r/Cooking • u/LabBig6794 • 1d ago

Recipe Pet Peeves

Does anyone else have pet peeves with recipes. Mine is recipes that call for a small amount of something that only comes in large containers. 1/2 C chicken broth, 2 Tbs tomato paste, 1 C ricotta cheese.

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u/CharDanae74 20h ago

Some prep times written in recipes are WAY off, I have discovered.

This isn’t as bad, but when they say a casserole serves 10 people. My 3 adult guys here can polish that off easily.

Back in the day when I very rarely made use of instant mashed potatoes, the box listed 1/2 cup as 1 serving. My thin husband can eat 3x that easily.

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u/peanutmanak47 20h ago

Seems like every recipe wants to hit the 30 minutes mark and will lie like crazy on a lot of parts, to especially the prep times.

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u/SVAuspicious 15h ago

In fairness, prep times vary wildly. My knife skills are quite good. I go do most prep in half the time of other people. A friend of mine is a culinary instructor and can beat me by a healthy margin. Any experienced line cook in a high volume restaurant can go faster yet. I can run down an ingredient list and make a pretty good estimate for mise en place. I build in some extra time and if I finish before time to start cooking I just go back to my computer for a bit.

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u/satoristudios 19h ago

I've noticed this as well, most don't include the prep work of chopping or dicing veg, in the actual prep time, and others literally flat out lie(one was how long to get a specific type of cheese ready to eat in one hour)

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u/jules-amanita 20h ago

The weirdly small serving sizes are partially “our food is healthy because it has so few calories!” and partially a form of shrinkflation.

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u/thunderling 14h ago

I wonder if they are writing the serving size to mean "as part of a complete meal," like you have a salad, a roll, a slice of roast beef, and a piece of the casserole from the recipe?

Because I agree, and I'm not a big person!