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!)

@Mustbetimeforachange

This is a recipe from a thread a while back for making hummus and I'm not kidding, it is really really good. But we do take the skins off the chickpeas, which is laborious. It makes loads! (This isn't my recipe, I copy and pasted from the thread)

To get really smooth hummus you need to boil a tin of chickpeas for 10 minutes so they get soft. Drain but reserve the liquid then slip the skins off each chickpea by pinching them at the pointed end and throw the skins away. In a food processor mix 4 tablespoons of lemon juice and 4 tablespoons of tahini and blend until it goes fluffy. Add the warm chickpeas in 2 additions scraping the sides of the bowl inbetween. Add 2 fat cloves of pureed garlic, 1 tsp salt, pinch of cumin and 2 tablespoons of the chickpea liquid then let the food processor run for about 5 minutes until it's smooth and creamy, finally add 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, blend and it's done. It freezes really well too.

Slimming World weetabix cake was absolutely hideous.... oh and the banana pancakes were vile too

LauraMipsom care to share your seitan recipe? I'm still a novice and mine always comes out a bit like a sea sponge

Thank you @Roussette. I'll give it one last try!

Slimming World weetabix cake was absolutely hideous.... oh and the banana pancakes were vile too

Ewww,that sounds like when my bf and tried to make rice crispie cakes but had no rice crispies so we used Weetabix instead,it was GRIM!!

I can never make an Indian curry as good as the ones from a curry house - which is a shame as where we live they have Indian food but it's not like the curries we get back in the UK. They are lovely curries but they're not what we crave on a Friday night! Unfortunately I can't cook a decent Indian curry at all, no matter what I do it seems to just taste of tomatoes!
I can also never coat anything in breadcrumbs properly - it always turns into an eggy floury clump so any recipe that involves breading and deep frying I just don't bother with.
Disagree with others about ham in coke - we love it here!

Those struggling with curries and buying takeaway instead should buy 'the curry secret'. It's a tiny little book, but the recipes really do taste like what you get from the takeaway. There's a base sauce that you make (which you can freeze) and after that the individual curries are really easy.

DS made some disappointing hummus recently and it knocked his confidence a bit, as he's just learning to cook. I'm glad it's not just him.

My worst fails were: rhubarb chutney with the texture of glue that made the house stink of old socks; rock hard wholemeal bread that tasted of stale beer and a claggy, puddingy carrot cake with cream cheese frosting that went mouldy after two days in the fridge.

The carrot cake was from a newspaper recipe and cost a lot to make. These days with online recipes, there's usually someone in the comments who will warn you if a recipe doesn't work or tastes bad, hence fewer disasters in recent years.

Nigeria's polenta cake, it was exactly like a collapsed sandcastle I'd poured lemon juice over.

Nigella even, I'm sure there's lots of lovely recipes from Nigeria.
Bastard autocorrect.

Nigella’ Holiday Hotcake. Sounds so delicious. Is so disgusting. Like a horrible, claggy, cough mixture- flavoured damp sponge.

Also Nigel Slater’s salt baked chicken. It’s really salty Guess I should have known from the name. I ended up having to wash the cooked chicken in the sink before serving it.

And agree about curries. They never turn out like a curry house curry. I’m cooking one right now for tomorrow. It’s nice. But not as nice as the curry house version.

@WooMaWang Thanks for the suggestion, we tried the Curry Guy book which does a similar thing of making a base sauce to then build on to make different curries, but after an entire afternoon doing this and making different spice mixes, we tasted they curry and they were very meh. Was not worth the effort! So I'm officially giving up and just going to eat a truly insane amount takeaway curries next time we're back in the UK. Seems reasonable to me!

Lasagne. Bloody faff but my children love it.

Any kind of roulade/swiss roll is a whole load of mess and faff and has never gone right for me.

A slow cooker veg lasagne. It held together, texture was great. It just Tasted of nothing.

I don't think my curries are authentic mostly because they don't have a ton of ghee in them, and are a bit healthier, but I can make pretty nice, fresh tasting curry.

I do a fairly authentic Katsu though.

Anything involving batter. It's my nemesis.

I tend not to use recipes apart from when baking as I'm a pretty decent 'by sight' cook.

However I have accumulated number of recipe books over the years mainly for inspiration, and whilst I sometimes enjoy watching Jamie on the telly his written down recipes are often absolutely laughable.

It's like he's sat down and just guesstimated times and quantities and no one has ever actually tried the written down recipe out before printing it in a book.

I feel sorry for people out there who think they can't cook because they are sticking to the letter of a doomed to fail JO recipe.

Yes you are right, some recipes are laughable. For batter you need James Martin.

Basically anything involving butter as well.

Hairy Bikers for pies.

Nigella for chocolate cake.

I couldn't make a good sponge cake until someone bought me the first Bake Off book. Recipe one. It's all in the whisking.

Good Food recipes are usually reliable. And anyway, you can see the ratings and comments underneath.

Nigellas polenta cake, it was exactly like a collapsed sandcastle I'd poured lemon juice over.

Gawd..I made this..yes it just sunk..was an hour and half in the oven..was gutted..I’d made three lovely cakes before that

There’s a bbc polenta, pistachio and pink grapefruit recipe on bbc website which is really nice
I just use a bit less coconut oil

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1581636/james-martins-yorkshire-puds

Have you tried this pastabest?

I'm usually pretty successful as a cook and baker, but I just cannot master ANYTHING which contains either yeast or gelatin. Yeast just sits there all sullen and only manages a sulky rise, so therefore tastes like baked breeze block and gelatin either won't set or sets like a big wobbly rock.

I know my limitations now and refuse to even try to use either of these things. Oddly enough, both of my sons make EXCELLENT bread, so it's not a genetic thing.

I'm glad that I'm not the only one who thinks that Jamie's gravy isn't worth the effort. I have made a lot of Jamie Oliver recipes and they have been fabulous, but this one is just not worth it.

I don't understand why people can't make tasty hummus though. IMO home made is far superior to shop bought. You just need to taste and tweak it as you go along.

I don't make Christmas cake as I'm not fond of it and I can't make one small enough.

And this is the one you want for pancakes.

www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/basicpancakeswithsuga_66226

I'm not fond of Delia Smith recipes generally but this is great.

Also Nigella for American pancakes.

I also made a nice beer batter for fish, I'll see if I can find it.

I’m making df and gf chocolate orange trifle for tomorrow
Watch this space
Never done it this way before
Even making the bloody cake.