What recipe have you tried, hated and wished you never wasted so much time making it?

[kevintheorangecarrot]

I have just tried a creamy garlic, chicken and mushroom sauce and I really wish I hadn't now. I consumed as much as I could as well as my DH, then thrown the rest in the bin (thank god for food waste recycling where I live!)

I made JO Porchetta recipe on Boxibg day for our buffet. I’m a good cook, so it didn’t phase me and our butcher had sorted out the exact cut required as per recipe.

It was absolutely vile, black over cooked stuffing, dry in places and undercooked in others. It tasted so disgusting I was sure it would make some of us ill. It went in the bin!

Biscuits. I just can’t make them, they taste like sugar and flour. Every. Time! Bleugh

Although.. My friend gave me some of her homemade biscuits and I thought they tasted wrong too, so perhaps I just prefer shop bought.

I don't know the recipe but I had to take over a vegetarian dish that my MIL started then gave up with. She always goes on about how much of a nuisance it is catering for vegetarians - no wonder if she picks such complicated faffy recipes! So many things mixed, heated then set aside that we used all of her pans. I wouldn't mind but the damned thing was tasteless after all that!

The problem with the mayonnaise is that I want it to taste like Tesco's finest French mayonnaise which they haven't made for years. The other problem is that it only keeps for a week and even allowing for our obsession with the stuff we cannot eat a jar a week. I have no trouble with stuff like hollandaise and bearnaise but mayo refuses to taste the way I want it to.

I like a lot of Ottolenghi's stuff but it is always a Project. My favourite celeb chefs for reliability and similarity of taste to me, and fair warning of time and ingredient investment, are:

Felicity Cloake of the Guardian
Smitten Kitchen
Delia Smith
Mary Berry (the actual monarch of baking)
I like Nigella as well but what I like about the others is that if I do what they say and my oven is working, the meal will come out right, and much though I love Nigella I wouldn't quite say that about her.

Rick Stein is great too, I've made most dishes in his Far Eastern Oddysey and they've all been amazing.

Cannelloni. What an absolute faff having to stuff it. Lasagne has exactly the same taste with half the effort!

Scones. Delia but with only 3/4 of the milk. I use basic self raising flour and they still rise.

Disasters...rye bread that I fed to the birds (it was snowing and I had a woodpecker come to eat it so that was worth the pain). Croissants, stuff that, twice as expensive and half as nice.

I have read on many forums that Nigella's recipes aren't tested properly and can be hit and miss.

It's weird, the most reliable scone recipe for me is Nigella's. The one with bicarb, cream of tartar and fakey fat Trex. Scones light as a feather.

Most of her other baking. Meh.

I did a spinach filo pie before and it was absolutely awful.

My nemesis is meringues. They always end up weeping and really chewy although DH says they're nicer than shop bought.

Jamie Oliver's gnudi from his Cooks Italy book - never heard of them before but thought they sounded yum - ricotta balls in tomato sauce. Such a messy faff, they worked ok but nobody in the fam liked them and after a few balls they were really quite sickly.

I never mastered pavalova or tried much to be honest but nigellas chocolate one is fabulous. Mine turn out the size of a small planet though
www.nigella.com/recipes/chocolate-raspberry-pavlova

I once spent a whole day, or that's what it felt like, making a mega batch of beetroot beanburgers for my newly veggie DC. A ton of beetroot had to be baked, cooled, peeled and grated. Which took bloody forever and left my hands looking like I'd committed several gruesome murders. Then a ton of other veg also had to be peeled, baked, chopped and mixed with the bleeding beetroot and various rare and freshly ground spices. The recipe invited the cook to test fry the mixture at various points in order to adjust the ingredients and seasoning. Which I did. Many times.
They still tasted like earth.
I bagged them up and willed them to die of freezer burn.

@underneaththeash as someone who's visited artisanal porchetta makers in Italy I think somethings are best left to the professionals.
But my god it's good when it's done well ❤️

Sourdough....gloopy, flat, and the entire kitchen covered in stickiness.

Spanikopita. Looks amazing, takes a load of faff and then tastes vastly underwhelming

To make your macaroni cheese really tasty add a teaspoon or two of dijon mustard to the cheese sauce, plus a shake of cayenne pepper. Once you have put cheese on top to brown sprinkle with salt and pepper, then brown under grill. Very tasty.

Jamie’s gravy, yet again. I will never bother again. This year we had Asda extra special gravy granules with meat juices and a slug of wine and no one noticed.

The problem with Jamie's gravy is the star anise, it just doesn't go in gravy.
My daughter hates that flavour in anything also.

Gravlax - curing a slab of salmon in salt, sugar and dill. Slimy result and, just no.

Yes, I agree about Jamie's gravy. I've been doing it for years and it makes amazing gravy but I have never used the star anise.

It takes about five minutes to make properly delicious gravy from meat juices in a pan. I don't see why anyone would spend 2 hours making Jamie Oliver's, it's absolutely ridiculous.

For those struggling with scones, this recipe is really easy and produces the best scones ever IMO.

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/buttermilk-scones