Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
I set out tonight to make a delicious chicken paprika kind of stewish thing I've done before. As is my usual habit I took the jar of paprika from the cupboard and sprinkled a generous amount in the pan. Tasted after half an hour and fuck me, it was HOT.
It was cayenne pepper, not paprika.
My stomach actually hurts a bit.
Paprikash?
Yes, kind of, though I don't follow a recipe. It's what veg I have kicking around, flavoured with garlic, paprika and Hungarian sweet red pepper paste. Sometimes a bit of chicken or chorizo.
That time I made banana bread but with salt instead of sugar. Accidentally, of course.
It looked sad and squishy, I tried a bit anyway. It was odd, my tongue detected something amiss, but the bad taste arrived a second or two after my brain started "reacting", like warning lights were flashing but I didn't know why.
And then the taste of bananabrine arrived and my face locked up in a rictus grimace.i couldn't control my mouth so I had to scrape it out with my hand.
Truly awful.
Hahaha bananabrine, great description
FYI, the trick to making caramelized onions is boiling the onions. After you cut up your onions and add them to your pan, add a small amount of water, enough that the water will cook out after a few minutes. The water will steam the onions and cook them more quickly, which will them make them faster and easier to caramelize.
Here's a video to demonstrate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqhzil3wJw
This trick works well to make mushrooms more flavorful and all sorts of other foods!
I found a recipe for Boston Beans that sounded interesting. It involved stewing kidney beans with tomatoes, brown sugar and bacon bits.
At the end of it I realised I'd made baked beans, exactly like you'd get in a can. It tasted okay, but 45 minutes of effort when I could open a can and heat the contents in five minutes for the same result?
Done well they will be the best baked beans you will ever have... but they are still baked beans. They can only be so good.
Pumpkin pie using fresh pie pumpkins. It's not that hard, but it takes more time and means washing more dishes, and no one that I know of can tell the difference vs. a pie made using canned 100% pumpkin.
I think it depends on the squash you use. Sure, buying a cheap pie pumpkin or butternut squash at the store might not taste that much better, but a home-grown squash or good local squash can far exceed the flavor of canned pumpkin. As usual, a lot of cooking is about using fresh, good quality ingredients.
I hear what you're saying, but I also hear, "no, just do even more work!" Haha. As it is, baking a single pie is already more expensive than a single store bought pie, and the people I'm pawning my leftovers off to don't seem to know the difference.
On top of that, I live in a high rise in the middle of the city, so home-grown squash is impossible (I barely have space for a few window sill herbs), and anything "local" is going to be even more expensive. Just not worth it to me so I can have a few slices of pie.
Angel Food Cake. It turned out fine, but it really wasn't much better than the store bought kind. Plus it calls for about a million egg whites so I was left with a million egg yolks when it was all said and done.
You’re supposed to make an angel food cake and a pound cake using the two halves of a dozen eggs.
We buy egg whites in a carton. Much less hassle that way
What did you end up doing with all the egg yolks?
Fucking cauliflower vegan "wings" they were the nastiest, smelliest, mushiest pile of gross I have ever tasted.
I have a dog who is a rescue, she was severely neglected when we first got her as a foster and her file stated she had to eat her own feces in order to survive at the place she was rescued from. Well, those cauliflower wings I just told you about? She sniffed them and gagged!! That's how bad they were.
cauliflower wings properly made are amazing, but you should definitely not follow a recipe that results in nasty mush 😆
Sounds like you fucked something up when making them. I'm not vegan but I've tried them and they're ok when done properly. Not special, but okay and far from vile garbage.
Similarly, cauliflower steak. I followed some recipe that just turned it into a brick of balsamic vinegarette and, while I love both cauliflower and balsamic vinaigrette, this was not delicious nor did it taste like steak.
One time I made a Chinese restaurant favorite, mei cai kou rou.
It was very long and made a ton of dirty dishes.
It turned out not quite as good as restaurant quality, cost the same, and I learned it’s better left to someone with a prep cook and dishwasher.
Orange chicken.
It was my comfort food while studying in the US. At Panda Express it was cheap, convenient, and delicious.
Then I tried making it. And... although I could make delicious-er, it was too much work. Then I forgot how much work it was, and made it again, and I swore, never again. I don't have a proper kitchen or a fryer, and it took me about two hours of active work (if you're serving 8 people). Most other food I make is max 20 minutes, and the rest is just time passing and heat doing its thing. Even dishes that take 8 hours to prepare, is usually still only 20-30 minutes of labour.
Without the right kitchen equipment. Never again.
I might make it again soon.
My kids love Trader Joe’s frozen orange chicken and it’s easy to make.
Pan fry the breaded chicken pieces while you thaw the sauce, then toss cooked chicken in the sauce.
Cleanup is a large frying pan and tongs.
