The Cooking Irritations thread

Dial Hard

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?????

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.

Gloomtastic!

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

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.

Malari

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

Dial Hard

confusticated wrote:

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.

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.)

The Black Oil

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

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".

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!)

Speedwell

MissFlitworth wrote: »

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 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:

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.

The Hill Billy

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

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!

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

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.

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.

lazeedaisy

Michellenman wrote: »

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

TeletextPear

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

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

Dial Hard

TeletextPear wrote:

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...

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.

Mrs Fox

TeletextPear wrote: »

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.

Mrs Fox

Michellenman wrote: »

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.

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*

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.

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

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

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.

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

Dial Hard

fiddlechic wrote: »

Avocados.

Malari

MissFlitworth wrote: »

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.

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.

Malari

Alun wrote: »

One word ... soup.

Yeah, not really a soup eater. And definitely not vegetable soup!

kimokanto

My ultimate has to be a broken yoke in my fried egg. Do I give it to the dog & feel guilty about waste? Do I put up with a fried egg thats not nice & dippy? Grrrr

Dubl07

kimokanto wrote: »

My ultimate has to be a broken yoke in my fried egg. Do I give it to the dog & feel guilty about waste? Do I put up with a fried egg thats not nice & dippy? Grrrr

Give it to the dog every time!

Malari

Do dogs eat vegetables?! :eek:

Edit...oh, I see you've removed my post from your post ;-)

Dial Hard

kimokanto wrote: »

My ultimate has to be a broken yoke in my fried egg. Do I give it to the dog & feel guilty about waste? Do I put up with a fried egg thats not nice & dippy? Grrrr

Give it to the dog. Life's too short to put up with non-guggy eggs.

Whispered

Dogs eat vegetables. Our boys get 90% of the carrots that come into the house. Raw and crunchy.

They also get a lot of the chopping board veggie bits like peppers and tomatoes. So long as it's not toxic and you can eat them raw, I'll throw it to them. If they don't eat it they'll play with it for a while

Dubl07

Malari wrote: »

Do dogs eat vegetables?! :eek:

Edit...oh, I see you've removed my post from your post ;-)

:-)

I'd navigated away and returned to reply to another post, but my half-formed response to you remained in the system. A ghost in the machine. Like a celery botty-burp from a pup, perhaps.

Celery is not something I'm fond of in quantities. I can accept a balanced dance with apple and walnuts in some Waldorf; a slender stalk in a Bloody Mary; a frond or two in soup; a few seeds either inside or topping a crusty loaf. In most other cases it's overpowering to my palate and I happily throw it into the compost heap.

MissFlitworth

My dog will beg for/just bully up beside me and wait for a carrot but it's a couple of nibbles and then try to find somewhere to hide it. Finding root vegetables in your couch cushions is a bit irritating.

Kovu

I've only recently started eating avocados and feel your pain! I do a big shop once a week otherwise I get grenade hardened ones in the local shop. One of which took a 10 days to ripen before and had a chewy texture....bleugh. Never had a problem with Lidl ones funnily enough, I poke them eery day and move them either into the fridge when just ripe in order to slow it for a couple of days or plonk them on the bananas.

I get really irritated if people start poking at something I'm cooking for myself and adding bit to it or eating out of the pot. FECK OFF, you said you didn't like spicy food and that you weren't hungry!

People watching me eat, don't like that oddly enough. Oh and leaving something in the fridge and looking forward to it the next day. Only to have some greedy so and so eat it on me!!

Alun

I had a weird one just now with avocados. I bought a "Ripe n Ready" 2 pack from Aldi (after vowing never to do so again after a recent pair of bullets!) and had one last week which was lovely and ripe, just right. I totally forgot about the other one until this lunchtime, but thought I'd try and rescue what I could from it expecting it to have turned to mush, but no, this one was still as hard as a rock. Go figure.

Tree

Volumetric measurements are a big one.

Bags of potatos where some of them are bad but you can't tell till you've sliced them open. Also potatoes for "baking" packs, as they're never good enough to eat the skins off. Also, that way you roast a bunch of potatos and some of them have the peculiar new spud taste to them and you can never identify them and they're always the last one left after you ate a perfect fluffy one.

Minder

Beanshoots - specifically western supermarket beanshoots. Typically sold in a hermetically sealed bag, they have been washed before being bagged. The result is a product with a shelf life that should be measured in hours, not days. The residual water ensures that the bright, crisp vegetable will be well on its way to turning into a fetid brown mess suitable only for the compost bin before one sunset has passed.

Give me a breathable bag of dry beanshoots any day. Alas, these little beauties are only available in oriental supermarkets and I'm don't have one local to me. I'm on to you Tesco/Laldi/Sainsburys. Change your product & packaging or I'll set Joliver and Hugh Fearlessly-Eats-It-All on you.

kylith

Minder wrote: »

Beanshoots - specifically western supermarket beanshoots. Typically sold in a hermetically sealed bag, they have been washed before being bagged. The result is a product with a shelf life that should be measured in hours, not days. The residual water ensures that the bright, crisp vegetable will be well on its way to turning into a fetid brown mess suitable only for the compost bin before one sunset has passed.

