There’s also the people that overestimate their abilities in the kitchen.
The most popular recipe in our site, by far, is the Dominican cake. It is a very complicated recipe. In the Dominican Republic almost nobody prepares it at home, it is something that you buy from a baker that specializes in this type of cake. Working with royal icing is not piece of cake either (pun intended).
There are gazillions of threads about this cake in our site. Dominicans who live abroad miss this cake (centerpiece of fancy celebrations here) and try to bake it at home. That is fine if you have *some *experience baking. It’s very hard to get right and you have to follow the instructions to a T, but there is still a good chance you’ll need some tweaking before you get it right. But when you get it right it’s heaven.
And then sometimes I get people that post something like “my sister is getting married and I want to bake a 10 lb. cake for her wedding. I have never baked anything before and the wedding is tomorrow” (mild exaggeration)." There are not enough :rolleyes:s.
My mom does. She uses it to make theeeeee best “steak” (read: ground beef) soup. Finally, one day when Mom had made the soup and I was having a lot of trouble keeping myself from dunking my entire head into the pot, I said, “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you put a bunch of MSG in here!”
“No,” she answered, "All it is is [ingredient], [ingredient], [ingredient], monosodium glutamate, [ingredient] . . . "
You know what I really hated? Star Wars. That movie made no sense, had way too many weird animals in it, and completely lacked any sense of conflict. I didn’t like the idea of Jedis, so I pretended instead that they were insurance salesmen. Whenever Han Solo appeared on screen, I mentally swapped out a lemur, and for Darth Vader I used a crippled giraffe. Princess Leia was an amoeba. I thought the Empire was useless, so I pretended that they didn’t exist. What a dumb movie!
This is largely true. “cooking” can be very individualistic, improvisational and forgiving. Baking requires a lot more precision, less fucking around and more adherence to recipe.
I do agree with the OP, though, straying from the written recipe is not the issue. Practically everyone who likes to cook does that. That’s fine, I rarely, if ever, follow a recipe to the letter myself. Just don’t go online and rate a written recipe if you haven’t really made it.
I like it when people give suggestions, but yeah, if you’re just going to rewrite the entire recipe then just post a new recipe, 'cause what you made isn’t what I looked up.
I also get really aggravated with people who seem like they just like to complain. Find any recipe with hundreds of positive reviews, and there will always be one or two that are “This was horrible, my family wouldn’t touch it! Will not be making again”. Uh, thanks. Mind explaining what was horrible about it that the other 500 people who’ve given it five stars somehow missed?
I agree with the OP with folks who give negative reviews on a recipe that they have hacked to death. Shaddup!
HOWEVER, I am learning to cook and I adore the reviews at allrecipes.com precisely because people do give their variations and opinions. It is doing a very good job of teaching me what kinds of things go together and what kinds of substitutions I can make. When I first started, I would follow the recipes to a T. Now I have several recipes (like the Salsafied Chicken) that I modify like crazy. Typically, the first time I make something, I do follow the recipe or incorporate some of the suggestions to “fix” it. Then I review accordingly.
I attempted the Pasta Carbonara yesterday that was a dismal failure, however, I did modify the recipe because I didn’t have heavy cream on hand. No way in hell will I review it. My version sucked. Or, as my husband said “It tastes like it wants to taste good.” When I have all the proper ingredients, I’ll give it another shot.
OT>why is it that it seemed like every recipe I looked at required sherry. Then when I actually procured some sherry, I can’t find a stinkin’ recipe that uses it? Where did they all go? /OT
Ah, but I know many cooks who are completely unable to follow a recipe as written, specially if it has an ingredient trated in a different way than they usually would.
My brother’s MiL still cooks with an old-fashioned pressure cooker. One day she was eating some lentils Mom had made and started bemoaning recipes that call for “X amount of dry lentils, wetted for 24 hours or a can of lentils of Y weight” and almost fainted when my mother informed her that those superb lentils were… from a can.
Ha, ha, ha! Oh, preach it sister! That happens to me all the damn time. Everything needs sherry. I get sherry - nothing needs sherry. Same thing with red wine, white wine, rice vinegar, apple-grape-cherry-fermented-yak-sweat-spring-vinegar. Every recipe needs that one thing you don’t have until you have it.
I agree on the don’t rate somebody’s recipe if you didn’t follow it. It’s not the same if you use different ingredients. It’s a different recipe that you came up with. The ratings are for people know if the recipe will be good or bad. I make up new recipes often, and I would never use a variation to review somebody’s recipe. Post that you have a variation that sucks or rocks, but don’t rate the original unless you made it.
Y’know, I can even see a negative review (minus a star rating or whatever) that says something like, “I know this shrimp recipe called for two habaneros, but I didn’t have any, so I substituted a bottle of Texas Pete. DON’T DO THAT–IT’S NASTY!” If you make a sub, and the recipe sucks, it might be useful to let folks know that your particular substitution is a bad idea. Just be aware that you’re offering a cautionary tale, not rating the recipe.
I do the opposite - I love a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup, with only a quarter can or so of milk added, so that it’s still really nice and thick, and then I have a big hunk of bread or some rolls (they are crucial!) to eat it with.
You’re missing my point. Every meal doesn’t have to be a work of art. I’m talking about artistic freedom. We are talking about a style of cooking here that is so stringent and unwilling to color outside of the lines that people are upset that some strangers actually had the audacity to use what was available to them (gasp) and actually comment on it (double gasp). I’m really talking about art as practicality… I know that many people are locked into this Brown anality and might not make a recipe if they don’t have sherry vinegar or crimini, whilst they have button mushrooms and white vinegar in the pantry. Some people might not have a microplane, and when faced with only $8 to buy food for a day, or a microplane, well guess what, I’ll make do with the alternative and actually use a knife or a box grater to do the same job (gasp).
