Cooking Sites are NOT for Newbies!

[Kim Shook]

The recipe that Mr. Kim cooked last night (the feta and bacon stuffed chicken) turned out well.  But in putting it on my recipe site, it got me thinking.  As I said, the directions were a little wonky, as they sometimes are at unvetted sites.  Some of it could be put down to differences in taste – it called for 1 tablespoon of dried oregano to season 4 chicken breast halves.  To me, that seems quite excessive.  But, again, that is taste.  Other things bother me more – like the fact that she never explains what to do to a chicken breast in order to stuff it.  And the original directions call for placing the chicken into the baking dish, pouring the sauce on it and THEN stuffing the breasts with the cheese and bacon.  She also says to stuff the chicken with slices of feta and bacon.  I decided that crumbled was a better way to go – I figured by the time you’d stuffed a slice of feta into a pocket in a chicken breast, it would be crumbled anyway. 

 

I knew all of this stuff and was helping him, but would a novice cook?  All of those things are exactly why I would never send a newish cook to a place like allrecipes to find something.  If an experienced cook never looks at the recipe, there are a million things that can go wrong.   Who’s to say that the recipes are even safe? 

 

I know that there really isn’t a solution to this issue, but it is something I hadn’t really thought about until I was cooking this recipe side-by-side with Mr. Kim.  

 

ETA: I am quite sure that I have committed the same kinds of errors at my own recipe webpage, so I'm living in a glass house here.  Some of those recipes date back many years - long before I was a mediumly accomplished home cook.  

Edited February 12, 2015 by Kim Shook (log)

[gfweb]

I trust no recipe completely.  If you cook enough it is possible to see where a recipe goes wrong when you read it.  I see recipes as starting points.

 

And so many recipes leave so much unsaid, assuming an intuition/experience that the cook may not have.

 

One exception...the recipes on Bourdain's Les Halles book are so detailed that they could be executed by any being with opposable thumbs (assuming of course that they can read). You have to tolerate being called a dickhead occasionally, but it is a great great starting cookbook....  As is Beard's Theory and Practice which is written more civilly.

[Martin Fisher]

That's life.

I don't know of any recipe site that doesn't have recipes that totally suck.

 

RISOTTO WITH RADICCHIO AND TOMATOES, BON APPÉTIT MARCH 1991

 

"This was horrible!! : ( I made it for a dinner party with my friends. After one bite they looked at me in disgust and asked for the phone. They wanted to call the nearest papa ginos to order pizza! Thanks to your recipe my friends will never look at me again... DREADFUL!!!!!!!"

[Thanks for the Crepes]

I know exactly what you mean, Kim.

 

I'm so thankful that the internet wasn't available when I was growing up and learning to cook. (I never dreamed before today that I'd write a sentence that began with, "I'm so thankful that the internet wasn't available...") 

 

Now that my foundation is firmly established on cookbooks with tested recipes that were professionally written, I enjoy the gazillion recipes I can get on the internet. I know enough now to usually be able to realize for myself if the ingredients or the instructions are going to work before starting the recipe.

 

I also love being able to search for recipes on the web to get ideas for twists to the ingredients or shortcut techniques, even if I already have an established recipe for a dish. I get a ton of ideas and information for food and recipes from the internet.

 

I can see young cooks without experience trying to make some of the recipes on the internet and losing interest in cooking altogether, which is a real shame, since this art is dying out fast enough without any help from bad web recipes.

 

My first exposure to amateur recipes came from church and other organizations' fund-raising cookbooks, and I don't recommend those for starting cooks either. That said, I have some treasured recipes from those types of publications in regular rotation.

[FeChef]

I dont think it has anything to do with cooks being newbies. Its the person posting the recipe thats to blame. Why should anyone assume the recipe there following is bad? Especially when theres a million reviews saying how good it was. And how they added this, and used less of this..ect..ect. But lets give the recipe a 4-5 star.

[liuzhou]

I dont think it has anything to do with cooks being newbies. Its the person posting the recipe thats to blame. Why should anyone assume the recipe there following is bad? Especially when theres a million reviews saying how good it was. And how they added this, and used less of this..ect..ect. But lets give the recipe a 4-5 star.

