Ain’t nothing wrong with a can of cream of mushroom soup as a homemade base and enrichment to build upon. It has it’s place, just never actually serve it up as soup.
I’m workin’ on my Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom White Barbecue sauce.
We used to call it bachelor cooking. Anyway, I’m not fond of recipes which use commercial products as bases since I usually can’t get them here in Japan.
I don’t mind the alterations in the reviews, since I never cook the same way twice. If you get a feel for what substitutions taste like then knowing that it’s OK with mushrooms and the combination of other ingredients gives you an idea that shiitake would be fine.
Hey, lay off Alton. Sure, for already accomplished cooks, his show is probably unnecessary. But for people who don’t really know how to cook but would like to do so, his show rocks. Every cooking show I’ve seen before his assumed you were already a pretty good cook before you sat down & started watching. His is the only show that showed you what to do every step of the way.
Hey, aren’t you the person who berated posters for recommending an $8 microplane grater in Cafe Society? Why yes, you are. We’re not all gourmet chefs. Some of us are perfectly happy to follow a recipe and get a good meal out of it for our family. It doesn’t have to be art.
Alton and ATK/CI approach the science of cooking in two totally different mindsets. Alton’s approach is ‘you should know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it so that you can cook anything however you want’. ATK/CI’s approach is ‘there is one best way to do everything and we’re going to figure out what it is’. Metaphorically, Alton is a theoretical physicist and Chris Kimball is a civil engineer.
There’s value in both those approaches, especially for people who lack confidence in their cooking skills, but become a great cook, you need to know when to step away from the civil engineering approach.
Personally, I rely on CI when I need a no-fail recipe for something I haven’t made before. For a potluck, for example, when I really only have one shot to get it right, and other people will be eating it–they may not be inspired, but a CI recipe always turns out.
I read and watch Alton for the basic information that helps me cook with more finesse outside of his recipes.
I don’t get that sense from Alton Brown at all. Yes, sometimes his method seems unnecessarily complex, but he explains the reasoning behind everything he does. Every ingredient he puts in, he explains whether it’s necessary for a specific chemical reaction to occur, or used to provide structure/texture, or just there for the flavor. That lets me judge what’s important and what’s optional, which ingredients can be adjusted to modify flavor, what types of ingredient can be added (e.g. would an acidic flavoring ruin the dish?), etc. It’s a much better foundation for creativity than other cooking shows that tell you what to do, but not why.
I’ve always said the first time you make something, you should follow the recipe exactly. You might thing you can improve it, but you’d be wrong.
I once was looking for a recipe for avoglemono, and I found one on Epicurious that looked easy and was well reviewed - good thing I read the reviews, because they were all reviewing somebody’s grandma’s recipe that they’d posted as a review that was much better than the actual Epicurious recipe. And it was really good. But you always have to read those reviews, absolutely. Often they’re all doing roughly the same thing.
Full disclosure–I did start a thread about my mad crush on Alton Brown. But yeah, I like how he goes through every step, showing food, equipment, prep areas, etc. Shows like Emeril are just performances–he doesn’t really tell you much about the basics, or much detail on the things he’s already prepared and is incorporating into the dish.
I was looking up a recipe for homemade cupcakes, and one of them started with “Take a box of Duncan Hines cake mix. . .” I actually thought it was a joke, but it wasn’t.
I have several times faithfully made cupcakes from scratch out of my Joy of Cooking book. IMHO, they taste just like the ones out of a box. However, this may only go for the basic chocolate/vanilla varieties.
I think the OP’s point is a valid one: How can you “review” a recipe you didn’t follow? I don’t care if the review is good or bad. The fact that YOU hated/loved the dish once you substituted day-old fried rice for Arborio in your risotto doesn’t actually help me decide how good or bad the recipe is.
That said, there is still great value in the reviews and comments, provided you don’t expect them to actually review the recipe. I made a posole from Epicurious last week, and there were multiple comments to double the amount of hominy in it, which I did because I like a thick, ingredient-packed soup (especially for the heartier soups/stews, like posole). It was great but, yeah, if I’d been dedicated to making it exactly as written, the “reviews” would not have helped me much.
What if you make your own condensed cream of mushroom soup? Can it be considered homemade then? Or do you need to find a recipe for instant bouillon to qualify?
