Recipe "Disaster!"

[weinoo]

Last week I wanted to try a recipe (for the first time) from a cookbook I've had for over 20 years.

 

So I did just as the recipe instructed, even though after reading the recipe I felt like it wouldn't work properly - as it was written. But dutifully, I followed the many steps. The damn recipe took hours (fortunately, there was no rush), and when it was finally finished, it pretty much sucked. As a matter of fact, I didn't even give a taste to Significant Eater.

 

Of course I should've known better, but I wanted to give the written instructions their shot.  And then I thought of this video/essay from Jacques. Which is really what a "recipe" is about in a nutshell.

 

http://www.pbs.org/video/2365717095/

Edited January 2, 2017 by weinoo
"there" needs to be "their." (log)

[Anna N]

I could watch him for hours!  But truly he has hit the nail on the head. I forget that all too frequently. Like you I have followed a recipe when my gut said "this is just wrong"  trusting that somebody knew more than I did. Often they do. But not always.  Thanks for sharing this video.  I am humbled by Jacques' wisdom. 

[cakewalk]

But do you think your recipe needed adapting in order to account for differences in ingredients used, etc., which every recipe might need, as Pepin (and many others) have long pointed out? Or do you think it was just a bad recipe? There is a difference. Or, given the attention that is needed for the differences that abound, is there even such thing as a "bad recipe"? Perhaps your recipe worked for the author, but didn't work for you because you followed it too precisely?

 

Instinctively feeling that a recipe won't work is one thing, and I suppose we've all been there and trusted the recipe rather than our instincts. But Pepin's point is that it's not the recipe. You seem to be saying that in your case, it is the recipe. Pepin's recipe was a good one, but he's saying that even with his good recipe, if he hadn't made certain changes in particular instances, it would have turned out badly. He's calling our attention to the fact that good recipes sometimes do not work because we're not paying attention to the fact that we can never "step into the same river twice," so to speak. So I guess the question here is, is there such thing as a bad recipe at all? I think instinctively most of us would say yes. It seems to be what you are saying regarding your recipe. But Pepin seems to be saying something else.  

[weinoo]

It was not a great recipe. I think there were one or two steps left out that would've made a difference. And maybe even an ingredient or two.

 

As Jacques says about the particular recipe he's referring to in that video, different pears and pear ripeness will, of course, affect the outcome. We've all been there trying to figure out what type of apple to use for something, or whether a tomato is worthy of a particular recipe due to its ripeness and flavor, or lack thereof.

 

In the recipe I followed to a  "t," the ingredients were not the problem. It was more the prep of the ingredients as well as the steps in the overall recipe.

 

For someone who religiously follows recipes (something I rarely do), this would've been a big disappointment.

[pastrygirl]

2 minutes ago, weinoo said:

It was not a great recipe. I think there were one or two steps left out that would've made a difference. And maybe even an ingredient or two.

 

As Jacques says about the particular recipe he's referring to in that video, different pears and pear ripeness will, of course, affect the outcome. We've all been there trying to figure out what type of apple to use for something, or whether a tomato is worthy of a particular recipe due to its ripeness and flavor, or lack thereof.

 

In the recipe I followed to a  "t," the ingredients were not the problem. It was more the prep of the ingredients as well as the steps in the overall recipe.

 

For someone who religiously follows recipes (something I rarely do), this would've been a big disappointment.

 

I'm tempted to say that bad recipes do exist, but apparently a lot of people like what we consider bad food, so maybe someone out there would be excited about mushy or bland or whatever the problem was.   But yeah, sometimes you can tell when a recipe isn't going to be worth making.

 

To me, Jacques' pear example points out more the necessity of specificity, not the uselessness of recipes.  Shouldn't you specify a firm Bosc instead of trusting the cook to know to adjust when they have a ripe Bartlett?

[cakewalk]

11 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:

To me, Jacques' pear example points out more the necessity of specificity, not the uselessness of recipes.  Shouldn't you specify a firm Bosc instead of trusting the cook to know to adjust when they have a ripe Bartlett?

I entirely agree about specificity. It just seems that most people are arguing in the other direction - abandon recipes! never use a recipe again! - they cry. I've never been keen on that trend. (But I'm more interested in baking than in cooking, and I think recipes hold a very different place for each thing.) I guess the thing is to cook (and bake) a lot, again and again. Follow the recipe, change what you don't like, learn how ingredients behave (or misbehave). That's how we develop those instincts - which we then ignore because the recipe said so!  

