Recipe Pet Peeve.

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 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.

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 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.

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

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

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?