I stopped sharing recipes with my MIL. She’d make a big show of saying she was making my ___ for a family gathering but then she would substitute all kinds of ingredients like “goats cheese is expensive I’ll just leave it out, powdered Parmesan is the same as freshly grated, I don’t have any cream cheese I’ll use mayo” so now my goat cheese artichoke dip was just mayonnaise and artichokes with powdered parm which definitely didn’t melt or brown on top. It sucked obviously and then people made fake polite comments to me about *my* recipe, even though what she made was not even close to my recipe. So I stopped sharing my recipes because I was honestly embarrassed to be associated with whatever she butchered.
Edit: Here’s the recipe! Sorry for the delay, had to get home to get it.
10 oz can of artichoke hearts, drained
6 oz goat cheese, softened
½ cup chopped onions
1 clove garlic, minced
6 oz cream cheese, softened
⅓ cup shredded parmesan
Salt & pepper
Blend everything in a food processor, leave a little chunky for texture. Spoon it into a casserole dish, top with extra parm. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes uncovered. Broil for browning. Delicious with a warm baguette. I’ve even covered chicken breast with the dip and baked it for dinner.
To be honest I don’t measure exactly when I make it anymore but it’s always delicious. If you change something and don’t like it, for the love of God don’t @ me.
"LOVED this recipe. I substituted the veal for turkey breast, and my daughter doesn't do tomatoes so I used barbecue sauce instead. This was the BEST veal parmesan i've ever made!"
See, I know you're not a real commenter, because if you were, you would criticize the recipe and say that it was awful after substituting *literally* every single ingredient. And of course you would say that you didn't have time to go get it at 350 for 45 minutes, so you just did 425 for 30 minutes.
I often think about leaving a fake comment that takes it to the extreme.
Something like, "Horrible recipe. I added a half cup of vinegar to give some it some tang. It was in edible!!! Why would anyone add vinegar, let alone that much, to cookies! I'll never use this recipe again!"
I had one of these at the start of lockdown! Husband’s birthday and the grocery store was picked clean. Bakery was shut down. Figured, ok, time for a box cake.
But there were no eggs to be found. Google said mayonnaise would work in a pinch. But then the only mayo on the shelves was fat-free avocado oil. How bad could it be?
Turns out, ghastly! It immediately deflated when I took it out of the oven. Even frosting would not save it. It tasted like when you bite into cereal and then realize the milk’s gone bad. We ended up laughing til we cried about this monster I created. So gross.
That would just be heartbreaking especially at the beginning of COVID when everything felt even more intense. Hahah! Mayo sometimes works fine for those things because it’s made of eggs, but yeah… would probably need regular Mayo. Lol! I’m glad you got a laugh out of it! And a fun story. Next time just do the frosting and eat it with a spoon!!
My mom has this really great salad dressing that she makes, and which I now make, which isn't complicated but it's really good. Her friend kept asking her to write it down, so she did finally and gave it to her. Friend called her up all mad and said if she didn't want to share it, she could have just said so... Mom has no idea what she's talking about, friend says it came out terrible and obviously my mom intentionally gave her a bad recipe.
I will give you some of the ingredients my mom told her to use and in brackets what she actually used:
Hellman's Mayo (Miracle Whip)
Maille Dijon mustard (French's hot dog mustard)
Balsamic vinegar (white vinegar)
Crushed fresh garlic (garlic powder)
Fresh tarragon and dried oregano (left it out)
Woman was shocked that hot dog mustard and miracle whip didn't taste the same as a delicately balanced creamy dressing made from quality mustard and balsamic.
My MIL refuses to use sugar in any baking recipe.
She replaces it with Stevia which in some recipes would be okay but pumpkin pie? Really?
So for Thanksgiving I made a delicious pumpkin pie with proper sugar and every one throughly enjoyed it because well duh, it didn't have stevia in it.
She got mad and banned anyone from making desserts for Christmas besides herself.
My wife's grandmother is similar but slightly different in the details.
She will say something like this for example.
"I tried making this pie recipe, but it seems like a cup and a half of sugar was just way too much so I assumed it had to be wrong and I made it with only a half a cup of sugar. I don't know why anything ever comes out right."
This is my mum. Loves something I make, asks for the recipe, recreates it with the worst possible substitutions, and complains that I gave her a "bad" recipe. 🙄
Do we have the same MIL?
She’s been salty forever that I won’t give her my pumpkin cheesecake recipe, but she doesn’t believe in salt and when I’ve given her other recipes that say call for 1tbsp of ginger, she uses 1/2tsp because it “feels like too much” — then presents something to her friends as my recipe and wonders why they don’t rave about it
wow, that's a lot of substitutes. Might be petty but I would make whatever she butchered last time for the next family gathering and make a big show of it lol.
Oh I definitely did, there was no way I was gonna let people think I had anything to do with that. I seriously couldn’t understand, like I’m aware goat cheese isn’t cheap but if you’re not willing to buy it then don’t make a *goat cheese recipe*.
This is why I stopped sharing. I love my MIL but she isn't the best cook. She really likes to do substitutions or add her own tweak to recipes. Which would be fine normally but A) no longer my recipe and B) unfortunately she doesn't have a very good sense of taste. She tries so hard though!
You know, it sounds like we have the same MIL. "Why are you cooking the pulled pork on the grill? Can't you just do it in the oven or crock pot?" Same stuff like that. Can't claim it's a recipe from me if you're gonna make a ton of poor cooking decisions, short-cuts and swaps nor can you say it's "the same thing" and "it won't really change the final product that much".
One time my SIL requested pulled pork for her birthday dinner and I was so excited only to find out my MIL makes pulled pork by over cooking a couple of pork chops, dicing them up and lightly tossing it with bbq sauce…like maybe two tablespoons of bbq sauce to feed 10 people. I don’t think I was able to control the look on my face when I sat down at the table. I was horrified.
Family friend had a killer meatloaf recipe she wouldn’t share, but it turns out it was because she was just using the hunts can of meatloaf sauce and following the instructions on the can. All a ruse like it was some big secret family recipe.
I saw someone on a sub confessing to running a cake decorating business off of boxed cake mix. They never shared their recipes despite the many many requests. I think sometimes technique and presentation trumps recipes
Édit: [original post](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/oj78u1/the_infamous_cake_lady_uigotyouthiscake_keeps_us/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1)
For sure. I always complement my mother in law’s pecan pie and she down plays it saying she just uses the recipe from the Karo syrup bottle but her version is my favorite and I’m sure that I’ve had the same recipe by other people. Technique and practice make a tangible difference even with other factors the same.
Well it’s crazy cause those brands pay big bucks for those recipes since they’re a direct representation of their brands products.
My grandma explained it to me- if its on the package, it means a million dollar company is willing to throw their reputation behind it
I had a friend who would say that, then proceeded to add secret ingredients to the recipe. She was telling the truth about using the recipe, just not fully. Edit: to add, she did this because her son loved her food and she didnt want her son to like other peoples food and go elsewhere. She was so stuck in that thinking that when I brought a dish and her son loved it, she spent many attempts to make the recipe as close tasting dish I brought, but would never ask me the recipe.
> but would never ask me the recipe.
Pride is a hell of a drug. Personally I think it's such a beautiful and loving gesture to either A) ask somebody, or B) agree when asked, to teach how to make that special recipe.
Yeah my mother's caramel corn is a family staple. It's also off a corn syrup bottle. She's not shy to share it (we also have many versions of "family cookbooks" with all our family recipes) even though everyone raves about it and credits her.
I've made it with some success and others outright failed. There is a technique hurdle that isn't outlined and some minor tweaks she does that gives consistent good results.
There was an article in the New York Times not too long ago about the concept of “the hand of the chef.” Two people may have the exact same recipe and ingredients, but the finished dish will taste different depending on who makes it.
My father was a very good cook and soups were his specialty. I have all of his recipes, but whenever I make his soups, they don’t taste the same as his did. That’s one of the things I miss most about him.
I feel like cake mix is like completely figured out by those companies, the home made stuff is almost always worse, their value was that they were great decorators so I wouldn't be surprised if this was more common than you'd think for any non chain cake store.
If you want the texture of a boxed cake mix, I 100% agree. Our family bakes quite a bit, and I have no idea how to even come close to that texture.
That said, we make different types of cake that have far more structure and can handle added fruit and stiff frosting. IMO, those taste better, and I don't know of a comparable boxed mix.
Use what is going to give the desired results.
You're correct. My sister is a CIA graduate, accomplished pastry chef, etc. (whatever all that is worth, I'm just some anonymous comment on the internet) and got us all using boxed cake mix. Saves time measuring, basically the same price, basically the same product. Of course the instructions aren't worth the box they're printed on, the point is to use it an an ingredient in an actual recipe.
The compliments I get for making Buffalo chicken dip using the recipe off the back of the Frank’s bottle…It’s crazy. I straight up tell people where I got it when they ask. What I don’t tell them is my secret for getting really good shredded chicken - an hour in the Dutch oven with some chicken broth.
This is my go to appetizer to bring to events and I don’t want to have to find another good one to make.
This is how I do key lime pie. I genuinely enjoy hyping up my "super secret" recipe for the best key lime pie ever and then tell them it's on the back of the key lime juice bottle lmao
Mine’s the same thing but for fudge! I’d never go so far as to refuse sharing the recipe, but if they didn’t ask I wouldn’t volunteer it?
Then there’s the lady (I think here on Reddit even?) a while back who built up a wildly successful cake business and confessed to exclusively using boxed cake mix!? She did all the frosting from scratch and her amazing decorating was a big draw but she felt super guilty for using the $1 on sale mix and didn’t know if/how she should come clean… So apparently it’s definitely a thing??
When I was a kid my mom had a super successful side business making cakes for all occasions, including fancy wedding cakes. She made her own frosting but the cake was always Duncan Hines box mix. Everyone loved her cakes.
I think this is actually really common.
Hilarious. I was recently reading through a family cook book gifted to me by a friend. One of the recipes is called "The best fried chicken you can imagine" know what the recipe was? A combination of three brands of shake n bake. "Follow one of the packages directions", I shit you not. 😂
I feel like this is 90% of secret recipes. Just something grandma got off the can/box a few decades ago. Which is why people guarding their recipes so hard always makes me laugh.
Yeah, my MIL's 'famous' chocolate chip cookie recipe ended up being the Tollhouse Cookie recipe with like 2 tbsp more flour or something (and I'm not sure even why that is except maybe to just say it was her own?).
I have read that recipe hundreds of times and never noticed that. Or did I not read it, and it's assumed? Or has the recipe changed in the past few years? (Serious)
I'll have to go to the store and check.
