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The Cooking Irritations thread

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  • 13-02-2016 9:54pm
    #1
    Registered Users Posts: 13,754 ✭✭✭✭


    Not cooking disasters, as we have a thread for that already. But things that give you the eye-twitch.

    Cream in a carbonara recipe is a biggie for me.

    Also, recipes that list an item in the ingredients, but then there's no mention of it in the method. WHERE DID YOU GO?????


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Comments

  • Registered Users Posts: 1,681 ✭✭✭confusticated


    Recipes with mixed measurements for me. 250g flour, 1 stick of butter, 1/2 cup of sugar? Grrrrrrr.

    Actually the stick of butter thing all by itself drives me mad.


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,496 ✭✭✭Gloomtastic!


    Simple. Anyone trying to help me in the kitchen. GO AWAY, PLEASE!!!!!!!


  • Registered Users Posts: 14,772 ✭✭✭✭Whispered


    crappy timing. You expect me to eat an egg you fried 20 mins ago, before you even started cooking the sausages?! Eh... No thanks.


  • Registered Users Posts: 18,150 ✭✭✭✭Malari


    Preheat the oven to 180. Blend the marinade ingredients, add the chicken and and leave it in the fridge overnight.


  • Registered Users Posts: 13,754 ✭✭✭✭Dial Hard


    Actually the stick of butter thing all by itself drives me mad.


    American butter comes in individually wrapped little sticks inside the pack. Can't remember off the top of my head how much is in each though.

    But yeah, my sister is a divil for mixing metric and imperial measures while she's cooking or baking and then wondering why the results aren't quite right.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 3,809 ✭✭✭Speedwell


    Each stick is one quarter pound (113.4 grams). Cut it in 8 pieces to get exact "tablespoons".

    Add to that the fact that American volume measures (cups/spoons) are different from the ones here even when the recipe from here actually reads cups/spoons, and the baking powder and self-rising flours are slightly different, and you find you're making every bakery recipe three times to adjust it.

    But my biggest irritation? Recipes that use disgusting premade ingredients that are not actually designed to be part of a recipe. Canned soup. Unidentified bagged mixes. (Canned tomatoes and frozen pastry dough are fine; they're ingredients, not convenience meals.)


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Regional East Moderators Posts: 18,427 CMod ✭✭✭✭The Black Oil


    When the caps won't close on spice jars. :mad: :pac:


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,809 ✭✭✭Speedwell


    Oh, I got a good one. Going to someone's mother's house and seeing spice jars on the shelf with herbs faded to brown and spices with no smell, that you know she bought before you were even born. (And I'm 50 this year.) Even worse, knowing the aul wan cooked dinner with them.

    We bring our own to his mother's house, and she sometimes uses them, but more often it's "You forgot to take this home last time you came". :)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 8,057 ✭✭✭MissFlitworth


    When someone else is being lovely and cooking for you but they're doing a much worse job of it than you'd do yourself. Whipping scrambled eggs to hell with a fork like they're trying to kill a wasp in them, free pouring baking powder, making the whole thing the day before to microwave at dinner time etc.

    It makes me anxious.

    When you have a crappy cooker and everrrrything takes way longer than it should. (Yay renting!)


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,809 ✭✭✭Speedwell


    When someone else is being lovely and cooking for you but they're doing a much worse job of it than you'd do yourself. Whipping scrambled eggs to hell with a fork like they're trying to kill a wasp in them, free pouring baking powder, making the whole thing the day before to microwave at dinner time etc.

    It makes me anxious.

    Hahaha :D Me at eight, complaining about the poor woman I was sent to stay with after school until Mom got off work:

    Me: Mom, Mrs. Hubbard can't cook spaghetti.
    Mom: Now, honey, you shouldn't complain; she does her best for you.
    Me: MOMMMM. She boils the pasta until it's mushy and pours a can of tomato soup over it.
    Mom: Oh. Um. Well, tell Mrs. Hubbard you don't have to eat dinner with her children anymore. I'll send you to school with an extra snack and we'll see about dinner when we get home.


