ELI5- Why does frozen food in the supermarket taste a lot worse than the frozen food restaurants serve?
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Because you don’t reheat it the way restaurants reheat it. Your equipment and process isn’t a match to theirs, and they also plate the food with ingredients that aren’t frozen.
Frozen veggies and whatnot taste about the same, so I’m assuming you mean microwave meals.
You don’t deep fry it, grill it, put it under a salamander or broiler with an ounce of salt and a pound of butter and cream. You take it home and bake or microwave it. Not going to taste at all the same…
If you get the same frozen foods as the restaurant and prepare them the same way, they will generally turn out the same.
Where this works well:
* anything where the preferred method of cooking is to stick it in some type of cooker for some amount of time. Most fried foods (jalapeno peppers, egg rolls), casserole type things (lasagne, enchiladas), things sold and served cold (cheesecake).
Where this doesn’t work:
* any dish containing multiple types of foods (frozen dinner trays, a sausage egg and cheese biscuit sandwich) that tells you to microwave the entire thing together
* foods where the restaurant wouldn’t buy it frozen. Frozen pasta or the above biscuit sandwich – even the crappiest restaurant wouldn’t have trouble boiling pasta (maybe the sauce is bought premade) or using biscuit mix.
* where the frozen version is just a raw ingredient (most frozen vegetables).
Where this kindof works:
* anything requiring a little judgement. Pierogies are 10x better if pan fried a little after being heated up, scallops have to be taken off the heat before they become rubbery.
Because the roaches at the restaurant add flavor to the frozen meal. Lots of local pizza places buy $3 frozen pizzas and they add a couple crumbled roaches and sell it at 15+. Be careful
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