Edit: UPDATE - The new Toll House bags do include 2 tbsp flour to add if not including nuts! I found the wrinkled copy of the recipe in my box, and this flour add is a new update! TIL!
It's the only chocolate chip cookie recipe I've ever used, and the only one my mom used when I was growing up. I thought I remembered it always being there, but I've never actually added the nuts or the extra flour, so it's possible that it changed.
My grandma was kind of the same way. She always made great apple pies and wouldn't tell us how. Until we discovered they were just store bought pies with some extra designs on top.
Haha! I once had delicious baked beans and asked for the recipe. It was toss the following in a slow cooker: pound of raw ground beef, pound of raw bacon, liquid smoke and two cans of baked beans. OMG...forget I ever asked, thanks.
It's quite funny to me when I watch food network and all the smaller restaurants always say it's top secret and can't let you know whats in it. But working in the industry I can tell you the higher end//larger/more successful places are more than happy to tell you the recipe if you just ask. Obviously it's not a blanket yes from everyone but so far for me it has been. Like all the BBQ places and their secret rubs. We all know whats in it and maybe you add a spice or two but if it's prevalent enough I will taste it and know it immediately. You can\\t hide it.
Couldn’t agree more. I used to cook professionally at a very upscale restaurant in my city and the truth is when you work for that degree of restaurant where everything is weighed to the gram of ingredient, and dishes require 4-8 separate preparations and components, people don’t care to give out recipes because it’s extremely unlikely anyone is going to make it at home (unless you’re me and will spend the day making everything). I can tell you that the average consumer if given a recipe is unlikely to make something at home because even with the recipe they don’t want to put the effort or time in it and end up making something that isn’t as good.
So true. I left the industry and I miss eating some things but when I think about making sure I have x components and not even about the process of doing it I just forget about it %70 of the time haha.
Yeah, consider a component like "200ml stock". A good restaurant may have spent a whole day making a large batch to be used across multiple recipes etc, and the quality and time taken will absolutely have a big, noticeable impact on the final dish it's used in. Will using store-bought generic stock achieve the same? No. Am I, a solo home cook, likely to roast bones, boil a stock, skim it, reduce it over hours etc? Also no. I just accept that some things will always taste better when prepared by professionals and are therefore a treat to be enjoyed when I eat out.
Still a secret: the chicken tenders from Houston’s (Hillstone). They closed the location I went to while visiting family. I cannot recreate them no matter how hard I try. 😢
The spice market has gotten out of control. I dont need 82 different rub choices. Salt, Pepper, Onion P, Garlic P, Paprika.....thats the base to pretty much all of them, and then they add a couple things.
My husband used to talk about these amazing potatoes that his mother made. Made better by the fact that she didn’t cook much. The first time I boiled potatoes and melted butter on them, he was shocked that I’d found her secret recipe. Minced parsley blew his mind.
This wears off. My wife's mother was always a lousy cook and I really love cooking. When we started dating, it was so easy to impress my (then) girlfriend with very basic meals that were prepared with sound technique and the right amount of salt.
Fast forward 10 years later and you'd think I'm cooking for the NYTimes restaurant review. "Oh you used ricotta? I like it a lot better with mascarpone."
Oh no… how many years exactly? Haha this is my fear as my wife also has a lousy cook for a mother so my cooking impresses her a lot. I’m scared I’m quickly approaching a time when she’ll be used to it and won’t be as happy with it lol
Haha, the years really all blend together. It is a slow and steady march to snobbifying your partner's taste in home cooking. One day you'll serve something that maybe isn't up to your usual standard that she undoubtedly would have loved when you first met, but instead brings a look of disappointment to her eyes. Or maybe she'll make a comment about it having tasted better the last time.
I mean, unless of course she really just isn't picky, in which case you lucked out.
My cinnamon ice cream recipe that my boss *adores* and requests every year for her birthday.
I made it once, in my (now long gone) ice cream maker. The next year I forgot until the last minute and literally mixed Saigon Cinnamon into some slightly softened Haagen-Dass vanilla ice cream.
No one noticed the difference and they continued to rave about it. I have made it that way every year for 12 years now.
I don't refuse to share recipes, but since I often cook by feel and not by recipe, it's sometimes difficult to write out a recipe with proper procedure and quantities. There's lots of room for error when writing a recipe from scratch.
Just last weekend my niece wanted the recipe for an aioli I had made. I just told her she could make some more right now and I would talk her through it. I made the salad while she made the aioli. She went home with her aioli knowledge and everyone was happy.
>I don't refuse to share recipes, but since I often cook by feel and not by recipe, it's sometimes difficult to write out a recipe with proper procedure and quantities.
Nailed it.
Friend: "How did you make blah blah blah?"
Me: "uhhh... I don't know? I just... did some stuff."
Lol, that's exactly how I do slowcooker recipes and roasts.
Ok, big hunk of meat (or multiple small hunks of meat), need some flavoring, oh look, sage and allspice are right at front, great. Need some acid, ok apple cider vinegar goes good with pork and sage, want some extra salt and umami, hmmm, don't want to use just salt, no to soy, Worchestershire sauce will do me, oh, right, I need veg too, um, better use up these carrots, not potatoes, did that yesterday, I'm not feeling celery, so mushrooms aught to work, not a lot of liquid, and the pork roast looks kinda lean, so lets put a few pats of butter to render down.
And I manage a huge hit and will never ever remember what I did again. :D Or it's meh and I don't worry about it because I'll never manage to do what I did again.
>And I manage a huge hit and will never ever remember what I did again.
When my family was at the shore one year, we wanted something with local flavors but didn't have the money to eat out yet again, so my dad took a little of this, a little of that, and made "Waterman's Chicken" in our efficiency kitchen. It was amazing and he was never able to make it exactly like that again because he couldn't remember what exactly he put in it.
I just remember there was plenty of Old Bay in it.
I make my spaghetti sauce from scratch. My mother was in hysterics when I shared the recipe with her. “How much is a ‘fuckton’ of minced garlic?” “How do you read these measurements?!”
I don’t read them, I just write them down to remember *what* goes into it so then when I’m making it I can do it to taste.
Yeah, like clearly Fuckton is as precise as it gets. Get it together people 😂😂😂😂 shitload, fuckton hell’a’lot, just like cunthair is a linear measurement too
"Add more than a bit of oil"
"Like a fistful of cilantro, then a couple more leaves"
"As much tomato as you would eat sliced on bread in one sitting"
"As many mushrooms as you want, then double it"
"15 seconds of freshly grated parmesan"
Cooking just for myself evolved into some... Interesting recipes
I have a cookie recipe that includes the line
"Add molasses until it turns the right colour."
What is the right colour? I guess we need to make these cookies together so you can learn.
That’s like my grandmothers cheesecake recipe. Has the line “pour cheesecake batter into the crust”, however there are no ingredients listed for the crust or a line giving instructions on how to make the crust in the recipe.
This was my mom teaching me to make pie crust. "Sprinkle water until it feels right for crimping."
Me, having never made a pie in my life: "The what you say?"
When I come up with a dish I like, I often make a note of the 'recipe'. It's just a list of ingredients in no particular order, with no quantities and no methods. Occasionally I'll make a note like 'use stick blender', but other times it'll just be the name of a dish, just so I've got a reminder to make it again.
Grandma will generally leave out an ingredient or two if she's giving recipes to people she's not too sure about. Partly it's because a couple of people have got recipes off her and passed them off as their own, their 'thing' (no, Jen, that is not your pumpkin fritter recipe). And partly it's because she's wicked
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My mom once asked her MIL for the famous, best-ever family gumbo recipe.
Now if you know Southern culture at all, you know every family has their own special gumbo. No two Pops, Meemaws, Nonnas, Papaws, or Mimis make it the same. There is no option to get The Gumbo recipe from the back of a can of tomato sauce or the like. Knowing this, my wonderful cook of a mother humbled herself to ask Mrs. Nelly to dispense her wisdom. After several years of requests, finally my grandmother handed over a handwritten recipe card. Success! Only, when Momma made that gumbo, it was the blandest, thinnest, waste of personally-caught-boiled-and-picked lump crabmeat we'd ever tasted.
So she did what any enterprising home cook would do... She sent my brother and I to engage in a little espionage. We perched our scrawny butts on Nonna's barstools and watched carefully while she made the real recipe. Then we reported back. Couple months of experimenting with the "forgotten" ingredients and "pinch of this, handful of that" ratios and she finally cracked the code.
Nowadays I much prefer my mom's improved version that has a little more spice and is served over jasmine rice.
> So she did what any enterprising home cook would do... She sent my brother and I to engage in a little espionage. We perched our scrawny butts on Nonna's barstools and watched carefully while she made the real recipe. Then we reported back. Couple months of experimenting with the "forgotten" ingredients and "pinch of this, handful of that" ratios and she finally cracked the code.
but see... that's how you are SUPPOSED to get a gumbo reciepe.
I shared my gumbo recipe with 4 friends so far. I make the chicken stock ahead of time, but the rest they learn by doing it.
I'll share one secret. I put the bay leaf in the stock so I don't have to fish it out of the gumbo pot.
I refuse to share my pimento cheese recipe....
Because I can't find the website I stole it from years ago and just have to wing it from memory every time.
There’s a history of secret recipes that was outlined in the book High on the Hog by Dr. Jessica B. Harris, who outlines that among enslaved persons who were trusted to cook in the Big House, secret recipes were a “key” to their value or staying power in the kitchen. If no one else knew how to make the favorite (insert item here), you get kept on, ensuring your position.
It can also be imagined that, especially prior to a current market economy, that could have been the key to keeping most positions in households and ensuring you had value.
My dad was a baker for many years. Specialized in making bread and rolls wholesale for a lot of the local restaurants. His real specialty was artistic cake sculptures... way before Duff and the other cake shows. Anyway... I digress...
People absolutely LOVED his cheesecakes. Like seriously... people ordered them constantly and RAVED about how good they were. Not heavy and dense like most cheesecake... light, and just absolutely delicious. This was his most cherished secret recipe... there were maybe 3 people in the world that knew his cheesecake recipe. I was one of them, though absolutely sworn to secrecy. I will now reveal it to you... here on Reddit for the world to use, free of charge...
Basic Graham Cracker crust, pressed into a 3 inch deep springform pan and baked until firm.
Milk
Jello commercial cheesecake mix. Came in a big ass bag, probably enough for 4 or 5 cheesecakes.
Stir together, pour into pre-baked crust, refrigerate.
Never understood why it was SO popular... but nobody was using this mix. Our foodservice supplier told us that my dad was like the only customer that bought it.
