I would imagine they’re old British imperial units. Ireland’s all metric now but they used the units of their former oppressors until relatively recently. If it was a family recipe it would probably have come from a granny who thought in imperial. I doubt B&B owners would be thinking about conversion or even know that US units of the same name would be different. Try it again with our old units! Or try this recipe in metric which I’ve eaten in the Avoca Cafe and can vouch for its deliciousness.
For me, my biggest failure was a recipe for a chocolate torte in a Raymonde Blanc cookbook. Don’t have it here to transcribe but it’s basically melted bitter chocolate, almond flour, egg yolks and 10g of fructose. I made it first time for a dinner party and it came out like tasteless grit. My guests were so relieved when I spat mine out, and one of them even said “thank God for that, we don’t have to be polite any more”. Much spitting ensued.
Embarrassed, I made it again the next day and it was like grit again. I suspect it was meant to be 100g of fructose or even more, and was misprinted.
Also remember that an Imperial pint (20 oz), is different than 20 US fluid ounces. 20 fluid oz. UK is 568 mL, and 20 fluid oz. US is 591 mL. That said, while baking is more sensitive to measurements than regular ol’ cooking, it should be forgiving enough that a 5% difference isn’t going to absolutely kill your recipe.
Actually, I think what really killed it was the tablespoons/teaspoons. The quantity of baking soda is probably a lot more sensitive than the quantity of buttermilk.
Anything that the Food Network posted online of Emeril’s during the '90s and early 2000s (during his 15 minutes of fame). His cookbooks may or may not be good (I’ve never cared enough to look) but every online recipe from his show that I tried were screwed up beyond salvage.
Either Emeril is the worst cook ever (which I don’t believe. The most annoying, maybe. ) or whoever was transcribing his recipes didn’t know the difference between oz and cups, between teaspoons/tablespoons, etc.
My “favorite” was a recipe for a tomato-based seafood soup that called for two tablespoons of cayenne pepper. Which, in retrospect should have been two teaspoons. It was literally inedible. There was no flavor but “hot”. My own fault for not thinking about it and just following the directions, but I made about 6 of his recipes, and every one had errors like that.
I’ve had several issues with Alton Brown recipes. His pot roast takes MUCH longer to cook than the recipe suggests, so if you pull it out at the end of the listed time, it’s tough and nasty. But the worst of all was the crock pot steel-cut oatmeal. On the show it looked so awesome–combine oats, water, milk, and dried cranberries in the crock pot, turn it on low all night, and you wake up to lovely oats studded with plump fruit.
What came out, both times I tried it in two different crock pots, was curdled sour purple oat soup.
Lots of recipes don’t work, and it’s too bad, because I think people think it’s because they screwed up, and not because the recipe itself is bad.
I stick with trusted sources; Cook’s Illustrated and America’s Test Kitchen recipes rarely fail. Mark Bittman and most of the NY Times recipes I’ve tried work. eGullet is a great resource for reading cookbook reviews - they will tell you in no uncertain terms if the majority of recipes fail.
Celebrity chefs, as a whole, write shitty cookbooks.
I’ll add www.bbcgoodfood.com to Athena’s list of tested recipes. They have a rating system too so you can grab the best ones from the top of the list. All in metric, of course, but enthusiastic yanks can work it out - grab some $10 crappy Chinese digital scales and a dual measure jug and you’re good to go.
1 US tablespoon = 14.8 mL
1 UK tablespoon = 17.8 mL
I’m not entirely certain that would make that much a difference, either. When I use baking soda for baking, I don’t measure it precisely at all. I just use whatever teaspoon-sized looking spoon I have laying around. It’s never made a difference, so far as I can tell.
That said, perhaps Irish buttermilk has different acidity than American, so the reaction of baking soda + acid for leavening wasn’t happening as fast. You might want to try adding a little bit of cream of tartar or perhaps splitting up the baking soda component into half the amount in baking soda and half in baking powder (which is essentially baking soda + cream of tartar.) Generally, most soda bread recipes I’ve made had a ratio of about 1 teaspoon of baking soda to 1 cup buttermilk to 1 pound flour. Some add additional baking powder for more fluffiness, others add a little more baking soda, but that should be the general ballpark for what works. Make sure you add enough buttermilk to make your dough soft and pliable. It shouldn’t be too dry. Mix it just long enough to bring everything together into a ball, but soda-leavened bread is not the type of bread that you want to knead for a long time to develop the gluten. This’ll just make it tough. You want to treat it like a biscuit dough.
True, but they’re also bland and wimpy–it’s great if you’re making a chicken and dumpling casserole like ma used to take to the church bake sale, but the main weenie behind ATK is that Chris guy who thinks pepper is an exotic spice and god forbid you put more than a single, seeded jalapeno in anything.
Their ethnic recipes are well written, but if you want them to have anything resembling flavor, you have to up the spice content by several hundred percent.
The first time I picked up a bag of cassava farina out of curiosity I followed the recipe on the bag which was for a sweet breakfast cereal like cream of wheat.
