Have you ever tried a recipe that turned out to go horribly wrong, or maybe the end product, despite being good, just wasn’t worth the effort? What was that recipe, and what about it made you say “NEVER AGAIN”?
I ask this as I am actively trying to remove the stench of onions from my Instapot lid’s silicone ring after making French Onion Soup in it (so far steaming it with white vinegar on the steam setting, soaking the ring in a water/baking soda bath overnight, and baking it at 250 degrees F for 20 minutes have all done nothing, so I ordered a new one, I give up). And I realized that cutting all the onions and waiting hours for them to caramelize and now this damn smell issue just isn’t worth it. Plus I still have frozen soup in the freezer because I can only eat French Onion soup so many days in a row.
NEVER AGAIN.
I set out tonight to make a delicious chicken paprika kind of stewish thing I’ve done before. As is my usual habit I took the jar of paprika from the cupboard and sprinkled a generous amount in the pan. Tasted after half an hour and fuck me, it was HOT.
It was cayenne pepper, not paprika.
My stomach actually hurts a bit.
Oh spicy.
The spice so nice you feel it twice!
Paprikash?
Yes, kind of, though I don’t follow a recipe. It’s what veg I have kicking around, flavoured with garlic, paprika and Hungarian sweet red pepper paste. Sometimes a bit of chicken or chorizo.
This is brutal
I found a recipe for Boston Beans that sounded interesting. It involved stewing kidney beans with tomatoes, brown sugar and bacon bits.
At the end of it I realised I’d made baked beans, exactly like you’d get in a can. It tasted okay, but 45 minutes of effort when I could open a can and heat the contents in five minutes for the same result?
Done well they will be the best baked beans you will ever have… but they are still baked beans. They can only be so good.
Try adding a 3/4 cup of a Baja Chipotle bbq sauce, ancho powder, white pepper, 4 strips chopped bacon, and various other fiery powders n spices
I just think theres a definite ceiling on how good baked beans can be before it stops being baked beans.
True. Southern people would call what I just described a variation on Chili Beans
No-bake cookies with Splenda instead of sugar. My wife made some and they turned out looking amazing, but had the taste of Bitrex. Absolutely foul.
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Pumpkin pie using fresh pie pumpkins. It’s not that hard, but it takes more time and means washing more dishes, and no one that I know of can tell the difference vs. a pie made using canned 100% pumpkin.
I love making pumpkin pie from scratch, but fuck doing the crust from scratch. Last time I did that it was super doughy cuz I tried to reroll it out after it didn’t go into the pan right without chilling it beforehand.
Oh, I actually prefer a graham cracker crust for my pumpkin pie, and those are definitely easier than traditional crusts!
In college we actually had a huge debate about this, spanning half a decade and involving around 6 separate bakeoffs. I can conclusively say that I cannot tell the difference between whole pumpkin and canned pumpkin. That said, the pre-made canned filling is garbage. I can smell that difference from across the room. I can smell it from among four other pies. It’s like a completely different food product compared to homemade pumpkin custard.
For the store baked pies, it’s the same. The bad ones use the premixed stuff and taste like sadness, and the good ones taste like pumpkin pie. For me, the thicker the pie, the better it probably is, and what really sets good pies apart from each other is the crust.
Yeah, I would never use the canned pie filling, only canned whole pumpkin, although I haven’t done any side by side comparisons, and only have a slice or two per year lately, so I can’t say quite as confidently that I could identify the difference.
As I mentioned in another comment, I actually prefer a graham cracker crust for my pumpkin pie, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that anywhere other than my own kitchen. It can be a little tricky to get the filling fully cooked without burning the crust, but I’ve found that chilling the crust until just before baking helps a lot.
See, I hate crust, so I don’t really care about it. It’s all about how good the filling is.
Usually the thick pies aren’t that great to me, but mine comes out with a very light consistency so that’s probably why.
Most store bought pies suck though and none of them use cardamom, which is really the key to a great pumpkin pie.
I think it depends on the squash you use. Sure, buying a cheap pie pumpkin or butternut squash at the store might not taste that much better, but a home-grown squash or good local squash can far exceed the flavor of canned pumpkin. As usual, a lot of cooking is about using fresh, good quality ingredients.
I hear what you’re saying, but I also hear, “no, just do even more work!” Haha. As it is, baking a single pie is already more expensive than a single store bought pie, and the people I’m pawning my leftovers off to don’t seem to know the difference.