Give me a breathable bag of dry beanshoots any day. Alas, these little beauties are only available in oriental supermarkets and I'm don't have one local to me. I'm on to you Tesco/Laldi/Sainsburys. Change your product & packaging or I'll set Joliver and Hugh Fearlessly-Eats-It-All on you.

Ooo, I'll have to check the Asian supermarket tomorrow. I love beansprouts but they turn into mush as soon as you open the packet.

L1011

MissFlitworth wrote: »

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

Greengrocer (or a big Tesco actually) - can buy carrots in any number from 1 to the 15+ you get in a big bag. My usual weeks shopping includes 3.

Celery is the one that annoyed me enough that, after my partner objected to me putting it in *everything* to use the sodding thing up - I've just stopped using it.

Any form of bulk-packaged vegetables bar onion nets is usually too much for a two person household even if you usually cook 6 out of 7 dinners a week from scratch - punnets of mushrooms, four-packs of garlic in a net, etc are all too big.


I really wish the 4 packs of eggs were more common, or even the ability to buy singles of them. I like them for breakfast/lunch but the OH hates them with a passion so I frequently end up buying them for a purpose and throwing out two or three as they're not really freezer suitable!

anothernight

L1011 wrote: »

Any form of bulk-packaged vegetables bar onion nets is usually too much for a two person household even if you usually cook 6 out of 7 dinners a week from scratch - punnets of mushrooms, four-packs of garlic in a net, etc are all too big.


I really wish the 4 packs of eggs were more common, or even the ability to buy singles of them. I like them for breakfast/lunch but the OH hates them with a passion so I frequently end up buying them for a purpose and throwing out two or three as they're not really freezer suitable!

Was with you until you mentioned onions, mushrooms, garlic and eggs. :P
If onions come in the vegetable box I caramelise most of them and leave a couple for other uses, otherwise I don't buy any onions because they go off before I can use them (my bf hates onions). Mushrooms, eggs and garlic... we seem to be constantly topping up on those three ingredients.



My cooking irritation is actually three:
1. Being watched while I'm cooking or worse, people "helping" me cook. Just no. It's my kitchen.

2. Americans making Andalusian gazpacho with jalapeños, hot sauce, prawns, tomato juice, and a whole bunch of other things that don't belong in gazpacho. And then calling it Mexican. (while we're at it: no, that's not "Spanish" rice.) Same for a lot of other countries' cuisines. Carbonara with cream, I'm looking at you.

3. "Recipes" like this one. Brownie made with German cake mix and caramels. Cake mix is not and will never be an ingredient in my book!

Minder

kylith wrote: »

Ooo, I'll have to check the Asian supermarket tomorrow. I love beansprouts but they turn into mush as soon as you open the packet.

I have two bags still in edible condition that I bought on Friday evening from an Asian supermarket near work.

Speedwell

anothernight wrote: »

2. Americans making Andalusian gazpacho with jalapeños, hot sauce, prawns, tomato juice, and a whole bunch of other things that don't belong in gazpacho. And then calling it Mexican. (while we're at it: no, that's not "Spanish" rice.) Same for a lot of other countries' cuisines. Carbonara with cream, I'm looking at you.

I'm an American with Mexican family members (my brother's wife). I worked in a Mexican restaurant for a few months for extra money in college in the late 80s (waited tables and helped the back of the house learn English, lol). You are exactly spot on; both interpretations are Mexican (or Tex-Mex, or Cal-Mex). Mexican gazpacho really is a thing. Mexican rice is the proper name for what they serve beside the Mexican refried beans in Mexican restaurants. Most people in America would not know Spanish food if you actually served it to them (I was more fortunate in that the large Texas city I came from had a very authentic, highly-regarded institution of a Spanish restaurant).

Carbonara with cream? My mother's father was from Rome. He used to say, "Never mind about the food here; it is a different dish", and as far as he was concerned, he made the food, and he was Italian, so it was Italian food.

MissFlitworth

anothernight wrote: »

3. "Recipes" like this one. Brownie made with German cake mix and caramels. Cake mix is not and will never be an ingredient in my book!

Tangentially related to that link - food covered in something that shouldn't be there. Cake plastered in icing sugar, desserts with a 100 ml of red coulis on top (cakes that come served on top of a napkin give me twitches in both eyes), plates of food with pesto or balsamic crema. It's all fine and dandy if the food should be covered in 'stuff', I' a-ok with icing sugar on my victoria sponge, but when it's just there for decorative purposes and changes or overwhelms the taste of the food - rage.

nkav86

Anything with a foam on, what the hell is that?! The sight of it makes me gag oh and knowing the cook made a good batch of sauce but only puts a drizzle on the plate, don't want it drenched in the stuff but a drop more wouldn't go amiss! Aware that's a restaurant complaint, hope it's not off topic just drives me barmy!

Speedwell

I like it, I like it, but... molecular gastronomy somewhat annoys me