[weinoo]

When baking, I basically follow recipes exactly. I don't bake all that much - some cookies, flatbreads, a banana bread every now and then, and I know the recipes that I've used which work, and continue using them.

 

I don't believe anyone said to "never use a recipe again?" 

Edited January 5, 2017 by weinoo (log)

[cakewalk]

41 minutes ago, weinoo said:

I don't believe anyone said to "never use a recipe again?" 

No, not in this thread, certainly not in your posts. Just commenting on a general trend that has become very popular, and that this thread reminded me of. But it is far afield.

[quiet1]

I liked the take on recipes in the video essay - yes in some situations more specificity in the recipe would be a good thing, but even with that there are variations based on all sorts of small variables that you do have to learn to account for as you cook. The most obvious would be cooking times since maybe your stove is weaker than the one used by the recipe author, maybe your pan is different, etc. If you cooked exactly by cooking times and didn't use your own judgement at all, most cooking methods your results would not be particularly nice overall I suspect. (I think there are cooking gremlins involved also, as I can have something like onions which look the same to me and seem to be the same room temperature, same pan, same burner, and yet sometimes it seems like they are taking much longer to soften than other times. Gremlins!  )

 

One of the reasons I find it hard to teach people how to cook (friends, relatives who ask for tips) is some people are really very dedicated to following recipes and I go with my 'gut' a fair bit so I get frustrated when I can see there is a problem in the recipe but they insist on following it anyway. This particularly comes up for me with ingredients, as with produce you may not be able to get exactly what is called for, or a slightly different type might look better/fresher on shopping day. If my mom is following a recipe and the store had no Red Delicious apples, that's the end of being able to make an apple pie for her, she won't look to see what other apples are available that would also work. Drives me nuts.

[Anna N]

 I would argue that there are very definitely bad recipes.  They're all kinds of people who throw things up on the web missing ingredients. And I mean ingredients essential to a reasonable outcome (eggs, yeast, baking powder, etc.).  Experienced cooks and bakers catch these but newbies can easily be taken for a ride.  There are recipes that are incredibly bad because they get screwed up when somebody tries to convert metric to imperial and vice versa. Perhaps we should be more precise and called them incorrect recipes rather than bad recipes. 

Edited January 2, 2017 by Anna N (log)

[weinoo]

Q: "How long do I cook that for?"

 

A: "Until it's done."

 

People even get mad at me when I say that.

[cakewalk]

10 minutes ago, weinoo said:

Q: "How long do I cook that for?"

 

A: "Until it's done."

 

People even get mad at me when I say that.

Well I don't blame them!! They don't want you to say "cook for 37 3/4 minutes." Recipes are guidelines, not exact prescriptions, but the guidelines should be there. "Cook until nicely browned, that might take anywhere from a half hour to 45 minutes, you have to check it." I think any recipe that left out instructions like that would be lacking. I've read plenty of recipes that do actually say "cook until done" with no further elaboration. And I would call that a bad recipe. Takes things very far from the need for greater specificity mentioned above. 

[Katie Meadow]

Pepin's pear example highlights the fact that ingredients vary, even when following a recipe, and adjustments made by experienced cooks are often required. Some recipes for newbies often do warn about variables like that--unripe fruit, the difference that large chunks vs small chunks of any ingredient can make as far as timing, etc. Some might appreciate those warnings, but as Pepin implies, you can't anticipate everything.   Other problems might arise as the inexperienced cook tries to interpret instructions such as mince, slice thinly, chop coarsely, etc. These are not really examples of bad recipes as Pepin makes clear.

 

Bad recipes would include omitting ingredients and measurement confusions as noted above; these are often just proofreading mistakes, but they can wreak havoc. To my mind the worst kind of bad recipe is one that makes blatant errors in technique, and I'm sure everyone can think of certain instructions that bug them the most. For me the single most common bad instruction is when to add garlic. If followed to the letter, many recipes would have you saute garlic until it is burnt to a crisp and smells awful, simply because they don't add the garlic at a reasonable time.

