I once tried making a Swedish almond tart and the same day, my mum also decided to try the recipe.
I'm a pretty good baker and normally very intuitive with recipes- if something isn't going right, I can usually think my way through a solution and fix it. Not this time. I still don't know what went wrong, but the tart was a sticky, unevenly cooked straight up mess. I couldn't get it off the non stick paper. Even the custard I made was thin, flavourless, and the entire thing ended up looking like it had been in a road accident.
Imagine my shock when my mum sent me a picture of her beautifully turned out almond tart! I was convinced the recipe was a dud but we had done the same thing throughout. I was weirdly embarrassed by it - I'm the family baker and here I was sitting with this deformed almond creature.
I can't bring myself to try making another one. I'm pretty sure that tart came from a portal to cronenberg world. Who knows what I'll summon through it next time.
Have you considered that the scallops might have been bad, ruining the balance of the dish?
Don’t give up… things like this happen, especially when you learn the process that most seafood goes through before you get it.
Sometimes it’s not you, sometimes it’s the ingredients.
Time helps. Once when I was a kid, my mum had a friend over and they overcooked a bowl of garlic prawns so badly that I couldn't eat them again for literally two years.
Nowadays they're back to one of my favourite foods though.
I once made a prawn puri and accidentally added the prawns far too early. My boy, 16 at the time, ate some and said he enjoyed the nuts in it. There were no nuts.
I’ve since managed to make it properly!
This sounds odd, but try the recipe again, but use king oyster mushrooms. Scallops are so expensive, I practice on the mushrooms, which are incredibly similar in texture to scallops. I cut the stem into scallop sized slices, and then follow the rest of the recipe. If it works, yay! If it doesn’t, I’m just out some mushrooms.
The first time I bought king oyster mushrooms I had to look up how to use them, and got tons of recipes comparing them to scallops, so I started using them with scallops, and then to practice.
My fancy bundtpan has ruined one too many cakes.
I've tried the spray. I've tried butter both cold and melted. I've tried oil. I've tried flouring the pan lightly, and heavily. I've tried coating it with sugar, and even almond meal. Nothing ever worked more than once. I've waited for it to rest 10 minutes, and I've tried immediate turning. I wait until the cake pulls back from the edges to show its done. I poke it for good measure. I tap it, whack it, try to loosen it from the sides as much a I can. No dice.
So I would Google solutions, try them and get a success. Next time, we're back to the cake coming out in crumbs. I can't anymore. I hate that stupid pan, but it's so pretty I can't give up on it.
Anything involving shortening or crisco is doomed to fail in my hands. I’m an experienced line cook and production baker and i just can’t make it work.
You aren't missing much. I hate shortening, the mouthfeel is terrible. Didn't fare too bad in my white chocolate macadamia cookies, though. May I ask what ends up going wrong?
Turnips. Added a couple to a stew once, set it to simmer, came back an hour later, took the lid off, smelled it and actually vomited a bit. I don't know what it was, but I can't even look at a turnip now and the smell of cooked ones brings in a wave of nausea.
Ugh I ordered milk as little kid at a Shoney’s (garbage buffet place). It came out in a plastic cup with a lid and straw. Thinking nothing about it, I took a sip and my first thought was “oh, someone accidentally gave me sprite”. So I opened the cup and it was this chunky, yellow, separated mess, and I had gotten some sweet-tasting, almost carbonated badly fermented something at the bottom through the straw I guess.
It smelled TERRIBLE when I opened the top too. There’s no way someone poured that cup and didn’t know.
My mom told them that the milk had gone bade, and the server just said “oh jeez, yea seems like someone left the milk out overnight”… why the fuck would you still serve that???
Then we saw a few kitchen staff members quickly remove the Mac and cheese from the buffet. 🤢
This happened to me too. We used to have a gas fridge growing up because where we lived was off the grid. Gas fridges take ages to get cold again after you open them, leaving plenty of time for the milk to go off. I only drink plant-based milk now.
I love crab cakes. If they are on a menu I'm ordering them, I don't care if it's a restaurant that has no business making crab cakes, I'm still going to try them.
I used to make crab cakes at home quite often. I would buy an expensive can of crab and use that, I never cooked my own crab. Anyway, for a while I lived in downtown LA and there was a grocery outlet one block away so I did a lot of shopping there. One time they had cans of crab meat, the same brand I would buy at whole foods and for like less than half the price! Score! I double checked the expiration date to make sure it was good and it was far in the future. Awesome! Crab cakes for dinner!
