Recipe Pet Peeve.

Wynterbourne

My apologies in advance. Mini rant: You know what is an awesome cooking tip? Only rating and praising an online recipe after you've made and/or tried the recipe. It drives me insane when scouring blogs, forums, websites, etc looking for a recipe, to read the reviews on a highly rated recipe, only to see comment after comment like, "Five stars. I can't wait to try this" "This looks so good, Four stars" "10 out of 10. I know this is gonna be great". Oh. Em. Gee. You've heard of tarring and feathering? This makes me want to find these people and dump honey and couscous all over them and take away their internet. LOL. Sorry again. /end rant. Anyone else have any recipe pet peeves?

Creamtea42

Pet peeve for me is cups v grams …. Wish recipes had both! 🤬

yirara

Yes! I find it so crazy if a cookbook is only in cups! I have one single book by American Test Kitchen, and I won't buy any other for the following reason: Everything in cups. Including finely cut parsley. At the back of the book is a conversion table where I can convert that cup of finely cut parsley to: ml! What the Kitten! Such a big brand, and they do this *kitten*? Seriously? Ok, using the wrong amount of parsley won't spoil the dish, but if you use more essential ingredients then it gets downright annoying.

PeachHibiscus

When I look for a recipe online, I just want the ingredient list and the directions (what temperature/how long). It seems like every recipe I find lately has some extensive background story or blog prior to this part. I don't care about any of this and do not read it. It's air fried tilapia, not some earth-shattering revelation.

I guess it's kind of a "get off my lawn" type of pet peeve but there it is.

MsCzar

PeachHibiscus wrote: »

When I look for a recipe online, I just want the ingredient list and the directions (what temperature/how long). It seems like every recipe I find lately has some extensive background story or blog prior to this part.

Yes! It's so annoying. I usually just Ctrl + F search the page for 'ingredients' or something like 'cups'. The cups vs. grams is also hyper-annoying when trying to reduce a recipe or ingredient into halves or thirds. I don't want to have to figure out 1/3 of one and a quarter cups in my head.

I pretty much ignore online ratings and comments unless they repeat a theme: 'too much sugar, had to add salt, cook longer, etc.

cwolfman13

PeachHibiscus wrote: »

When I look for a recipe online, I just want the ingredient list and the directions (what temperature/how long). It seems like every recipe I find lately has some extensive background story or blog prior to this part. I don't care about any of this and do not read it. It's air fried tilapia, not some earth-shattering revelation.

I guess it's kind of a "get off my lawn" type of pet peeve but there it is.

There's usually a radio button for "skip to recipe". I can't really fault anyone for their side hustle and trying to monetize their blog. I used to have a travel and leisure blog...it was a lot of work but I was pretty passionate about it and it made me a little extra $$.

Wynterbourne

Creamtea42 wrote: »

Pet peeve for me is cups v grams …. Wish recipes had both! 🤬

Absolutely, I realize that certain things have little variation from 'cup' to 'cup' due to their tiny and self-compacting size, like my aforementioned couscous (hehe), but, for example, 'a cup of bell pepper (capsicum) strips'. Are you kidding me? I realize that from a diet perspective, the nutrition variation for that particular item isn't that great, but it's still a ridiculous measurement. Weight never changes no matter the size and shape of preparation and I don't understand using a measurement that can have such a drastic range. Baking and pastry recipes can flat out fail due to just a small descrepancy in amount. I frequently print out online recipes and then write down the gram measurements on it.

Mise_enPlace

Salt and pepper to taste. I know it's based on preference, but it still annoys me

Mouse_Potato

I hate it when people rate a recipe, good or bad, and then list out 12 different changes they made to it. That's not even the same recipe!!

Wynterbourne

Mouse_Potato wrote: »

I hate it when people rate a recipe, good or bad, and then list out 12 different changes they made to it. That's not even the same recipe!!

I can't believe I forgot about that. Yep. I can understand swapping out certain fruits or vegetables in certain recipes, or making minor adjustments for allergies, etc, but when the changes are so extreme it's no longer the same recipe, it makes no sense. Though, I have seen a few websites that actually had a separate comment section for people who made recipe modifications.