 

 

[kayb]

I've generally felt that my (frequent) failures with recipes have had to do with mostly (a) my failure to follow directions , or (b) my tendency to leave out ingredients I don't like, and add things I think would work in their place. (Not in baking; I try to follow recipes pretty religiously, at least for the first time or two, when I bake.) But then, I always have tended toward looking at recipe as a starting point for my own flight of fancy as to what would be good with ____. 

 

Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's just, by-god, awful. But sometimes I'm pretty pleased with it. And sometimes, I go ahead and use an ingredient I don't really care for, because it seems like it's integral to a dish, and find that I like it more than I thought I would.

 

To me, much of the fun of cooking is cobbling things together. But I could never do that had I not learned some of the basic techniques and flavor combinations from recipes.

[scubadoo97]

13 hours ago, weinoo said:

Q: "How long do I cook that for?"

 

A: "Until it's done."

 

People even get mad at me when I say that.

I just got a smirk, over the phone for that answer from my MIL when my wife's asked me how long to cook a snapper filet my MIL was making.   Like there is some set time?? So I gave Eric Ripert's method of piercing with a probe and touching it to your lips until it's just warm.  I'm sure that went over real big as well 

 

As to the video weinoo posted, I remember when I first saw that and it was like validation to why I hardly ever use a recipe except as a guide of method, technique and ingredients then wing it from there 

Edited January 3, 2017 by scubadoo97 (log)

[gfweb]

Yeah, @scubadoo97, recipes I follow for baking and are just guides/food for thought for savory dishes.

[scubadoo97]

Agreed gfweb.  Baking is a different kinda chemistry 

[Martin Fisher]

17 hours ago, weinoo said:

Last week I wanted to try a recipe (for the first time) from a cookbook I've had for over 20 years.

It was not a great recipe. I think there were one or two steps left out that would've made a difference. And maybe even an ingredient or two.

 

What's the recipe?

[liuzhou]

I have a fair number of Chinese language cookbooks, all of which give useful instructions like "add the correct amount of ____",  or "add enough ____", or the big favourite: "add the appropriate amount of ____" without ever specifying what those measurements might be.

Nearly as bad as using "cups" as a measurement!

Then, I swear, several of them say "Cook until cooked." (My translation)

Edited January 3, 2017 by liuzhou (log)

[gfweb]

31 minutes ago, scubadoo97 said:

Agreed gfweb.  Baking is a different kinda chemistry 

 

Which probably is why I almost never bake. : - )

[weinoo]

58 minutes ago, DiggingDogFarm said:

 

What's the recipe?

I'll let you know when I've corrected it!

[HungryChris]

If you have a dish that you make on a regular basis, chances are that you have screwed it 
up a time or two and the more you screw it up, the more you learn what to look for as the 
dish progresses and the quicker you become at spotting an emerging  problem. Failure

has taught you what will happen if you don't step in and make some corrections. Usually

those failures will also give you an idea of what should be done to bring the thing back

onto the tracks. If you are using a recipe with which you are unfamiliar, quite often, it

takes as much of a leap of faith to choose to intervene as it does to carry on with the

recipe. I think that is where your body of experience, as a whole, will guide you or at

least learn to better guide you next time.

HC

Edited January 3, 2017 by HungryChris (log)

[scubadoo97]

6 hours ago, gfweb said:

 

Which probably is why I almost never bake. : - )

Same here

[chromedome]

I had an instructor in culinary school who used to deliberately hand out sabotaged recipes as an object lesson. His point was that you needed to review the recipe critically before starting, to see if everything made sense in the context. 

 

A few years later, at the place I worked in Edmonton, one of the recipes from corporate called for 1kg of black pepper...I thought of that instructor as I took the black pepper from my new cook's hand and spoke to him (cough) gently of the need to think before adding ingredients.  

[Martin Fisher]

I've seen oodles of questionable, potentially dangerous or just plain ludicrous recipes.

 

A couple I can recall off-hand:

 

A sausage recipe in a book by a purported 'expert' calls for 18,000 ppm sodium nitrite, yes, 18,000 ppm!!!
The 'safe' (recommended) sodium nitrite maximum is just 156 ppm!!!!

 

In another 'artisanal' butchery/sausage book, some of the sausage recipes call for 1/4 to 1/3 cup of garlic powder per just 3 pounds of pork! What the.....???  

 

 

 

Edited January 4, 2017 by DiggingDogFarm (log)