With the internet at your fingertips, it can feel like the easiest thing to try a new recipe.
But things aren't always what they're cracked up to be. Reddit user u/Idrethil recently asked, "What is your most annoying pet peeve when you're trying to follow a recipe?" Here are a few answers:
1. "I hate it when something is mentioned in the ingredients list, but never shows up in the instructions."
2. "Recipe steps that are actually four or five steps: 'Step One: Start cooking your onions and garlic. Then, add the beef. After that's cooking for 10 minutes, add your herbs and tomatoes. Also, cook your pasta and prep the salad.'"
3. "When the recipe doesn’t note that an ingredient is divided, as in, add part of the quantity at one time and the rest at a later stage. Invariably, I end up adding the total quantity at the first mention."
4. "I’ve noticed many claims that you should caramelize onions/cook until translucent, but to throw in the garlic at the same time, which is impossible unless you want burnt garlic crisps ruining your dish."
5. "Pressure cooker recipes that say 'cooks in five minutes'...after 20 minutes to heat up and plus five minutes of pressure release."
6. "'Until the texture is right.' How is the texture supposed to be? This is not helpful at all."
7. "Apparently (and it took me years to find this out), New York Times recipes only start timing recipes once mise en place is complete! These recipes take 50 minutes (plus 30 minutes mise we don't deign to mention)!"
8. "I’ve only ever seen a few examples of recipes that do this, but they rarely ever give you a sense of how forgiving cooking something is. Like, how much attention and care do you have to give this thing? How much active cooking does it take? What is my window for not fucking the whole thing up?"
9. "All sorts of 'healthy' versions or extreme shortcuts that don't work and almost always involve peanut butter or a mashed banana."
10. "Recipes that have high ratings but everyone has a different comment about how they modified the recipe. It's not that great of a recipe if everyone felt the need to change it."
11. "Dry and wet ingredients out of order. I like to use one set of measuring spoons, measure the dry stuff out, then the wet. It bugs me when I get all the way to the end and it wants 1/2 tsp cumin or whatever, and the spoons have already measured honey. I edit the recipe in my database when I find that sort of thing."
12. "Ingredients not listed in order of use. If the flour, salt, and baking soda need to be combined first, they’d better be the first three things on the list!"
13. "When there are 27,848,596,847,362 paragraphs of nonsense before you get to the recipe. AKA, every food blog."
"Recipes that don’t have a 'jump to recipe' button; I’m not trying to read how this bbq chicken saved your marriage. I just need cooking times!"
14. "Recipes that use already prepared items; like, 'best salad dressing ever!' and it starts with: 'Open a package of ranch dressing...'"
15. "The uppity, pretentious commentary I see on some Pinterest recipes/food blogs/cooking shows about making their own ingredients that's like, 'Well if you don't want to churn your own butter as your ancestors did, then I guess (insert big dramatic sigh here) store-bought is fine.'"
16. "Recipes that ask you to first preheat the oven, then have something sit/chill for hours."