    Given that I was allowed to do minor prep work and use the cooker since I was six, I was mostly making dinner for the family at that time, which was totally fine with me. I was mature enough to handle a sharp knife, but not, unfortunately, mature enough to abstain from telling poor Mrs. Hubbard, who really was doing her best with little, exactly what I thought of her cooking. :eek:


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  • Registered Users Posts: 13,754 ✭✭✭✭Dial Hard


    Speedwell wrote:
    But my biggest irritation? Recipes that use disgusting premade ingredients that are not actually designed to be part of a recipe. Canned soup. Unidentified bagged mixes. (Canned tomatoes and frozen pastry dough are fine; they're ingredients, not convenience meals.)


    There was a whole thread on American Recipes in Ranting and Raving that more or less consisted of examples of this.

    You can buy some truly odd convenience "foods" in American supermarkets. I remember laughing my way around Winn Dixie last time I was over there.


  • Registered Users Posts: 22,777 ✭✭✭✭The Hill Billy


    Simple. Anyone trying to help me in the kitchen. GO AWAY, PLEASE!!!!!!!
    This. In my kitchen I am a whirlwind of sharp metal, boiling water & hot fat. Get the hell away from me!


  • Registered Users Posts: 11,195 ✭✭✭✭Michellenman


    Recipe for homemade vanilla cake with chocolate icing :

    For the cake:
    1 box yellow cake mix - make as per instructions on the packet

    For the icing:
    1 container cool whip mixed with one jar Nutella

    Method:
    Assemble


  • Registered Users Posts: 32,382 ✭✭✭✭rubadub


    Overcooked meat. Many are even following recipes "oh I know he said 50mins but I went an hour and a half to be sure"

    The US volume thing annoys me, I read many do not even use scales there.

    Also the pedants stating such and such is not true such and such, especially when they know fine well everybody probably knows it, or doesn't give a damn.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,801 ✭✭✭Dubl07


    One helpful relative insists on taking the lid off gently steaming rice or spuds and is guilty of putting a lid on boiling pasta.

    Anyone using my cooking knives on a hard surface instead of a board.

    The cheeky article who used my best squeezy bottle for touching up the paint around new light switches and didn't clean out the bottle.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,331 ✭✭✭lazeedaisy


    Recipe for homemade vanilla cake with chocolate icing :

    For the cake:
    1 box yellow cake mix - make as per instructions on the packet

    For the icing:
    1 container cool whip mixed with one jar Nutella

    Method:
    Assemble

    It amazes me how many Americans think they can bake! It was 31 years ago when I lived there! And now in the supermarkets here the same tubs of gunk that you bung between 2 sponges and call it icing!

    Yellow cake, pound cake!! Aghhhh...

    Its a travesty


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,413 ✭✭✭TeletextPear


    Simple. Anyone trying to help me in the kitchen. GO AWAY, PLEASE!!!!!!!

    I'm a 'clean as I go' cook. Problem is, Im also a 'clean as other people go' cook too. I drive my boyfriend absolutely mad when he's cooking because I breeze through throwing all his utensils in the dishwasher, putting ingredients back in the fridge. I can only imagine how annoying I am


  • Registered Users Posts: 13,754 ✭✭✭✭Dial Hard


    I'm a 'clean as I go' cook. Problem is, Im also a 'clean as other people go' cook too. I drive my boyfriend absolutely mad when he's cooking because I breeze through throwing all his utensils in the dishwasher, putting ingredients back in the fridge. I can only imagine how annoying I am


    I regularly annoy *myself* by throwing utensils in the filled sink that I realise a split-second later I will need again shortly.

    Often several times...


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,576 ✭✭✭Keane2baMused


    My wonderful husband to be and his 'all in one' cooking method.

    Feck it all in and stir until every ounce of taste is cooked off then adds loads of salt and pepper because it tastes of nothing :-D

    Oh and I hate being watched when I cook. Gway..I'll burn meself.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,292 ✭✭✭Mrs Fox


    I drive my boyfriend absolutely mad when he's cooking because I breeze through throwing all his utensils in the dishwasher, putting ingredients back in the fridge. I can only imagine how annoying I am

    I do this to Mr Fox all the time. Thanks, Teletext. I now realised how annoying I am.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 2,292 ✭✭✭Mrs Fox


    Recipe for homemade vanilla cake with chocolate icing :

    For the cake:
    1 box yellow cake mix - make as per instructions on the packet

    For the icing:
    1 container cool whip mixed with one jar Nutella

    Method:
    Assemble

    This! Big time.
    You Google for "The best yada yada recipe" and the most popular recipe reviewed with five stars includes the ingredient of a box of Aunt Jemima's cake mix.


