Recipe "Disaster!"

[helenjp]

I have a few recipes that I only use at New Year...there is one recipe for sweetened sweet-potato paste that I use because it does not recommend rice-malt syrup and other extremely sweet ingredients. However, every now and then I forget that the reason it is not too sloppy or too sweet for our family is because I only add half the recommended amount of regular sugar syrup. Oops!

Other than error, the only reason I can think of for the ridiculous amount of syrup in the recipe is that the original must have used a particularly floury type of sweet potato. Add this to the long list of starch-based recipes that are extremely sensitive to local ingredients and conditions!

[liuzhou]

Here is one recipe which I am definitely not going to follow.

[Porthos]

On 1/2/2017 at 1:06 PM, pastrygirl said:

 

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.

 

My DW picked up a cookbook for a particular ethic group at a major festival they hold each year. The foods that comes out of their kitchens are outstanding. The first time, and only time, I opened the cookbook looking for a specific recipe, I had my doubts about the recipe.  Then I noticed that all recipes in this book were edited to take up one half page per recipe no matter how simple or involved the dish was. Told my wife and she agreed with me to just toss it. Why not donate it? I don't want to frustrate some less-experienced cook with poorly written recipes.

[Porthos]

17 hours ago, DiggingDogFarm said:

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.....???  

 

That just hurts ...   

[gulfporter]

Have a friend who was a newspaper reporter for a mid-sized city back in the 1960s.  The editor required every reporter to spend one day a month taking incoming phone calls from the public.  My friend said without doubt most calls had to do with the newspaper's weekly recipe column (which were usually bought from a service).  There were no food editors back in the 1960s in small city newsrooms and certainly no kitchen-testing was done.  Errors like 1/2 cup of salt, instead of 1/2 teaspoon of salt were not uncommon and my friend presumes these same recipes were printed in newspapers all across America.  

 

When I lived in Mexico for five years, I wrote a recipe column for a monthly ex-pat magazine.  Many of the recipes were ones I gleaned from local women at markets or at their homes (and my Spanish is not all that good).  And while I kitchen-tested each recipe and (thought I was) being assiduous in my ingredient lists and directions, I was always amazed at the errors/omissions I caught before submitting to my editor.  A few got past me; my editor (who had written this monthly column previous to my stint) caught those.  Well, all but one.  

 

I have a great amount of respect for food writers, but I always try to make sense of a new recipe before I start assembling ingredients and cooking.  

 

 

 

 

Edited January 4, 2017 by gulfporter (log)

[EatingBen]

On 04/01/2017 at 11:08 AM, DiggingDogFarm said:

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.....???  

Sounds like a stellar way to keep people away from you! I can only imagine what that would be like to eat

[Smokeydoke]

On 1/2/2017 at 3:01 PM, quiet1 said:

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.

 

 

 

My husband does this. It drives me nuts. It's one reason we have 4 different types of flour, 3 different types of onions and 3 different types of salt.

And yes, no granny smiths, no apple pie!

 

There have been knock-out fights about this, with him storming out of the kitchen.

I'm like, "Really? Over yeast?"

Edited January 5, 2017 by Smokeydoke (log)

[gfweb]

13 minutes ago, Smokeydoke said:

 

My husband does this. It drives me nuts. It's one reason we have 4 different types of flour, 3 different types of onions and 3 different types of salt.

And yes, no granny smiths, no apple pie!

 

There have been knock-out fights about this, with him storming out of the kitchen.

I'm like, "Really? Over yeast?"

 

 

Engineer?

[cakewalk]

41 minutes ago, Smokeydoke said:

There have been knock-out fights about this, with him storming out of the kitchen.

I'm like, "Really? Over yeast?"

 

We've had knock-down drag-outs on eGullet over "no yeast!" 

[chromedome]

4 hours ago, Smokeydoke said:

 

My husband does this. It drives me nuts. It's one reason we have 4 different types of flour, 3 different types of onions and 3 different types of salt.

And yes, no granny smiths, no apple pie!

 

There have been knock-out fights about this, with him storming out of the kitchen.

I'm like, "Really? Over yeast?"

 

You only have four kinds of flour?