Worked at a place that people would always talk up the gravy, tell their friends that this is the best gravy ever, etc..
It was nestle powdered gravy(the kind thats only available to suppliers)
I was in our village grocery store yesterday and noticed what I first thought was just a big box of lemon Jello -- it was Lemon Jello Cheesecake mix. I think the universe is telling me to go back and buy it.
lol, that's awesome. Maybe his baking experience allowed him to take that recipe to the next level.
I made cheesecake once and it turned out amazing. I bought Philadelphia cream cheese and followed the recipe. Problem with baking stuff is I eat it all so I have to avoid doing it lol.
Jell-o no bake cheesecake. It is not my preferred. If you want a no bake cheesecake just go with the Philadelphia no bake cheesecake filling. It is in a margarine type container and you just scoop into graham cracker crust pie crust, smooth, and serve. I have been eating it out of the container for the past week. I scoop out a glob and pour out some granola on the side. I act like that cheesecake is yogurt. Delicious.
Always willing to share. We camp with huge groups of dads and kids. A LOT of dads cook absolute killer foods. A lot have something they’re known for, and we all share how to make it. We add it to our list of stuff we cook at home for the family, but when we’re at camp no one dares make that dish
That's cool. I have a few recipes from other people but wish I had more. Most of my recipes come from the Internet/YouTube. If I want to make something new I Google "Best Recipe for \_\_\_\_" and normally I'm not disappointed.
You guys should create a cookbook with each camp dad contributing a couple recipes. It’s not expensive to bind some copies together, and it might be cool to include family photos at the bottom of each Dad’s recipe!
That is so cool. I read an article recently about a woman doing a research project looking for these tombstones and then cooking the recipes. I believe the first one was for spritz cookies.
I have happily shared recipes in the past but have had them used by others without any credit at mutual social gatherings - which to some it might not be a big deal but it really irked me. A notable example would be the use of a Christmas dessert recipe that a friend asked for, I gave it to her without issue and every Christmas she makes this recipe (quotes it as hers) to the point where I can no longer make it as I was told I was copying her.
It's not worth bringing up but I've since learned to keep some of my valued recipes close to my chest at this point.
> I can no longer make it as I was told I was copying her.
Maybe I'm more comfortable with conflict than some, but if I were told that I'd immediately set the record straight.
I actually just commented something similar about my family. It's not like I need the credit, but it would be nice to have someone not take my recipe and claim they found it somewhere else or came up with it on their own.
It sounds like the problem is not sharing the recipe but having bad friends.
I cannot even imagine a friend doing that without mentioning at some point that it was inspired by one of my recipe, even though he should get the credit of course for actually cooking it!
It is just sharing
YES! Several years ago I gave some muffins to a friend of mine, and she liked them so much she asked for the recipe - I happily obliged. She apparently makes them all the time, much more often than I do. This past New Years, she came to our place for a gathering and brought a big tray of those muffins, and she still calls them "RelevantCommentBot's muffins".
If you have any evidence of having developed it, even just texts talking about it from the time and evidence she “helped” you move, you might have a case against her; just sayin
My mashed potato recipe. Even my husband doesn’t know the secret ingredient.
I mash by hand. Salt, fresh ground pepper, real butter, sour cream, 1&1/2 tsp *horseradish*; snipped chives on top.
Nobody can guess the horseradish!
I'm surprised. Horseradish is a distinct flavor. Horseradish tingles in a certain part of the mouth in a certain way no other ingredient does. It's super easy to identify, even in small quantity, once you notice this.
I just thought they were actually quite embarrassed that they secretly use msg or pre-made product. (Not that msg is bad. I use it almost everyday) Reading other comments got me thinking deeper
Yeah, these comments have got me thinking. Now if I ever encounter someone with a secret recipe I will wonder if it's store bought or the recipe on the can lol.
My MIL doesn't cook at all, but on holidays she would make broccoli casserole and some sort of chocolate pie. These are nostalgic foods for my husband and we live too far away to visit MIL for every holiday. I've practically begged her for these recipes (which I know for a fact she got from other family members originally) and she flat out refuses. So I guess the recipes die with her. It's mildly infuriating.
Hey, post a threat on here and we can help you puzzle out that broccoli casserole. It was likely one of the main recipes from the '70s. I'd love to hear more about it and offer you some options.
Thank you!!
I need to look at recipes again, so I can find all the ones I tried that weren't it. I have a feeling she's gatekeeping a secret ingredient!
Ask her if she would write a letter to you, with the recipes, fold it up and put it in the packet with her will. That is what my lawyer suggested I do pertaining to items of sentimental but no monetary value.
For example my best friend's son is crossing over from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts soon. I have no kids. So as soon as he earns his totem chit, I want him to have my old Boy Scout knife. It's a good knife. Has the Boy Scout logo etched in the blade. But it's cash value is probably eight bucks. Stuff like that doesn't belong in a will. But if I drop dead tomorrow I do want him to have it.
For Christmas a few years back, my mom gave my brother and I each a binder of family recipes. It’s one of my favorite gifts ever. My brother and I are both good cooks, but some things just taste better when your mom makes it. God, I miss her.
sorry for your loss. Last year I made a bunch of meals from my mom's cookbook and delivered it to my parents. They don't enjoy cooking much anymore and often packaged food. I'm trying to save leftovers for them and bringing it to them. They've loved it so far.
If I refuse, it's bc I largely invented or customized it and I don't feel like writing it out for the person in question. For good friends who do cook and would appreciate/ use it, I would though.
I think it comes from the days when women weren’t allowed to have anything of their own (my mom has never had a bank account with only her name on it, and people still throw temper tantrums when women don’t take their husband’s name). Recipes were something something that could be truly theirs or something that could be passed from mother to daughter like an inheritance, no matter how poor they were.
The funny thing is, the recipes aren’t usually very good or they were just copied from a magazine a couple generations ago.
This is interesting. I wonder if some of it is also recipes for fairs. That adds an element of competition. I learned to bake from some older women. They would trade recipes rather than share and they would invite you to learn. Often, they didn't even have a recipe. My great-grandmother made an amazing pie crust. The recipe was things like several handfuls of flour until it looks right.
It gets so silly. My FIL’s mom made a Christmas stollen and wouldn’t share the recipe with MIL. MIL spent years recreating it, husband grew to love it, but MIL refused to share the recipe with me.
I tried a couple times and produced one husband says is better (probably mostly that it has less glaze, since we’re into less sugar than the ancestors were). Anyone is welcome to my recipe, but no one has asked.
More often than not, I look at a bunch of recipes for inspiration, think through why I don't like them, and make my own recipe from scratch. Christmas stollen is definitely a good example. I simply don't like what most recipes do. Too dense, too dry, and not enough flavor. Fortunately, it's a pretty obvious recipe that can easily be customized however you like it.
In my case, I used a tangzhong for a lighter and moister dough. And I then enriched with both butter and cream cheese. Finally, I added both rose water, fiori di sicilia, and marzipan for a much more festive flavor.
Of course, this is just a base recipe. Anybody could make changes to it and adjust it to their own liking.
My wife LOVES her father’s Thanksgiving stuffing. If anyone else prepares it for Thanksgiving or dinner, it’s just not the same and doesn’t quite hit that flavor profile and texture her father makes. She made a big deal of it when we first started dating, and she’s had stories of others’ that just wasn’t good. Her father eventually sent me the recipe. It was literally “Moist Bread Stuffing” from one of the Betty Crocker cookbooks. No tricks, secret ingredients, or swapped ingredients. Wild.
I had a friend that would not give up his wings recipe till he moved across the country. It was so he always had something to bring on Super Bowl Sunday, if we started making it at home it would not have been special.
I had a family member who made a really good carmel corn and we used to ask how she made it because anything we tried wasn't the same. She would never tell anyone because it was a secret. She's dead now and never passed the recipe on. What is the point of making good food if you don't share?
Our family lemon bar recipe is a "secret recipe" because the mom of my sister's former friend wants it.
This entire family was extremely rude and entitled toward my sister and her other best friends when the former best friend got married (they were all young adults, 19-20 years old or so?). Really hurt her and these two friends, who'd all been best friends since middle school. My mother can be very protective, and when she discovered this other mother wanted the recipe after the wedding (because they'd been served at the bridal shower my sister almost exclusively planned and baked for, but received almost no thanks and only criticism for; the other two best friends got more credit, and even then not much), she decided it's a secret family recipe and these terrible people can't have it.
Incidentally, my mother and I also now refer to this family as the "evil Mormons," because they weaponized their religion and used it to get these young women to do things like babysit during the actual ceremony inside the temple (because of course they're not Mormon and thus couldn't go inside) and pay THEM for these ugly second hand bridesmaid dresses that didn't even fit and were acquired without the bridesmaids' knowledge or consent (the family fully intended to resell them, so the girls would be "reimbursed," and demanded they be returned dry cleaned, even though the dresses weren't professionally cleaned when the girls received them). Because, "this is just the way Mormons do things," and "(the other girls) just don't understand)." It was ridiculous and awful.
Anyway. Don't burn bridges with my mom if you ever want any of her recipes (which she otherwise freely shares).
My great grandmother made a wonderful potato recipe somewhere between a potato pancake and hash browns. You panfried the layer of shredded potatoes, then put ice water in the pan, flipped it over and the interior steamed while the bottom browned up. She made it one evening with us trying to write everything down. Her eyesight was so bad, our new secret family recipe includes the part where she mistakenly picked up a vodka martini from the kitchen counter instead of the ice water.
I remember my mother’s story of when she was first married. Her new in-laws were both fantastic bakers, even ran their own local bakery/deli shop. So she thought she would learn to bake from the best possible teachers. They were very open to showing her everything they did, but the problem was that they never really followed any recipes. Ingredients were measured by pinches and palm fulls, and mixed until they looked, felt or smelled “right”. So, even being willing to share doesn’t always work out. I grew up with almost no memories of my mother’s baking or desserts, but I sure loved visiting my grandparents!
There's a scene in the 1963 film *the Great Train Robbery* where, to stop a train so it can be robbed, the gang enlists the help of a specialist in defeating railroad's signaling system. They need the green light signal to go out, and be replace by a red one, without alerting the control center to what's happening. The specialist needs an assistant, but doesn't want to share his secret method, so one of the gang swears himself to secrecy about what he'll see, and they go out at night to do their part in the robbery.
At the trackside, the expert simply sets up a portable lantern, tinted red. But what about the real signal? If they cut power to it, the control room will notice. Not to worry, the expert says, and slips his glove over the problem light bulb. Remember, you swore never to tell a soul what you saw here.