Fried chicken, it was absolutely delicious but the prep work, frying and dish clean up was more than I’d like.
Puff pastry! The constant fear the butter getting too soft, the (seeming) hours of rolling then resting in the freezer, the failure of witnessing the butter melt out in the oven was just too much for me, especially when the pre made frozen stuff is quite good.
That said, I love a challenge and have been thinking of trying it again.
Yeah. I tried it once, just to see if I could do it. Now I know I can, I never need to do it again. I buy the frozen stuff.
Some sort of marshmallow dessert that added condensed milk and sugar.
It caught on fire in the oven.
It tasted like eating pure sugar.
Threw it away after it cooled and it was also a bitch to clean off the pans. 0 stars.
Reminds me of the time I tried to make spun sugar for some decorations and I wrecked so many pans of sugar water by not getting the temperature right and yes, cleaning them was a royal pain in the ass. The sugar basically turned into a solid rock inside the pan every time, so I had to add water and reheat it on the stove to melt it down again just to get it out.
We followed a cake recipe once from some US food blog. We learned then that you should only use half or even one quarter of the sugar stated in recipes from Americans and even then it might be sickeningly sweet.
French Onion Soup is indeed a bitch and a half, but its also delicious and vwry affordable to make. Next time, try a heavy cast iron pot; it'll absorb the onions flavor without stinking. That said, you still have to endure chopping 3 lbs of onions...
I'll probably never make fried ravioli again. I like em on salad but its just a pain to deepfry anything and the payoff isnt worth it.
Chopping onions is not an issue. I remember peeling and cutting three bags of 25 kilograms each with a number of farmers wives for some kind of savory onion cake.They had thought it funny to invite me to their table (I was dropping by as one of them had to leave), expecting to see a young man giving up after a few minutes. What they did not expect was that I was quicker in peeling and cutting than they were, as I've had learned to do this from a real cook ;-)
My wife and I tried to make Pho one year for our anniversary. Went all out and got stuff from the Asian market to make it authentic and to the recipe I was recommended.
It was so bad, we just had to throw it out and order pizza. It sucks cuz I really like Pho, but it's just not worth trying to do myself.
The good thing is the majority of Vietnamese restaurants are small family businesses that don't charge a lot. So for me pho is an exclusively eat out option. I know any attempt I'd make would be shit and expensive.
Smoked brisket. I don't have the proper smoker, but that didn't stop me. I turned the thing and watched fuel and air and temperature every half hour for 12 hours. It was delicious. Never again.
I can get pretty much the same results just buying from the barbecue joint 3 miles away.
Homemade Soup Dumplings (Xiao Long Bao), made from scratch. So much work. It became quickly evident doing it properly required skill you couldn't learn from a video or a recipe book and would take a really long time to master.
The whole thing ended up kinda thick and clumpy. Definitely one of those things better left to people who know what they're doing.
Pumpkin lasagna roll ups. Absolutely delicious but not worth the time and effort.
Boiling your own beets takes so fucking long, I had no idea. 4 hours on the stove for a simple beet. No thanks, I'll just buy them in a jar.
Thanksgiving 2019 my wife and I decided to make an apple pie from scratch. Cook and prep time was estimated for 3h this was with us factoring in never having baked before. We decided we could start at 8 and be fine. Fast forward to 230am and we are just removing it from the oven. Next day everyone is trying it and we all agreed it was probably the best pie ever made in the family. I'll never try again because it wasn't worth all that work.
Beetroot curry. I was drunk and went with the idea that "you can curry anything"... you can't.
NEVER put lemon juice in an omelette. Absolutely disgusting. Once tried it, not following any recipe. Never again.
I've never seen an omelette recipe call for lemon juice, that does sound totally gross.
I made prime rib and was scared of the oven constantly burning, causing me to constantly turn it off and then back on whenever someone got angry since I was at the house alone babysitting the oven at the time. When we went to eat it, everyone complimented it and theorized me constantly jumpstarting the oven while it was cooking actually made it better than it otherwise would've been. So while I successfully made prime rib by accident, I'm not going through that again.
Pad Thai, found a recipient from Hot Thai Kitchen YouTube video. She made it look easy.
3 hr later I produced a goop that was un-edible. So bad my SO asked me never to try again.
Chocolate soufflé. Fuck that caved in nonsense
I mixed myself a Bloody Mary, just to find out if I like it, and I didn't like it at all.
Now I know. Never again.
More of a cooking technique than a recipe. I wanted to make a stir fry more substantial so I added flour to it. Strongly recommend against ever doing this.
Inspired by this video, I tried making smörgåstårta, a Swedish sandwich cake.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=I98AAMQm9f0
It had lots of ingredients, but it was like eating salty mayonnaise-flavored swamp mud.
