They’re a start. Add more milk and Jiffy Corn Bread becomes awesome corn pancakes.
ETA: I’ve ranted before about people who Just Can’t Cook. The manufacturers pay people to cook better than you, using the same ingredients. You are free, and likely are an idiot. Listen to your betters.
actually Nabisco ripped off the government on that one … the original called for “butter crackers” and came from a ww2 home ec book on how to make your favorites on ration coupons …
A lot of “mock” recipies that became standards came from ww2 rationing
It would almost have to be.
I’ve never made the recipe on the box, but I do get annoyed that the recipe is always very prominent on the package but the actual instructions for making what’s actually in the package are always printed in a little tiny box in the corner, or not even on the side of the box opposite the nutritional information but the same side as the nutritional information in only slightly larger print than the ingredients list. I hate that.
A bottle of Heinz 57 Steak Sauce once featured a recipe for skillet chicken breasts, using a sauce made of two parts Heinz 57 to one part limeade concentrate. Garnish with mint leaves.
That was more than 20 years ago. As a sales gimmick, it totally worked on me, exactly as intended. In the time since I’ve bought many bottles of Heinz 57 for the specific purpose of making that recipe. There’s an unopened bottle in my pantry right now when the next opportunity arises.
Sure I look at the recipes on the packaging. Then I might riff on the theme, if I’m familiar with the product already. Sometimes it’s a recipe I wouldn’t have thought of on my own. Both the wife and I are good cooks, and we’re always checking out new dishes.
Same here – my Mom would only make pie for guests (we had ice cream after dinner, and she occasionally made birthday cake). Her chocolate silk pie was to die for. Homemade crust (with Crisco) and homemade whipped cream on top. She made one at Thanksgiving one year and the last piece became a pivotal prize in a poker game. 
I have an excellent recipe for chicken with three peppers that I found on a package of refrigerated linguine 15 or so years ago. It is so tasty that I make it for company and am often asked if I got it from a chef. I also make a Mexican pizza that was featured on a Bisquick box. It was a favorite of my son and his buddies throughout their school years. It certainly wasn’t as ‘cheffy’ as the other recipe, but even the pickiest of kids would eat it.
Mom made Bisquik biscuits. They somehow managed to make lumps of flour, shortening, salt, and leavening barely edible. In these pages some years ago I took a recipe that lacked some vitals and made something I was pleased with, given enough butter and jam. I brag without basis that I can cook, but it’s all about proportions. Which, to my daughter’s regret, involves words like “yea,” “some,” and “not too much.”
I don’t need no stinkin’ recipes!
I wing it, man! I’m crazy like that. You can’t stop me!
Yeah, baking powder biscuits, on the can of Clabber Girl.
You mean, as opposed to preparation instructions, like on a cake mix? Which are not all the same.
Is this the culinary equivalent of the old adage “The cobblers son has no shoes”? Alton Brown slumming it at home with a Swansons TV dinner, natch.
A dish that always appears at our family’s Christmas dinners (and similar get-togethers) is green bean casserole, which was invented by the Campbell company as a recipe to make use of Campbell’s mushroom soup:
More or less :)`
It seems to be true amongst many of the other cooks I’ve known, at least the single ones (I’m 50, but have only been married for six months, first marriage). I actually cook for real at home more often now, since cooking for my wife is something nice I can do for her that doesn’t cost a whole lot of money (since we don’t have much). But when I was single and had nobody at home to cook for but myself, my philosophy was that I wasn’t going to spend 30 minutes preparing something that I was going to wolf down in 10 and then spend 20 minutes afterward cleaning up.
The two cookie recipes, Toll House and Quaker oatmeal raisin. Also a delicious soft, chewy gingersnap from a bottle of molasses (don’t remember which brand). But the most surprisingly good back-of-the-box recipe I ever made were corn muffins from the back of a Kellogg’s Corn Flakes box.
I make these all the time. That and the Bisquick chicken pot pie recipe.
I use the Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe, and my base baked macaroni and cheese recipe came from the back of a macaroni box. I don’t even remember what brand.
I mess with the mac & cheese recipe a lot but I hardly ever change the cookies.