I tried to make a dutch baby/skillet pancake http://www.food52.com/recipes/7645_david_eyres_pancake Looks good and easy, but it was a complete failure. Tasted like lemon pizza dough and didn’t puff up at all. One day I’ll try it again, because I really want what’s in that picture.
I made chili that I liked once. I have not liked my own chili since. Why, oh, why didn’t I write down what I did? :smack:
Anne Burrell’s Red Wine and Port Poached Pears with Mascarpone, though it’s not that it doesn’t work so much as there’s no warning that the second you take that ‘syrup’ off the heat and it starts to cool, it becomes the stickiest stuff in the universe. You’d best have your pears plated and ready to go the minute you take it off the stove. They were delicious, but it was a godawful mess to clean up afterwards.
An utter failure was - yep - another Alton recipe. Enchilada Lasagna. I thought it would be a good way to use up some leftover tortillas I had. It was not. Even though I seared them beforehand, they still turned into a mushy mess.
Pfft. I’ve had fantastic success with AllRecipes ventures because of the reviews. When eighteen zillion people say “this is fan-frickin’tastic if you double the onion” then dammit, you’re gonna add more onion, and you’re gonna LOVE the results.
Notable highlights include Stuffed Jalapeno Poppersand BBQ Ribs. So there! 
I also love AllRecipes with the caveat that you have to stick to recipes that have at least three digits worth of reviews. Those are the good ones.
However, I do keep in mind that it’s very… Midwestern. There are usually comments like “My husband didn’t like this because he doesn’t eat white foods” or “I made this but I took out all the salt and pepper because we don’t like things that are spicy.” So I doctor accordingly.
That’s part of the reason why I don’t like it.
Also, the more I look at it, the more I realize I’m just not the audience for that site. Most of the recipes that look decent to me are things I’d just make, I wouldn’t use a recipe for them - purplehorseshoe’s recipes fall in that category for me - aside from the bacon bits in the poppers, they look like decent recipes, I just wouldn’t go looking for a recipe for either of those, I’d just make 'em out of my head.
And then there’s a whole category of “foods made without spices for people who don’t like spices”. Seriously - the “Daily Recipe” today is Beef and Cabbage Stir Fry made with ground beef and absolutely no spices. The sauce is garlic, water, and very little soy sauce. If I ever made something with this little flavor, it’d be because I’d just suffered a bout of stomach flu and needed bland food to recover with.
Same thing with this World’s Best Lasagna recipe. If I wanted a mild lasagna with no vegetables and next to no spices, I’d just go buy a Stouffer’s frozen one. They’re pretty decent for that style of Lasagna, and a hell of a lot less work.
And then there’s the simply scare recipes, like Grandma’s Dried Beef Casserole. Yum yum, dried beef & Velveeta! 
For those of you who add a little of this and that haphazardly and then can’t replicate it, a tip: Before you start, mark the level of everything in the containers. Then, after you eat it, if it was good, note the new levels. The difference is how much you used this time. Make sure to account for any containers you emptied completely.
I find allrecipes.com to be a good research starting point. Some of the recipes are dead-on to style, some are a little odd. The problem with that site is that you have to do your homework. When researching American comfort food, it is a goldmine. Great for finding recipes for food that will please a wide range of palates. I love it for that sort of stuff. If I’m searching for authentic ethnic recipes, it’s really uneven. Like I said, some are pretty dead-on, others are downright heretical.
I made something like that once. Afterwards, we couldn’t stand to be in the same room with each other. Hell, we couldn’t stand to be in the same room with ourselves. I thought the HazMat Team was going to show up at the house any second. It was toxic.
I still cannot understand Alton Brown’s idea that you can cook a soft-fried egg in 2 minutes on low heat. Heck, not even the 6 minutes for hard-fried works.
That’s the best I’ve got: I’m still learning the basics of cooking, really, so I haven’t tried that many recipes. My mom rarely cooks with an actual recipe, and all I do is ask her what she normally does.
Years ago I’d caught near 12 dozen crabs on the Chesapeake Bay, cooked 'em up, ate a bunch, and picked out literally a couple of pounds of prime meat to turn into crabcakes.
The next day I went to cook them up for dinner. The recipe I used called for some baking powder, a couple of teaspoons, since I was intent on turning all the crab meat into crabcakes before it went bad.
Well, I grabbed the baking soda, not the baking powder.
The crabcakes looked perfect: Golden brown, huge lumps of white crab flesh, lspiced with Old BAy, with just enough filler to hold them together.
But they tasted like alka-seltzer tablets without the fizz.
AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!
<<sob>>
[sub]this was back in 1982 or so yet I still feel the loss[/sub]
I almost did the same thing–the recipe called for 6 tbs butter, and the font they used had a t with a very tiny crossbar, so it looked like an l. I thought something wasn’t right, so I looked up the recipe online, and it was definitely tbs, not lbs. I wish people wouldn’t use non-standard abbreviations–there’s a reason why we use Tbsp for tablespoons and tsp for teaspoons.
Huh. That should have made the casserole even better.
O/T, but there is a really cute site where a family occasionally tries to duplicate a recipe from years ago that looks and sounds positively bizarre to us modern types. Some turn out as revolting as they look in the vintage ad, some aren’t half bad. A lot of fun! Google Retro Recipe Attempts to see if, for example, great-grandma’s chicken in aspic with canned peas is or is not edible.
I once followed a chowder recipe that called for 1 tsp ground saffron threads. Since I’d never used saffron before, I did as the recipe asked. I ended up with a crayon-yellow, nasty, smelly mess. I posit that the recipe should have read 1 tsp saffron threads, ground, which is a far smaller and more reasonable volume.
The only plus from this experience is that I sent that account to a cooking magazine and they published it in their Kitchen Disasters section. So my name’s in print, and the little caricature they created to accompany the article looked surprisingly like me, even though they had no idea what I look like.
So it kind of canceled out. 
I have now spent over a half an hour reading Retro Recipe Attemps. Formidable time sink. Enter at your own risk! Then blame salinqmind.
Wow. Even 1 teaspoon of unground saffron threads seems like a large amount to me. Maybe it’s the type of saffron I use, but a 1/8-1/4 teaspoon adds plenty of color and flavor to risotto serving about six.
I’ve done a few of those for my library’s blog - made fruitcake from Godey’s Lady’s Book (pretty good!) and that sort of thing.
My takeaway from this post - Qadgop caught crabs in Chesapeake Bay.
Nice username/post combo. 
I only half remember the specifics of the event, so my recall on the amount may be off. Nevertheless, if it was 1/2 tsp (or whatever), the recipe asked for that amount ground, so that’s what I added. EPIC FAIL!