Saturday, 3 March 2018

The Dirty Secret of ‘Secret Family Recipes’

quote [ Surprisingly often, they’re copied from mayo jars and famous cookbooks. ]

yo life is just a secret recipe & I'm all up in it.
[SFW] [food & drink] [+2 Insightful]
[by ScoobySnacks@12:21amGMT]

Comments

rndmnmbr said @ 3:30am GMT on 3rd Mar [Score:1 laz0r]
My grandmother's peanut brittle recipe turned out to be from a bottle of Karo syrup, that her grandmother saved around the turn of the century. So it still has a tremendous amount of history to it.

I in turn converted it to modern temperature measurements instead of the old hard/soft ball test, and knowing more about the role corn syrup plays in inverting the sugar, reduced it from two cups of corn syrup to two tablespoons and likewise increased the sugar. My brother swears it tastes the same.
HoZay said @ 6:08am GMT on 3rd Mar [Score:1 Funny]
My mother was a good cook, and my bride asked her for one of her recipes. Mom wrote out the recipe, but my wife could never get it to turn out right. My brother's wife had the same experience. Pretty sure mom was deliberately sabotaging the daughters-in-law.
milkman666 said @ 7:08pm GMT on 3rd Mar
"If you like it you can ask me for the recipe since its mine, if you hated it, it's not my fault since i wasn't the one who made it."
midden said @ 8:59pm GMT on 3rd Mar [Score:1 laz0r]
My family thinks I'm some sort of master baker (no, baker, baker!), but I just use Mark Bittman's book, How to Cook Everything for pizza dough, biscuits, pies, etc., and follow Jim Lahey's No Kneed Bread recipe for all sorts of breads and rolls.

No Knead Bread | Mark Bittman Recipe | The New York Times


https://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Simple-Recipes/dp/0471789186/ref=sr_1_3?
HoZay said @ 10:25pm GMT on 3rd Mar
Yes, yes, this is exactly right.
damnit said @ 1:01am GMT on 3rd Mar
My grandma’s cookies are a secret family recipe passed down from her French grandma, Nestle Toulouse.
Ankylosaur said @ 1:06am GMT on 3rd Mar [Score:2]
Was that joke was passed down from a friend?
damnit said @ 3:47am GMT on 3rd Mar
Yep. Regina Phalange
EvilNinjaX24 said @ 5:33am GMT on 3rd Mar
D'oh - went from Funsightful to Sad. Very un-ninja-like precision.
bbqkink said @ 1:03am GMT on 3rd Mar
My mother passed down her guarded recipe box when she passed..mostly out of magazines she stole out of the doctors office and other assorted waiting rooms.
Bruceski said @ 2:14am GMT on 3rd Mar
My family's fruit pie recipe comes from the back of a tapioca box. My cookies are from Joy of Cooking. My mom's honeycake recipe has had some tweaks, but originated as part of a Folger's cookbook (we don't add the instant coffee crystals anymore). I donno where grandma's mandelbreit recipe comes from, but probably someplace similar. I don't see it as lying (in part because my family never pretended otherwise), you find something that works and that becomes the flavor the kids grow up with. I can bake cookies with other recipes and proportions, but they never taste *quite* right.

On the other hand, our BBQ sauce recipe is "molasses, tomato paste, vinegar, maple syrup in whatever proportions feel right, and then add your embellishments." I like to use balsamic vinegar, my mom adds soy sauce, stuff like that. Done entirely by taste, no proportions or anything.
zarathustra said @ 3:12am GMT on 4th Mar
No surprise here. I have a bit of a local rep as a master baker simply because I make things from scratch rather than using a shitty pre-made mix. I don't know what the hell I am doing but less than perfect scratch stuff using the recipe on the box of baking chocolate, bag of flour, etc is better than a perfectly prepared box cake mix, just add water or (shudder) corn oil. (btw, the one time I remember enjoying brownies from a mix was when the guy who made them substituted peanut oil for "vegetable oil". It actually gave it a bearable flavor.

The extra five minutes to use real ingredients makes all the difference in the world.

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