What's a recipe that you will NEVER make again?
What's a recipe that you will NEVER make again?
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.
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.
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.
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!
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?
Fucking cauliflower vegan "wings" they were the nastiest, smelliest, mushiest pile of gross I have ever tasted.
I have a dog who is a rescue, she was severely neglected when we first got her as a foster and her file stated she had to eat her own feces in order to survive at the place she was rescued from. Well, those cauliflower wings I just told you about? She sniffed them and gagged!! That's how bad they were.
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.
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.
Fried chicken, it was absolutely delicious but the prep work, frying and dish clean up was more than I’d like.
French Onion Soup is indeed a bitch and a half, but its also delicious and vwry affordable to make. Next time, try a heavy cast iron pot; it'll absorb the onions flavor without stinking. That said, you still have to endure chopping 3 lbs of onions...
I'll probably never make fried ravioli again. I like em on salad but its just a pain to deepfry anything and the payoff isnt worth it.
My wife and I tried to make Pho one year for our anniversary. Went all out and got stuff from the Asian market to make it authentic and to the recipe I was recommended.
It was so bad, we just had to throw it out and order pizza. It sucks cuz I really like Pho, but it's just not worth trying to do myself.
Homemade Soup Dumplings (Xiao Long Bao), made from scratch. So much work. It became quickly evident doing it properly required skill you couldn't learn from a video or a recipe book and would take a really long time to master.
The whole thing ended up kinda thick and clumpy. Definitely one of those things better left to people who know what they're doing.
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.
Pad Thai, found a recipient from Hot Thai Kitchen YouTube video. She made it look easy.
3 hr later I produced a goop that was un-edible. So bad my SO asked me never to try again.
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.
Beetroot curry. I was drunk and went with the idea that "you can curry anything"... you can't.
I mixed myself a Bloody Mary, just to find out if I like it, and I didn't like it at all.
Now I know. Never again.
Chocolate soufflé. Fuck that caved in nonsense
Inspired by this video, I tried making smörgåstårta, a Swedish sandwich cake.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=I98AAMQm9f0
It had lots of ingredients, but it was like eating salty mayonnaise-flavored swamp mud.
I tried some asian dessert once. It took a lot of effort to make. It tasted like scrambled eggs with a hint of coconut. Nope, not again.
Moussaka I did a research project on it in high school chef training class. I made the dish, including soaking in salt and extracting the bitterness. By all accounts it was delicious for everyone except me. I had a bad reaction to the eggplant and was throwing up all night.
I stay away from that member of the nightshade family. I'll stick with potatoes and tomatoes.
Traditional ramen. I tried doing it when Covid hit and no one could go out to restaurants and I really missed ramen.
So I set out to do it. Takes two days to make. Which was ridiculous so I adapted it to be made with a slow cooker in a day so I could still enjoy it . It might not be ‘as good’ but it is way more healthier (less salt and sugar). I do that often with recipes. I’ll try the traditional way and then tweak it to be healthier cuz so many old styles are heavy on the fat, salt and sugar but also needlessly lengthy processes when we have all these new style cookers to make life easier.
egg bites in the instant pot. The texture and flavour haunts me.
I just cannot get any clay pot recipe to work. Everything just tastes like early 90s brown and cheap run down council estate houses with peeling wall paper and damp infecting tye whole building. Not a flavour I am looking for in a good home cooked meal.
I don't cook or bake often, but I love watching other people do it. I watched a video last week of a dude making "Thousand Layer Pancakes" which were layered thinly sliced potatoes. IDK how many he used, but he halfway vertically filled up a large sheet cake/lasagna pan with paper thin slices of potatoes, coated each layer with oil or butter and then baked it for like an hour or two. He said just layering the potatoes took like a half hour or so.
It looked good, but definitely not worth the effort.
Anfo
Steak Ranchero. I had a version of it in a family owned Mexican restaurant that has been open for years near me. I moved away and missed it so much, I looked up how to make it online and I tried two different recipes from two different sources and they both came out tasting terrible. The first time the beef was super undercooked and chewy, and the sauce/salsa was very acidic and not very pleasant to eat. The second time the beef was still undercooked, included a bunch of ingredients that I would not have considered to be part of the actual dish (but may have been in the authentic/traditional dish) and everything came out underseasoned and didn't taste anything like how they made it at the restaurant. I was so disappointed I actually never bothered to make it again. If I really want it, I'll drive my ass to that restaurant five towns over. Or just wait until I move back there soon-ish.