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 have a cheap bread maker, and the bread it makes is delicious.

Jamie Oliver is to cooking what Ed Sheeren is to lyric composition - utterly overrated.

It's like JO has sat down, picked a basic, easy-to-get right recipe and added a ton of obscure ingredients and of course, pomegranate seeds (wtf is with all the pomegranate?) and randomly changed the measurements and voila! A cook book!

A risotto recipe of Colin Spencer. I normally love risotto. This had white wine in it and was dry as a bone!

My husband is an excellent cook and uses many of Jamie Oliver's books very successfully.

But risotto should always have white wine in it @Deathraystare!

@Fizzypoo - so far, so good! The cake has come out of the bundt tin cleanly, and looks good. It's in the fridge now, waiting for the final bit, which is the salted caramel sauce. (And that's easy to make, as it's ready made sauce just loosened with a bit of milk).

I don't normally like Yottam's recipes as I think they're overly complicated and use too many obscure ingredients - but this one looked lovely. Fingers crossed it's a good as it looks!

I would have agreed about crumpets till about a year ago when I finally had success after years of failure but I can't remember which recipe I used now.

I love Jamie Oliver's make ahead gravy but never add star anise to it.

I will never try gammon in coke, it sounds absolutely rank.

My most recent facepalm was cherry clafoutis. I took a spoonful and remembered that I hate eggy, wobbly, custardy puddings.

It would never occur to me to make crumpets. You're all mad!!

In defence of bread makers, we've got a standard Panasonic model which churns out really great loaves in 4 hours. The secret, I think, is in the recipes you use - the white bread recipe in the book supplied was bland but then I tried the one on the side of the Carr's flour bag (secret ingredient: a tbsp of skimmed milk powder and a tbsp sugar) and blimey, the difference.

My husband is an excellent cook and uses many of Jamie Oliver's books very successfully

Hi, Jools!

Nigellas brined turkey. It was damp and tasted of nothing but salt. We hacked it to bits to fit it into the food waste bin and had a veggie Christmas dinner that year

Also Nadiya Hussain's chocolate, crisp and peanut butter tart. It sounded amazing and looked stunning when she cooked it on tv. My mouth is actually watering as I think about it. So many wonderful ingredients - what could possibly go wrong? I ended up with a cartwheel sized tart with the texture of a breeze block. All those delicious things but we would have needed an electric saw to cut it. I actually had to take a hammer to it to break it up small enough for the food recycling.

The bread maker was such a disappointment - the texture of bread, the taste of the bread, the massive great hole in the bottom of loaves where the paddle sticks in, meaning you can only get about four intact slices. Although there was a rich fruit bread from the recipe leaflet that was quite nice, and I made a few times.

Rapidly became used for pizza dough only, and when I discovered Dan Lepard's 30 second kneading method, I abandoned the bread maker entirely.

Same for slow cooker - slow cooker meat is not as nice as slow braised meat, and as I mainly work from home, I just didn't need it. Useful for Christmas puddings though, but I got rid anyway.

Curry sauce. No matter what I try, it always tastes awful.

Someone once recommended filo pastry mince pies to me. They were awful but thankfully not much time wasted with a packet of filo and a jar of mincemeat.

I really did try with the bread maker, several different recipes and types of flour. All turned in to a barely edible brick which I couldn’t slice.

My biggest single disappointment was last New Year’s Eve. Spent hours preparing a huge pot of pulled pork, followed a recipe to the letter. It ended up a huge pile of inedible slop, a weird sweet and sour sauce with horrible textured sloppy meat. The whole lot went in the bin and we had beans on toast.

Delia is great for really terrible or new cooks. If you're lacking in confidence, the fact that she tells you EXACTLY how to do it is brilliant. If you're more experienced or instinctive then I think Nigel Slater is better.

I'm surprised at the number of people having trouble with bread makers - my standard Panasonic one reliably turns out OK loaves. The only time I had failures is when I used old yeast - you need the individual packets not the big tub as the big pots go off quite quickly. Admittedly, sourdough tastes better, but it does take more effort than the bread maker.

FatherRabulaConundrum my breadmaker recipe book includes skimmed milk powder and a tablespoon of sugar. The bread is fantastic.

MadisonAvenue I think home made curry sauce can be a little dull because most recipes ask for 1/2 teaspoon here and 1 teaspoon there of spices. Given that the spices in most people's spice cupboard might not be as fresh as those in an Indian restaurant I can see why many home made curries lack flavour. I usually double up on spices or grind my own to get maximum flavour.

Clafoutis is disgusting. Yorkshire pudding with cherries in.

Clafoutis is delicious

Beetroot risotto 🤢🤢🤢

Creme caramel. I was like sweet scrambled eggs.

Delia Smith Parmesan parsnips. Tasted like vomit.

Parsnips taste like vomit anyway. Vile vegetable - only fit for cattle fodder IMO.

I love crème caramel.

Fairydust
My daughter hates beetroot but earlier this year I made a beetroot and red wine risotto and she loved it.
Not from a recipe though, I just made it up as I went along.

Mine was polenta. I was sure I would love it, never having had it, and followed a Hugh F-W vegetarian recipe. First mistake was ordering it from Amazon because Tesco didn't have any in stock (l live in the sticks, so limited shopping). I misread the amount and instead of buying one 500g pack, ended up with 6. Never mind. I followed the recipe faithfully but it needed constant stirring for ages and ages until cooked and despite my efforts, stuck to a non stick pan. There was far too much of it and by the time I had added the parmesan there was enough to feed an army. I then had to spread it out, let it go cold, then slice and fry, to serve with a ragout of mushrooms. One mouthful of polenta and I decided I didn't like it - it was just boring and the texture is strange. Is it just me? Should it really be delicious? I never cooked it again, it cost me a fortune for a simple meal which I couldn't eat, and I eventually threw away all the bags of polenta when I discovered them, cowering and forgotten out of date at the back of the cupboard.
If anyone has an EASY polenta recipe, I'm willing to try it one more time!

@longear I like polenta porridge. Boil polenta in water with cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. When it starts to come together add condensed milk. It's bloody lovely.

You can buy polenta ready cooked in blocks, heat it up with butter in a frying pan, another in parmesan.