post off: what’s your recipe deal breaker?
Photo via Amazon.com.
In The New York Times yesterday there was an article about “recipe deal breakers”: instructions in a recipe that immediately turn you off from making it. The piece had me laughing out loud, and the comments from readers were even better. If you haven’t read it yet, take a look. As someone who cooks quite a bit, I’d like to say there aren’t too many things I won’t try, but the truth is I can claim plenty of recipe deal breakers:
“When your candy thermometer reaches 300°F…”
Ummm, no thanks. I don’t own a candy thermometer. I don’t really want to deal with fussy temperature readings and molten hot liquid at the same time.
“… and let marinate 48 hours.”
Well I’d like to eat dinner today, not two days from now, so I think I’ll pass.
“…cilantro.”
I hate the stuff.
And the list goes on, trust me. So, Shelterrific readers, I’d love to hear from you about your own recipe deal breakers. Where do you draw the line? –Erica P
June 5th, 2008 at 5:45 am
Food processors. Anything involving that, and I’m out.
June 5th, 2008 at 6:02 am
The need for an electric mixer makes me rule out lots of baking recipes. I don’t own one (no room!) and my arms get way to tired beating by hand.
June 5th, 2008 at 6:16 am
If a recipe calls for active yeast, I actively turn the page to a new recipe. I don’t know why I fear yeast, I know it’s illogical. It just seems way too involved.
Also I refuse to make something if the ingredient list is beyond say 20 things, especially if those ingredients are not normal ingredients I would have on hand. And I won’t make something that requires me to dirty too many pots and pans (over 4 is my limit)—this is also why I secretly hate Alton Brown. Dude obviously does not do his own dishes.
June 5th, 2008 at 6:16 am
Garnish. I hate when recipes call for garnish. Why do you need garnish at home? “Top with lemon peel.” WHY???? No one is going to eat it and you’ve wasted a perfectly good lemon! I try to make sure that I read and weed out such ingredients/steps.
June 5th, 2008 at 8:14 am
I hate it when recipes span across two pages in a book and require multiple techniques, i.e. peeling, rolling, dicing, chopping, sauteing, or boiling and THEN baking. Meh. For me home cooking needs to be a low maintenance pleasure, especially when you are coming home from work during the week and are examining the fine line between viewing it as a chore and a creative outlet of expression. Which I frequently do.
I will pay top dollar for someone else to make those complicated tasty things for me though.
June 5th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Three words: “fluffy, white peaks.”
June 5th, 2008 at 9:02 am
For me it’s obscure ingredients. Such as when the recipe calls for a bunch of normal things like onions, garlic, and carrots…but then tells you to saute them in yak butter (available at all the finer Tibetan specialty grocery stores).
Yeah, right.
June 5th, 2008 at 9:24 am
Mostly the equipment already mentioned: candy thermometers, and food processors.
That, and cooked bell peppers.
June 5th, 2008 at 9:24 am
words like “brunoised” and “haricots verts.” apparently, i’m not smart enough to make this recipe. I don’t know how to brunoise anything and where the heck do i get a haricots verts? you are my nemisis, Wolfgang Puck.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:18 am
A two-parter: first, make the crust, then, make the filling. Actually, I usually cheat and either buy the crust or go without. (This would be the twice every three years I cook an involved recipe.)
June 5th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Oh yeah, making crust. I’m out. For one thing, you really need marble to roll it out on and keep cool or you’re wasting your time. And I don’t have it, or the space.
I have a candy thermometer somewhere, but if the recipe’s that involved, I’m out.
And no french cooking with multiple steps for me. i like simple food. I love Giada delaurentis’ everyday italian for that reason. Very easy to replicate her recipes.
June 5th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Meringue, deep frying, pie crust, yeast, candy-making… these do not deter me, because I am an utter glutton for punishment.
(But I’ve been known to use the drip-test method with my candies.)
No, what gets me is ground beef. I can’t do it. I like my steaks rare and my sausage freshly ground, but I’m ridiculously squeamish about frying ground beef. I really don’t know why.
Fortunately my husband cooks too, so we can still have tacos and chalupas. I just stay out of the kitchen and let him work his sizzling, greasy, vaguely nauseating magic.
June 5th, 2008 at 11:42 am
If we are taking votes, I also want to chime in with EGG WHITES. I see “separate the eggs” and I turn the page!
I also keep kosher so when I don’t think I can make a kosher substitution for an ingredient I stop right there, too.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
no pictures.
June 5th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Oh, this is fun:
-olives
-anything requiring grilling (as I don’t have one) - this rules out whole “special summer grilling” issues of magazines sometimes. Such a bummer.
