What are your pet peeves with published recipes?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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?

I, too, am frustrated with onion “quantities” and have settled on 1 onion = 3/4-1 c chopped onion (we like onion!). As for the other half, chop it up and freeze it. Works well for most subsequent uses except raw. Same goes for bell pepper.

Another pet peeve is recipes passed off as their own when they’re really America’s Test Kitchen, sometimes with not even a small/subtle adjustment.

A finally one for allergy families — just substituting a [allergen]-free substitute for the thing you can’t eat. Well, duh! While they’ve gotten better in the last few years, most cow’s milk-free things are utter trash and GF stuff is often just a step above cardboard.

[Anonymous]

I actually don't mind reading the comments and seeing what people have changed. However, my BIGGEST PET PEEVE is when the commenter starts off with "I made the recipe as written EXCEPT . . ."

IF YOU USE "EXCEPT" THEN YOU DIDN'T MAKE IT AS WRITTEN!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

We know. And it backfires when normal people run across it.