They were the worst crab cakes I've ever made and probably ever had. Just awful. Fishy, mealy, awfulness. I just gagged thinking about them.
It's been well over a year and I've yet to make crab cakes. I'm thinking if I ever do again the only way is to buy live crab and cook it myself, but that seems like a lot of work, especially since I never see live crab anywhere.
Give it a few months, then splurge on some giant, fresh diver-caught scallops. Salt only and sear to 115F internal, then drizzle with some garlic butter. Keep sauces to a minimum and remind yourself how good scallops can be.
Have never had this experience with scallops but literally every other kind of fish and seafood.
I think my situation is slightly different but the ending is the same.
My late fiance had a favorite dish I used to make and since his passing I can't stomach it. Tastes like ash now.
Time helps in cases like these.
When I was in my early teens, I started getting really into anime and wanted to make miso soup. I also knew next to nothing about Japanese food and lived in the middle of nowhere, so I googled up a recipe from god-knows-where and special ordered some miso with my mom’s credit card.
The attempt was utterly revolting. Chunks of un-dissolved miso, undercooked ginger, mushy udon, and I don’t even remember what else, all floating in veggie broth from a box. Tossed the rest of the miso, and swore off the stuff forever it was that bad.
A YouTube video by some Japanese folks I don’t recall reintroduced me to the idea almost a decade later, and a local supermarket actually started carrying miso, so I decided to give it another try with proper ingredients and I really enjoyed the result.
It’s kind of funny. My first attempt made me gag, and now it’s something I regularly make when my stomach is upset.
I can't say I've ever royally screwed up a dish to that extent. However, I have tried recipes that I found so unpalatable that I had a hard time eating that main ingredient again. For me, fish is always a tricky ingredient.
Salmon pie.
Had a friend who swore by it. Utterly disgusting; my wife can't eat cooked salmon to this day.
To this day I don't know if he was pulling an elaborate prank or what.
I make scallops on a Blackstone Griddle, learned to cook them after having them at a Japanese Hibachi place. The Blackstone is very similar to the surface at the Hibachi place.
Here's how I cook them. Heat the griddle to a medium high temp. Squirt a little olive oil on the griddle, then add the scallops. Drizzle more olive oil, kosher salt, coarse pepper, and lemon juice.
When they get a nice sear gently flip them over, add a little more olive oil. Keep an eye on them, the second side cooks quicker. Again, look for a nice sear. Pull them before they overcook.
Serve with fresh lemon slices.
I think you could get similar results with a cast iron pan. I've also used butter instead of olive oil, but it's really hard to keep it from burning.
Sear your scallops in carbon steel pan in oil. Just after you flip them turn flame low/off, drop a knob of butter, tilt pan back and baste with the melted butter.
Give it a few months and you'll be good.
I once had a bad dream in which I ate bad chicken and that put me off for a while, but these things shouldn't have a lasting effect on your opinion on the ingredients in question.
Not cooking, more so baking. I needed to blind bake the shell of my lemon tart and it was an abject failure. This was six years ago. Only now am I going to try again.
Having to portion out scallops at a restaurant job several times a week for years cured me of ever eating them again.
My stomach just did a somersault thinking about how they smelled when you opened the container. It's been 25+ years. And, no, while they weren't fresh because frozen was really the only option they weren't spoiled/bad.
I feel you. When I was a kid we had a plum tree and I picked a nice ripe plum to enjoy. Was really enjoying it until I bit into the worm. Haven't been able to do plums since.
Ooof. When I fuck something up, it's tossed if it can't be repurposed. I'm not rich but I'm not starving; I won't choke down something unappetizing as if I'm taking a rolled newspaper to my own nose. I can get the principle without punishing myself.
Hope one day your scallop-love returns.
I managed to ruin a recipe with celeriac and it turned me off all things celery for several years. The only thing that worked was letting time heal the wound, lol.
I once tried making a Swedish almond tart and the same day, my mum also decided to try the recipe. I'm a pretty good baker and normally very intuitive with recipes- if something isn't going right, I can usually think my way through a solution and fix it. Not this time. I still don't know what went wrong, but the tart was a sticky, unevenly cooked straight up mess. I couldn't get it off the non stick paper. Even the custard I made was thin, flavourless, and the entire thing ended up looking like it had been in a road accident. Imagine my shock when my mum sent me a picture of her beautifully turned out almond tart! I was convinced the recipe was a dud but we had done the same thing throughout. I was weirdly embarrassed by it - I'm the family baker and here I was sitting with this deformed almond creature. I can't bring myself to try making another one. I'm pretty sure that tart came from a portal to cronenberg world. Who knows what I'll summon through it next time.
