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I make a chocolate pudding pie every year for Christmas. The pudding is made from scratch, and I just about gave up on it too the first time I made it. The recipe says that after whisking for 5 minutes, the pudding will start to thicken. It's not 5 minutes, it's more like 20 minutes.
It was also my mom who encouraged me to keep whisking and see what happens. I think if I was making it alone at home, I would have given up after 15 minutes, thinking I did something wrong.
Sooooo many recipes underestimate the time needed for various steps - like that you can brown/carmelize onions in 10 minutes!
And for baking - I always set the timer a bit early to check on something "just in case" but invariably the time stated is 25% too soon - so up and down, up and down checking on it. It IS NOT the temperature of my oven that is off!
I frequently cook from cookbook or internet recipes and am usually pretty careful about reading through a new recipe to make sure everything makes sense before I commit to it, but occasionally I run up against frustrating instructions.
Last night I was making risotto cakes with shrimp and in spite of following the directions very carefully, there was no way that I was going to be able to scoop out risotto (mixed with egg and grated parm) that only cooled for 30 min, shape it into patties and dredge them in flour then egg then breadcrumbs without them falling apart. I was frustrated and worked through it, but figured out that what really should have happened is that I should have chilled the risotto for several hours to give it a chance to firm up first. (They turned out pretty good, but the entire process was more annoying than enjoyable!)
I feel like the author didn't want the recipe to look like it was going to take 4 hours so they just left out that part of the instructions.
What recipe instructions frustrate you?
I normally do a spinach and dried chanterelle mushroom risotto where the mushrooms are rehydrated in sauvignon blanc and chicken stock and the liquid is more chicken stock and sauvignon blanc. It's OK the first day but the point is to have leftovers the next day to fry in butter as pucks. I just dredge mine in flour with salt and tarragon. The key is lots of butter and enough heat to get them crispy. I've never bothered with eggs or breadcrumbs.
I agree. I think your problem is that it needs to sit overnight in the fridge.
My disasters are usually from failing to follow the recipe for baking. It's chemistry where you need to follow it exactly unless you're so experienced that you know how you can get away with diverging from the recipe.
When I can I try and read thru now and make sure they make sense before using them. I tend to prefer to make a copy from a real recipe book.
I was making this cake a few years back from an Internet recipe and I had not really looked at it but had assembled all the ingredients. As I was cooking I realized there were 3 recipe items listed that were not in the instructions! I did not know what to do with them. I wasted some time really trying to figure out what to do with those 3 things. I realized the website designer had probably left several ingredients from a different recipe orphaned on the page, they were in a funny place.
SO that really chafed my hide and I avoid that now.
Lodestar, Making pate choux (cream puff dough) is easier if you use an electric mixer, even more so a stand mixer. You can also do it in the food processor per Jacques Pepin, as he did on one of his shows. I haven't tried the food processor yet, haven't made pate choux since I saw that episode. I've made it by hand when I was in my early 20s and I think that was the first and last time I ever did it without an electric appliance. I've been wanting gougeres again so may be trying the FP method soon.
I use tempura batter or even panko to get crispy shrimp. You can use cornstarch as part of a tempura batter, but just by itself, not going to give much of a coating.
Pinetreelover, Yes, definitely, let the risotto cool overnight in the fridge if you are going to make cakes out of it.
Saibot, The egg yolks are supposed to become lighter in color and thicken just slightly, it's not a huge difference in thickness. It's more like a pale lemon color.
My biggest frustration is because of me basically. I tend to just skim through recipes and often miss things like it needs to marinate several hours or even overnight. Comes time to make it and OOPS, guess we'll be having something else tonight! It would be nice if everybody put the actual time involved at the top of their recipe, but they don't.
I don't like Pinterest either, don't even look at a recipe if the link involves Pinterest. It's annoying.
Old-fashioned directions like "beat egg yolks until thick and lemon-colored."
My egg yolks don't seem to get any thicker with beating and they are lemon-colored to begin with, so I have no idea what I am looking for.
LOL. We used to have a thing called Home Ec in high school. You'd read the directions and do them. Then a human being called a teacher would come over and look. She'd say, "Yes, now they are thick and lemon-colored." Then you could proceed.
You're making me think of that Little Rascals episode where the kids were trying to bake a cake. The radio announcer said, "Separate two eggs." So they set them on the floor a few feet apart from each other.
But I get what you are saying. It helps a lot with some trickier things if you have a grandma or someone else there to demonstrate what the look and feel of the ingredients should be. Homemade bread comes to mind.
I find that the most reliable recipes come from good cookbooks. Not, books of recipes, but cookbooks. I do cook with Pinterest recipes, though. One of the latest was the stupidest. It was for Utica Greens which is a dish with escarole that is baked with cheese and pickled hot peppers and topped with crumbs. The instructions say to pop it under the broiler at the end. That is one stupid thing--you don't normally pop a casserole dish under the broiler. If you bake the thing uncovered you will get that crisp topping anyway.
But really the easy and logical way to do the thing was ignored. I think the writer was not an experienced cook. I will make Utica Greens again, but I'll do it the logical, and easy way. Sheesh!
Bloggers get paid through affiliate links, so the recipe is at the bottom so that you'll read through the rest and hopefully click on the links to buy a kitchen tool or two on your way to the recipe.
Well it's lost on me....
I just want to review the recipe!
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