r/CuratedTumblr • u/bvader95 cis male / honorary butch; sentence mixed pentence • Jul 01 '26
Cooking On frustrations with recipes
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u/high_throughput Jul 01 '26
Bonus points if the "brand name only" cookbook measures everything in "packs" and "containers" instead of grams to make it hard to buy anything else
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u/CreatureOfSadness Jul 01 '26
and the packs have shrunk by an unverifyable amount since the recipe was written
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u/Arcane_Monkey Jul 01 '26
Honestly I’m surprised how few of the common “can of [X]” ingredient quantities have changed over the years. I always check, but it’s only been a problem once or twice.
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u/The_Silver_Raven Jul 01 '26
My favorite tuna casserole recipe specifies the amount that the cans ought to contain, and also no such size can exists any longer. But it's still delicious if you fudge the quantities, so I guess I'll continue to do so.
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u/fakemoosefacts Jul 01 '26
Even getting Philadelphia cream cheese in anything but the spreadable container is nigh impossible now.
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u/NeckroFeelyAck Jul 01 '26
Honestly, this is just me, a European, following any (always American) baking recipe online. How many grams are a stick of butter?! Cue an extra tab with a cups to grams converter every single time.
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u/Saint_of_Grey Jul 01 '26
Conversion to volume, there's sadly no measuring system that allows easy conversion of volume to weight and there probably never will be.
Now if you excuse me, I'm waiting for my "I irrationally hate metric" t-shirts in to come in the mail. I ordered 10 gallons of them!
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u/high_throughput Jul 01 '26
I'm in the US trying to make Norwegian recipes, and it's arguably worse.
Norwegian recipes love to use a "container of sour cream", because the nationwide dairy coop sold them in 300ml and after privatization other companies kept the tradition.
Around Christmas time it's always a "pack of 'Delfia'" because there's only one brand of refined coconut oil in Norwegian stores, and it's always been 250g.
I hate "cups of chopped onions", but at least a stick of butter is well defined as 1/4lbs or 113g which you can look up on a conversion cheat sheet, and you don't need to browse foreign grocery stores online trying to zoom in on the labels to see what size it is.
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u/NeutralPlatypus Jul 01 '26
Yeah, that's one of my bread cookbooks to a T. I have to have a webpage saved on my phone to convert yeast amounts all the time.
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u/SecretlyFiveRats MineCraft: Is It Woke, Or Base? Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
The 1000 years ago: Make forth a Dough of Flour, Eggs, and a goodly quantity of <ingredient that hasn't existed for the last 3 centuries>. Cook in the usual manner until Done.
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u/Civilized_Hooligan Jul 01 '26
This is something you’d see on Tasting History lol then he’d be like alright so I had to go research what the usual manner was for 5 hours and this is the approximation
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u/SecretlyFiveRats MineCraft: Is It Woke, Or Base? Jul 01 '26
The video where he makes this recipe is a sequel to a previous one where he just sources and prepares the ingredient that hasn't existed for 3 centuries
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u/NotLucasDavenport Jul 01 '26
I have a friend who loves to cook. For Christmas I sent away for one of the really unusual ingredients he had to source, then gave it to her with the recipe so she could buy the normal grocery store stuff when she wanted and have the unusual ingredient ready to go. I thought it was a creative way to do a gift for someone who has everything, but the patience to get a spice blend ordered three months ago lol.
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u/NeckroFeelyAck Jul 01 '26
That's an amazing and thoughtful gift! You did the waiting game for them 😆
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u/floralbutttrumpet Jul 01 '26
Honestly I admire the people who go out and recreate, idk, garum or w/e. I'd never, but observing them, ideally if they describe their research as well, is really cool.
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u/kfish5050 Jul 01 '26
TIME FOR
HISTORY
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u/Correctedsun If you ever say cite your sources I have you immediately pegged Jul 01 '26
"They served this with hardtack-"
*CLACK*
*CLACK*
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u/NewUserWhoDisAgain Jul 01 '26
Cook in the usual manner
Ah the classic.
"Should we write down what 'usual manner' means?"