 

There is of course the converse. People leaving comments saying "I didn't have ingredient X so I used ingredient Y instead. I don't like ingredient Z, so I left that out. My partner won't eat anything green so a few other things had to go. I'm on a fat free diet so I boiled it instead of frying it.

 

"What a rubbish recipe! The writer can't cook!" they wail despite not having made the dish in question, at all.

I, too, read recipes for ideas but don't often slavishly follow them. That way lies madness. But if I change a recipe and it goes wrong, I'm only going to blame myself.

Edited February 12, 2015 by liuzhou (log)

[Tri2Cook]

I'm guilty of leaving out a massive amount of detail when sharing a recipe. I get mildly annoyed reading a recipe that holds my hand and walks me through every single little step. I forget sometimes that there was a time when I needed that hand holding and that it's easier for me to skim over stuff I already know than for someone who doesn't know to figure it out on their own. Fortunately, I don't put recipes on cooking sites.

[CatPoet]

I have a problem translating and sometimes I think Swedish, sometime  British English and then I realised that most cooking sites I been on are American, so food terms are different, ingredients are different.   I often leave disclaimer that  English is my second language.

But I do not like  when people leave out water when it is  part of the recipe, not like cooking  the potatoes in water but  add 1 cup water to soften the sauce. Delia Smith is a master on it.

[jmacnaughtan]

For desserts (especially more advanced ones), I'd much prefer a detailed recipe.  I don't generally use recipes on the internet as much more than guidelines though...

 

Unfortunately, I find that there are often glaring errors in professional level books, too.  This is the reason why I only keep my Francisco Migoya books around for the photos and general inspiration; half of the recipes tend to fall flat.

[Norm Matthews]

Sometimes recipes get passed on and they get changed like a rumor.  Here is a reply to a recipe I posted once on another site. I said I like to make French Onion Soup with some stock after I have made some beef stock. The recipe plainly stated dry sherry.

 

I made Norm's French onion soup last weekend for guests and it was delicous! I even broke down and bought a bottle of sherry. I was confused in the store wether to get the cream sherry or plain sherry so I went with the cream. I mean what can go wrong with anything that has cream in it's name? LOL I didn't have beef bones and 6 hours to make my own stock. I found beef stock at the grocery but it was $3.25 for what looked like less than a quart! No way am I going to pay that much for stock, plus I recalled I have a small jar of demi glace from France in my cupboard I had indulged in but never opened yet. So I used regular canned beef broth and demi glace to taste. The recipe says it takes about an hour to cook the onions. I think I had my temp too low because it took me closer to 2 hours and I had to turn up the heat toward the end to get the brown carmel color. No problem though... I had plenty of kitchen chores to do and just needed to stir the onions ever so often. I toasted rustic bread slices on one side, buttered and sprinkled granular garlic on the other side, then toasted that side. I floated those on top of the soup and grated over some Edam cheese. The market I had been shopping in had their guyere cheese over priced in my opinion (6oz for $7.65!!!) so I substituted Edam. I hate shopping a regular grocery when imported or gourmet ingredients are on my list!!! Sams club is great for reasonable imported cheeses but I didn't have time to run by there. Edam cheese is a great melting cheese so it turned out fine. The soup was a hit. My dinner menu was French onion soup, my open face gyro type sandwich, and hot blueberry cobbler for dessert. I swear I have bruises on my back from all the complements I got for that dinner. The rich soup was nicely balanced by the fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, and garlicky yogurt of the gyro sandwich. And the sweet warm cobbler can't be beat on a winter night. Thanks again Norm for your delicous recipe and inspiration!

 

I thought a nice red wine would taste great in the soup too. I almost added some but I do try to stick to the recipe if it's the first time I'm trying it. I also thought a touch of soy sauce would have expanded the flavor levels too. Next time I'll get a bit bolder and try some variations. The thing I most liked about the soup was it's layers of flavors. The broth is so exotic tasting I just loved it, and Sunday morning when I woke up all I could think about was the leftover soup in the fridge. Ate the rest for breakfast!!!

Edited February 12, 2015 by Norm Matthews (log)

[Anna N]

"When ready to make the dough, combine the bread flour with the salt and yeast in the stand mixer fitted with the dough hook and mix for five minutes, or mix by hand for about 12 minutes."

That is a direct quote from a recipe for "house bread" in the book Vedge by Rich Landau and Kate Jacoby.

