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!)

Anything with aubergines in (but that’s because I truly hate them) except for baba ganoush.

I have to disagree with all those that say Thai food. The "World kitchen:Thailand" book has recipes that beat any jar/takeaway/restaurant any day. You won't get better unless you go to the country itself.

Sourdough bread on the other hand - meh. If you want it, buy it. It always goes flat and mingin for me

Anything pasta related in the slow cooker, always bland and soggy. Should have learned with the lasagne but went on to attempt macaroni cheese. There's a lot of cheese to be wasted in an inedible slow cooker macaroni cheese

SuperLoud I’ve not tried that particular recipe but I do like her recipes generally so I will give it a go. May as well, I still have nearly 2kg of VWG to use up...

VeganCow yes, I’ve done that one - definitely one of the better recipes I’ve tried. I could still taste the gluten until I drowned it in Chinese curry sauce and just used a little with mostly veggies. DP loved it and had it plain straight from the fridge in sandwiches, in salads etc.

Nadiya's latest cookbook has a recipe for a pasta bake with spaghetti hoops in it. I thought I'd give it a go as it sounded easy and her flavours are usually good. It was awful - overcooked soggy pasta. Even the kids wouldn't eat it.

Humous. Never as good as shop bought.

@wowfudge thanks for the link to that macaroni cheese. I am V. excited to try that; I've never managed to make one that tastes amazing and even the most expensive ready made ones are hit and miss. So sad as it's literally one of my favourite things!

Ham in coke is disgusting,no need to cook a perfectly nice meat in sugary crap. Blerk.

I made strawberry cheesecake for DD this Christmas. I thought she would love it, as she adores strawberries and loves soft cheese. She immediately declared it 'blergh!' and refused to eat it. DP also declined. So i felt obliged to eat the damn thing on my own and now i never want to see another cheesecake ever in my life.

A 'tropical' Christmas cake which had the addition of slightly different and more interesting dried fruit. I gave myself a blister chopping mango strips, made the cake, dutifully fed it rum for weeks. It was disgusting.

I can do amazing things with lasagna, macaroni cheese, hams and my Indian curries are amazing.

Humous and breads are my downfalls.

Hummus, definitely. I've tried many times & sadly bought is much better. If anyone knows a failsafe way if making hummus like the Sabra one, let me know. It's the closest to what we had in Cyprus

Another vote for Nigella’s ham in coke. Cooked huge ham and had to throw it out.£££

DH is a self confessed food ponce and has the patience of a saint apart from in traffic jams after several tries (and fails) of making his own pasta he gave up and gave the pasta machine away. The funny thing was that DS had "helped " make the failed pasta and was so proud when we served it, no-one had the heart to tell him we had actually binned it and used normal shop bought pasta instead!!

Homemade bagels.
various recipes said how easy it was to make, they all sank to the bottom of the Dutch oven.
Wasted so much flour and bagel seeds mix, never again!

Ages ago, a leg of lamb in some fancy red wine marinade.
A lot of faff, esp. when I had guests, and honestly not as nice as plain roast lamb which you just bung in the oven.
Never again.

Nowadays I reserve any fancy dishes, i.e. involving a lot of faff/umpteen different ingredients/both, for eating out, where I’m paying someone else for all the time and faff.

Pleased to see the comments about ham in Coke!

Always sounded vile (and gimmicky) to me.

I've made loads of curries, spent hours and they all tasted bland.

Weirdly I make the slimming world chicken tikka masala now but with much less stock and a couple of added spices and it's bloody lovely. My friend made it for me and I loved it. 😂

Stollen.

If I’d made a few I could have built a house with them. Brick solid.

Ham in coke always goes down well here eating it in a sandwich right now

I can't get to grips with pastry, it never sticks together, but it always sticks to the board!

I also made macaroni cheese for years and every time the sauce would go slightly curdled and thin - I thought that that was how it was meant to be! Turns out I'd misinterpreted the recipe several times as I'd memorised it, in a kind of Chinese whispers in my head!

lots of curries just don't seem to work.
the 'ultimate' sticky toffee pudding on bbc good food was vile - so black treacley yuck.
nigella cakes have never worked for me.

@NewName54321 I agree with you about bread made in the bread maker; it turns out like a breeze block. Have you tried using the machine on the dough setting and baking in the oven? It's much nicer.

@PeriwinkleBlueIrises oh god glad it’s not just me! I make a nice cake but scones I just cannot do! I find myself drawn to eating them at cafes because I can’t do a decent one at home. Including a Nigella recipe labelled ‘foolproof’ - still dry and just odd!

@Knittedfairies my mother in law uses a bread maker all the time and thinks her bread is amazing but I don’t like it - too dry and dense and the kids struggle to eat it toasted as it’s so crusty/dry

Low carb peanut butter cookies. Expensive ingredients and, although they looked right, the taste was nothing like a biscuit.

I’ve come to the conclusion that ANY food pretending to be another is just wrong and that I’m far better off eating the ingredients with as little manipulation as possible.