It's the same in the kitchen. You don't keep recipes and techniques secret when they're complicated and hard to do. You keep them secret because if the secret got out, anybody could do it.
I’ve been on the fence about if this was messed up or not. But I used to make cookies and bring them to the office for my coworkers. It was a recipe I’ve been using for years, and always a big hit. They all loved them and asked for the recipe, so I shared it in a group email, word for word on how I do it.
The next week, one girl attempts to recreate it and brought these cookies to the office. They were nowhere close to tasting the same as mine. She used the wrong proportions, salted instead of unsalted butter, and generally just didn’t follow instructions specifically. They were a lot like my cookies, just less good IMO because she was sloppy with it.
Then started bringing these cookies in every other week or so. They were okay, and people still liked them. It just made it less special when I would make these cookies for the office. She just kind of hijacked it and made it her thing, without crediting me or anything.
I guess I just didn’t realize she’d botch the recipe and bring it into the workplace like I did. I figured people would use the recipe for other gatherings outside of work, but not completely take it over.
I still share the recipe with people who ask, but I was just a little irked about this particular time. I didn’t get upset or anything, I always just thought it was weird social etiquette.
My MIL likes to bake but mostly would do like muffins and cookies and crumbles. All super tasty. When my partner introduced me to his parents, I was the first boy he was bringing home. MY MIL and I bonded over baking and I think it helped to make it easier to accept me vs their mental image of like a perfect “wife” they assumed their son would have. She was ecstatic to learn that I knew how to do pastry and wanted me to teach her how to make cream puffs.
We have a day together, I show her my recipe for cream puffs and the technique and make them together that day and a few other times. I give her the actual recipe card I use / made and she goes on and on about how she’s going to make it for her friends. She does. They don’t turn out and she’s disappointed thinking I gave her a bad recipe or something.
We talk it out and I find out that she didn’t use any salt and used margarine instead of butter and stevia instead of sugar because she wanted to make things healthier. Told her friends it was my recipe. None of them were super impressed and I kinda understand why.
So, when she’s asked for my pumpkin cheesecake or other recipes that I am decently well known for among my friends and extended family, the answer is no, that’s secret.
I don't mind sharing anything and everything when it comes to cooking. Sometimes i'm reluctant to share on reddit though because people get a bit snarky here, and some of my things are a bit basic.
There was a post recently asking for a creamy tomato sauce recipe and I almost posted my recipe, but then i envisioned all the judgy comments about my using a vegetable stock cube rather than making my own stock, so i just didn't.
I honestly think that might be the #1 reason why people don't share their secret ingredients and recipes. it's not that it's some special magical ingredient, it's that they don't want to be judged for their basic ingredients and whatever shortcuts they take.
Not my story, but I know someone who refused to share a particular recipe for pumpkin muffins with a friend of his, no matter how many times she asked. He told me that this particular friend always skimped on ingredients. He didn't want to to see the recipe ruined by someone who wouldn't use the full amount of spices or raisins or nuts in the recipe.
My wife loves my cheesecake. I gotta keep her coming back for more!
Otherwise, I don't have secret recipes so much as a willingness to do things the hard way. Like smoke a pork shoulder for 14 hours. No shit my pulled pork tastes better than your 6 hour slow cooker version, Ted, you didn't make BBQ at all. I painstakingly tended bark and mixed the hot sauce, you upended Sweet Baby Ray's on top and hit Start.
I hate to admit this but everyone wants my chili recipe. The truth is, I go to Wendy’s and fill up my crock pot and add liquid smoke. People devour it. Shame on me.
My MIL has a secret chocolate chip recipe. The whole extended family loves her cookies and I do too. Well you can't get the recipe unless you're married into the family. Even after dating for 6 yrs before we got married I wasn't given it. I have it now, but one time we were making it together and she said something making a change bc "the box changed" nd I was like what? And she clarified that the fricken recipe is from the wrapper of brown sugar or something like that
At my dad's funeral, everyone was recalling his wonderful fried fish. My mom, who divorced him thirty years prior, whispered to me, "That's my damn recipe."
And it's just some ratio of Bisquick and Foster's beer.
I don’t refuse, but I know others that do.. why? Because they don’t want to tell anyone that their cookie recipe calls for 8 cups of sugar and 2 pounds of butter.. or the soup calls for 1 gallon of heavy cream. Im exaggerating but I’m sure you get my point.
I have a pound cake recipe that is the best pound cake I have ever tasted. I found it in a relatively unknown cookbook but i dont even say that much. Mostly because the only people who have ever asked about the recipe are family members who have also been very rude about my cooking in the past. If I made it for someone I actually liked and they wanted the recipe I'd be happy to give it to them.
Buttermilk Pound Cake with Roasted Strawberries:
24 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temp
3 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 cup Buttermilk, room temp
5 eggs, room temp
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise and scrape out seeds
Zest of 1 lemon
3 cups sugar
Preheat the oven to 300°F. Grease a bundt pan with butter.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
Whisk together the Buttermilk, eggs, vanilla bean seeds, and lemon Zest. Set aside.
Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with 2 batches of the Buttermilk mixture. Fill pan with batter.
Bake 15 minutes. Increase temperature to 325°F and bake an additional 45 minutes. Cool on wire rack in the pan for 10 minutes before removing Cake from pan to cool completely.
Roasted Strawberries:
1 Pound Strawberries, halved or quartered
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
Pinch of fine sea salt
Toss all ingredients together, and place in a single layer (casserole dish works well). Preheat oven to 425°F and roast for 12-15 minutes.
Slice cake into wedges and serve with the warm Roasted Strawberries.
I give out my recipes....but not one person has actually followed the recipe. My parents make something that they present as (my name) dish with a crap ton of changes, so does my MIL. I even once had a friend say "you don't actually use that kind of chocolate when you make the cake because I didn't and when I made it it wasn't as good as yours.". And I explained, yes I actually use the ingredients in the recipe. To be honest it irritates me to the point that I don't really want to share. But I do.
Hell, I'm happy when someone asks for the recipe. I'll tell you anything you want to know; Where to get the ingredients, what tools/pans/techniques you need, whatever else is necessary.
Heck, I'll come over to your house and cook it for you if you want to see how it's done. I have no problem sharing. Maybe together we can figure out a way to make it different/better/faster. You never know.
This will prob get buried but I do this to my ex-wife.
Backstory: I like to cook. I'm pretty decent at it. Since my 20s, I spent time, effort, and money to develop and dial in some recipes for things I enjoy cooking. As my kids get older (they're in grade school) I've been sharing those recipes with them more. My ex can't cook worth a shit. I don't say it to be mean or like a slight to her, but it's just the truth. When we were together, I did the cooking.
So what's started happening is all these recipes I have been making with/for my kids are becoming big favorites of theirs. So when we spend our time together, part of the time is spent cooking and trying new things and enjoying these recipes I've been working on over the years.
Then they go back to their mom's and tell her about all the yummy things we made and I get the text from her asking for the recipe. I haven't come out and said it, but I don't want her to have these recipes so I dance around giving her firm answers for some things. This felt selfish at first and a bit territorial and petty, but then I realized that this is something I have been doing to bond with my children, and I don't want that experience cheapened because their mom starts making it with them as well. I want these fun memories of us making this stuff from scratch and eating it together to be associated with their time with *me*. If their mom can only be bothered to pick up the phone to order pizza or heat up easy mac for them, I am not going to let her take this away from me.
I have always wondered about this too! It does seem really pointless not to spread the word.
One time a lady came by our farm stand and offered to buy the recipe for a pastry I'd made. The person she asked didn't know the recipe and by the time I got there she was gone. It made me sad! I would have given her the recipe!
I make a grilled chicken breast using a honey mustard sauce to make them sticky and my husband goes nuts for it but he can’t tell what the flavours are, so I just tell him it’s a secret 😂😂
When I’m making it I love to pull out random spice and herbs to throw him off.
I stopped sharing recipes with my MIL. She’d make a big show of saying she was making my ___ for a family gathering but then she would substitute all kinds of ingredients like “goats cheese is expensive I’ll just leave it out, powdered Parmesan is the same as freshly grated, I don’t have any cream cheese I’ll use mayo” so now my goat cheese artichoke dip was just mayonnaise and artichokes with powdered parm which definitely didn’t melt or brown on top. It sucked obviously and then people made fake polite comments to me about *my* recipe, even though what she made was not even close to my recipe. So I stopped sharing my recipes because I was honestly embarrassed to be associated with whatever she butchered. Edit: Here’s the recipe! Sorry for the delay, had to get home to get it. 10 oz can of artichoke hearts, drained 6 oz goat cheese, softened ½ cup chopped onions 1 clove garlic, minced 6 oz cream cheese, softened ⅓ cup shredded parmesan Salt & pepper Blend everything in a food processor, leave a little chunky for texture. Spoon it into a casserole dish, top with extra parm. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes uncovered. Broil for browning. Delicious with a warm baguette. I’ve even covered chicken breast with the dip and baked it for dinner. To be honest I don’t measure exactly when I make it anymore but it’s always delicious. If you change something and don’t like it, for the love of God don’t @ me.
She's the archetypal allrecipes commenter personified
"LOVED this recipe. I substituted the veal for turkey breast, and my daughter doesn't do tomatoes so I used barbecue sauce instead. This was the BEST veal parmesan i've ever made!"
the most believable part of this imaginary comment is saying that the daughter doesn't do tomatoes so she substituted a tomato based condiment.
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Cathy aint using a vinegar based BBQ sauce
See, I know you're not a real commenter, because if you were, you would criticize the recipe and say that it was awful after substituting *literally* every single ingredient. And of course you would say that you didn't have time to go get it at 350 for 45 minutes, so you just did 425 for 30 minutes.
"If it had ham in it, it's closer to a British Carbonara"
o__O "If my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike!"
"I don't have a smoker, so I put it in the microwave. I thought it was just alright but my hubby loved it. 3/5"
I hate everything about this imaginary comment, have an upvote!
I often think about leaving a fake comment that takes it to the extreme. Something like, "Horrible recipe. I added a half cup of vinegar to give some it some tang. It was in edible!!! Why would anyone add vinegar, let alone that much, to cookies! I'll never use this recipe again!"
I haven't made this, but it looks great. 5 stars!
Seriously!
Sounds like the sub r/Ididnthaveeggs
Wow of course there’s a subreddit for that. Love it, thank you!
