice and tomato flavor (use tomato paste!)."

Here's Chef Anupa's matar paneer recipe:

13."Quesadillas. They never have the right soft AND crunchy balance. The outside needs to be slightly crisp, and the inside should obviously be soft."

Here's Cooking con Claudia's chicken quesadilla recipe:

14."Mac and cheese. No matter how hard I search for good mac and cheese, mine is still the best."

Here's Sunny Anderson's mac and cheese recipe:

15."Grits. Almost all restaurants serve them too grainy, or they're terribly bland."

Here's Kardea Brown's shrimp and grits recipe:

16."Spaghetti. I like it the way I make it — and pretty much only the way I make it. The sauce needs to be thick, meaty, and deeply flavored, with no sweetness. And I like spaghettini pasta for it."

Here's Alton Brown's spaghetti and meat sauce recipe:

17."Nachos. My wife used to like ordering them as her meal every once in a while. But they seem to be very hit or miss in restaurants — you never know what will come out on the plate. So one night, I decided to make my own at home. I cooked up some ground beef, sliced up some green pepper and red onion, and threw on jalape?os with a bunch of cheese. I put 'em in the oven for 10 minutes or so at a medium temperature, and they were amazing. It's very simple to do, and you can put whatever you want on them."

Here's Molly Yeh's pulled pork nachos recipe:

18."Burgers. They're either under-seasoned, have cheap cheese, are cooked wrong, or they have really crappy condiments that go with it."

Here's Bobby Flay's Louisiana burger recipe:

19."Egg McMuffins. The recipe is pretty straightforward. Sear your ham and English muffins, throw on a fried egg, and a slice of cheese. You can usually make it in about the time it takes to get through the drive thru, without the gas money."

Here's Jeff Mauro's sausage egg McMuffin recipe:

20."Fried catfish. I've inherited a long history of perfected methods in my family for frying the best catfish, and no restaurant can serve it up the way my family and I do. It's more than a dish, it's a memory, and a family treasure. Restaurant catfish doesn't have the same nostalgia with it."

Here's Soul Food Cooking's southern fried catfish recipe:

21."Lamb chops. Every time I've ordered them out, they're way too gamey and chewy."

Here's Katie Lee's grilled lamb chop recipe:

22."Home fries, hash browns, and hash. I haven't quite managed to nail the home fries every time, but once you get that right combination of a crispy outside and pillowy fluffy inside, then it's just not the same as when you go to a diner and get some greasy mushy fried potato chunks."

Here's Chef John's home fries recipe:

23."Where I live there is a restaurant that is 'famous' for their flautas that are in a very soupy sauce. Mine are WAY better, and now I refuse to eat there."

Here's Sunny Anderson's chicken flautas with avocado cream recipe:

24."Lasagna. If I wanted something extremely salty and microwaved, I would just microwave a bowl of salt at home, thank you very much."

Here's Giada De Laurentiis' classic Italian lasagna recipe:

25."Bruschetta. Every goddam restaurant has their own 'twist' on it now, when the original is perfection."

Here's Chef Vincenzo's bruschetta recipe:

26."Bibimbap. My first kitchen job was working for a Korean family in their restaurant. The owner taught me how to make so many delicious and authentic Korean foods, and now I know any restaurant I go to will do things differently, and perhaps not as well as me."

Here's Daniel from Future Neighbor's bibimbap recipe:

27."Cake. Cake made with actual butter, eggs, etc. (and no chemical preservatives) is lightyears ahead of most cakes I've tried in restaurants."

Here's Alex Guarnaschelli's simple birthday cake recipe:

28."Blackened chicken. I live in the Midwest, and blackened anything is just grilled with some Cajun seasoning up here. It’s flavorless and unappetizing. If you’ve ever had real blackened chicken, you probably know this pain."

Here's Allrecipes' blackened chicken recipe:

29."Risotto. Most restaurants I’ve had it make it crunchy instead of al dente, and are always lacking the real flavor of a good rich stock."

Here's Ina Garten's easy parmesan risotto:

30."Pulled pork. You can't beat handmade bbq sauce."

Here's Alton Brown's 5-star pulled pork recipe:

31."Beef and broccoli! I hate ordering it from restaurants because it's usually 80% broccoli to beef."

Here's Jet Tila's famous 5-star beef and broccoli recipe:

32.And finally, "Alfredo pasta. A lot of restaurants add, like, two sticks of butter to their Alfredos, and just eating it makes my organs feel greasy. I love a good cream sauce, but the texture is often so bad and oily!"

Here's Giada De Laurentiis' fettuccine Alfredo recipe:

Is there a dish that you think tastes 1,000 times better when you make it at home? Let us know in the comments for a chance to be featured in a BuzzFeed Community post!

Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.