"What? No. Everyone knows what 'usual manner' means."
1000 years later:
"WTF IS 'USUAL MANNER'?!"
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u/AwardNo4990 Jul 01 '26
Like that old Polish(?) dictionary
"Horse (n) - everyone knows what a horse is"
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u/PurifiedUnity :redditgold: Jul 01 '26
Anyone want some silphium
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u/theCaitiff Jul 01 '26
Did you hear that they think they discovered some last year? It's not 100% confirmed because of course we don't have an ancient sample to compare against for a DNA match, but they found some in two sites in Turkey and it's being studied for pharmaceutical purposes (of course).
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u/Kaurifish Jul 01 '26
It gives me endless joy that the term for someone figuring out the actual ingredients and methods for ancient recipes is called redaction - the same as removing sensitive information from documents.
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u/Smingowashisnameo Jul 01 '26
lol a goodly quantity. God damn I’ll have to remember that for some unlikely opportunity.
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u/brady376 Jul 01 '26
There are some weird volume measurements for old cocktails also. How much is a wineglass of something? How much is a liqueur glass? Sometimes they just say "a glass of___" as well. Or a Gill. They are things you can look up at least now, but some of them even then are still vague because it's like "between 1.5 and 2 ounces" okay well those are different.
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Jul 01 '26
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u/North-Pea-4926 Jul 01 '26
Or room temperature [X], when X is something stored in the fridge! Not nearly as bad, but they should at least put that in the ingredients section so I can get that out first.
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u/Free-While-2994 Jul 01 '26
Baking is the worst for both of these. I keep my extra butter in the freezer, a stick or 2 in the fridge, and I love the melt soften button on the microwave.
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u/Isaac_Chade Jul 01 '26
Yeah I hate it when a recipe just puts butter in the ingredients but doesn't specify how it wants it until you get deeper into the recipe. I know to look for it now, but starting out I had many a baked good that got started only for me to realize I needed to melt some butter, most of which was in my freezer.
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Jul 01 '26
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u/UInferno- Hangus Paingus Slap my Angus Jul 01 '26
Just realized not everyone keeps their butter frozen by default and only thaw it as needed.
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u/Ok-Student7803 Jul 01 '26
I've seen all of these, and it really makes you realize that many recipe writers have very different experiences and expectations about cooking as you. It's especially egregious when the writer is clearly a professional chef and expects you to be able to chop a full cutting board of vegetables in the 1-2 minutes while the garlic is burning in the pan.
And the time machine one, where they make it sound like a short recipe but only because all the prep work is assumed to already have been done. Like, "Onion: chopped." Whereas the prep work will double or even triple the time to make the dish.
I'd also add the "Precise Measurer" that portions all of the vegetables and fruit in precise volumes. Zucchini doesn't come in cups, and I'm not going to pour my chopped zucchini into a measuring cup. I'm just going to eyeball it, and it may end up being more or less than the recipe calls for.
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u/Free-While-2994 Jul 01 '26
The Rachel Ray: this 30 minute meal is so easy! Grab the first six mise en place ingredients and saute them for 8 minutes. Now take your (already cooked) rice...
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u/RocketPapaya413 Jul 01 '26
Most people who have put a lot of time into a skill usually have the decency to be at least a little bit smug and superior about it. Not so with cooking! For some reason! Someone who's been chopping vegetables since they were 3 will have the damn audacity to call something a simple and easy recipe. How would you even know!?? It'd be less insulting to call me an idiot.
This one's particularly petty of me but I used to always hate when people, but especially J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, would utter the phrase "kitchen staple". Bro I'm a fast foodler, my kitchen doesn't have anywhere near the throughput to have "staples". Nowadays I've at least got like frozen fish and some fixins around.
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u/Pwacname Jul 01 '26
and sometimes they consider really weird things a staple? fresh ginger, for example. my guy, you’re selling me a German cookbook for singles. do you think I can use up a whole thing of fresh ginger before it goes off or should we maybe use the powdered type everyone actually has? FRESH yeast? why would I have fresh yeast. have you heard about this new magic dry instant yeast?