On top of that, I live in a high rise in the middle of the city, so home-grown squash is impossible (I barely have space for a few window sill herbs), and anything “local” is going to be even more expensive. Just not worth it to me so I can have a few slices of pie.
yeah, that makes sense in your context - canned squash isn’t so bad, definitely not worth making from scratch.
I’m in a suburb where I have grown squash in my compost bin and gotten a harvest that lasted me a whole year, and that squash was some of the tastiest and had the most colorful of any squash I’ve had. The squash was also essentially free, a waste product, and in that context it seemed worth it (at least in some sense). However, it does take time and planning and a lot more work, and as you’re saying depending on who you’re baking for they may not appreciate it.
Fried chicken, it was absolutely delicious but the prep work, frying and dish clean up was more than I’d like.
French Onion Soup is indeed a bitch and a half, but its also delicious and vwry affordable to make. Next time, try a heavy cast iron pot; it’ll absorb the onions flavor without stinking. That said, you still have to endure chopping 3 lbs of onions…
I’ll probably never make fried ravioli again. I like em on salad but its just a pain to deepfry anything and the payoff isnt worth it.
Gotta get an air frier! Totally worth it!
Chopping onions is not an issue. I remember peeling and cutting three bags of 25 kilograms each with a number of farmers wives for some kind of savory onion cake.They had thought it funny to invite me to their table (I was dropping by as one of them had to leave), expecting to see a young man giving up after a few minutes. What they did not expect was that I was quicker in peeling and cutting than they were, as I’ve had learned to do this from a real cook ;-)
I’ll probably never make fried ravioli again. I like em on salad but its just a pain to deepfry anything and the payoff isnt worth it.
This sounds heathenly (yes, you read that right).
I tried some asian dessert once. It took a lot of effort to make. It tasted like scrambled eggs with a hint of coconut. Nope, not again.
NEVER put lemon juice in an omelette. Absolutely disgusting. Once tried it, not following any recipe. Never again.
I’ve never seen an omelette recipe call for lemon juice, that does sound totally gross.
I do suggest adding a splash of lemon juice or vinegar to the water when boiling eggs tho. Makes them much easier to peel.
I usually add baking soda to the water, does the same thing
Anfo
Puff pastry! The constant fear the butter getting too soft, the (seeming) hours of rolling then resting in the freezer, the failure of witnessing the butter melt out in the oven was just too much for me, especially when the pre made frozen stuff is quite good.
That said, I love a challenge and have been thinking of trying it again.
Yeah. I tried it once, just to see if I could do it. Now I know I can, I never need to do it again. I buy the frozen stuff.
Cooking meth, I almost got intoxicated and exploded…
Got to get that campervan ventilation upgraded mate.
I once made vegan Mac and cheese, and it was soooo good. But I will never make it again because it was just too much work for the pay off. I also hate cooking so…
What made it take a lot of work?
Regular mac and cheese you just boil noodles, make a sauce, dump it in a baking dish, put in the oven.
Was the vegan sauce extra complicated?
Yeah there were a ton of things I needed to buy for the sauce and all the prep.
I’m not vegan, I just wanted to try it. Compared to traditional Mac n cheese the payoff was not worth it (as long as eating non vegan isn’t an issue) imo.
Beetroot curry. I was drunk and went with the idea that “you can curry anything”… you can’t.
Fucking cauliflower vegan “wings” they were the nastiest, smelliest, mushiest pile of gross I have ever tasted.
I have a dog who is a rescue, she was severely neglected when we first got her as a foster and her file stated she had to eat her own feces in order to survive at the place she was rescued from. Well, those cauliflower wings I just told you about? She sniffed them and gagged!! That’s how bad they were.
cauliflower wings properly made are amazing, but you should definitely not follow a recipe that results in nasty mush 😆
I tried to make cauliflower hummus once, it was fucking rank.
Similarly, cauliflower steak. I followed some recipe that just turned it into a brick of balsamic vinegarette and, while I love both cauliflower and balsamic vinaigrette, this was not delicious nor did it taste like steak.
Sounds like you fucked something up when making them. I’m not vegan but I’ve tried them and they’re ok when done properly. Not special, but okay and far from vile garbage.
Yeah, probably. Still, they smelled like zombie farts so I stir clear away from trying them again but to each their own.
Moussaka I did a research project on it in high school chef training class. I made the dish, including soaking in salt and extracting the bitterness. By all accounts it was delicious for everyone except me. I had a bad reaction to the eggplant and was throwing up all night.
I stay away from that member of the nightshade family. I’ll stick with potatoes and tomatoes.