 

(Kidding. I have probably 8 or 9 -- and 3 or 4 kinds of salt -- but it's an occupational hazard)

 

My late wife belonged to the camp that believes there is is One Perfect Way to make anything, and that it's the cook's job to figure out that One Perfect Way and do it that exact way, henceforward, every time. Her apple pie was only, ever, equal portions Golden Delicious and Granny Smiths sliced thinly. It was a good apple pie, but I prefer locally-grown Cortlands and I may bake a thin-slices pie or a thick-chunks pie on any given day depending on my mood. We squabbled a *lot* about food. 

[quiet1]

15 minutes ago, chromedome said:

You only have four kinds of flour?

 

(Kidding. I have probably 8 or 9 -- and 3 or 4 kinds of salt -- but it's an occupational hazard)

 

My late wife belonged to the camp that believes there is is One Perfect Way to make anything, and that it's the cook's job to figure out that One Perfect Way and do it that exact way, henceforward, every time. Her apple pie was only, ever, equal portions Golden Delicious and Granny Smiths sliced thinly. It was a good apple pie, but I prefer locally-grown Cortlands and I may bake a thin-slices pie or a thick-chunks pie on any given day depending on my mood. We squabbled a *lot* about food. 

 

We actually like Granny Smiths for a lot, but the farm share people get all kinds of apple types and I like to experiment. My mom is not an experimenter.

 

At this point if she wants me to help make something, I just follow her instructions and don't give suggestions because it is simpler even if it drives me nuts when I know a small change would make things better.

[chromedome]

I don't use 'em much, to my taste they don't have much flavor underneath the acidity. Of course, you may well get better Grannys than I do up here. 

[quiet1]

26 minutes ago, chromedome said:

I don't use 'em much, to my taste they don't have much flavor underneath the acidity. Of course, you may well get better Grannys than I do up here. 

 

I like the acidity and the texture since they hold up well. I like to mix them with an apple that is sweeter and cooks down more. I find with just baking apples the end result is too sweet for me.

[EatingBen]

I am a chronic recipe abuser. Everything starts off great and the next thing you know I'm just winging the spices, liquids, meats and vegetables. The recipe just generally kinda resigns its self to the corner as a base. I modify or use the same ingredients but go with ratios I know work to my tastes. 

 

I tend to follow the recipe when I haven't made something before and it's starkly different from anything I've ever made, a lot of Japanese dishes for example I follow those closely when it comes to the quantities or when I'm baking. 

 

I don't think there are inherently bad recipes, there are some truly terrible writers of recipes though. Like that Lobster dish above mmmmm I've always wanted to urinate on a lobster

[scubadoo97]

Like Ben (or was Ben eaten?), I look at recipes as a guide and may sometimes follow to the letter if it's something I'm unfamiliar with but will often sub out some ingredients based on what I have in house knowing it won't be a deal breaker.  When baking I tend to stay to the recipe up to a point.

[Smokeydoke]

23 hours ago, gfweb said:

 

Engineer?

 

Not quite, but he would've been an excellent engineer, I'm sure.

I won't say exactly what he does, it'll be too easy to google him. Lets just say it has something to do with books, lots of books.

[Smokeydoke]

18 hours ago, chromedome said:

You only have four kinds of flour?

 

(Kidding. I have probably 8 or 9 -- and 3 or 4 kinds of salt -- but it's an occupational hazard)

 

 

I guess we have more like eight if you count all the starches and meals. We had a "discussion" about substituting corn starch for potato starch to thicken a sauce and I eventually did win that one, but I bought some potato starch at the store anyways. As the old adage says, "choose your battles wisely..."

[gfweb]

47 minutes ago, Smokeydoke said:

 

Not quite, but he would've been an excellent engineer, I'm sure.

I won't say exactly what he does, it'll be too easy to google him. Lets just say it has something to do with books, lots of books.

Bezos!

[FrogPrincesse]

David Lebovitz is jumping on the bandwagon on his blog. Too bad he doesn't post here anymore.

 

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/jacques-pepin-how-following-a-recipe-can-lead-to-disaster/#more-25474

 

[Porthos]

This morning I was looking at recipes online for Tamale Pie. For those who don't know it is seasoned ground beef with other ingredients and cornbread. Generally the corn bread is a crust but some recipes want it in the mix, almost like cornbread dumplings. The recipe that made me post here wanted a 1/3 cup of raisins in it. Um, no.