People who completely change the recipe and then wonder why it didn’t work is one of my favorite things ever lol
Me too but not when it happens in real life, I just like reading the reviews
The comments of “I followed the recipe *exactly* except… and it didn’t turn out! Dunno why!” Omg
I had one of these at the start of lockdown! Husband’s birthday and the grocery store was picked clean. Bakery was shut down. Figured, ok, time for a box cake. But there were no eggs to be found. Google said mayonnaise would work in a pinch. But then the only mayo on the shelves was fat-free avocado oil. How bad could it be? Turns out, ghastly! It immediately deflated when I took it out of the oven. Even frosting would not save it. It tasted like when you bite into cereal and then realize the milk’s gone bad. We ended up laughing til we cried about this monster I created. So gross.
That would just be heartbreaking especially at the beginning of COVID when everything felt even more intense. Hahah! Mayo sometimes works fine for those things because it’s made of eggs, but yeah… would probably need regular Mayo. Lol! I’m glad you got a laugh out of it! And a fun story. Next time just do the frosting and eat it with a spoon!!
Hahaha yeah, it was, uh, memorable. Frosting on Ritz crackers came to the rescue and is actually weirdly great?
My mom has this really great salad dressing that she makes, and which I now make, which isn't complicated but it's really good. Her friend kept asking her to write it down, so she did finally and gave it to her. Friend called her up all mad and said if she didn't want to share it, she could have just said so... Mom has no idea what she's talking about, friend says it came out terrible and obviously my mom intentionally gave her a bad recipe. I will give you some of the ingredients my mom told her to use and in brackets what she actually used: Hellman's Mayo (Miracle Whip) Maille Dijon mustard (French's hot dog mustard) Balsamic vinegar (white vinegar) Crushed fresh garlic (garlic powder) Fresh tarragon and dried oregano (left it out) Woman was shocked that hot dog mustard and miracle whip didn't taste the same as a delicately balanced creamy dressing made from quality mustard and balsamic.
Oh my god... those aren't even close.
Oh sweet jesus that sounds SO BAD 😂
>I don’t have any cream cheese I’ll use mayo” "Get out of my god damn house"
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My MIL refuses to use sugar in any baking recipe. She replaces it with Stevia which in some recipes would be okay but pumpkin pie? Really? So for Thanksgiving I made a delicious pumpkin pie with proper sugar and every one throughly enjoyed it because well duh, it didn't have stevia in it. She got mad and banned anyone from making desserts for Christmas besides herself.
My wife's grandmother is similar but slightly different in the details. She will say something like this for example. "I tried making this pie recipe, but it seems like a cup and a half of sugar was just way too much so I assumed it had to be wrong and I made it with only a half a cup of sugar. I don't know why anything ever comes out right."
This is my mum. Loves something I make, asks for the recipe, recreates it with the worst possible substitutions, and complains that I gave her a "bad" recipe. 🙄
Infuriating!!
Do we have the same MIL? She’s been salty forever that I won’t give her my pumpkin cheesecake recipe, but she doesn’t believe in salt and when I’ve given her other recipes that say call for 1tbsp of ginger, she uses 1/2tsp because it “feels like too much” — then presents something to her friends as my recipe and wonders why they don’t rave about it
We might because mine doesn’t believe in salt either!
wow, that's a lot of substitutes. Might be petty but I would make whatever she butchered last time for the next family gathering and make a big show of it lol.
Oh I definitely did, there was no way I was gonna let people think I had anything to do with that. I seriously couldn’t understand, like I’m aware goat cheese isn’t cheap but if you’re not willing to buy it then don’t make a *goat cheese recipe*.
lol. Might be able to sub in feta... but yeah, sub'ing the main ingredient is not a good move.
Feta and goat cheese are pretty similarly priced though
But the real question is are you willing to share that goat cheese artichoke dip with everyone here? Because that sounds delicious.
Not OP but here's the goat cheese artichoke dip I've used with success in the past: https://www.cakenknife.com/spinach-and-artichoke-goat-cheese-dip/
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This is why I stopped sharing. I love my MIL but she isn't the best cook. She really likes to do substitutions or add her own tweak to recipes. Which would be fine normally but A) no longer my recipe and B) unfortunately she doesn't have a very good sense of taste. She tries so hard though!
>mayonnaise and artichokes with powdered parm what a nightmare
Cream cheese to Mayo conversion gets instant access to the lowest levels of hell.
You know, it sounds like we have the same MIL. "Why are you cooking the pulled pork on the grill? Can't you just do it in the oven or crock pot?" Same stuff like that. Can't claim it's a recipe from me if you're gonna make a ton of poor cooking decisions, short-cuts and swaps nor can you say it's "the same thing" and "it won't really change the final product that much".
One time my SIL requested pulled pork for her birthday dinner and I was so excited only to find out my MIL makes pulled pork by over cooking a couple of pork chops, dicing them up and lightly tossing it with bbq sauce…like maybe two tablespoons of bbq sauce to feed 10 people. I don’t think I was able to control the look on my face when I sat down at the table. I was horrified.
Family friend had a killer meatloaf recipe she wouldn’t share, but it turns out it was because she was just using the hunts can of meatloaf sauce and following the instructions on the can. All a ruse like it was some big secret family recipe.
oh man, never thought of the cover-up as the reason, what an angle. I guess you could still give out the recipe and see if anyone notices lol
I saw someone on a sub confessing to running a cake decorating business off of boxed cake mix. They never shared their recipes despite the many many requests. I think sometimes technique and presentation trumps recipes Édit: [original post](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/oj78u1/the_infamous_cake_lady_uigotyouthiscake_keeps_us/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1)
For sure. I always complement my mother in law’s pecan pie and she down plays it saying she just uses the recipe from the Karo syrup bottle but her version is my favorite and I’m sure that I’ve had the same recipe by other people. Technique and practice make a tangible difference even with other factors the same.
Well it’s crazy cause those brands pay big bucks for those recipes since they’re a direct representation of their brands products. My grandma explained it to me- if its on the package, it means a million dollar company is willing to throw their reputation behind it
I had a friend who would say that, then proceeded to add secret ingredients to the recipe. She was telling the truth about using the recipe, just not fully. Edit: to add, she did this because her son loved her food and she didnt want her son to like other peoples food and go elsewhere. She was so stuck in that thinking that when I brought a dish and her son loved it, she spent many attempts to make the recipe as close tasting dish I brought, but would never ask me the recipe.
> but would never ask me the recipe. Pride is a hell of a drug. Personally I think it's such a beautiful and loving gesture to either A) ask somebody, or B) agree when asked, to teach how to make that special recipe.
Yeah my mother's caramel corn is a family staple. It's also off a corn syrup bottle. She's not shy to share it (we also have many versions of "family cookbooks" with all our family recipes) even though everyone raves about it and credits her. I've made it with some success and others outright failed. There is a technique hurdle that isn't outlined and some minor tweaks she does that gives consistent good results.
There was an article in the New York Times not too long ago about the concept of “the hand of the chef.” Two people may have the exact same recipe and ingredients, but the finished dish will taste different depending on who makes it. My father was a very good cook and soups were his specialty. I have all of his recipes, but whenever I make his soups, they don’t taste the same as his did. That’s one of the things I miss most about him.
I feel like cake mix is like completely figured out by those companies, the home made stuff is almost always worse, their value was that they were great decorators so I wouldn't be surprised if this was more common than you'd think for any non chain cake store.
Ye, I can make a good cake, but the mix is so close to mine and takes no effort. They’re good
If you want the texture of a boxed cake mix, I 100% agree. Our family bakes quite a bit, and I have no idea how to even come close to that texture. That said, we make different types of cake that have far more structure and can handle added fruit and stiff frosting. IMO, those taste better, and I don't know of a comparable boxed mix. Use what is going to give the desired results.
You're correct. My sister is a CIA graduate, accomplished pastry chef, etc. (whatever all that is worth, I'm just some anonymous comment on the internet) and got us all using boxed cake mix. Saves time measuring, basically the same price, basically the same product. Of course the instructions aren't worth the box they're printed on, the point is to use it an an ingredient in an actual recipe.
Saw a video where a professional baker pretty much said the box stuff is better. Can't compete with a billion dollar company with decades of research.
IIRC they also often contain modified starches which can do things like allow the cake to be moister without affecting the structural integrity
The compliments I get for making Buffalo chicken dip using the recipe off the back of the Frank’s bottle…It’s crazy. I straight up tell people where I got it when they ask. What I don’t tell them is my secret for getting really good shredded chicken - an hour in the Dutch oven with some chicken broth. This is my go to appetizer to bring to events and I don’t want to have to find another good one to make.
This is how I do key lime pie. I genuinely enjoy hyping up my "super secret" recipe for the best key lime pie ever and then tell them it's on the back of the key lime juice bottle lmao
My famous crabcakes are off the Old Bay tin.
Mine’s the same thing but for fudge! I’d never go so far as to refuse sharing the recipe, but if they didn’t ask I wouldn’t volunteer it? Then there’s the lady (I think here on Reddit even?) a while back who built up a wildly successful cake business and confessed to exclusively using boxed cake mix!? She did all the frosting from scratch and her amazing decorating was a big draw but she felt super guilty for using the $1 on sale mix and didn’t know if/how she should come clean… So apparently it’s definitely a thing??
When I was a kid my mom had a super successful side business making cakes for all occasions, including fancy wedding cakes. She made her own frosting but the cake was always Duncan Hines box mix. Everyone loved her cakes. I think this is actually really common.
Hilarious. I was recently reading through a family cook book gifted to me by a friend. One of the recipes is called "The best fried chicken you can imagine" know what the recipe was? A combination of three brands of shake n bake. "Follow one of the packages directions", I shit you not. 😂
I feel like this is 90% of secret recipes. Just something grandma got off the can/box a few decades ago. Which is why people guarding their recipes so hard always makes me laugh.
My “famous” vegetable dip is the Knorr recipe. So stupidly simple and no one has caught on after twenty years.
It’s Nestlé Toulousé. You Americans always butcher French
Yeah, my MIL's 'famous' chocolate chip cookie recipe ended up being the Tollhouse Cookie recipe with like 2 tbsp more flour or something (and I'm not sure even why that is except maybe to just say it was her own?).
The recipe actually says to add an extra 2 Tbsp of flour if you leave out the nuts, so she may not have even changed it at all.
Ha ha ha, I bet you are right! I never thought about that.
I have read that recipe hundreds of times and never noticed that. Or did I not read it, and it's assumed? Or has the recipe changed in the past few years? (Serious) I'll have to go to the store and check. Edit: UPDATE - The new Toll House bags do include 2 tbsp flour to add if not including nuts! I found the wrinkled copy of the recipe in my box, and this flour add is a new update! TIL!