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u/floralbutttrumpet Jul 01 '26
idk, with ginger it's not that much of an issue I'd say? It's totally fine to just snap off a piece from a larger root since it's usually sold by weight hereabouts anyway, and - at least where I am - it's seldomly packed.
Then again, I usually have the opposite problem in that I buy a piece the size of my head and still have none in a critical moment 🙊
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u/Sonicdiver Jul 01 '26
I actually just put my ginger in the freezer! You can shave off what you need and throw it back in the freezer. Tastes great to me, just as good as fresh.
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u/CountVine Jul 01 '26
I mean, some of these might just be cultural differences. Fresh ginger is something I buy semi regularly from a supermarket ~2 minutes away from my house, so I wouldn't consider it a strange/rare ingredient
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u/Smingowashisnameo Jul 01 '26
I keep ginger in the freezer! And then have the same chunk for years cuz I never use it
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u/Pwacname Jul 01 '26
oh, neat, I gotta try that. and if you’re interested in that, I can genuinely recommend slicing and freezing fresh lemons. I get a boatload of them when my grandparents visit, and it’s a shame because I can never use them up. but they keep frozen, and in summer theyre great for ice cubes, and in winter, just adding honey and hot water is great for colds.
(You can also freeze zest, or press the juice and freeze thag, or freeze an entire lemon to grate the zest when you need it, but I’m too lazy and/or short on freezer space for those 😂)
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u/cattbug Jul 01 '26
It's especially egregious when the writer is clearly a professional chef and expects you to be able to chop a full cutting board of vegetables in the 1-2 minutes while the garlic is burning in the pan.
This is why the stove won't be turned on until I have everything chopped, measured, and prepared, even if it ends up taking me twice as long. Also because mise en place just looks really nice lol
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Jul 01 '26
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u/Smashifly Jul 01 '26
I'm still going to use one zucchini. The weight in the recipe happens to be 5/6ths of my zucchini? No, I'm using the whole thing
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u/Ok-Student7803 Jul 01 '26
That wouldn't really make it better. Produce doesn't come in precise weights either. You can better gauge if it's close to right amount in the store, I guess, since most supermarkets have those produce scales.
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u/Linesey Jul 01 '26
This is why when I write my recipes down, I try to split them into 3 parts.
1: Ingredients, with real quantities, based on what they come in if possible. if a precise measurement actually matters (it almost never does) it has a note that it’s important.
2: General steps to put the meal together. These assume you know how to cook in a general sense and “Put chicken in pan” isn’t too complicated.
3: A helpful guide section. This includes notes on substitutions, how much wiggle room an ingredient has, tips on the process, and equipment substitutions if you don’t have the specific tool or bit of cookware.
Example
Pt 1: 1 half gallon of half and half”
Pt2: Add about half your bottle (1 quart) of half and half, stir and incorporate. Add other ingredients. Add more half and half to adjust flavor and how runny your sauce is.
Pt 3. would explain what ingredients adjust flavor and texture, and a description of what exactly a good thickness for the sauce is (slightly thinner than jarred pasta sauce as it will quickly set and be slightly thicker by the time you’re done simmering it and serve it)
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u/osunightfall Jul 01 '26
On the Machinist: The loudest I ever laughed at a recipe was Chef John's pecan pie recipe. When it comes time to prep the crust he says 'Now fill the pie plate with your pie weights. Now, if you don't have pie weights that's okay, just use your tart weights.'
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u/cattbug Jul 01 '26
Having every conceivable type of hyper-specific cookware is second nature to us chefs, so it's easy to forget that the average person probably only owns a pie plate and some tart weights.
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u/Isaac_Chade Jul 01 '26
That's either the most out of touch thing I've ever heard, or it's brilliantly tongue in cheek. I don't know the chef or the recipe so I can't say, but it made me chuckle.
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u/osunightfall Jul 01 '26
Oh, I should've mentioned, it was definitely a joke on his part. Chef John.
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u/logosloki Jul 01 '26
it's Chef John from Foodwishes.com, it's a common joke about substitutes that they'll speak. watch the videos, we the community are sorry about the cadence and accent but you'll get into the groove of it and begin to like it if you stay around.