It called for milk and sugar to be added in copious amounts, omg :eek: it was horrible! The cassava had a strong nutty and savory flavor that did not lend itself to a sweet breakfast cereal, also the recipe resulted in a very thin watery porridge.
For my second try I decided to cook it only with water, and added more farina to make it thicker and salt to taste. Much better! I got a nice chewy and thick texture, then I melted some sharp cheddar into it. DELICIOUS!
America’s Test Kitchen has a crockpot cookbook (saw it on newsstands recently) which discusses the “overnight slow-cooker steel-cut oats” recipe concept, and basically agrees with you. They recommend cooking them the night before on high for 3-4 hours, then just reheat a portion the next day. I can confirm this has worked well for me, with the caveat that I’ve had a lot of issues with the oatmeal sticking to the sides of the crappy little off-brand 1.5 qt crockpot that I’ve made it in. I’m blaming it on the crockpot model until I test it with another model.
Addendum: they don’t use milk, and another crockpot cookbook recommends a spray of oil inside the crockpot before cooking, which I will try out. They also recommend toasting until golden the oats in some butter (skillet on the stove, medium heat) before putting in the crockpot.
Their recipes do indeed suffer from a recipe by committee type of approach. That said, they are generally crowd pleasers for that reason, and I mostly read CI and watch ATK for technique ideas. They’re really good for that. Some of their methods (like the reverse sear for steak) has been incorporated in my base technique.
I find their ethnic recipes all over the place. If authenticity is important to you, there’s better sources than ATK and CI for those recipes. Saveur, for instance, does a very good job with presenting recipes true to the original culture.
I’m no gourmet cook 90% of the time, so I like Allrecipes. I always read the reviews first because if there’s something wrong with the recipe, it will be noted and discussed. I’ve had poor results with recipes on epicurious.com. And I am wary of adding salt to anything that already has salty ingredients, like cheese or canned tomatoes.
If you’re talking about the olive and raisin pot roast, you’re right. It’s a wonderful tasting recipe, but I don’t know how in the heck it’s supposed to finish in 3 to 3 1/2 hours at 200F. Perhaps at 300F, but not at 200. You do need to have some knowledge of pot roasts to get this recipe to work correctly. I find a lot of pot roast recipes like that, that seem to woefully underestimate the amount of time to cook a pot roast. That said, pot roasting isn’t a science, and one cut of meat may take 2-3 hours to cook at 325, while another may take a little bit more. That’s really one of those dishes when the meat tells you when it’s done, and you have to prod it with a fork every so often, or take a bite, to see where it’s at.
My worst was some chili recipe that I probably got from some vegetarian cookbook; this was back in the late 80s/early 90s. It started with dried beans and an overnight soak, but the beans ended up being still hard and maybe half-cooked at the end. Years later and much more cooking experience under my belt, I would have changed the recipe to precook the beans before making the chili. Acidic foods like tomatoes apparently highly prolong cooking time of beans.
I’ve seen this myself - I can cook plain dried chickpeas with water in a crockpot on high in about 2.5 hours, give or take. A recipe for slow-cooker curried chickpeas (kabuli chana) that called for dried chickpeas plus tomatoes said 14 hours on high. They weren’t kidding. Even 12 hours was not long enough!
That’s very similar to a gravy recipe that we always use except we use sherry instead of wine. We also always brine the turkey and have never had any problem with using the drippings. They aren’t noticeably saltier than those from a non-brined turkey in my opinion.
I tired that crock pot oatmeal as well. I ended up with perfectly cooked, delicious oatmeal… on top of about an inch of crusted burnt to the bottom of the crock pot oatmeal.
I suspect your crock pot runs at too low a temp, while mine runs at too high a temp. It works out well if I only leave it in there a few hours, but all night was too long. And I have a cheap crappy crockpot on which there is no temp control knob. Trouble is, when I want to make oatmeal, I’m hungry now; I don’t want to wait four hours. So I just use the stovetop method and fuck Alton Brown. He’s got some good ideas in terms of flavor palate and proportions, but some of his methodology sucks.
I’ve also made his chiffon cupcakes, baked in coffee mugs. That was a great idea and worked out really, really well.
I remember trying Alton Brown’s macaroni and cheese recipe and thinking it was pretty disappointing. Way too oniony.
I found a recipe for Siberian nut cookies in a Russian cookbook I got from the library, and while they tasted all right when I made them, they came out completely flat and had the texture of Catholic communion wafers. The recipe did not call for baking soda, and I assumed that this was a deliberate omission and they just must not have baking soda in Siberia. So maybe the cookies actually came out smashingly! …Or else maybe the author forgot to include that important ingredient in her recipe.
I must be doing something really wrong, because I’ve used Alton’s turkey, pot roast, mac and cheese, and overnight oatmeal recipes all to great success. I did not try the gravy one.
Note: I’m not trying to thread-shit on the “Please bitch here” aspect of the discussion. I’m seriously just wondering how I’ve managed success where so many others seem to have been disappointed.
) or whoever was transcribing his recipes didn’t know the difference between oz and cups, between teaspoons/tablespoons, etc.