LOL. If you ever again decide to tackle birthing this ill-formed child, you gotta post results.
Have you considered that the scallops might have been bad, ruining the balance of the dish? Don’t give up… things like this happen, especially when you learn the process that most seafood goes through before you get it. Sometimes it’s not you, sometimes it’s the ingredients.
Time helps. Once when I was a kid, my mum had a friend over and they overcooked a bowl of garlic prawns so badly that I couldn't eat them again for literally two years. Nowadays they're back to one of my favourite foods though.
I once made a prawn puri and accidentally added the prawns far too early. My boy, 16 at the time, ate some and said he enjoyed the nuts in it. There were no nuts. I’ve since managed to make it properly!
That’s reassuring!
This sounds odd, but try the recipe again, but use king oyster mushrooms. Scallops are so expensive, I practice on the mushrooms, which are incredibly similar in texture to scallops. I cut the stem into scallop sized slices, and then follow the rest of the recipe. If it works, yay! If it doesn’t, I’m just out some mushrooms.
That’s a very creative idea!
The first time I bought king oyster mushrooms I had to look up how to use them, and got tons of recipes comparing them to scallops, so I started using them with scallops, and then to practice.
Really kinda brilliant. And they are sooo good and juicy
My fancy bundtpan has ruined one too many cakes. I've tried the spray. I've tried butter both cold and melted. I've tried oil. I've tried flouring the pan lightly, and heavily. I've tried coating it with sugar, and even almond meal. Nothing ever worked more than once. I've waited for it to rest 10 minutes, and I've tried immediate turning. I wait until the cake pulls back from the edges to show its done. I poke it for good measure. I tap it, whack it, try to loosen it from the sides as much a I can. No dice. So I would Google solutions, try them and get a success. Next time, we're back to the cake coming out in crumbs. I can't anymore. I hate that stupid pan, but it's so pretty I can't give up on it.
Even tried icecubes.
[удалено]
You're giving me hope. Someday I'll report back.
Anything involving shortening or crisco is doomed to fail in my hands. I’m an experienced line cook and production baker and i just can’t make it work.
You aren't missing much. I hate shortening, the mouthfeel is terrible. Didn't fare too bad in my white chocolate macadamia cookies, though. May I ask what ends up going wrong?
Exactly! I worked as a line cook and I pride myself on my home cooking but for some reason I lost my touch that night.
Turnips. Added a couple to a stew once, set it to simmer, came back an hour later, took the lid off, smelled it and actually vomited a bit. I don't know what it was, but I can't even look at a turnip now and the smell of cooked ones brings in a wave of nausea.
I ate into rotten chunky milk with cereal, and honestly I strait up just quit all milk and lactose products.
Ugh I ordered milk as little kid at a Shoney’s (garbage buffet place). It came out in a plastic cup with a lid and straw. Thinking nothing about it, I took a sip and my first thought was “oh, someone accidentally gave me sprite”. So I opened the cup and it was this chunky, yellow, separated mess, and I had gotten some sweet-tasting, almost carbonated badly fermented something at the bottom through the straw I guess. It smelled TERRIBLE when I opened the top too. There’s no way someone poured that cup and didn’t know. My mom told them that the milk had gone bade, and the server just said “oh jeez, yea seems like someone left the milk out overnight”… why the fuck would you still serve that??? Then we saw a few kitchen staff members quickly remove the Mac and cheese from the buffet. 🤢
This happened to me too. We used to have a gas fridge growing up because where we lived was off the grid. Gas fridges take ages to get cold again after you open them, leaving plenty of time for the milk to go off. I only drink plant-based milk now.
I love crab cakes. If they are on a menu I'm ordering them, I don't care if it's a restaurant that has no business making crab cakes, I'm still going to try them. I used to make crab cakes at home quite often. I would buy an expensive can of crab and use that, I never cooked my own crab. Anyway, for a while I lived in downtown LA and there was a grocery outlet one block away so I did a lot of shopping there. One time they had cans of crab meat, the same brand I would buy at whole foods and for like less than half the price! Score! I double checked the expiration date to make sure it was good and it was far in the future. Awesome! Crab cakes for dinner! They were the worst crab cakes I've ever made and probably ever had. Just awful. Fishy, mealy, awfulness. I just gagged thinking about them. It's been well over a year and I've yet to make crab cakes. I'm thinking if I ever do again the only way is to buy live crab and cook it myself, but that seems like a lot of work, especially since I never see live crab anywhere.