Melwillbehealthy

I agree with you. I cook a lot and belong to a group of women who all like to cook and share what we make. I often try the online blog type recipes. I’m often disappointed by them. I feel that someone just wanted to post a blog more than they cared about the recipe. Look for recipes by established cooks.
Also, being Canadian, I’ve always had to convert from Imperial to metric when following anything American. It’s not a biggie.

paperpudding

The cups thing is fine by me - you get standard cup sets which have cup, half cup, tablespoon teaspoon etc in a nest of cups, I use them quite often

I cant think of any pet peeves - not quite on topic, more recipe silliness, I suppose - my grandmother once had a recipe that called for 24 tablespoons of something - imagine measuring out 24 tablespoons !! - surely the writer could of converted that to 2 cups or whatever.

AnnPT77

paperpudding wrote: »

The cups thing is fine by me - you get standard cup sets which have cup, half cup, tablespoon teaspoon etc in a nest of cups, I use them quite often

I cant think of any pet peeves - not quite on topic, more recipe silliness, I suppose - my grandmother once had a recipe that called for 24 tablespoons of something - imagine measuring out 24 tablespoons !! - surely the writer could of converted that to 2 cups or whatever.

The idea that cups/spoons don't work is hilarious to me: US recipes have been written in cups/spoons for many decades. Is the contention that all of our cooking has been turning out badly the whole time, and we just didn't realize it? Where recipes are written that way, cups/spoons are a standardized volume measure, plenty close enough for the purpose.

In general, recipes aren't some magical spell that must be exactly exact in order to work. In fact, some will go better if modified on the fly, such as adjusting the amount of flour in bread during kneading based on how the dough feels, or varying the amount of fluid in pie crust depending on whether it's a humid day or not. Thick rolled oats will result in a different oatmeal cookie from thin rolled oats of equal weight. Fresh ground black pepper has much more bite than store-bought: I wouldn't want to use the same amount. And so on.

I don't follow recipes often enough to have pet peeves about them, I guess. (I mostly just cook, only use recipes for the proportions of structural ingredients in baked goods, to get ideas for flavor profiles or food combinations, or to make some truly novel dish using major structural ingredients I've never cooked before.)

I do dislike the blog recipes that make the actual recipe hard to find amongst parasocial chit-chat, and hate video recipes entirely.

paperpudding

Ann you have quoted my post - so just to be clear - I have no issue with cups/spoons and have a standard set that I use frequently.

My point was more on the silliness of counting out 24 tablespoons of something rather than it being listed in the recipe as 2 cups or whatever equivalent of that many spoons.

JaysFan82

The long drawn out story that I have to scroll through to get to the actual recipe.

AnnPT77

paperpudding wrote: »

Ann you have quoted my post - so just to be clear - I have no issue with cups/spoons and have a standard set that I use frequently.

My point was more on the silliness of counting out 24 tablespoons of something rather than it being listed in the recipe as 2 cups or whatever equivalent of that many spoons.

For clarity, I meant to be agreeing with your first paragraph - like "I know, right?" and continuing the conversation.

neanderthin

When I write a recipe it's always metric and it makes it easier for others to follow, or should, but alas some people should not step foot in a kitchen, I'm kidding.

The comment about salt and pepper to taste bothered someone, those instructions are for seasoning at the end only, and it can't be any other way. If your making a volume recipe generally the salt will be a measured amount for a particular recipe and if you taste salt, you've basically added too much and if you leave it out, the food is often inedible and that is a very hard thing to teach someone. I'm not talking about outliers where any amount of salt is too much or more salt the better. Oven times and temps are bothersome imo. Cheers

springlering62

That’s why I like Allrecipes. No drama or back story, have to convert but it’s concise and comparably easy to do so, and the reviews are from people who’ve actually made it. I always read the reviews there because I often find helpful cooking tips for every day use.

I also find that the nutrition calculations on many blogs and websites are hideously inaccurate, particularly those claiming to be low cal. Tbh, I wonder if they do it on purpose as clickbait.

I’ve learned: . Never rely on the recipe website’s nutrition calculations.

nossmf

Some recipes assume you have ingredients in your kitchen which I've either never heard of before, or this is literally the only time I've ever seen a recipe asking to use it, so now I'm faced with a decision: do I go out and buy this ingredient, risking not liking the recipe and therefore having spent money on something I'll never use again, or do I move on to the next recipe instead? Sadly, after a couple times buying the mystery stuff, I've learned to move on. Who knows how many wonderful meals I've missed due to my hesitation?