-ditto on the cilantro, although it’s usually easy to just leave it out
-ditto on the candy thermometers
-obscure peppers. I can do jalepenos, but outside that, I just don’t bother.
-torches (no creme brulee for me!)
-double-boilers. I don’t have one, and I’m pretty sure I can improvise with a glass bowl and some boiling water, but I’m still too confused to bother.
-whole birds, as in chicken. I don’t like dealing with them (messy), and it usually produces too much food for a one-person household anyway.
-”folding something into something” has been known to scare me off a recipe, esp if it’s beaten egg whites. There’s just too many ways to get that wrong.
Wow, that’s a long list. It’s a miracle I cook anything!
June 5th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Oh man, I was just cleaning out recipes today. I love all things “Cooking Light”-related, but I refuse to make the stuff requiring egg substitute. Bleh. That’s really the major one. Like Elise, I have a husband who will cook the stuff I don’t want to, so he gets to de-bone and do most meat-related tasks.
June 5th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I’m pretty unshakable, but I am not a fan of “trussing the bird”. Can not, will not, SHOULD NOT. My roasted poultry never turns out right when I tie them. That and whole birds are a bit of a pain in the rump to roast. Oh, but how I love them so!
That and any lattice topped pies. Im-freaking-possible!
June 5th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Deep frying. Living in a small New York kitchen with no outside ventilation, and my only ventilation coming from the over the range microwave oven, yeah, no. Not going to happen.
Oh, that, and freeze on a sheetpan before storing. Not a lot of extra room in my freezer because, well, see above.
Everything else is fair game.
June 6th, 2008 at 3:13 am
anything that requires “butterflying”.
June 6th, 2008 at 6:29 am
Milk or cream, due to allergies.
Food colouring, due to other allergies.
Anything overly complicated and fussy, as I do my week’s cooking on Sunday, and need to get through several meals at one go. I don’t mind doing some extra work, but I can’t afford to spend hours on one recipe.
Anything that involves specialty cookware I would rarely ever use. I have a good selection of the basics, and they do a lot. If they won’t cook it, forget it.
Aside from that I’m really pretty open.
June 6th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Dough
June 6th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Dairy products & gluten foods (if I plan on eating it).
I have to modify recipes that ask me to use an electric mixer. Seriously, they’re freaking expensive and most people I know don’t own them. I hope to own one someday, but my grandmother didn’t use a stand mixer and she was a cake maker!
I don’t own a grill either, so I stay away from grilling recipes. It saddens me, but some day I hope to own a grill. Heck, I don’t even own a grill pan!
Oh, and things like duck & entire fish…I don’t do those.
June 9th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Well, meat stuff, since I’m veggie, but otherwise I flip past anything that uses olives or capers as major ingredients (if they’re minor/garnish, I leave them out), and anything with mayonaise. That stuff gives me the willies.
June 9th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Anything that goes in a bain-marie, or water bath, while in the oven. Forget it.
June 10th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
great post - my deal breaker (as I posted on my blog today after reading this) is any recipe that has “DO NOT OVERCOOK” in the directions. It never fails that I undercook it and it doesn’t turn out.
June 10th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
As a pre-teen I was super into making all kinds of candy, and I did it without a candy thermometer (drip test, like Elise above–you can drop the candy concoction into a glass of cold water, and much like a crystal ball gazer, cook to ’soft ball, hard ball’ or soft crack stage… how I ) and managed to make lots of tasty candy (which when you are 12 is super awesome!). Alas, as an adult living in Seattle WITH a candy thermometer, I’ve learned that either the cold damp here makes candy-making difficult if not close to impossible, or I’ve grown into an adult candy-making idiot. I suspect the latter.
So yeah, candy thermometer, probably out.
Mostly though I’ll try anything once or twice…I do have more of a list of things I won’t do except for a special occasion like deep fat frying…. but I’d have to say “knead dough for xx minutes/hours/forever…” is a deal breaker. I guess I don’t love fresh baked bread enough to offset how much I hate to knead dough!
June 24th, 2008 at 6:58 am
[...] my post on recipe deal breakersI thought it only fitting to open the discussion up to kitchen disasters. I would imagine many of [...]
June 24th, 2008 at 7:35 am
I love Sloan’s comment. I’d never really thought about it that way before, but, yeah, no pictures and I’m turning the page.
June 27th, 2008 at 8:43 am
misspellings, both on recipes and restaurant menus
June 27th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
@ raegan: i’ve bought pre-washed haricot verts (some type of french green bean) at Safeway. i’m definitely not a wolfgang puck but i’m pretty lazy so i always check out the prewashed/precut/prediced veggies.