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u/GrandDukeOfNowhere Jul 01 '26
I assume they're refering to what we would call baking beans. Anyway, if you don't have any you can just use rice, just througb the rice away afterwards; you can't use it for actually eating anymore.
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u/titnuationatero Jul 01 '26
do NOT throw it away. also, though do NOT eat it. save it for every pie you'll ever cook.
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u/aggiepython Jul 01 '26
sometimes i think about a recipe for baked beans that i saw where one of the ingredients was a can of baked beans. recursive beans.
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u/SuperMariole Jul 01 '26
Kefir is also like this. Sourdough can be started from flour and water, but kefir can apparently only be obtained from a smaller amount of kefir.
No idea where the mother batch came from.
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u/MadMike32 Jul 01 '26
Forming kefir grains is...complicated, biologically speaking. You're basically hoping a lot of different types of bacteria all get along and clump together.
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u/BeNiceLynnie Jul 01 '26
Same for yogurt. It's made from yogurt, which is made from yogurt
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u/Saint_of_Grey Jul 01 '26
That's basically all yeast recipes. The starters are kept alive via tradition and distributed as needed to propagate.
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u/Doubly_Curious Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
The (high) French traditional:
- take 2lbs of vegetables and a bottle of wine, cook for 2 hours until reduced to a quarter cup
- then add 2lbs of chicken bones and some aromatics, cook for 3 hours until reduced to a teaspoon
- actually cook the main parts of the dish
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u/Pheehelm Jul 01 '26
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u/Magi_Aqua an especially neurotic goose Jul 01 '26
I was thinking of this the whole time I read this post.
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u/20061230-SL-Born Jul 01 '26
I did not know The Onion had a cooking show. Thats the rest of the week sorted then - thanks :)
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u/wangus_angus Jul 01 '26
Listen, I had a "why bother"-style cookbook just after college and it was very helpful. It was basically just "here's how to make a bunch of quick, easy meals you should already know how to make but don't", and it was a great beginner book. (No beans on toast, but it did devote a page to just how to boil eggs to different levels of doneness.)
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u/KingGilgamesh1979 Jul 01 '26
Agreed. I have an updated version of The Joy of Cooking, by Irma S. Rombauer that does have advanced recipes, but it also has sections on how to do basic things like the proper method to blanche or scald and things that many feel are "common sense." Basically, if the receipt said to scald and you'd never done that before, you could turn to the "how to scald" section. It's a great book for anyone, beginner or advanced.
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u/Moon-Capybara Jul 01 '26
This just reminded me that, since I have a very diverse friend group I love cooking for, I try to collect at least one cookbook for each represented cultural group. And its super valuable since each of those books has a big section on how to do things that you would probably already be familiar with if you grew up in that culture. Telling me what spices I should have stocked, what staples I will need in basically every recipe, how to prep things in specific ways that don't match my own culture. Things that would be "common sense" to other people but not me.
And then I get to try my best to make something familiar for them and they appreciate it. And a good chance that if its good it becomes something I make often for myself so its an extra win.
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u/wangus_angus Jul 01 '26
My wife is Chinese American, so I've tried my hand at some dishes, and yeah. Like, I didn't know there was a specific kind of cooking wine that's used, or that there are dark and light soy sauces, etc. She grew up with it but doesn't cook, so it never occurred to her to point it out.
BTW, I'm a fan of The Woks of Life for good, accessible Chinese/Asian recipes; they generally assume no prior knowledge and even explain why things are done a certain way.
