Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes
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Yeah but a can is basically one unit. Once a can is opened it usually has to be used relatively quickly, so I would much rather use an entire can than measure out a fractional number of cans to be precise with measurements. It depends on the ingredient of course but eg with beans it really doesn’t matter to get the exact weight.
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Cmon man, there’s two kinds of recipes: one with exact measurements and precise instructions, usually written in metric with a lot of notes and contingencies… and then there’s general guideline cheat sheets and refreshers, which you use when you already know how to cook it.
If a recipe tells me “a couple spoonsful” and I don’t know what to do, the problem is not the recipe, it’s that I don’t know what I’m doing.
So what do you do? you learn. or I guess you could be like NileRed and watch food burn in front of your face because you don’t want to deviate from the recipe. over and over again. but hopefully you’ll learn to deviate soon.
If it says a couple spoonfuls then you are golden to abandon all fear and just go with it. That’s half my curry recipes. How much curry do you want? How much can you handle?
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Which is why a lot of recipes will say “One 14 oz can of…”
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Which is why a lot of recipes will say “One 14 oz can of…”
as they should
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Which is why a lot of recipes will say “One 14 oz can of…”
But they didn’t start saying that until 2008.
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On the flip side you get goofy things like this where you are supposed to use a specific amount of something that so far as I know you would have to buy as a pre-made mix. Either that or start a separate recipe to make you own cake mix.
HAHAHA that recipe is half a dump cake.
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I can’t speak to that book specifically and am not sure what the translation of Australian moneys to Freedom Units is, but 40 bucks for THIS sounds kinda… I wouldn’t go so far as to say “scammy” but I would definitely imply it.
Yes, baking and the like is almost entirely ratios. But you still have to understand how many parts fat and liquid butter is versus shortening versus lard versus… Yes, understanding those ratios makes it much easier to be flexible and you start realizing just how similar so many recipes are (and what the actual contribution of a given developer is). But that is more in the sense that you learn how similar two bread recipes actaully are as you make both.
The best way to actually learn that is to actually just cook and read through the recipes and make tweaks as you go. The second best way is to find instructors/youtubers who understand this and convey it. Kenji is going through some stuff lately but his older videos are spectacular for “Two parts flour to one part water but also this is the texture you actually want because humidity is a thing”. But Brian Lagerstrom (and Ethan Chlebowski when he is focusing more on cooking and less on weird wellness guru’ing) have more than taken up the burden. And while it is a few tiers lower, Made With Lau is actually amazing for learning how to translate “older” recipes into actionable steps.
And if you JUST want the ratios? Just go to the library and grab a few of the foundational cookbooks for a given cuisine and look at the recipes. THOSE are the ratios and… they are generally going to be REALLY close
Completely picking up what you’re putting down regarding the dollar value and if I’m being honest was probably going to find an alternative way to access rather than purchase. Our libraries offer pretty much every book as ebooks on loan and for informational non fiction works you can usually glean the majority of the content through a quick peruse in-store or online synopsis.
Personally I do little baking but have been the primary cook in our household for the past 8 or so years and have been noticing that my dishes have been improving a lot lately due to noticing some ratios (particularly in pasta dishes, carbonara especially) that seem to work really well with what the family likes. These are probably rather personal and the missus does also somewhat despise that I generally never make the same thing twice cause I’m always tweaking things depending on available ingredients & whatnot, basically cooking from experience and feel. So I also agree with what you’ve mentioned around learning from doing and bringing in the look, feel & smell components to aid that learning.
The smell of things has made a huge difference in my cooking as well once I started to pay attention to when I could smell that things were done (mostly bbq and baking) - nothing more disappointing then following a recipe to the letter and coming out with an over cooked lamb shoulder (just one somewhat recent experience).
Why this was interesting was because I’ve realized that having a few ratios/rule of thumbs that relate not just to ingredient ratios but also to cooking times and styles I can be way more flexible and adventurous in my cooking while maintaining mostly consistent flavours and (more importantly) a happy family.
Also realizing the importance of trusting that you know your own appliances/cooking environment best has been helpful lately. Going back to the lamb shoulder comment, the recipe asked for me to have the grill at medium heat or about 150’ Celsius for like an hour. For me to get my bbq up to 150’ took a lot (it’s a six burner, so lots of space) but I was determined to follow the recipe to the letter and instead what I did was I ruined the dish. Everything was telling me that it was too hot (dials were past mid way, fat flare ups, etc) but instead of trusting my instincts and adjusting to my conditions I just blindly followed the recipe.
So yeah, bit of a lengthy comment but love simple ratios like a 3:1 for a vinegarette and feel like I could definitely benefit from some more knowledge in that area to further bolster my cooking skills. I’ll check out a couple of the youtubers you mentioned and go from there, cheers
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Uses some American brand name you’ve never heard of as an ingredient with no further elaboration
Sprinkle on some Glorm to taste, or for you midsouthnortherners, pour in some Old Undeserving Chattal Slave Mamy’s for a similar effect
Mfw (I am in the Middle East and my understanding of American food is exclusively “<verging-on-parody tuple name> Whopper” (this is a 30 second explainer on how to boil a potato))
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I’ve seen recipes that are based around the water content (I.e. put X ml of water and add flour until shaggy) so your comment makes a lot of sense.