  • Registered Users Posts: 17,736 ✭✭✭✭kylith


    Speedwell wrote: »

    But my biggest irritation? Recipes that use disgusting premade ingredients that are not actually designed to be part of a recipe. Canned soup. Unidentified bagged mixes. (Canned tomatoes and frozen pastry dough are fine; they're ingredients, not convenience meals.)
    Oh gods yes! 'Mix a sachet of ranch dressing with a can of condensed soup..' That's not cooking you utter *muffled swearing*


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 8,057 ✭✭✭MissFlitworth


    Oh! When you have a net of onions and only need one of them but every.single.one of them turns out to be decomposing when you cut them open.


  • Registered Users Posts: 412 ✭✭fiddlechic


    Avocados.
    I love them. But ripe and ready, are seldom just so, often battered and bruised. Then normal ones are hard as stones.
    Last week was the first in a long time that hit the sweet spot - bought Monday, bit hard, left on counter beside bananas for 2 days, then into fridge overnight, then made the perfect gauc.
    I've a system of buying the hard ones and ripening at home. But it's all just so irritating.


    The other thing that irritates me is the cloud of dusty icing sugar when pour into scales, or into sieve, or into bowl.... goes up my nose and is all sweet and unsettling


  • Registered Users Posts: 17,736 ✭✭✭✭kylith


    When you need an onion (I don't like them so rarely use them), or A lime but the supermarket only has nets of 6


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,801 ✭✭✭Dubl07


    fiddlechic wrote: »
    Avocados.
    The other thing that irritates me is the cloud of dusty icing sugar when pour into scales, or into sieve, or into bowl.... goes up my nose and is all sweet and unsettling

    Avocados are just aggravation in a skin but I love them too.

    I've breathing problems so flying particles are taboo. For flour, sugar etc now, I use a wire whisk to aerate and incorporate seasoning. For icing sugar I use a huge plastic salad bowl and shuffle it to make the lumps come up to the surface, fish them off with a small 2" sieve and press through. Much less tedious than sieving the whole lot.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 8,057 ✭✭✭MissFlitworth


    fiddlechic wrote: »
    Avocados.

    When you have one sitting there, picked for a meal with a song in your heart and a skip in your step, and it turns out to be a Bad one. Like one of those horrible thin skinned, watery jobs. Or it goes from 'ripe' to 'blackened zombie flesh' in the twinkling of an eye.

    I might be overly invested, emotionally, in avocados. It upsets me when they go wrong.
    kylith wrote: »
    When you need an onion (I don't like them so rarely use them), or A lime but the supermarket only has nets of 6

    Carrots are my limes/onions. I generally need A carrot, maybe 2. Definitely not 1.5kg of them. And my kitchen is murder on carrots so I'm a World Champion Thrower of Black Mouldy Carrots in the Bin


  • Registered Users Posts: 13,754 ✭✭✭✭Dial Hard


    fiddlechic wrote: »
    Avocados.

    post2.jpg


  • Registered Users Posts: 18,150 ✭✭✭✭Malari





    Carrots are my limes/onions. I generally need A carrot, maybe 2. Definitely not 1.5kg of them. And my kitchen is murder on carrots so I'm a World Champion Thrower of Black Mouldy Carrots in the Bin

    Yes, or celery. I only use them really in bolognese sauce or shepherd's pie, and there's no way I'm making THAT much that I need a whole head of celery or bag of carrots.

    Even trying to use them up in salads makes me weary.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 21,466 ✭✭✭✭Alun


    Malari wrote: »
    Yes, or celery. I only use them really in bolognese sauce or shepherd's pie, and there's no way I'm making THAT much that I need a whole head of celery or bag of carrots.
    One word ... soup.


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