Too much work?

[lsanderson]

Recipe Deal Breakers: When Step 2 Is ‘Corral Pig’
By KIM SEVERSON

I WAS reading a recipe for apple strudel when I came to a sentence that stopped me cold: “If you don’t have a helper,” it began.

If a dish needs a helper, I need to move on.

Although I didn’t end up with a strudel, I did end up on a quest. I began asking good cooks I know about recipe deal breakers — those ingredients or instructions that make them throw down the whisk and walk away.

Whether for reasons practical or psychological, even the most experienced cooks have an ingredient, technique or phrase that will make them bypass a recipe. More

Comments

[madtruk.livejournal.com]

Mine is: Exact measurements (and any synonyms).

This means, offhand, that I am a horrible baker but an excellent improviser. I also like taking recipes and doing 'whatever it takes' to make them interesting.

Not baking though. Nope. Not good. Chocolate chip cookies yes, all others do not eat...

You really, really, really

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

Hafta know what you're doing to play around with baking. Or expect unpleasant surprises.

[pameladean]

It's the recipe within the recipe that gets me every time. This is extremely common in vegan cookbooks, where they want you to make your own vegan sour cream, mock feta or ricotta, cashew cream, or whatever. A recipe that has five ingredients listed but turns out to include three embedded recipes is not for me.

P.

Si

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

That ustta bug me a lot too. If only because you have to flip all over hell to make one simple recipe -- and even if you have all the ingredients to make one simple recipe. There are a few things like cassoulet, with that little embedded duck confit, that are probably worth it anyway. Hardly vegan, but good nonetheless.