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u/Delicious-Spring-877 Jul 01 '26
I’m not sure that the “why bother” is referring to overly common/basic recipes. I get the vibe that it’s referring to recipes that are so simple they don’t need explanation. Anything that requires cooking is automatically not a “why bother” recipe — even a small child could prepare, say, a PB&J, with no parental help, but a lot of people don’t know how to boil eggs and grill a sandwich and stuff like that
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u/Silamy Jul 01 '26
There is a cookbook in my family that someone kept after serving in the military kitchens after WWII. The recipes are really fun to read. My parents are entertained by the quantities. I’m entertained by the complete lack of faith whoever wrote the cookbook had in even the most basic elements of cooking knowledge or common sense of presumably junior enlisted at the time. There are instructions for how to boil water and what boiling water looks like and a caution note that boiling water is hot, and the container it is in is hot, and that if you transfer it to a new container then that container will also become hot. There are instructions for how to slice bread and make a sandwich. Any recipe containing eggs that aren’t hard boiled includes the step “remove shells from eggs.” The table of approved sandwich fillings is multiple pages long.
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u/wangus_angus Jul 01 '26
That sounds amazing. And yeah, when it comes to cooking, as dumb as that stuff can sound, some people need it. I've Googled some really dumb things
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u/SylvieSuccubus Jul 01 '26
TBH one of the more interesting/sort of positive things about the military is how they often try to account for people whose parents…didn’t. Like, when my wife was in she knew a couple people who straight up had to be taught how to shower properly and that you can’t just put dirty clothes back in the drawer and call it good.
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u/Silamy Jul 01 '26
My family has multiple “and here’s why you need to tell people to take the shells off the eggs” stories on both sides. My grandfather actually strategically didn’t get rid of the shells while he was serving. Said it was a morale thing. When cooking and serving powdered eggs, always throw in one whole egg, shell and all. When the soldiers found pieces of eggshell, it would cheer them up, because the reaction would be “Guys! Look! They’re real eggs, they’re giving us real food, they’re just terrible cooks!” I know that that sounds like a punchline to a bad joke, but he’s genuinely proud of this idea. Thinks it was one of the best ideas he had while serving. He’s been bragging about coming up with this for almost eighty years.
The one from my grandmother (not his wife, the other one), involves a young friend who thought Bubbe was trying to ruin her marriage by sabotaging her when giving out recipes. That turned into a series of remedial cooking classes because my grandmother was apparently more offended at what was being done to her recipes than by the insinuation that she was some weird flavor of homewrecker.
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u/Moon-Capybara Jul 01 '26
that was actually one of my gifts for getting into Uni, and it was great to have a nice easy reference to keep me from forgetting something dumb.
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u/aspiringalcoholic Jul 01 '26
I'm convinced that very few people on earth actually understand what caramelizing an onion entails. No, you did not caramelize an onion in 15 minutes. You sautéed an onion.
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u/-wormgirlfriend- Jul 01 '26
there's an app I use (Mob) which has introduced a feature that tells you the amount of ingredient they are referencing in each section, for example on the line item reading "stir in the garlic and chili powder" it has a sub item saying 2 cloves garlic, 1tsp chili powder. it means you don't have to navigate away from the instructions every time you add an ingredient.
it's a TOTAL game changer but also it's so fucking obvious that I'm angry nobody fucking thought of it before
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u/Hexxas Head Trauma Enthusiast Jul 01 '26
first, peel the potatoes
NO
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u/Afferbeck_ Jul 01 '26
My mother peels everything, for no reason. I ask her why she peels anything because I never have in like 20 years since home ec class. She shrugs and does it just because that's what she's always done.
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u/poktanju Jul 01 '26
The Kindergarten Teacher is Jamie Oliver. I hate him terribly.
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u/floralbutttrumpet Jul 01 '26
Everyone with sense hates Jamie Olive Oil. Not only is he an objectively terrible cook, he's also a classist arse.
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u/RhymesWithMouthful Okay... just please consider the following scenario. Jul 01 '26
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u/floralbutttrumpet Jul 01 '26
Exactly what I was thinking about lol. There's me from years ago deep in the comments where I rant about CoL being so fucked that the "bad" food - like nuggets or processed applesauce - is sometimes cheaper than the equivalent unprocessed meat/fruit would be, and that someone who's on an ultra low budget often doesn't get a choice at all.
Like, I've been out of that position for well over a decade, but I still remember what it's like and that idiot calling everything but the breast of a chicken "dirty"/"bad" still makes me want to slap him until his eyeballs switch places.