The book is a favourite of mine but this gives me pause. I read and re-read the recipe but in this part of the recipe no liquid is called for.

So my point is one made above that it is not just recipes on the Internet that can be badly edited.

Anyone who has ever made a loaf of bread would quickly recognize there is a problem here. Would a novice baker? One would hope so.

[huiray]

It is true that ingredients and steps often get left out of recipes both on the internet and in cookbooks. I've been guilty of that as well.  For example, I might describe a braise or whatnot but neglect to mention that OF COURSE one needs to add water for the braise and salt for the seasoning etc etc.  These are things that would be apparent to someone that cooks on a regular basis but I can see that a novice would wonder where the hell the liquid came from in a "braise" (for example) where the end result talks about the "sauce". 

 

OTOH one could say that folks - whether newbies or not - need to read stuff with some imagination and with some thought --- and that anyone with intelligence should be able to think about what they are reading, including novice cooks.  Unfortunately, far too many folks do not have this BASIC capability** - and I think I should stop there because some folks might accuse me of intemperance if I said anything more.

 

** Let alone anything else that they are required to deal with on a daily basis, or when they are voting...

 

I also acknowledge that in some cases I apply UNIX standards to questions/situations that some folks present to me - like asking me if I have something..."Yes, I do", I may respond...and they will wait while I go about my business - until they realize they need to ask me if they can have some, when they can have it, how much they want, if I have the quantity they want, If I can or am willing to give them what they want, when I can weigh it out, when I can tell them to come by to get it, paperwork they may or may not need to fill out to get it, what signatures they may need, how to store it, what to do with it, what to do with unused portions, etc etc. :-) ;-)

[LizD518]

I try and stick to searching web sites (usually bloggers like Smitten Kitchen or sites like Serious Eats) that I know and where I've had success with their recipes.  And when recommending a recipe to friends I always recommend reputable sources if I haven't produced the recipe myself.  Sometimes if I am looking for inspiration or to compare a few recipes I go to Tastespotting, which is a site where bloggers can post links to their blogs.  It is a visual site - the homepage is a grid of pictures with a short description. I find that choosing a recipe by sight is actually a pretty good indicator of quality - if baked goods or cooked meats look pale and "flabby' then I am pretty sure that there isn't much skill behind the dish.  Dishes that look appetizing are much more likely to be produced with someone who has some skill in the kitchen, although you still have to read the recipe instructions to make sure it is coherent.  

[cakewalk]

Just briefly - I love tastespotting for a lot of the reasons mentioned below. It's a great springboard to new sites, and then I can judge whether or not I like the new website. But I very much appreciate being exposed to it. However, as important as visuals are, I have found that many, many food bloggers are better at photography than they are at cooking!! And often the vice-versa is also true. As much as I like the nice food photos, over time I have learned not to confuse a good photo with a good recipe.

 

I try and stick to searching web sites (usually bloggers like Smitten Kitchen or sites like Serious Eats) that I know and where I've had success with their recipes.  And when recommending a recipe to friends I always recommend reputable sources if I haven't produced the recipe myself.  Sometimes if I am looking for inspiration or to compare a few recipes I go to Tastespotting, which is a site where bloggers can post links to their blogs.  It is a visual site - the homepage is a grid of pictures with a short description. I find that choosing a recipe by sight is actually a pretty good indicator of quality - if baked goods or cooked meats look pale and "flabby' then I am pretty sure that there isn't much skill behind the dish.  Dishes that look appetizing are much more likely to be produced with someone who has some skill in the kitchen, although you still have to read the recipe instructions to make sure it is coherent.  

[Porthos]

I have mentioned in other threads that I word-process recipes found on the internet. It allows me to make sure the ingredient list is complete and in the right order and to make sure the instructions make sense.

 

I have on occasion transcribed recipes out of cookbooks that I am going to prepare away from home. Besides not having to lug a cookbook somewhere else I can do the same things I mentioned above. It also tells me what cookware and gadgets I will need. This is especially helpful on vacations where we take all of the cookware needed with us.

 

One more advantage as I see it of word-processing the recipes is that sometimes the number of servings that the recipe is for is different that what I need. I find it much easier to have the right measurements in the recipe proper instead of making notes in the cookbook.