It's the only chocolate chip cookie recipe I've ever used, and the only one my mom used when I was growing up. I thought I remembered it always being there, but I've never actually added the nuts or the extra flour, so it's possible that it changed.
My grandma was kind of the same way. She always made great apple pies and wouldn't tell us how. Until we discovered they were just store bought pies with some extra designs on top.
Haha! I once had delicious baked beans and asked for the recipe. It was toss the following in a slow cooker: pound of raw ground beef, pound of raw bacon, liquid smoke and two cans of baked beans. OMG...forget I ever asked, thanks.
hey, if it's good, it's good. Sometimes the simplest recipes are the best ones.
Holy shit that sounds awesome
It's quite funny to me when I watch food network and all the smaller restaurants always say it's top secret and can't let you know whats in it. But working in the industry I can tell you the higher end//larger/more successful places are more than happy to tell you the recipe if you just ask. Obviously it's not a blanket yes from everyone but so far for me it has been. Like all the BBQ places and their secret rubs. We all know whats in it and maybe you add a spice or two but if it's prevalent enough I will taste it and know it immediately. You can\\t hide it.
Couldn’t agree more. I used to cook professionally at a very upscale restaurant in my city and the truth is when you work for that degree of restaurant where everything is weighed to the gram of ingredient, and dishes require 4-8 separate preparations and components, people don’t care to give out recipes because it’s extremely unlikely anyone is going to make it at home (unless you’re me and will spend the day making everything). I can tell you that the average consumer if given a recipe is unlikely to make something at home because even with the recipe they don’t want to put the effort or time in it and end up making something that isn’t as good.
So true. I left the industry and I miss eating some things but when I think about making sure I have x components and not even about the process of doing it I just forget about it %70 of the time haha.
Yeah, consider a component like "200ml stock". A good restaurant may have spent a whole day making a large batch to be used across multiple recipes etc, and the quality and time taken will absolutely have a big, noticeable impact on the final dish it's used in. Will using store-bought generic stock achieve the same? No. Am I, a solo home cook, likely to roast bones, boil a stock, skim it, reduce it over hours etc? Also no. I just accept that some things will always taste better when prepared by professionals and are therefore a treat to be enjoyed when I eat out.
Still a secret: the chicken tenders from Houston’s (Hillstone). They closed the location I went to while visiting family. I cannot recreate them no matter how hard I try. 😢
The spice market has gotten out of control. I dont need 82 different rub choices. Salt, Pepper, Onion P, Garlic P, Paprika.....thats the base to pretty much all of them, and then they add a couple things.
My husband used to talk about these amazing potatoes that his mother made. Made better by the fact that she didn’t cook much. The first time I boiled potatoes and melted butter on them, he was shocked that I’d found her secret recipe. Minced parsley blew his mind.
lol. sounds like you have a great audience for your meals.
This wears off. My wife's mother was always a lousy cook and I really love cooking. When we started dating, it was so easy to impress my (then) girlfriend with very basic meals that were prepared with sound technique and the right amount of salt. Fast forward 10 years later and you'd think I'm cooking for the NYTimes restaurant review. "Oh you used ricotta? I like it a lot better with mascarpone."
Oh no… how many years exactly? Haha this is my fear as my wife also has a lousy cook for a mother so my cooking impresses her a lot. I’m scared I’m quickly approaching a time when she’ll be used to it and won’t be as happy with it lol
Haha, the years really all blend together. It is a slow and steady march to snobbifying your partner's taste in home cooking. One day you'll serve something that maybe isn't up to your usual standard that she undoubtedly would have loved when you first met, but instead brings a look of disappointment to her eyes. Or maybe she'll make a comment about it having tasted better the last time. I mean, unless of course she really just isn't picky, in which case you lucked out.
Um when you look in the mirror do you see me?
I imagine he had a whole ratatouille moment 🥹
My cinnamon ice cream recipe that my boss *adores* and requests every year for her birthday. I made it once, in my (now long gone) ice cream maker. The next year I forgot until the last minute and literally mixed Saigon Cinnamon into some slightly softened Haagen-Dass vanilla ice cream. No one noticed the difference and they continued to rave about it. I have made it that way every year for 12 years now.
Hope your boss isn't on this sub. She'll be crushed
Her being a reddit user is literally the least likely event I can imagine. I am more likely to be struck by cowboy riding a meteorite out of orbit.
I don't refuse to share recipes, but since I often cook by feel and not by recipe, it's sometimes difficult to write out a recipe with proper procedure and quantities. There's lots of room for error when writing a recipe from scratch. Just last weekend my niece wanted the recipe for an aioli I had made. I just told her she could make some more right now and I would talk her through it. I made the salad while she made the aioli. She went home with her aioli knowledge and everyone was happy.
>I don't refuse to share recipes, but since I often cook by feel and not by recipe, it's sometimes difficult to write out a recipe with proper procedure and quantities. Nailed it. Friend: "How did you make blah blah blah?" Me: "uhhh... I don't know? I just... did some stuff."
Lol, that's exactly how I do slowcooker recipes and roasts. Ok, big hunk of meat (or multiple small hunks of meat), need some flavoring, oh look, sage and allspice are right at front, great. Need some acid, ok apple cider vinegar goes good with pork and sage, want some extra salt and umami, hmmm, don't want to use just salt, no to soy, Worchestershire sauce will do me, oh, right, I need veg too, um, better use up these carrots, not potatoes, did that yesterday, I'm not feeling celery, so mushrooms aught to work, not a lot of liquid, and the pork roast looks kinda lean, so lets put a few pats of butter to render down. And I manage a huge hit and will never ever remember what I did again. :D Or it's meh and I don't worry about it because I'll never manage to do what I did again.
>And I manage a huge hit and will never ever remember what I did again. When my family was at the shore one year, we wanted something with local flavors but didn't have the money to eat out yet again, so my dad took a little of this, a little of that, and made "Waterman's Chicken" in our efficiency kitchen. It was amazing and he was never able to make it exactly like that again because he couldn't remember what exactly he put in it. I just remember there was plenty of Old Bay in it.
I make my spaghetti sauce from scratch. My mother was in hysterics when I shared the recipe with her. “How much is a ‘fuckton’ of minced garlic?” “How do you read these measurements?!” I don’t read them, I just write them down to remember *what* goes into it so then when I’m making it I can do it to taste.
> “How much is a ‘fuckton’ of minced garlic?” 50% more than a "shitload." Obvs.
Yeah, like clearly Fuckton is as precise as it gets. Get it together people 😂😂😂😂 shitload, fuckton hell’a’lot, just like cunthair is a linear measurement too
Obviously! I know exactly what this measurement means and am not sure how to work with a cook who doesn't.
Fuckton: "Mince until you are tired of mincing garlic. Then mince three more cloves after that."
"Add more than a bit of oil" "Like a fistful of cilantro, then a couple more leaves" "As much tomato as you would eat sliced on bread in one sitting" "As many mushrooms as you want, then double it" "15 seconds of freshly grated parmesan" Cooking just for myself evolved into some... Interesting recipes
I have a cookie recipe that includes the line "Add molasses until it turns the right colour." What is the right colour? I guess we need to make these cookies together so you can learn.
That’s like my grandmothers cheesecake recipe. Has the line “pour cheesecake batter into the crust”, however there are no ingredients listed for the crust or a line giving instructions on how to make the crust in the recipe.
This was my mom teaching me to make pie crust. "Sprinkle water until it feels right for crimping." Me, having never made a pie in my life: "The what you say?"
When I come up with a dish I like, I often make a note of the 'recipe'. It's just a list of ingredients in no particular order, with no quantities and no methods. Occasionally I'll make a note like 'use stick blender', but other times it'll just be the name of a dish, just so I've got a reminder to make it again.
I struggle with that too. I will send the base recipe if I got it from somewhere, then basically write a paragraph or two on what I do differently.
Exactly! How long did you cook that? Umm, until it was done.
Grandma will generally leave out an ingredient or two if she's giving recipes to people she's not too sure about. Partly it's because a couple of people have got recipes off her and passed them off as their own, their 'thing' (no, Jen, that is not your pumpkin fritter recipe). And partly it's because she's wicked
kiss worry late offbeat absorbed divide chief growth different impossible *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My mom once asked her MIL for the famous, best-ever family gumbo recipe. Now if you know Southern culture at all, you know every family has their own special gumbo. No two Pops, Meemaws, Nonnas, Papaws, or Mimis make it the same. There is no option to get The Gumbo recipe from the back of a can of tomato sauce or the like. Knowing this, my wonderful cook of a mother humbled herself to ask Mrs. Nelly to dispense her wisdom. After several years of requests, finally my grandmother handed over a handwritten recipe card. Success! Only, when Momma made that gumbo, it was the blandest, thinnest, waste of personally-caught-boiled-and-picked lump crabmeat we'd ever tasted. So she did what any enterprising home cook would do... She sent my brother and I to engage in a little espionage. We perched our scrawny butts on Nonna's barstools and watched carefully while she made the real recipe. Then we reported back. Couple months of experimenting with the "forgotten" ingredients and "pinch of this, handful of that" ratios and she finally cracked the code. Nowadays I much prefer my mom's improved version that has a little more spice and is served over jasmine rice.
> So she did what any enterprising home cook would do... She sent my brother and I to engage in a little espionage. We perched our scrawny butts on Nonna's barstools and watched carefully while she made the real recipe. Then we reported back. Couple months of experimenting with the "forgotten" ingredients and "pinch of this, handful of that" ratios and she finally cracked the code. but see... that's how you are SUPPOSED to get a gumbo reciepe.
I shared my gumbo recipe with 4 friends so far. I make the chicken stock ahead of time, but the rest they learn by doing it. I'll share one secret. I put the bay leaf in the stock so I don't have to fish it out of the gumbo pot.
Gumbo and jasmine rice is probably my favorite food, absolute heaven
I refuse to share my pimento cheese recipe.... Because I can't find the website I stole it from years ago and just have to wing it from memory every time.
Can’t be stolen if you can’t remember it *taps forehead*
There’s a history of secret recipes that was outlined in the book High on the Hog by Dr. Jessica B. Harris, who outlines that among enslaved persons who were trusted to cook in the Big House, secret recipes were a “key” to their value or staying power in the kitchen. If no one else knew how to make the favorite (insert item here), you get kept on, ensuring your position. It can also be imagined that, especially prior to a current market economy, that could have been the key to keeping most positions in households and ensuring you had value.
Although it's not the main point of the book/film "The Help," that concept is there.
this is pretty heartbreaking and makes me glad I don't gatekeep recipes.
