What's a recipe that you will NEVER make again?

grasshopper_mouse@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 75 points –

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.

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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.

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!

You can also cheat by adding some sodium bicarbonate.

oo, I didn't know this trick, thanks!

Doesn't taste quite like real caramelize onions, but it's close enough for when you're rushing

The flavor is not as rich, and too much baking soda will make them slimy.

It's a good 'I really want Crêpes but it's already 7pm' thing.

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.

yesss! and any broth really could work here in substitute for more flavor, but beer and onions is a bomb combo, especially with brats

Wine also. White is more subtle, red will give it a sort of balsamic vinegar type aftertaste.

Angel Food Cake. It turned out fine, but it really wasn't much better than the store bought kind. Plus it calls for about a million egg whites so I was left with a million egg yolks when it was all said and done.

You’re supposed to make an angel food cake and a pound cake using the two halves of a dozen eggs.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

See, I hate crust, so I don't really care about it. It's all about how good the filling is.

Usually the thick pies aren't that great to me, but mine comes out with a very light consistency so that's probably why.

Most store bought pies suck though and none of them use cardamom, which is really the key to a great pumpkin pie.

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!

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.

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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One time I made a Chinese restaurant favorite, mei cai kou rou.

It was very long and made a ton of dirty dishes.

It turned out not quite as good as restaurant quality, cost the same, and I learned it’s better left to someone with a prep cook and dishwasher.

I can never get Chinese food right. I've tried making my own fried rice and chicken lo mein and it's always nasty

It's usually because you didn't use enough oil, likely you need at least twice what you put in.

Or a hot enough pan, which is super difficult if you don't have a gas range. Electric often doesn't get hot enough

I can turn out a decent mapo tofu. Basically make a spicy pork gravy and sautee tofu in it.

Fried chicken, it was absolutely delicious but the prep work, frying and dish clean up was more than I’d like.

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 in 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.

Sounds like you fucked something up when making them. I'm not vegan but I've tried them and they're ok when done properly. Not special, but okay and far from vile garbage.

Yeah, probably. Still, they smelled like zombie farts so I stir clear away from trying them again but to each their own.

cauliflower wings properly made are amazing, but you should definitely not follow a recipe that results in nasty mush 😆

Similarly, cauliflower steak. I followed some recipe that just turned it into a brick of balsamic vinegarette and, while I love both cauliflower and balsamic vinaigrette, this was not delicious nor did it taste like steak.

Some sort of marshmallow dessert that added condensed milk and sugar.

It caught on fire in the oven.

It tasted like eating pure sugar.

Threw it away after it cooled and it was also a bitch to clean off the pans. 0 stars.

Reminds me of the time I tried to make spun sugar for some decorations and I wrecked so many pans of sugar water by not getting the temperature right and yes, cleaning them was a royal pain in the ass. The sugar basically turned into a solid rock inside the pan every time, so I had to add water and reheat it on the stove to melt it down again just to get it out.

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.

Smoked brisket. I don't have the proper smoker, but that didn't stop me. I turned the thing and watched fuel and air and temperature every half hour for 12 hours. It was delicious. Never again.

I can get pretty much the same results just buying from the barbecue joint 3 miles away.

For me, brisket is more of an event than a meal. Usually I'll make it when we have friends staying with us for the weekend, and it's an excuse for us to have beers at 6am once the meat is in the smoker. We all take turns watching temps and fuel, and having the extra hands helps with wrapping and stuff.

Another option is smoked top sirloin roast aka picanha. It has a thick fat cap and lots of marbling into the meat. Traditionally, it's cut into steaks and grilled on a skewer, but i also like to smoke it whole and sear off the fat cap at the end. Prep is fairly simple, remove some of the fat cap (down to about 1/2") score the rest almost to the meat, season the whole thing with salt and pepper, then in the smoker at 250F. I will then take the fat trimmings and cut them down into small pieces and put them in the smoker to render into tallow. After about an hour or when the meat is 130F, I'll wrap in pink butcher paper using the tallow that I just rendered. From there, I just watch until it hits about 155F. At that point, you can let it rest and eat, but I like to throw it on a hot grill fat side down to get a good crispy sear on it. Slice it in thin strips like brisket, it melts in your mouth.

