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.
We followed a cake recipe once from some US food blog. We learned then that you should only use half or even one quarter of the sugar stated in recipes from Americans and even then it might be sickeningly sweet.
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If your teeth don’t hurt is it really cake?
Thanksgiving 2019 my wife and I decided to make an apple pie from scratch. Cook and prep time was estimated for 3h this was with us factoring in never having baked before. We decided we could start at 8 and be fine. Fast forward to 230am and we are just removing it from the oven. Next day everyone is trying it and we all agreed it was probably the best pie ever made in the family. I’ll never try again because it wasn’t worth all that work.
Orange chicken.
It was my comfort food while studying in the US. At Panda Express it was cheap, convenient, and delicious.
Then I tried making it. And… although I could make delicious-er, it was too much work. Then I forgot how much work it was, and made it again, and I swore, never again. I don’t have a proper kitchen or a fryer, and it took me about two hours of active work (if you’re serving 8 people). Most other food I make is max 20 minutes, and the rest is just time passing and heat doing its thing. Even dishes that take 8 hours to prepare, is usually still only 20-30 minutes of labour.
Without the right kitchen equipment. Never again.
I might make it again soon.
My kids love Trader Joe’s frozen orange chicken and it’s easy to make.
Pan fry the breaded chicken pieces while you thaw the sauce, then toss cooked chicken in the sauce.
Cleanup is a large frying pan and tongs.
Same thing with Kung Pao Chicken from Trader Joes. Tried to make it once from scratch, never again. Hours and hours of labor and specialized ingredients that you’ll only use for that one recipe taking up space in your pantry/fridge, versus buying the frozen bag that ends up tasting better, can be prepped in no time flat, and has exactly one pan to clean up in the end. Way better.
Beetroot curry. I was drunk and went with the idea that “you can curry anything”… you can’t.
That time I made banana bread but with salt instead of sugar. Accidentally, of course.
It looked sad and squishy, I tried a bit anyway. It was odd, my tongue detected something amiss, but the bad taste arrived a second or two after my brain started “reacting”, like warning lights were flashing but I didn’t know why.
And then the taste of bananabrine arrived and my face locked up in a rictus grimace.i couldn’t control my mouth so I had to scrape it out with my hand.
Truly awful.
Hahaha bananabrine, great description
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Chocolate soufflé. Fuck that caved in nonsense
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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FYI, the trick to making caramelized onions is boiling the onions. After you cut up your onions and add them to your pan, add a small amount of water, enough that the water will cook out after a few minutes. The water will steam the onions and cook them more quickly, which will them make them faster and easier to caramelize.
Here’s a video to demonstrate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqhzil3wJw
This trick works well to make mushrooms more flavorful and all sorts of other foods!
Instead of water you can add a bit of beer to cook the onions. You don’t taste the beer at the end but it brings a bit more flavors at the end.
Wine also. White is more subtle, red will give it a sort of balsamic vinegar type aftertaste.
yesss! and any broth really could work here in substitute for more flavor, but beer and onions is a bomb combo, especially with brats
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
I made prime rib and was scared of the oven constantly burning, causing me to constantly turn it off and then back on whenever someone got angry since I was at the house alone babysitting the oven at the time. When we went to eat it, everyone complimented it and theorized me constantly jumpstarting the oven while it was cooking actually made it better than it otherwise would’ve been. So while I successfully made prime rib by accident, I’m not going through that again.
More of a cooking technique than a recipe. I wanted to make a stir fry more substantial so I added flour to it. Strongly recommend against ever doing this.
Corn starch slurry, dawg
What happened when you added flour?
Flour is a common ingredient for thickening stews etc. Not OP, but if I had to guess I’d wager that the flour soaked up all the moisture in the pan, then dried out and started to burn.
Best way to describe the resulting texture is “slimy”, it’s pretty gross
Oof, yeah that doesn’t sound appealing. I was going to guess burnt like the other comment but slimy is worse.
Fried chicken, it was absolutely delicious but the prep work, frying and dish clean up was more than I’d like.
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.
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.
Oh spicy.
The spice so nice you feel it twice!
