Ongoing Notes
How to Tell if an Online Recipe Is Bullshitting You
websites like Allrecipes are full of dishes where the author took someone else's photograph, whether that be a stock photo or real cook's, and basically improvised the recipe. recipes on Betty Crocker's website mainly exist as a way to advertise their products and were never tested. if you've ever followed a recipe perfectly and had the results look absolutely nothing like the picture, that's probably why. this has been happening long before generative AI was a thing and you can fall victim to it regardless of how good you are at spotting AI recipes/images. so, how can you know when something's bullshitting you before you waste your ingredients and feel disappointed by the results?
I've realized that, while the massive wall of text before a recipe card is shown is annoying, it's actually really important in determining whether the recipe is legitimate or not. a recipe that has multiple photos beyond the preview image and shows pictures for every step of the instructions is likely a recipe that works. these recipes are going to be on someone's personal cooking blog or the site of a small independent business. if it's on a website where anyone can submit recipes, an inexperienced cook has almost no way of knowing that it won't work until it doesn't. if it's on a website for a big company, the point of the recipe is to get you to buy their specific brand of flour or whatever and they don't actually give a shit about whether it works or not.
sometimes, a recipe isn't complete bullshit but still doesn't come out the way you thought it would. if you got it from one of the more legit sources I mentioned above, it's important to take into account that it's written by someone that has a lot of cooking experience and often doesn't consider people that don't have any intuitive understanding of cooking. they assume that you have all ingredients measured out in advance, so if you overcook something on the stove because you were measuring out ingredients while it was already hot in the pan, that's why. they have very sharp knives and know how to chop vegetables with a lot of precision, quickly. they know to spoon and level ingredients like flour rather than scooping with the measuring cup directly, even when they don't tell you to spoon and level it (you should always do that btw). they know what role every ingredient plays in their recipes, so they know how to correct it when they've accidentally used too much of one or not enough of another without measurements or additional instructions.
there is also a chance that they did take an inexperienced cook into account, but those kinds of instructions are usually the section with step-by-step pictures... yes, right below where they talked about where they were during 9/11. it's important to remember that a real person wrote these recipes, even if the stories they tell above them aren't always relevant or exist mostly to create ad space. at the end of the day, the best way to avoid a bullshit recipe is to confirm that someone wrote it based on food they've actually made for their loved ones and read the instructions the way they intended for them to be read.
two videos I recommend if you want to understand why recipes online are Like That are i actually read the essay before the recipe, here's why by Answer in Progress and Debunking Pine Needle Soda, a Medical SCAM & flat cookie hacks by How To Cook That (just the first half of the video).