It doesn’t matter how you decide. I recommend you do what I would do. Hop on a plane and go to Vegas. Start dropping $1000 chips on number 23 on the roulette wheel. Count how many chips you lose until 23 hits. If it’s an odd number, use a round pan, otherwise use a square pan. If there are two gorgeous hookers breathing on your neck use an 8" pan. If there are 3, use the 9" pan.
If you must, use some other method of selection, but don’t expect it to come out as well.
Of course, but then it should say: “Use an 8-9” round or square pan." For the person who’s never made a coffee cake before, all those ORs make the beginner wonder: “Is there something I should know that I don’t know about?” By mentioning each pan separately like that it seems like you’re choosing a political affiliation or something.
I may be joking somewhat, but this actually touches upon a fundamental concept of pedagogy: The reason you you have to teach it to them is that they don’t already know it. So don’t talk to them the way you talk to people who already know it.
It will if the pan’s cover is not hermetically closed. Whether it takes eight minutes or more will depend on whether the eight minutes are counted since it started boiling or since you start heating (in which case it will also depend on initial temperature), it will depend on amount of water, amount of heat transferred, on the external pressure, and on how let’s- say-holey the covering is.
I’m not talking about the specific recipe, I’m talking about physics. Not only are pressure cookers about the only pots which can be covered so hermetically that evaporated water won’t exit them (and they stop being hermetic once enough internal pressure is reached), but there’s even such items as coverings designed to not interfere with evaporation at all.
Ok. Common sense based on the generalization brought us to an answer in this case. I think we all realized that eventually the water would eventually evaporate even from a covered pan.
OTOH, this is a perfect example of why recipes could never have enough detail for someone who has no knowledge of cooking. You have to know the difference between a loosely covered pan, a covered pan, and a tightly covered pan. And know that a tightly covered pan is not a pressure cooker (which you hope can’t be hermetically sealed).
the depressing thing is the number of people (quite enamored with their own intelligence) who can’t fathom that, and simply blame the person they’re supposed to teach as “stupid.”
I disagree. The pan example, at least, is not showcasing an instance where poorly crafted instructions are the barrier to successful completion, but the reader’s inherent paranoia. I know several people who would merrily glide on by, grateful that for this recipe at least, they can just grab a pan and go to. I think it’s a bit much to ask the frozen food instructions copy editor to successfully predict the level of suspicion some customers will have.
I am no beginner and I am familiar with the product.
One of the probems is it is a cooking style many in the US are not familar with or use to. Take Mac and Cheese for instance. Reguardeless of brand most of us could prepair it without hesitation or so much as a glance at the recipie. If we did read it the terms are all easily known to us. And we know what the final result should look like. Butter or Margerine, salt optional, cook 8-12 min or till desired doneness is nothing. Most of us will just fish a piece out with a fork and call it good depending on the rumblings of your belly. Folks in some countries would likely have trouble even if the reciepe translation was perfect. Having trouble with the timed cooking range. And the lack of cremyness or absorbson of the sauce if the noodles are cooked to long. Or even the salt option or differences between butter OR margerine.
The recipie for the potstickers is accurate. It is just a cooking style most of us are unfamiar with and a product that many of is have not grown up with. Put that bag of potstickers in a houshold in a country were potstickers are a regular culteral dish and it would seem obvious as a mac and cheese recipie to americans. Authentic, possably.
That being said. Recipies can be written by anyone. And the results of even a perfectly written recipie can and often do come out differently. Either by the same cook following it the same or different cooks attempting it. Interpetation is part of cooking. You may
Be able to write out the ambiguiousness in some recipies but never in cooking in general. That is why you see grey confusing terms in cooking and always will.
Just a side note and a personal belife of mine. Cooking is not a science and it definalty is not an art. It is a craft. Art and science can be applied but cooking skills must be aquired through diligent practice and or training. You can not just go out and build your own cabanitry with fantastic results. You have to understand wood and saws and measuments. You may beable to apply some artistic flair but without the groundwork the results will be chaotic. And taking a moslty scientific appoach will leave you tearing down the whole house due to a pooly aligned beam set 35 years ago.
Feel, taste, touch, smell, atmosphere, frugality and culture can not always be coveyed in a couple paragraphs. And the interpretaions reguarless of the quality of the copy will be as varied as the readership.
Tl;dr
The recipie is hard to understand.
