What are your pet peeves with published recipes?

[Anonymous]

I have two.

1) The recipe states 10 minutes prep, 20 minutes cooking. But the recipe includes an enormous amount of pre-chopped vegetables and/or meat and all that chopping isn’t counted in the “prep” time. I have a food processor which helps but realistically the prep ends up being double the time.

2) A recipe states it serves four as an entree but that is with ridiculously small portions. A NYT shrimp recipe I made recently called for a 1/2 lb of shrimp for four. And it was just shrimp with a bit of cheese on it, so not part of a larger thing.

[Anonymous]

Agree with both, OP. And just lowballing the time it takes to cook things.

[Anonymous]

Baking recipes without weight/ gram measurements

[Anonymous]

In addition to listing the quantity of ingredients prior to the instruction, I would really like the instructions to include the quantity even if all of any one ingredient is added in one step, i.e., "Next, add the one tablespoon cumin and two teaspoons paprika."

I usually have ready all the major ingredients that need to be prepped, but items like herbs/spices, broth/water, tomato paste I pull from the pantry/cripser as needed. I hate have to scroll up from the instructions to the list of ingredients & quanity and then back to the instructions.

[Anonymous]

Besides the fact that almost all recipes are practically unreadable with huge prefaces about life history of the publisher and ads covering most of the content, I wish there would be some explanation to why some unusual ingredients are used and acceptable substitutions. Often, because of how hard it is to read through the list of ingredients because of being bombarded by ads, I miss this or that ingredient and then have no idea what to do.

[Anonymous]

When they don't tell you that the ingredient needs to be divided in the recipe.

1 tbsp cumin (you add 1/4 at step one and 3/4 at step four)

Just say:

1 tbsp cumin (divided)

so I know it's coming.

[Anonymous]

Recipes that call for half an onion. What the heck am I supposed to do with the other half of the onion? It dries up in the fridge. And is it half a large onion or medium onion or small onion?

[Anonymous]

Recipes that pretend you can caramelize onions in 10 minutes

[Anonymous]

Two gloves of garlic


Am I a joke to you!?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Besides the fact that almost all recipes are practically unreadable with huge prefaces about life history of the publisher and ads covering most of the content, I wish there would be some explanation to why some unusual ingredients are used and acceptable substitutions. Often, because of how hard it is to read through the list of ingredients because of being bombarded by ads, I miss this or that ingredient and then have no idea what to do.

In front of the recipe URL, add cooked.wiki/ It will give you a page with just the ingredients and instructions, and if you have an account, you can save the recipes in that format.

[Anonymous]

I hate NYT recipes and that you HAVE to read the comments (which are admittedly great) for it to turn out well. It just seems so lazy. "Here's this recipe. If you follow it, it will be trash, but see what our readers do to salvage it." Why?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Besides the fact that almost all recipes are practically unreadable with huge prefaces about life history of the publisher and ads covering most of the content, I wish there would be some explanation to why some unusual ingredients are used and acceptable substitutions. Often, because of how hard it is to read through the list of ingredients because of being bombarded by ads, I miss this or that ingredient and then have no idea what to do.

Since you are referring to online recipes, I agree with you. What's up with that weird identikit long spiel you have to scroll through to get to the ingredients? Even "jump" to the recipe is often annoying especially on the phone. I've lost plenty of interest in a possible recipe just by that awful format.

[Anonymous]

I read most recipes from a device online. I wish they would say something like, "add 1/2 cup of flour" in the instruction part, rather than just saying "add flour," so I don't have to scroll back up to the top to see how much they mean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Besides the fact that almost all recipes are practically unreadable with huge prefaces about life history of the publisher and ads covering most of the content, I wish there would be some explanation to why some unusual ingredients are used and acceptable substitutions. Often, because of how hard it is to read through the list of ingredients because of being bombarded by ads, I miss this or that ingredient and then have no idea what to do.

Since you are referring to online recipes, I agree with you. What's up with that weird identikit long spiel you have to scroll through to get to the ingredients? Even "jump" to the recipe is often annoying especially on the phone. I've lost plenty of interest in a possible recipe just by that awful format.

Food writer here - it's for SEO purposes that blogs do that. Longer time on the page is preferable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When they don't tell you that the ingredient needs to be divided in the recipe.

1 tbsp cumin (you add 1/4 at step one and 3/4 at step four)

Just say:

1 tbsp cumin (divided)

so I know it's coming.

Or, better yet,

1 tbsp cumin divided into 1 tsp and 2 tsp