Meh. My cousin has a recipe for these cookies that calls for cake mix. You make what you call “quick cookie mix”, and then use it for various recipes.
She makes those holiday cookies (what are they called-spritz?), with a cookie press and they are absolutely divine.
On a different note-does anyone eat cream of mushroom soup as itself, out of the can? (Ugh)
Totally. But then I found this. It’s amaaazing. Problem is, every-one asks for the recipe and then I have to own up to “cream of mushroom soup, tomato soup and french onion soup mix”
[/hijack]
Honestly, I think recipes using canned soups might score high points because they allow the home cook to introduce MSG, something most of us don’t have lying around in the spice cabinet. And yeah, it may cause problems for some people, but it does make those taste buds fire like crazy.
As for the “cooking is an art” versus “use the recipe strictly,” I imagine it’s the same as, well, art. You first learn the basics, and extensively review what the masters have done, so you know why certain techniques get certain results. Then you can go off and do your own thing. Start out doing your own thing, with no grounding, and you will have a mess, not art or food worth eating.
For example, I can go into my kitchen and scrape together macaroni and cheese, as long as I have some form of pasta, a fat, flour, milk of some sort, and cheese. I’ve made roux so many times I can eyeball it. I also know approximately how much salt to add, and that just the right amount of cayenne enhances the flavor without being hot. How much cheese to put in the cream sauce? Enough. And I can make crispy topping from just about any starch.
Contrast my husband, who has not had years of daily practice in the kitchen. Give him a recipe, and he will do just fine. Tell him to root through the pantry and concoct some mac & cheese, and he will lie on the floor in the fetal position, whimpering in fear.
Anyway, there are two more things that bug me about recipe reviews.
First, the person who reviews a baking recipe: “I’m trying to cut my fat intake, so I substituted applesauce for all of the butter, and used egg whites only. It was really tasty!” No, no it was not really tasty. It was dry and rubbery, as anything but angel food cake is without some fat.
Second, let’s say there’s a recipe for Boston cream pie, with a recipe for delicate genoise, to be assembled with pastry cream, and topped with a chocolate glaze made with cream and bittersweet chocolate. Someone will invariably post this review: “This was soooo good! I used a yellow cake mix, instant vanilla pudding, and topped it with Duncan Hines frosting.” :smack:
Now, if these people like it the way they made it, more power to them. But I wish the sites let you flag reviewers as having *no *relationship to your sense of taste!
Gaaah! I came across this today at Allrecipes:
Grrr to LEHILOVESUTAH and the 31 users who found that review helpful. :mad:
I’m going to play devil’s advocate for a moment. Bear with me.
There are a lot of recipes on both All Recipes and Recipe Bazaar that desperately need tweaking. For every recipe I find, for instance, there are at least 3-4 comments stating “Made exactly as written, didn’t like/work/etc.” I then go back to look at the recipe. Um…yeah. What in the world was the poster thinking?
But that’s easy for me to say because I’m a cook. Give me a basic recipe and I can come up with X number of variations. Unfortunately not everybody is a natural cook. Those are the people who need step-by-step-can’t-fail recipes.
Straight condensed soup, no. Condensed soup prepared as directed? Yep.
I confess that I don’t mind those reviews, as long as they’re balanced by reviews from people who also rated the recipe as is. It’s nice to know that not only is the recipe tasty, but people have had great success with it when adjusting this or that. I’m a big “rule follower” when it comes to recipes and I HAVE TO have one in front of me when cooking. So it’s very helpful to me to know what tweaks other people (braver people!) have done. Some days I too get bold and OMG HOLD THE PHONES I’M GOING TO ADD EXTRA PEPPER!!!
What I can’t stand are the ones who rate it badly and then admit they were out of something critical so they don’t know what it really would have tasted like if made properly. THAT’S when they should refrain from rating the thing.
I grew up in the midwest, and at my childhood dinner table cream-of-whatever-soup in a casserole was an absolute STAPLE. It still tastes like comfort food to me. Yes, I’d probably have to leave that out of my essay when/if I apply to the Culinary Institute.
I think the only time I’ve had a cream-of soup was when I used it to make crab bisque, so it wasn’t actually the unadulterated cream-of. It was really good, though. Take a can of cream-of-mushroom, some skim milk, a couple cans of lump crabmeat and a shot of sherry and you’ve got a really good, lighter version of crab bisque.