Let me take this opportunity to complain about online recipes these days. Everything is inflated with a ridiculous volume of unwanted fluff content that makes the recipes more difficult to use.
Like, I just want to know the ingredients for Beef Stroganoff and in what order to assemble them. What I get is a book that starts with, “Beef Stroganoff started as the ancestral celebration meal for peasant steppe farmers…yadda…yadda…yadda.”
This is because of everyone’s favorite topic SEO
Google’s fault. Their prevalence and search ranking decisions.
edit: I dropped the"entirely" from “Google’s fault” because I guess it’s a decision by the platforms and without too, even if the alternative means less to no discoverability on Google.
That’s how Thug Kitchen started. To cut through the crap but also be funny at the same time
I recommend picking up an analog, wood pulp-based copy of The Joy of Cooking. Pretty much any classic western dish is in there and you don’t need to worry about AI slop.
I also love my copy of The Food Lab by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. That one is a little more global, and has I think 500+ pages of recipes with minimal irrelevant anecdotes.
Don’t worry bloggers, soon Ai will have affiliate links and SEO and people will move on to the next new thing until it becomes a soulless money Hussle.
I’m pretty sure that’s already happening.
It crushes my soul that I work hard every day and make less than an AI bot running dozens of websites and youtube channels despite churning out garbage.
…So are we going back to print cookbooks? Published before 2024?
Honestly, that feels like the practical solution.
Wandering through to mention that your local library almost certainly has a collection of cookbooks spanning decades, and, depending on your area, might even have stuff tied specifically to your region. Take the book, photocopy the recipes you’re interested in, return it, get to cooking!
America’s Test Kitchen. All you need. Recipes for nerds.
100%.
But I was pondering more what the general population might do. People are going to figure out slop recipes don’t work, but the question is what’s the next most accessible thing to replace it with?
my mother has something like 8000 cookbooks she’s collected from the 1930s to around 2015.
I think I’m set.
Heh, so does mine.
All our parents’ book hoarding may end up saving us. And the internet, if they become the new standard?
Until they fake author or print dates.
You joke, but that’s horrifying.
This is already an SEO technique, apparently, and I could see Amazon book sellers finding a way to fudge it: https://yoast.com/help/date-appears-search-results/
Wayyy ahead of you, I have a collection of vintage cookbooks that is growing by the day! Muahahahha :D
Recipe blogs were already a problem.
Once you do enough cooking, you start to realize that most recipes can be rendered down to a few basic components and combinations … and it all depends on what region of the world you’re in, what culture, what foods are available and what you grew up with.
Cooking, preparing, cutting and serving a turkey/chicken is fairly simple if you stick to just the basics … and use a digital thermometer to monitor the internal temperatures
Gravy is a bit of a trick but do it enough times and you get the hang of it … if all else fails, have a packet of instant gravy mix handy (it makes gravy in about ten minutes)
Everything else with the Thanksgiving dinner is basically just boiled vegetables … if you plan on anything more complicated than this, then you are spending the entire day in the kitchen.
Dessert can be very simple or very complicated … depending on how masochistic you want to be … but it’s best to prepare the sweet stuff a day or two ahead of time.
Whatever you do … stay in the kitchen and pay attention to everything that is cooking, baking, frying or boiling … if it’s roasting for hours, stay nearby and be ready to act on it if anything changes or goes bad … in your off time when nothing needs to be done in the kitchen, wash the dishes and clean the space, because you’ll be making a mess again as soon as you start processing food again anyway.
If you’re not cooking, you’re cleaning. If you’re not cleaning, you’re cooking.
Thermometer! Always a thermometer! Not even meats, it’s great for breads, and also temping oil for deep frying.
This year, my family decided on a big get together. I have no idea who all is coming.
My plan is to start Wednesday with cranberry sauce so it has time to sit in the fridge overnight.
Thursday morning I have it all planned out…
2 loaves of banana bread (350°)
Scalloped potatoes (350°)
3 loaves of bread, white, medium wheat, dark wheat (425° oven, internal to 180°)
Sweet potatoes with toasted pecan topping. (stovetop +450° in the oven for toasting).If I start by 10:00 it should all be done by 4:00 which gives me time to clean up, pack up, and get to the house.
