I love looking at recipes. I’ve been know to literally waste hours at a time browsing through recipes, looking for inspiration or just something delicious to make for dinner. I don’t think I could ever have too many cookbooks. They have beautiful pictures, are full of recipes, and can double as great coffee table books.
There are some gripes that I have with a lot of recipes, however. It’s really just a nitpick, but I don’t think I’m alone….
It seems like some recipe writers just have no common sense. I run into this problem much more in cookbooks than I do with online recipes. Here is my issue: I hate it when recipes list out ingredients in strict measurements when the ingredient itself comes in an easily measured form. What I mean is this: why can’t a recipe just call out one chopped medium onion (and many do), instead of one cup of chopped onions. How am I supposed to know what a cup of chopped onion looks like when it isn’t chopped yet?
The worst offender always seems to be cheese. I was making a mac and cheese dish a couple weeks ago and the recipe for the sauce included two cups of grated cheese. I tried eying what I thought would be two cups when it was broken down, but I wanted to make sure that I had enough. What I ended up with was more than twice as much cheese as I actually needed for the recipe. Many recipes list out the approximate weight or size of something, and I am appreciative of that, but they don’t make up for the recipes that don’t.
I’m not a restaurant. As much as I would love to have all that fancy cooking equipment and a kick ass kitchen, I don’t. As such, I also don’t have a sous chef and an endless supply of chopped onions and carrots. Thankfully, one thing I do have is The Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. You know the one: red plaid, has everything in it. One of my favorite features about the book is the little page in the front that gives equivalents between whole foods and measurements. Just a quick check and I can be sure that I’m buying the right amount of onions to fill up that cup.
Clacked by Bob Degon
on Jan 15, 2010 @ 11:00 EST5EDT
I LOVE my red plaid cookbook … I use its basic recipes to riff off of often. And I always forget how long to roast a chicken and the red plaid book saves me every time.