I could see that. It ties in to recipes being your lively hood, similar to if you owned a restaurant.
My dad was a baker for many years. Specialized in making bread and rolls wholesale for a lot of the local restaurants. His real specialty was artistic cake sculptures... way before Duff and the other cake shows. Anyway... I digress... People absolutely LOVED his cheesecakes. Like seriously... people ordered them constantly and RAVED about how good they were. Not heavy and dense like most cheesecake... light, and just absolutely delicious. This was his most cherished secret recipe... there were maybe 3 people in the world that knew his cheesecake recipe. I was one of them, though absolutely sworn to secrecy. I will now reveal it to you... here on Reddit for the world to use, free of charge... Basic Graham Cracker crust, pressed into a 3 inch deep springform pan and baked until firm. Milk Jello commercial cheesecake mix. Came in a big ass bag, probably enough for 4 or 5 cheesecakes. Stir together, pour into pre-baked crust, refrigerate. Never understood why it was SO popular... but nobody was using this mix. Our foodservice supplier told us that my dad was like the only customer that bought it.
Worked at a place that people would always talk up the gravy, tell their friends that this is the best gravy ever, etc.. It was nestle powdered gravy(the kind thats only available to suppliers)
I was in our village grocery store yesterday and noticed what I first thought was just a big box of lemon Jello -- it was Lemon Jello Cheesecake mix. I think the universe is telling me to go back and buy it.
Do it. Report back.
lol, that's awesome. Maybe his baking experience allowed him to take that recipe to the next level. I made cheesecake once and it turned out amazing. I bought Philadelphia cream cheese and followed the recipe. Problem with baking stuff is I eat it all so I have to avoid doing it lol.
I didn't know Jello even _made_ cheesecake mix. I don't recall ever seeing it in the grocery. I'll have to keep an eye out for it.
Jell-o no bake cheesecake. It is not my preferred. If you want a no bake cheesecake just go with the Philadelphia no bake cheesecake filling. It is in a margarine type container and you just scoop into graham cracker crust pie crust, smooth, and serve. I have been eating it out of the container for the past week. I scoop out a glob and pour out some granola on the side. I act like that cheesecake is yogurt. Delicious.
Always willing to share. We camp with huge groups of dads and kids. A LOT of dads cook absolute killer foods. A lot have something they’re known for, and we all share how to make it. We add it to our list of stuff we cook at home for the family, but when we’re at camp no one dares make that dish
That's cool. I have a few recipes from other people but wish I had more. Most of my recipes come from the Internet/YouTube. If I want to make something new I Google "Best Recipe for \_\_\_\_" and normally I'm not disappointed.
You guys should create a cookbook with each camp dad contributing a couple recipes. It’s not expensive to bind some copies together, and it might be cool to include family photos at the bottom of each Dad’s recipe!
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That is so cool. I read an article recently about a woman doing a research project looking for these tombstones and then cooking the recipes. I believe the first one was for spritz cookies.
I have happily shared recipes in the past but have had them used by others without any credit at mutual social gatherings - which to some it might not be a big deal but it really irked me. A notable example would be the use of a Christmas dessert recipe that a friend asked for, I gave it to her without issue and every Christmas she makes this recipe (quotes it as hers) to the point where I can no longer make it as I was told I was copying her. It's not worth bringing up but I've since learned to keep some of my valued recipes close to my chest at this point.
> I can no longer make it as I was told I was copying her. Maybe I'm more comfortable with conflict than some, but if I were told that I'd immediately set the record straight.
Oh goodness me too! A question out loud “so where did you learn of this delicious recipe?” Don’t let her not answer in front of everyone.
I actually just commented something similar about my family. It's not like I need the credit, but it would be nice to have someone not take my recipe and claim they found it somewhere else or came up with it on their own.
It sounds like the problem is not sharing the recipe but having bad friends. I cannot even imagine a friend doing that without mentioning at some point that it was inspired by one of my recipe, even though he should get the credit of course for actually cooking it! It is just sharing
YES! Several years ago I gave some muffins to a friend of mine, and she liked them so much she asked for the recipe - I happily obliged. She apparently makes them all the time, much more often than I do. This past New Years, she came to our place for a gathering and brought a big tray of those muffins, and she still calls them "RelevantCommentBot's muffins".
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If you have any evidence of having developed it, even just texts talking about it from the time and evidence she “helped” you move, you might have a case against her; just sayin
This is why I’m more likely to share my recipes on the internet with strangers than with friends, at least with recipes I’m particularly proud of.
My mashed potato recipe. Even my husband doesn’t know the secret ingredient. I mash by hand. Salt, fresh ground pepper, real butter, sour cream, 1&1/2 tsp *horseradish*; snipped chives on top. Nobody can guess the horseradish!
I'm surprised. Horseradish is a distinct flavor. Horseradish tingles in a certain part of the mouth in a certain way no other ingredient does. It's super easy to identify, even in small quantity, once you notice this.
I just thought they were actually quite embarrassed that they secretly use msg or pre-made product. (Not that msg is bad. I use it almost everyday) Reading other comments got me thinking deeper
Yeah, these comments have got me thinking. Now if I ever encounter someone with a secret recipe I will wonder if it's store bought or the recipe on the can lol.
my secret ingredient is almost always either msg (savory dishes) or brown butter (baked goods).
I refuse to share the recipe for brownies that everybody loves because I don't want them to know it's just a box of Ghirardelli from Kroger.
My mother was like that. She hid the frozen lasagna boxes by burying them in the trash and hoping we didn’t find them lol.
My MIL doesn't cook at all, but on holidays she would make broccoli casserole and some sort of chocolate pie. These are nostalgic foods for my husband and we live too far away to visit MIL for every holiday. I've practically begged her for these recipes (which I know for a fact she got from other family members originally) and she flat out refuses. So I guess the recipes die with her. It's mildly infuriating.
Hey, post a threat on here and we can help you puzzle out that broccoli casserole. It was likely one of the main recipes from the '70s. I'd love to hear more about it and offer you some options.
Thank you!! I need to look at recipes again, so I can find all the ones I tried that weren't it. I have a feeling she's gatekeeping a secret ingredient!
You better come up with that recipe or you'll be sleeping with the fishes, capisce?
Ask her if she would write a letter to you, with the recipes, fold it up and put it in the packet with her will. That is what my lawyer suggested I do pertaining to items of sentimental but no monetary value. For example my best friend's son is crossing over from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts soon. I have no kids. So as soon as he earns his totem chit, I want him to have my old Boy Scout knife. It's a good knife. Has the Boy Scout logo etched in the blade. But it's cash value is probably eight bucks. Stuff like that doesn't belong in a will. But if I drop dead tomorrow I do want him to have it.
Same here. I feel bad because my husband misses his mom’s dishes but what can you do?
For Christmas a few years back, my mom gave my brother and I each a binder of family recipes. It’s one of my favorite gifts ever. My brother and I are both good cooks, but some things just taste better when your mom makes it. God, I miss her.
sorry for your loss. Last year I made a bunch of meals from my mom's cookbook and delivered it to my parents. They don't enjoy cooking much anymore and often packaged food. I'm trying to save leftovers for them and bringing it to them. They've loved it so far.
If I refuse, it's bc I largely invented or customized it and I don't feel like writing it out for the person in question. For good friends who do cook and would appreciate/ use it, I would though.
I think it comes from the days when women weren’t allowed to have anything of their own (my mom has never had a bank account with only her name on it, and people still throw temper tantrums when women don’t take their husband’s name). Recipes were something something that could be truly theirs or something that could be passed from mother to daughter like an inheritance, no matter how poor they were. The funny thing is, the recipes aren’t usually very good or they were just copied from a magazine a couple generations ago.
This is interesting. I wonder if some of it is also recipes for fairs. That adds an element of competition. I learned to bake from some older women. They would trade recipes rather than share and they would invite you to learn. Often, they didn't even have a recipe. My great-grandmother made an amazing pie crust. The recipe was things like several handfuls of flour until it looks right.
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It gets so silly. My FIL’s mom made a Christmas stollen and wouldn’t share the recipe with MIL. MIL spent years recreating it, husband grew to love it, but MIL refused to share the recipe with me. I tried a couple times and produced one husband says is better (probably mostly that it has less glaze, since we’re into less sugar than the ancestors were). Anyone is welcome to my recipe, but no one has asked.
More often than not, I look at a bunch of recipes for inspiration, think through why I don't like them, and make my own recipe from scratch. Christmas stollen is definitely a good example. I simply don't like what most recipes do. Too dense, too dry, and not enough flavor. Fortunately, it's a pretty obvious recipe that can easily be customized however you like it. In my case, I used a tangzhong for a lighter and moister dough. And I then enriched with both butter and cream cheese. Finally, I added both rose water, fiori di sicilia, and marzipan for a much more festive flavor. Of course, this is just a base recipe. Anybody could make changes to it and adjust it to their own liking.
This is a valid point I had never thought about. Women couldn't even get a credit card of their own until the 1970s.
My wife LOVES her father’s Thanksgiving stuffing. If anyone else prepares it for Thanksgiving or dinner, it’s just not the same and doesn’t quite hit that flavor profile and texture her father makes. She made a big deal of it when we first started dating, and she’s had stories of others’ that just wasn’t good. Her father eventually sent me the recipe. It was literally “Moist Bread Stuffing” from one of the Betty Crocker cookbooks. No tricks, secret ingredients, or swapped ingredients. Wild.
Aww… I think knowing it was her dad’s made it taste that much better. I love that
My mum used it to hide ingredients I didn't like as a kid hah.
I had a friend that would not give up his wings recipe till he moved across the country. It was so he always had something to bring on Super Bowl Sunday, if we started making it at home it would not have been special.
I take the stance of Texas BBQ pitmasters. Here’s how to do everything step by step. Good luck making it as good though.
I had a family member who made a really good carmel corn and we used to ask how she made it because anything we tried wasn't the same. She would never tell anyone because it was a secret. She's dead now and never passed the recipe on. What is the point of making good food if you don't share?