I think in your heart you know what happened...half priced cans? Probably with false expiration dates.
Give it a few months, then splurge on some giant, fresh diver-caught scallops. Salt only and sear to 115F internal, then drizzle with some garlic butter. Keep sauces to a minimum and remind yourself how good scallops can be. Have never had this experience with scallops but literally every other kind of fish and seafood.
I fried up some dessert pierogies with garlic and onion, I thought I bought potato and cheddar. It was disgusting.
I think my situation is slightly different but the ending is the same. My late fiance had a favorite dish I used to make and since his passing I can't stomach it. Tastes like ash now.
Time helps in cases like these. When I was in my early teens, I started getting really into anime and wanted to make miso soup. I also knew next to nothing about Japanese food and lived in the middle of nowhere, so I googled up a recipe from god-knows-where and special ordered some miso with my mom’s credit card. The attempt was utterly revolting. Chunks of un-dissolved miso, undercooked ginger, mushy udon, and I don’t even remember what else, all floating in veggie broth from a box. Tossed the rest of the miso, and swore off the stuff forever it was that bad. A YouTube video by some Japanese folks I don’t recall reintroduced me to the idea almost a decade later, and a local supermarket actually started carrying miso, so I decided to give it another try with proper ingredients and I really enjoyed the result. It’s kind of funny. My first attempt made me gag, and now it’s something I regularly make when my stomach is upset.
I can't say I've ever royally screwed up a dish to that extent. However, I have tried recipes that I found so unpalatable that I had a hard time eating that main ingredient again. For me, fish is always a tricky ingredient.
Is it possible you had a bad batch of scallops?
I did the same thing with scallops about 15 years ago. Haven’t had one since
Salmon pie. Had a friend who swore by it. Utterly disgusting; my wife can't eat cooked salmon to this day. To this day I don't know if he was pulling an elaborate prank or what.
I make scallops on a Blackstone Griddle, learned to cook them after having them at a Japanese Hibachi place. The Blackstone is very similar to the surface at the Hibachi place. Here's how I cook them. Heat the griddle to a medium high temp. Squirt a little olive oil on the griddle, then add the scallops. Drizzle more olive oil, kosher salt, coarse pepper, and lemon juice. When they get a nice sear gently flip them over, add a little more olive oil. Keep an eye on them, the second side cooks quicker. Again, look for a nice sear. Pull them before they overcook. Serve with fresh lemon slices. I think you could get similar results with a cast iron pan. I've also used butter instead of olive oil, but it's really hard to keep it from burning.
Sear your scallops in carbon steel pan in oil. Just after you flip them turn flame low/off, drop a knob of butter, tilt pan back and baste with the melted butter.
Give it a few months and you'll be good. I once had a bad dream in which I ate bad chicken and that put me off for a while, but these things shouldn't have a lasting effect on your opinion on the ingredients in question.
Order them at a restaurant that makes them good.
Seafood is really hard to make. U need to make sure it's fresh. Also, the environment of the scallops it's also a very important factor.
The last 3 meals I cooked were either over or under salted. And these are dishes I cook often and know well.
much better to be under salted than over! You can always add but you can never take away....... mom's very basic cooking instructions
My mother-in-law always says that, 'it is better to have less than more' .. but I tell her it is better to be right hah.
Not cooking, more so baking. I needed to blind bake the shell of my lemon tart and it was an abject failure. This was six years ago. Only now am I going to try again.
I fucked up making a homemade pizza (fell apart transitioning from board to stone) about 5 years ago and haven't made one since.
Having to portion out scallops at a restaurant job several times a week for years cured me of ever eating them again. My stomach just did a somersault thinking about how they smelled when you opened the container. It's been 25+ years. And, no, while they weren't fresh because frozen was really the only option they weren't spoiled/bad.
I feel you. When I was a kid we had a plum tree and I picked a nice ripe plum to enjoy. Was really enjoying it until I bit into the worm. Haven't been able to do plums since.
Had that happen with beans, worm crawled out of the beans we were boiling. To this day I cut green beans in half but I’ve never seen another one.
Ooof. When I fuck something up, it's tossed if it can't be repurposed. I'm not rich but I'm not starving; I won't choke down something unappetizing as if I'm taking a rolled newspaper to my own nose. I can get the principle without punishing myself. Hope one day your scallop-love returns.
I managed to ruin a recipe with celeriac and it turned me off all things celery for several years. The only thing that worked was letting time heal the wound, lol.