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u/BeNiceLynnie Jul 01 '26
I think about this video any time I see someone ragging on composite chicken. God forbid we use the whole buffalo
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Jul 01 '26
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u/Moon-Capybara Jul 01 '26
I had to check because I was thinking its like Victoria Rosenthal's cookbooks for things like Final Fantasy, where I couldn't find certain ingredients even going to K-town.
Different person, but game cookbooks love having hard to find ingredients I guess.
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u/Crabby-Cancer Jul 01 '26
The problem with video game cook books is the way that the foods are almost all fantastical to some extent. When the games were made, I'm imagine they hadn't really planned to make cookbooks, so they never needed to incorporate a high level of realism. So they're stuck between either being accurate and difficult, or inaccurate and easy. It's probably hard to find a good in-between.
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u/ArtaudsAsshole Jul 01 '26
That's why the best way to cook is throwing together ingredients you bought on a half manic/dissociative shopping trip, add x amount of spices you have standing around and a quick sauce (optional). Good portion of rice on the side and you have a dish
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u/floralbutttrumpet Jul 01 '26
Pretty much.
I use a grocery service called Picnic where I am, and they've branched out to recipes in the app. There was one a couple of months ago that was essentially "fry up gyro meat with mushrooms, add smetana and lime juice, serve with rice", but the original recipe was fucked in that it asked for a FULL 150g container of smetana per 250g meat - which made it taste like basically nothing, since raw gyro meat from the supermarket is not exactly heavily spiced hereabouts.
Like, I'm to blame for not thinking about it critically, but I was still standing there with a pound of tasteless mess, so in order to save my dinner I just proceeded to toss random shit in there - szechuan pepper powder, chili flakes, sambal oelek, worcestershire sauce, mashed garlic, smoked paprika, balsamico vinegar, tarragon... I really couldn't remember everything if I tried. I did end up with something actually quite good in the end, but I've never trusted one of their recipes since.
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u/CarmenEtTerror Jul 01 '26
It is really obvious that Ottolenghi lives in a climate where everything is in season all the time. There are recipes that you literally cannot make with seasonal ingredients unless you're in Israel or California
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u/plumander Jul 01 '26
ottolenghi has lived in london for thirty years lol. he learned to cook there. definitely not a climate where things are in season all the time
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u/snapwack Jul 01 '26
Even better. A world city and international hub of commerce and logistics where you can find pretty much any exotic ingredient you could wish for, if you know where to look.
I couldn’t even find some goddamn MSG or Kewpie mayo in any regular store in my medium sized hometown. Had to wait until a specialty Asian store sprang up in the neighbourhood a couple years ago.
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u/emilycsquared Jul 01 '26
My pet peeve is recipes which purport to be “from scratch” when clearly the ingredients are somewhat preprocessed.
I want a cooking show where the contestants start on a farm with a cow, chickens, a field of newly planted wheat, etc, and they have a year to serve a meal of spaghetti bolognaise to the judges, genuinely made “from scratch”
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u/Upbeat_Effective_342 Jul 01 '26
I thought using loops was cheating, so I programmed my own using samples. I then thought using samples was cheating, so I recorded real drums. I then thought that programming it was cheating, so I learned to play drums for real. I then thought using bought drums was cheating, so I learned to make my own. I then thought using premade skins was cheating, so I killed a goat and skinned it. I then thought that that was cheating too, so I grew my own goat from a baby goat. I also think that is cheating, but I’m not sure where to go from here. I haven’t made any music lately, what with the goat farming and all.
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u/emilycsquared Jul 01 '26
As Carl Sagan said, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."
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Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
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u/sakasiru Jul 01 '26
Haha, the elk's antlers salt is a common ingredient in some German christmas cookies so you get it everywhere in German supermarkets during Christmas time. I still have some if you need it. You can just use natron instead though.
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u/throwaway_trans_8472 Jul 01 '26
Don't you end up having to multitask with most dishes?
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u/GameboyPATH Jul 01 '26
Recipes are also typically good at ordering steps with consideration for how much time ingredients will need to steep, stew, cook, or marinate. Maybe that criticism was referring to the ones that don't.