Edited February 3, 2017 by Porthos (log)

[Katie Meadow]

That seems like a very untraditional tamale pie. The tamale pie we used to make in New Mexico was really more like a traditional tamale, but cooked like a cake: Spicy shredded pork with either red or green chile between two layers of masa. Of course the filling could be chicken or cheese, or anything, but whatever meat was in it was not likely to be ground. I'm sure there are Tex-Mex or soCal adaptations that vary widely. A filling that included ground beef and raisins sounds like the filling for an empanada; more like a turnover, in a pastry typically made with wheat flour. 

[Lisa Shock]

I can understand Pèpin's point, especially with with an ingredient like fruit which can vary a lot. And, I understand that people's tastes vary.

 

Here's why I generally do not share recipes with people I know in RL:

 

Years ago, I catered an event and made some oatmeal cookies. I used a recipe from the Quaker old fashioned oats package. (one that is no longer printed on those packages) I used butter, the recipe called for butter or margarine, and added an 1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg -my only alteration to the formula. A woman asked me for the recipe, so I hand-wrote it on a 3x5 card and gave it to her. In doing so, I listed butter as the only fat, and made sure to add the nutmeg. A few days later, I get a phone call, and the woman is shrieking at me that she tried making the cookies, and all she got was a soupy mess, and that I owed her a bunch of money for ingredients.

 

I asked if she had followed the recipe exactly, and she said that yes, she had. So, I started asking, step by step, about each sentence of the instructions. So, I asked how long she creamed the butter and sugar. Well, she told me that she hadn't used butter. She had used vegetable oil. I asked about the sugar. Oh no, she said, she never touched the stuff. She had used brown rice syrup. I asked about the eggs, and she admitted to using applesauce instead. On a whim, not believing what was happening, I asked about the flour. (AP was called for in the recipe) She had use rice flour. I asked about the baking soda. She had left that out because she didn't feel it was healthy to eat. And, finally, I got to the oats. She had used oat flour.

 

So, of course she got a soupy mess. I had to explain cookie theory to her and how every substitution acted against the formation of the structure of a cookie.

 

Research, information, education -all critical to making decisions about using a recipe. We often see issues when trying to use really old recipes when we don't have the proper context (wineglasses were tiny in the 1700s) or definitions (nipping sugar) at hand.

[Smokeydoke]

On 2/3/2017 at 7:21 PM, Lisa Shock said:

I can understand Pèpin's point, especially with with an ingredient like fruit which can vary a lot. And, I understand that people's tastes vary.

 

Here's why I generally do not share recipes with people I know in RL:

 

Years ago, I catered an event and made some oatmeal cookies. I used a recipe from the Quaker old fashioned oats package. (one that is no longer printed on those packages) I used butter, the recipe called for butter or margarine, and added an 1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg -my only alteration to the formula. A woman asked me for the recipe, so I hand-wrote it on a 3x5 card and gave it to her. In doing so, I listed butter as the only fat, and made sure to add the nutmeg. A few days later, I get a phone call, and the woman is shrieking at me that she tried making the cookies, and all she got was a soupy mess, and that I owed her a bunch of money for ingredients.

 

I asked if she had followed the recipe exactly, and she said that yes, she had. So, I started asking, step by step, about each sentence of the instructions. So, I asked how long she creamed the butter and sugar. Well, she told me that she hadn't used butter. She had used vegetable oil. I asked about the sugar. Oh no, she said, she never touched the stuff. She had used brown rice syrup. I asked about the eggs, and she admitted to using applesauce instead. On a whim, not believing what was happening, I asked about the flour. (AP was called for in the recipe) She had use rice flour. I asked about the baking soda. She had left that out because she didn't feel it was healthy to eat. And, finally, I got to the oats. She had used oat flour.

 

So, of course she got a soupy mess. I had to explain cookie theory to her and how every substitution acted against the formation of the structure of a cookie.

 

Research, information, education -all critical to making decisions about using a recipe. We often see issues when trying to use really old recipes when we don't have the proper context (wineglasses were tiny in the 1700s) or definitions (nipping sugar) at hand.

 

Dear gawd, the woman was bat-shit crazy.

[chromedome]

She's in good company. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a recipe on...oh, Epicurious for example, but many other sites are the same...where a commenter recites a laundry-list of changes, then pronounces the recipe a failure and gives it one star. 

[IowaDee]

As to the use of raisins in tamale pie, never did that but I often make picadillo filling.  My version calls for 1/2 cup of them to a pound of ground pork.  This is a recipe from the Sunset Mexican Cook Book.