I like to steam or even boild them them to defrost. Then stir fry them in seseme oil with some ginger garlic and chiles. Finish with some fish sauce.
If step by step instructions do not result, when followed exactly, in the production of what they claim to produce, then how can there not be something wrong wiht the instructions?
They turned out fine. I just uncovered them after about fifteen minutes, continued to cook them til the water really did boil/absorb down, then browned them on all three sides (because that’s the way we like em) and served them up.
Tell me the driving instructions from one place to another that if followed step by step guarantee a successful journey. Remember that you have no idea if the reader has a car, what kind of car it might be, knows how to drive it, knows how to recognize intersections, what a traffic light is, and can recognize and comprehend street signs, and all of the many other assumptions made when you give someone instructions.
I’ll make it easier. Just provide step by step instructions for cooking a hamburger to medium rare.
Recipes aren’t computer programs. And there isn’t even a determinable outcome to a recipe either. Each result will be somewhat different.
Granted, some recipes are just bad. A good cook can’t come up with the right results if there enough mistakes in the recipe.
My Larousse Gastonomie has some 50 000 or so entries in it, and is about 3 inches thick. It is an ‘aide memoire’ not a cook book. Generally you will get the name of the dish in french and english, a list of ingredients, and occasionally some mention of how the dish is processed [steamed, boiled, sauted or whatnot] and occasionally an interesting anecdote about the origin of the dish. It is more a dictionary/encyclopedia of classic french cuisine and not the nouvelle crap that started in the 70s.
Haven’t you ever met someone that claims they can screw up boiling water?
I lived with a guy who literally had the touch of death when it came to cooking. He couldn’t make a cake from scratch, and I sat there and talked him through every step. I can make a cake from scratch in my sleep. It fell and I know he put everything in, I made his mise en place myself. He could take your package of instant mac n cheese, and have mac/cheese soup or mac n cheese brick with no moisture in it randomly and he made it by the directions every time.
Hell, everybody has one recipe that kicks their ass. I give my husband, who is quite a good cook the ingredients from the back of the cocoa tin for fudge, and it will be randomly fudge frosting, fudge sauce or fudge no matter the weather conditions when he tries to make it. Our roomie makes an absolute killer batch of fudge, so we just get her to make it when he wants some. Me? I can’t make caramel to save my ass - I always scorch the damned stuff.
One of the managers at my work place claims she isn’t good at making Jello. Her fellow manager (whom I suspect doesn’t do much cooking) laughed at her, because how hard is it to boil water and stir in the Jello?
The Jello that inspired that discussion was slightly more complicated (add whipping cream for a nice creamy layer–and cut out lots of Christmas themed jello shapes), but was basically fixed by me because it was quick, cheap, and let me participate without spending more energy on the potluck than the amount of time (and my wacky workschedule) permitted.
Someone who doesn’t know those things doesn’t know how to follow the directions. The problem is in the person, not the instructions. The instructions themselves may for all this nevertheless be perfect, in the sense that if they’re followed, then the result will be the production of what they’re supposed to produce.
Your argument is for a completely different claim than the one you made at the start.
The claim you started with is: If instructions are followed exactly, yet don’t produce what they’re supposed to produce, then there need not be a problem with the instructions.
But the completely different claim you’ve given reasons for instead is: some people don’t know how to follow instructions.
Your argument doesn’t work for your original claim since someone who doesn’t know how to follow instructions will not have follwed the instructions exactly in the first place.
But of course this is an exaggeration. Take the following directions:
Put water in a pot.
Put pot on a burner.
Turn that burner’s control up to its highest setting.
Wait.
If followed, these directions will result in boiling water every time. Now, if someone puts a pot with a hole on it in the burner, then that person will not get boiling water. But as with all things, following the above directions requires certain presuppositions (like, “your pot shouldn’t have holes in it”) such that not assuming those presuppositions amounts to not correctly following the directions in the first place.. In other words, someone who uses a pot with holes in it has not understood correctly what “pot” means in the above directions, and so has not followed the directions correctly.
Don’t take the following comment too seriously, but to me this appears to be some kind of supernaturalistic thinking.
There’s not some magical aura around some people that makes them good fugdemakers. I know you know this and didn’t mean to imply otherwise, but I can’t think of a way to express my response other than by repeating this thing we all already know.
There’s something your husband is doing wrong, that your roomie is doing right, which can be quantified. If you’re both following the directions, then the directions are bad.