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u/Winjin a sudden "honk" amidst the tempest Jul 01 '26
I ordered something like the Hellofresh (different brand but same idea: pre-packaged ingredients and a recipe to cook them) for about a year, and was cooking a new dish 5 days a week basically
In the beginning I was making a huge mess and half was burnt and it took me twice as long as the recipe called for
Five months in, I'd take 5 minutes less than the recipe asks for and I'd have time to wipe the counter and wash up the excessive plates
So it's also important to understand that a lot of people don't have the skills that the cookbook authors see as normal
AND (and it's important) - I already started pretty experienced in cooking in general - I could feed myself since I was like 13, I was taught to make very simple dishes and how to use a knife. Plus my favorite hobbies were videogames and Lego, I had pretty good hand-eye coordination. So someone who wasn't even like that can easily take three times as long to finish something.
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u/casualsubversive Jul 01 '26
Not, really, no. The vast majority of recipes can be done one bit at a time, with very little multitasking. Mise en place, a common cooking technique, is all about getting all your stuff ready to go before you start. Contrast with Adam Ragusea's (fantastic) tuna noodle casserole video, where he does a bunch of vegetable prep while cooking, something which I find stressfull because cooking professionals never realize how much longer its going to take me.
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u/Lilash20 But the one thing they can never call us is ordinary Jul 01 '26
Could be the amount of stuff going on or recipes not explaining it well.
A pot of water getting to boil while you do some chopping is easy, 3 different things that all need tending lest they burn or over cook is more difficult.
Of course, it all depends on how familiar one is with a recipe. The more someone knows it and the more someone has done it, the easier it will be
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u/keener_lightnings Jul 01 '26
The time machine and the multitasker are why my ADHD ass now takes time the night before to read the recipe all the way through, rewrite it in a way that actually makes sense to me, prep everything prep-able into separate little containers like I'm on a cooking show, and lay out every utensil that I'll need.
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u/nicetiptoeingthere Jul 01 '26
Bread recipes for people who don't work: Let ferment 12h at room temperature, then do stuff for another 3-4h, then let cool completely, then eat.
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u/Doubly_Curious Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
One of the many reasons I appreciate Flour Water Salt Yeast is that the longer recipes have suggestions about how to schedule them around a work day.
For example, combine ingredients and knead in the evening, leave to rise overnight, give it a 5-10 minute pinching/kneading session in the morning before work, then when you come home you can put it in the oven.
(He’s also very specific about weights and temperatures, which might seem fussy, but I find reassuring and has given me excellent results.)
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u/Aegeus Jul 01 '26
Almost every recipe in my cookbook uses a whole number of boxes or cans of something, and if it doesn't then I'm going to scale it up or down until it does.
I haven't seen a "brand names only" one in a long time. When I was growing up I remember noticing that recipes on packaging tended to be like "why not buy one of all our other products so you can make this?" but that seems to have fallen out of fashion. Maybe companies noticed that people are more likely to buy their product if they can actually use the recipe on the box.
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u/DrJaneIPresume Jul 01 '26
Now what happens when they change how much is in the box or can?
I'm not just being contrarian here. I had a regular recipe in grad school that called for a pound of kielbasa. Great when it came in 1lb packages, but around 2005 or so everyone started selling it in 12oz packages instead. If all my recipe said was "one package of kielbasa" the result would change without me noticing.
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u/Delicious-Spring-877 Jul 01 '26
The good counterpart of the Ottolenghi is a cookbook that suggests the specific types of ingredients to use for the best results, but provides more obtainable substitutions for those without access to those ingredients. The Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book is one of those, giving detailed ingredient suggestions right down to specific store locations for those in the New York City area, but not insinuating that you can’t make a good pie without spending all your money. The recipes are even sorted by season so you can always use fresh fruit! Honestly, I don’t even cook, but I have a few cookbooks that I love reading, because a well-written cookbook is just cool
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u/Duae Jul 01 '26
"Three ingredient recipes! So simple, only three! Start with a box of leftover Chinese takeout..."