Oh, I'm Brazilian and I'm almost cursing at you and blessing you at the same time. I'll have to try this.

Protip for grilling picanha: you'll want the smallest piece you can find. They're more tender. Not so relevant if you're slow smoking.

Of course I'd find the Brazilian when I suggest improperly cooking a picanha :p

I’ve got an electric smoker so I can just set and forget. Only have to check in at the half way mark to apply the Texas crutch.

Pumpkin lasagna roll ups. Absolutely delicious but not worth the time and effort.

I made pumpkin ravioli once. Was also delicious, but definitely will never make it myself again.

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.

Agreed.

There's so much skill that goes into making a good dough and then rolling it out. Too thick and it's gooey and pasty, too thin and it breaks during cooking or when you try to remove it from the steamer. Even among restaurant that serve soup dumplings, not all can make a good dumpling, that told me all I needed to know about attempting it.

Weird, we make Xiao long bao all the time and it's super simple meal prep food for us. Well spend a couple hours making like 100 of them on a rainy day and then eat them for months. The trick to making them like the restaurant is to clip off the top so you don't end up with a giant dough lump.

Boiling your own beets takes so fucking long, I had no idea. 4 hours on the stove for a simple beet. No thanks, I'll just buy them in a jar.

But have you ever roasted prebooked Beets? And then added some yoghurt and dille? Otto Lenghi has made me taste cool new things!

I boil beets all the time and it never takes more than 1-1.5h, 4 hours seems like you might want to re-visit your technique.

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.

Chopping onions is not an issue. I remember peeling and cutting three bags of 25 kilograms each with a number of farmers wives for some kind of savory onion cake.They had thought it funny to invite me to their table (I was dropping by as one of them had to leave), expecting to see a young man giving up after a few minutes. What they did not expect was that I was quicker in peeling and cutting than they were, as I've had learned to do this from a real cook ;-)

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.

This sounds heathenly (yes, you read that right).

NEVER put lemon juice in an omelette. Absolutely disgusting. Once tried it, not following any recipe. Never again.

I've never seen an omelette recipe call for lemon juice, that does sound totally gross.

I do suggest adding a splash of lemon juice or vinegar to the water when boiling eggs tho. Makes them much easier to peel.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The good thing is the majority of Vietnamese restaurants are small family businesses that don't charge a lot. So for me pho is an exclusively eat out option. I know any attempt I'd make would be shit and expensive.

I've got pretty close with my instant pot recipe, but its hours of work and I end up throwing away so much rotted veg because I don't use it all. So yeah, way better to buy in from a local place.

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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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.

Tonkotsu and similar styles take forever, but I've made this Dashi Ramen and in a couple hours it has turned out perfectly every time. Really tastyt too. (Donabe is just a clay pot. You can use a normal pot for this) https://happydonabelife.com/recipes/chicken-dashi-ramen/

Agreed, dashi ramen is the way to go if you're doing it at home. Still tasty and way easier.

Ooooo thank you for this. Gonna try this one

egg bites in the instant pot. The texture and flavour haunts me.

I once made vegan Mac and cheese, and it was soooo good. But I will never make it again because it was just too much work for the pay off. I also hate cooking so…

What made it take a lot of work?

Regular mac and cheese you just boil noodles, make a sauce, dump it in a baking dish, put in the oven.

Was the vegan sauce extra complicated?

Yeah there were a ton of things I needed to buy for the sauce and all the prep.

I’m not vegan, I just wanted to try it. Compared to traditional Mac n cheese the payoff was not worth it (as long as eating non vegan isn’t an issue) imo.

Liver pâté.

Either I don't like it in general, or I am bad at making it.

I had to acquire this taste while working in fancy service and horking down fois de gras leftovers. I love it now, but I longer work in service so... No free duck liver lollipops for 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.

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.

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.