Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Are They Just Snobs?

I like to get recipes off of allrecipes.com, more so than cooks.com. You can put in a list of ingredients and non-ingredients and pick a recipe from there. There seem to be multiple choices for the popular recipes so you will get a I, II, III, IV... version of the same dish. Nice, because then you can pick and choose what will work for you.

But I'm wondering who these people are that comment on the site. Are they food critics? Are they chef's in training? Do they work for Rachel Ray or Emeril? OR, are they just snobs? Women (I've never read a man's comment) who have too much time on their hands to experiment with recipes and criticize others. Geez. Very few comments don't include a suggestion on how to make the dish better, and I don't feel like it is said to be helpful, mostly critical. Sure you added onion, but maybe the author has picky eaters that don't like that texture. I'd imagine that, if I were making a dish that typically has onion in it, I would add it if my family liked it.

Where does this rant come from you ask? Beef Stroganoff. It's Bill's favorite and I wanted to make it for Father's Day. The traditional version that we both grew up on was called "S.O.S" by my father and uncle. They both served in the military and this dish was served often. As a child, I thought SOS stood for "Save Our Ship" but didn't really question why you would name a food that. Yes, I'm a little naive since neither of them were in the navy. Later, I found out it really meant, "SH-- on a Shingle." Yikes! Ground beef with cream of mushroom soup, served on a piece of (inevitably) burnt toast. Not so yum. I thought I could do better so the search began.

I stopped my search at the second recipe I found on allrecipes.com. It fit the bill because it used real beef and could be done in the slow cooker, which I love. The ingredients were in my house, and it had a 4 1/2 star rating. Then I checked out some of the comments. The first 3 people gave it a 5 star rating, but all had 9 changes to the recipe which just about doubled the ingredient list. One of them even said that original recipe would have been 1 star worthy, but with the changes it was fabulous. What the heck? Who are these people? Snobs I tell ya, cooking snobs.

4 comments:

Bill said...

My question is, "How much Beef Stroganoff is too much?" It was the best I have ever had! I had my fare share, and if Helena would have let me, I would have picked up the serving spoon and finished off what was left in the slow cooker. But, no, she compelled me to stop and leave it for leftover lunches. And there is enough left over for a couple of lunches. Then I had to get up from the table. I don't remember gravity being so strong! Awesome dinner babe!

M said...

I haven't been to Cooks.com but I agree there are some snobs on Allrecipes.com. I try not to read the comments if I can help it. I mean really the third lady's name on there is PieHole. Maybe she should just shut hers. hehe

Jaylee Draney said...

I've also wondered why people can't just follow the recipe as given. The commenters are always saying something like "yeah, I didn't have tomatoes, so I used salsa and it turned out great". I don't understand why people can't just follow the recipe as given, comment on that, and then add their own version to the site. I follow recipes to a tee because I can't afford for the dinner to turn out tasting like S.O.S.

H said...

Funny Jaylee, I could have written that ficticious comment you just wrote. I can't stand following a recipe to a tee, which is probably why I end up with S.O.S quite often. No wonder I stay out of the kitchen!

Marie, I didn't even notice "piehole". That's hilarious! Hmm, what would my cooking name be?