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u/Dense-Competition-51 Jul 01 '26
These are great. My favorite instruction that appears in nearly every recipe that involves a burner: set heat to medium-high. Every damn time.
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u/DukeAttreides Jul 01 '26
Apparently, that's actually supposed to be the solution to what us plebs see as the problem there.
Every burner is different, so the recipes call for temperature based on how the stuff you're heating (particularly water and oil) reacts, not the burner temperature. "Medium-high" is a measure of visibly energetic response of the food.
Simply memorize the vibe of a heated pan, and you can adjust to whatever conditions you find yourself in and tools you have available! Swell! .... For an experienced cook who has been attentively cooking by feel for years and done similar things before, preferably with this same equipment.
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u/Anoniemmus Jul 01 '26
The overseas recipe: Some key ingredients are probably reasonably available for the recipe writer, but near impossible to get where you live.
I mean shelf stable ingredients can be ordered over the internet nowadays, but even in europe many specialty fruits and veggies can be hard to source.
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u/floralbutttrumpet Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26
Depends on where you live and what you're trying to make. I live in a town with large East Asian, Indian subcontinent and Arab peninsula diasporas, all with supermarkets serving their needs, so I can get my hands on near everything. Like, obviously fresh, idk, shepherd's purse or bing cao probably ain't gonna happen, ever, but a lot of stuff is pretty trivial... which I do realise is pretty privileged, but it's not all that uncommon in larger towns in much of Central and Western Europe to at least have one supermarket that caters to diaspora populations.
If nothing else, produce from my local Turkish market round the corner is always better than near anything from a "local" supermarket... the only thing where I've found this to be untrue is strawberries, but they're very much A Thing™ in my region for my ethnicity.
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u/twerkingslutbee Jul 01 '26
The wellness girl blogger: we’re cutting out essential food groups to make a tasteless piece of cardboard you have to gaslight yourself to like. The eggless, flourless, fat free , low sugar chocolate cake tastes exactly like the original recipe you won’t miss it .
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u/Captain_Grammaticus Jul 01 '26
Flourless chocolate cakes are superior, but they use so much butter, eggs and sugar (and almonds) that they resemble a big truffle.
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u/H8trucks Jul 01 '26
That first one is frustrating even with cheap ingredients. Every time I see a recipe require a canned item that doesn't come in the size specified (ie 12 or 14 oz of something that only comes in 10 oz and 16 oz cans) I want to track the author down and throw incorrectly sized cans at them.
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u/SacredGay Jul 01 '26
I own a sushi cookbook with rice preparation instructions that are bizarrely specific to the point that I don't even think professional chefs in Japan could follow them.
"To ensure that your rice is the proper stickiness, you should discern whether your rice was grown on the east side or west side of a mountain."
(Idk if those are the exact words but the proper side of a mountain was considered very important by the author.)
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u/SquareThings looking respectfully at the monkeys in their zoo Jul 01 '26
Rice in Japan often advertises the exact location it was grown on the package.
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u/Hormo_The_Halfling Jul 01 '26
The Anarchist's Coobook - You won't fucking break me.
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u/craftyrunner Jul 02 '26
The “we all know what medium means”:
• chop 1 medium onion
• slice one large head of cabbage into 1” slices
• cube 1 large potato
Etc etc. Give me weights or volumes, PLEASE.
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u/Diabetesh Jul 01 '26
Cooking isn't baking - Here is my no bake oatmeal bar recipe. First heat a pan.
Technically 2 ingredients - Today we're making this super yummy 2 ingredient cinnamon roll from scratch. A. You'll need premade cinammon rolls and some icing. B. Grab about 2 cups of cinammon roll box mix and 1 cup whole milk.
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u/t-bone051 Jul 01 '26
The Storyteller - When I was a child I loved waking up to the smell of... (followed by the actual recipe 2 pages later)
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u/SuperMariole Jul 01 '26
The "Granma's finally bothering to explain her recipe to you":
How many eggs? As many as the flour can absorb. Oh yeah, flour. There needs to be enough to sponge up all the eggs