Hydration level comes first. Everything is built around that
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During the previous round of shirkflation I warned people about knowing what year a recipe was from because “a can” means something different in 2004 than in 2010. And now it means something different again in 2025.
Now boxes are getting the shrink treatment too.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/618032
Because of this I won’t buy any box mixes anymore - they were almost always overpriced for what you got and didn’t contain anything magical… They just made things simpler. I’ll make my cakes and cookies from scratch now and save a fortune.
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Because of this I won’t buy any box mixes anymore - they were almost always overpriced for what you got and didn’t contain anything magical… They just made things simpler. I’ll make my cakes and cookies from scratch now and save a fortune.
This is the way.
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Cmon man, there’s two kinds of recipes: one with exact measurements and precise instructions, usually written in metric with a lot of notes and contingencies… and then there’s general guideline cheat sheets and refreshers, which you use when you already know how to cook it.
If a recipe tells me “a couple spoonsful” and I don’t know what to do, the problem is not the recipe, it’s that I don’t know what I’m doing.
So what do you do? you learn. or I guess you could be like NileRed and watch food burn in front of your face because you don’t want to deviate from the recipe. over and over again. but hopefully you’ll learn to deviate soon.
There are recipes based on package sizes which is fine for chocolate chips or nuts but becomes intensely problematic when it is leavening ingredients. Half-a box of bisquick was a valid measure when there was one size on the shelf.
Some of my family recipes go back 150-250 years so along the way some of the collection contains cards calling for a tin of x, y, or z. I still sometimes use a ham glaze that calls for a bottle of coca cola.
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I’m all for using box mixes like this to make something easier if you wanna bake shit… but this seems a bit odd…
“It’s just so upsetting,” says Judith, whose cookie recipe was passed down by her mother. These “perfect little cookies” once made the rounds at bake sales, Christmas cookie exchanges, and birthdays. She now calls them “unusable.” She could buy an additional box to make up the difference, she acknowledges, “but out of principle, I just can’t.”
It was a box mix… does that really need passing down? It looks like she sub’d oil for butter and thats it. I’m sure the box suggests a little less butter now… so like, a little less oil? I can’t imagine the box mix cookies are just plain trash now either, unless they just are.
You have a different quantity of leavening relative to ypur fats due to the size change. The whole thing will be goopy until you sort out the baking soda/powder which can get difficult since you use so little relative to the volume of the batch.
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HAHAHA that recipe is half a dump cake.
Hadn’t heard the term before but it does look like it.
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Hadn’t heard the term before but it does look like it.
I know of a dump cake as a thing to do on a family camping trip. Canned fruit, cake mix, butter and I think some other ingredient are simply dumped into a baking dish or dutch oven, resulting in a cobbler-like substance which 10 year olds will love. Here we’re making half of one in an instant pot, because everything had to be done in an instant pot. I remember seeing a recipe for making wine in an instant pot. YOU DON’T APPLY HEAT OR PRESSURE TO GRAPE JUICE TO MAKE WINE!
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During the previous round of shirkflation I warned people about knowing what year a recipe was from because “a can” means something different in 2004 than in 2010. And now it means something different again in 2025.
Now boxes are getting the shrink treatment too.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/618032
It would be better if other recipes adjusted accordingly.
The Zatarans Jambalaya box still says to add a pound of smoked sausage. But those sausages went down to 14oz. Then 12oz. Now some are 10oz. The box still says to add a pound. It’s becoming a hotdog/bun situation.
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During the previous round of shirkflation I warned people about knowing what year a recipe was from because “a can” means something different in 2004 than in 2010. And now it means something different again in 2025.
Now boxes are getting the shrink treatment too.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/618032
This explains everything.
I made some things from hand me down recipes recently that I had memorized and they seemed a bit off. So I dug up the recipes (a can of this and a container of that) and assumed that I was going insane.
These c°ck$uck!ng m0th3rf^ck€r$… Grrr!
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This explains everything.
I made some things from hand me down recipes recently that I had memorized and they seemed a bit off. So I dug up the recipes (a can of this and a container of that) and assumed that I was going insane.
These c°ck$uck!ng m0th3rf^ck€r$… Grrr!
Okay but some of my favorite people in life have been cock suckers. Which is why I hate it as a pejorative.
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One scoop of rice. Rinsed a few times until the water is mostly clear. Throw it in the pot I always use for rice. Add water to the lower line that has developed over the years of making rice in the same pot. The upper line is from making mac and cheese so don’t use that one. Some salt. Maybe some oil or butter depending on the final dish. Place the lid on.
Bring to a boil, reduce to low. Wait until the lid harmonics change to tell you there isn’t any liquid water in there anymore. Use a fork to check the bottom of the pot for water. Done.
No one else here knows how to make rice. Everyone thinks a rice cooker would make my life easier. I had one. I tossed it because it kept scorching the rice.
The crispy rice at the bottom of your pot is tahdig in Persian, tutong in Tagalog. In some cultures and families, they fight over the crispy rice, lol.
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I don’t measure rice & water
oh dude entire family agrees that i make the best rice in the family and i’ve tried to teach them how i make the rice but like it’s a big fucking argument how to make rice properly. at this point i think it’s just become a joke.
I’m curious, do you use the first line on your middle finger to measure water?
That’s how my grandmother taught us (pot and rice cooker).