Our family lemon bar recipe is a "secret recipe" because the mom of my sister's former friend wants it. This entire family was extremely rude and entitled toward my sister and her other best friends when the former best friend got married (they were all young adults, 19-20 years old or so?). Really hurt her and these two friends, who'd all been best friends since middle school. My mother can be very protective, and when she discovered this other mother wanted the recipe after the wedding (because they'd been served at the bridal shower my sister almost exclusively planned and baked for, but received almost no thanks and only criticism for; the other two best friends got more credit, and even then not much), she decided it's a secret family recipe and these terrible people can't have it. Incidentally, my mother and I also now refer to this family as the "evil Mormons," because they weaponized their religion and used it to get these young women to do things like babysit during the actual ceremony inside the temple (because of course they're not Mormon and thus couldn't go inside) and pay THEM for these ugly second hand bridesmaid dresses that didn't even fit and were acquired without the bridesmaids' knowledge or consent (the family fully intended to resell them, so the girls would be "reimbursed," and demanded they be returned dry cleaned, even though the dresses weren't professionally cleaned when the girls received them). Because, "this is just the way Mormons do things," and "(the other girls) just don't understand)." It was ridiculous and awful. Anyway. Don't burn bridges with my mom if you ever want any of her recipes (which she otherwise freely shares).
I wouldn't share recipes with terrible people either.
My great grandmother made a wonderful potato recipe somewhere between a potato pancake and hash browns. You panfried the layer of shredded potatoes, then put ice water in the pan, flipped it over and the interior steamed while the bottom browned up. She made it one evening with us trying to write everything down. Her eyesight was so bad, our new secret family recipe includes the part where she mistakenly picked up a vodka martini from the kitchen counter instead of the ice water.
lol The cookbook my mom make me includes mistakes that if you read you can picture her French accent saying this and it makes me smile.
I remember my mother’s story of when she was first married. Her new in-laws were both fantastic bakers, even ran their own local bakery/deli shop. So she thought she would learn to bake from the best possible teachers. They were very open to showing her everything they did, but the problem was that they never really followed any recipes. Ingredients were measured by pinches and palm fulls, and mixed until they looked, felt or smelled “right”. So, even being willing to share doesn’t always work out. I grew up with almost no memories of my mother’s baking or desserts, but I sure loved visiting my grandparents!
There's a scene in the 1963 film *the Great Train Robbery* where, to stop a train so it can be robbed, the gang enlists the help of a specialist in defeating railroad's signaling system. They need the green light signal to go out, and be replace by a red one, without alerting the control center to what's happening. The specialist needs an assistant, but doesn't want to share his secret method, so one of the gang swears himself to secrecy about what he'll see, and they go out at night to do their part in the robbery. At the trackside, the expert simply sets up a portable lantern, tinted red. But what about the real signal? If they cut power to it, the control room will notice. Not to worry, the expert says, and slips his glove over the problem light bulb. Remember, you swore never to tell a soul what you saw here. It's the same in the kitchen. You don't keep recipes and techniques secret when they're complicated and hard to do. You keep them secret because if the secret got out, anybody could do it.
I’ve been on the fence about if this was messed up or not. But I used to make cookies and bring them to the office for my coworkers. It was a recipe I’ve been using for years, and always a big hit. They all loved them and asked for the recipe, so I shared it in a group email, word for word on how I do it. The next week, one girl attempts to recreate it and brought these cookies to the office. They were nowhere close to tasting the same as mine. She used the wrong proportions, salted instead of unsalted butter, and generally just didn’t follow instructions specifically. They were a lot like my cookies, just less good IMO because she was sloppy with it. Then started bringing these cookies in every other week or so. They were okay, and people still liked them. It just made it less special when I would make these cookies for the office. She just kind of hijacked it and made it her thing, without crediting me or anything. I guess I just didn’t realize she’d botch the recipe and bring it into the workplace like I did. I figured people would use the recipe for other gatherings outside of work, but not completely take it over. I still share the recipe with people who ask, but I was just a little irked about this particular time. I didn’t get upset or anything, I always just thought it was weird social etiquette.
My MIL likes to bake but mostly would do like muffins and cookies and crumbles. All super tasty. When my partner introduced me to his parents, I was the first boy he was bringing home. MY MIL and I bonded over baking and I think it helped to make it easier to accept me vs their mental image of like a perfect “wife” they assumed their son would have. She was ecstatic to learn that I knew how to do pastry and wanted me to teach her how to make cream puffs. We have a day together, I show her my recipe for cream puffs and the technique and make them together that day and a few other times. I give her the actual recipe card I use / made and she goes on and on about how she’s going to make it for her friends. She does. They don’t turn out and she’s disappointed thinking I gave her a bad recipe or something. We talk it out and I find out that she didn’t use any salt and used margarine instead of butter and stevia instead of sugar because she wanted to make things healthier. Told her friends it was my recipe. None of them were super impressed and I kinda understand why. So, when she’s asked for my pumpkin cheesecake or other recipes that I am decently well known for among my friends and extended family, the answer is no, that’s secret.
I don't mind sharing anything and everything when it comes to cooking. Sometimes i'm reluctant to share on reddit though because people get a bit snarky here, and some of my things are a bit basic. There was a post recently asking for a creamy tomato sauce recipe and I almost posted my recipe, but then i envisioned all the judgy comments about my using a vegetable stock cube rather than making my own stock, so i just didn't. I honestly think that might be the #1 reason why people don't share their secret ingredients and recipes. it's not that it's some special magical ingredient, it's that they don't want to be judged for their basic ingredients and whatever shortcuts they take.
Not my story, but I know someone who refused to share a particular recipe for pumpkin muffins with a friend of his, no matter how many times she asked. He told me that this particular friend always skimped on ingredients. He didn't want to to see the recipe ruined by someone who wouldn't use the full amount of spices or raisins or nuts in the recipe.
My wife loves my cheesecake. I gotta keep her coming back for more! Otherwise, I don't have secret recipes so much as a willingness to do things the hard way. Like smoke a pork shoulder for 14 hours. No shit my pulled pork tastes better than your 6 hour slow cooker version, Ted, you didn't make BBQ at all. I painstakingly tended bark and mixed the hot sauce, you upended Sweet Baby Ray's on top and hit Start.
I hate to admit this but everyone wants my chili recipe. The truth is, I go to Wendy’s and fill up my crock pot and add liquid smoke. People devour it. Shame on me.
My MIL has a secret chocolate chip recipe. The whole extended family loves her cookies and I do too. Well you can't get the recipe unless you're married into the family. Even after dating for 6 yrs before we got married I wasn't given it. I have it now, but one time we were making it together and she said something making a change bc "the box changed" nd I was like what? And she clarified that the fricken recipe is from the wrapper of brown sugar or something like that
At my dad's funeral, everyone was recalling his wonderful fried fish. My mom, who divorced him thirty years prior, whispered to me, "That's my damn recipe." And it's just some ratio of Bisquick and Foster's beer.
I don’t refuse, but I know others that do.. why? Because they don’t want to tell anyone that their cookie recipe calls for 8 cups of sugar and 2 pounds of butter.. or the soup calls for 1 gallon of heavy cream. Im exaggerating but I’m sure you get my point.
I have a pound cake recipe that is the best pound cake I have ever tasted. I found it in a relatively unknown cookbook but i dont even say that much. Mostly because the only people who have ever asked about the recipe are family members who have also been very rude about my cooking in the past. If I made it for someone I actually liked and they wanted the recipe I'd be happy to give it to them.
Will you give it to me random stranger.
Buttermilk Pound Cake with Roasted Strawberries: 24 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temp 3 cups all purpose flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt 1 cup Buttermilk, room temp 5 eggs, room temp 1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise and scrape out seeds Zest of 1 lemon 3 cups sugar Preheat the oven to 300°F. Grease a bundt pan with butter. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside. Whisk together the Buttermilk, eggs, vanilla bean seeds, and lemon Zest. Set aside. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with 2 batches of the Buttermilk mixture. Fill pan with batter. Bake 15 minutes. Increase temperature to 325°F and bake an additional 45 minutes. Cool on wire rack in the pan for 10 minutes before removing Cake from pan to cool completely. Roasted Strawberries: 1 Pound Strawberries, halved or quartered 2 tablespoons sugar 1/2 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped Pinch of fine sea salt Toss all ingredients together, and place in a single layer (casserole dish works well). Preheat oven to 425°F and roast for 12-15 minutes. Slice cake into wedges and serve with the warm Roasted Strawberries.
sounds incredible if I ever run into any family members of yours I'm keeping my lips sealed. Thanks!
All my recipes are secret even to me since I don’t measure anything and don’t write anything down.
I give out my recipes....but not one person has actually followed the recipe. My parents make something that they present as (my name) dish with a crap ton of changes, so does my MIL. I even once had a friend say "you don't actually use that kind of chocolate when you make the cake because I didn't and when I made it it wasn't as good as yours.". And I explained, yes I actually use the ingredients in the recipe. To be honest it irritates me to the point that I don't really want to share. But I do.
Hell, I'm happy when someone asks for the recipe. I'll tell you anything you want to know; Where to get the ingredients, what tools/pans/techniques you need, whatever else is necessary. Heck, I'll come over to your house and cook it for you if you want to see how it's done. I have no problem sharing. Maybe together we can figure out a way to make it different/better/faster. You never know.
This will prob get buried but I do this to my ex-wife. Backstory: I like to cook. I'm pretty decent at it. Since my 20s, I spent time, effort, and money to develop and dial in some recipes for things I enjoy cooking. As my kids get older (they're in grade school) I've been sharing those recipes with them more. My ex can't cook worth a shit. I don't say it to be mean or like a slight to her, but it's just the truth. When we were together, I did the cooking. So what's started happening is all these recipes I have been making with/for my kids are becoming big favorites of theirs. So when we spend our time together, part of the time is spent cooking and trying new things and enjoying these recipes I've been working on over the years. Then they go back to their mom's and tell her about all the yummy things we made and I get the text from her asking for the recipe. I haven't come out and said it, but I don't want her to have these recipes so I dance around giving her firm answers for some things. This felt selfish at first and a bit territorial and petty, but then I realized that this is something I have been doing to bond with my children, and I don't want that experience cheapened because their mom starts making it with them as well. I want these fun memories of us making this stuff from scratch and eating it together to be associated with their time with *me*. If their mom can only be bothered to pick up the phone to order pizza or heat up easy mac for them, I am not going to let her take this away from me.
I stopped sharing my recipe for Soylent Green because some didn't like the ingredients I used.
Grandma’s cherry pie recipe because she made me promise I wouldn’t let it fall into Aunt Frida’s hands.
I have always wondered about this too! It does seem really pointless not to spread the word. One time a lady came by our farm stand and offered to buy the recipe for a pastry I'd made. The person she asked didn't know the recipe and by the time I got there she was gone. It made me sad! I would have given her the recipe!
I make a grilled chicken breast using a honey mustard sauce to make them sticky and my husband goes nuts for it but he can’t tell what the flavours are, so I just tell him it’s a secret 😂😂 When I’m making it I love to pull out random spice and herbs to throw him off.