Things About Recipes That Annoy Me - Part 2

Last week’s blog covered some of the things about recipes that annoy me. This week, I’ll finish off my list of recipe pet peeves, in the hopes that someone out there who actually writes recipes will see my blog and make the necessary changes required to create easier to use recipes!  

Writing easy-to-use recipes is harder than one might think! Laurie and I have created 80+ recipes over the past five years, and I still struggle sometimes to describe the steps for making these recipes in simple, clear, and concise wording. But I also work really hard at creating recipes that include easy-to-find ingredients, that don’t require hours and hours in the kitchen, and that actually include instructions that accurately reflect what you will likely experience as you make the recipe yourself. To that end, here are more of my recipe pet peeves, things I try to avoid when creating my own!

• Recipes with long ingredients lists.  I’m all for settling into the kitchen on a weekend afternoon and working my way through a complicated recipe with a ton of ingredients to prep and use in the dish, but I don’t want to do that on a regular basis. Instead, I’m looking for recipes that have a reasonable number of ingredients, most of which I can already find in my pantry. And ideally, an ingredients list that requires limited prep work chopping vegetables and herbs. My sweet spot in a recipe where I can prep all the ingredients in 15-20 minutes instead of 45 minutes to an hour.

  
  

• Recipes that specifically call for using unsalted butter. More often than not, recipes will call for a specific type of butter, usually unsalted. They specify that because it supposedly allows you to control the amount of salt in a dish. My problem with this is that the impact of salted or unsalted butter on the flavor profile of a dish is negligible, especially when compared to the salt you add to the dish as you are preparing it. I also think it’s a bit pretentious when chef’s specify the type of butter in their recipes. Instead, I always use salted butter (you can keep it out at room temperature for an extended period of time, and you don’t have to keep two different types of butters on hand) in all of the dishes I make, regardless of whether or not they call for salted butter. And it doesn’t make a difference!

  
  

• Recipes that specify reducing liquid times. Many recipes require you to reduce a liquid over high heat, which helps to intensify the flavor of the liquid or make it thicker. My problem is that the times these recipes cite for reducing the liquid to it’s desired state (i.e., reduce the liquid by half, or reduce the liquid until it forms a thick syrup) are almost always inaccurate, in my experience. And when I say inaccurate, I don’t mean off by a minute or two – I mean off by a significant amount. In fact, it often takes me twice as long to reduce a liquid than the recipe specifies. I attribute this to the equipment these chefs have in their kitchens – burners that operate at significantly higher btu’s than mine do. Assuming that’s the case, they should adjust for that in their recipes so home cooks aren’t surprised when it takes 30 minutes instead of 15 minutes to reduce the liquid as directed by the recipe.

  
  

• Recipes that call for using whole canned tomatoes. This seems to be a more recent trend that I’ve noticed over the past few years, but more and more recipes (usually Italian recipes) call for using whole canned tomatoes instead of canned diced tomatoes or even crushed or pureed tomatoes when making sauces or soups. The recipes will either call for squeezing the tomatoes and breaking them up with your hands, or doing the same with a wooden spoon or fork in the pan. I’m not sure what all this extra work is about, but you can get exactly the same or better result using diced tomatoes, or a combination of diced and pureed or crushed tomatoes. They might be going for a more rustic look or feel here, but I just see it as a waste of time.

  
  

• Recipes that specify bone-in cuts of meat. There are some recipes where including the bone makes a lot of sense – think smoked pulled pork, prime rib roast, or Osso Bucco where the bone keeps the meat tender while it cooks for an extended period of time. But when you are talking pork chops or chicken, I always avoid (or adapt) recipes that call for bone-in cuts of meat, like bone-in chicken thighs or chicken breasts. My experience is that it really doesn’t make a difference as long as you know how to cook those cuts properly. Also, it’s a lot less work and much easier to eat if you don’t have to battle the bones while enjoying your meal! So, I always go boneless if the recipe for pork chops, and especially chicken, calls for bone-in cuts of meat.

  
  

• Recipes that will definitely smoke up the kitchen. There are some kitchen tasks better left for the outdoors. For me, that includes almost all recipes that require a hard sear on the meat, or ones that include cooking protein at a high temperature. Even when you use a high heat oil, these recipes invariably result in high smoke cooking that sets off the smoke alarms. Instead, I do most of the searing and high heat cooking of proteins outside on my grill, and then move back into the kitchen to finish the recipe inside (which is very easy to do when you live in Florida and have a grill in your covered lanai!). Doing it this way also results in less splatter and mess, and easier cleanup as well. If I didn’t have that option, I would hesitate to make these recipes, unless I had a really strong hood vent to suck up all of that smoke (something we had in our kitchen in Virginia but that we don’t have in our kitchen down here in Florida).

  
  

So, now you have heard all of things about recipes that annoy me – what would you add to the list that I missed?!