Can I come too? Do you have room for uninvited guests? I won’t talk to anyone or bother anyone … I’ll just eat :)
LOL - Hey, if you’re willing to help haul food, sure! 😉 Seriously, loading and unloading the car I think will be the trick…
don’t forget to add the lye to your gravy this year. it makes it way less lumpy.
use it in a 1:1 ratio with the amount of water you use.
🎶Why you lyen’🎶
I just saw someone repost AI Slop as a list of “classic Thanksgiving crockpot recipes”. It included various ingredients such as:
- 3 lb bonciles torkey roast
- 1/cup starch
- 1 ln ctrioin steak
- 2 tsp bosher salt
- 1 smail onion
- 1 1/Z cup beet broth
Honestly, it got me angrier than it should have, but it’s a sign of the times. It wasn’t verified by the poster and it’s just clearly AI Slop.
Somehow read that as a snail onion
Yep, that’s it. I didn’t feel the need to propogate its presence. Mmmm, steak lips. And my favorite other dish made from cranberro sauce and crango juice. Also, no temperature or time at all. Just… Boil for hours?
Instead of AI slop, that looks to me like someone that doesn’t speak the language hurriedly transcribing it from paper, getting paid by the recipe, and knowing nobody is going to verify anything. AI knows how to spell turkey and kosher.
Not in an image it doesn’t
True, but… I mean… who would try to generate something like that as an image? … I take that back. I’m sure somebody would.
I considered that, but decided it was AI throwing words together like “garlicpper”. Yes, a chat LLM knows “turkey”, but an image generator doesn’t. I didn’t mention it was a graphic. Another commenter has posted it, so you can be your own judge.
You can get good 2nd hand cook books for insanely cheap (compared to new) from op shops/thrift. It’s one of a few things that are still decent value on the 2nd hand market.
Don’t let AI generate recipes. Recipes are generally tried, tweaked a little, tried again, etc until it’s consistently reproducible, and well good. The AI recipes I’ve tried get proportions wrong, skips steps, has stuff cooked in the wrong order, etc. There is no trial and error or iterations.
I mean, you could take the same logic and apply it to many things AI generated…
Well… I guess you’re right … dang. 🤯
I tried making roasted plantains the other week after getting a ridiculous deal on 40 pounds of them. ($6!) I’ve only ever made chips before, so I looked up a video recipe with a great looking finished product. By the time they had finished baking, they were still basically raw, and I had to up the temp to something reasonable. If a recipe came out on or after 2023, I’m ignoring it forever.
Plantains are a fickle plant. Ripeness is a huge factor, and that aside, some are just fibery/less sweet and don’t cook as fast.
The recipe was bunk from the get go, but I wasn’t certain until after trying it. 90c for 1 hour, and then 120c for 15 minutes with very ripe plantains. I thought they knew something I didn’t. I’ve learned to be intensely skeptical of online recipes.
Cooking at 200c for 15 minutes flipping, and cooking for another 15-25 minutes was universally decent
Maybe controversial, but if I ask AI for a recipe I get one. If I search for something and go to a website there’s a fucking novel to trawl through before I find the actual recipe. Even then it’s in weird units half the time.
90% of the time I’m only looking for advice on a single aspect. How long to cook X at Y? Can I put X in Y? List required ingredients. etc.
Just makes sense to add gemini to the search and get the answer I’m looking for immediately.
Yeah I hear you there. Quick recipes are the singular reason I find AI useful.
Watch the bad substitutions in the comments actually fix the recipes now
Slop it up!
enjoy your dinner with glue, rocks and rat poison!
Maybe if I could find a recipe for a simple corn bread without a trilogy worth of lore about the writer’s grandmother, they wouldn’t be in such a predicament. In terms of AI strengths, informational efficiency is paramount. I can think of fewer things I can search for with more worthless gunk tacked to it than a recipe.
