Internet recipes that don't turn out

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

Yeah, I find that a lot. The one I did just last night had me using a 2-to-1 ratio of flour to butter in a roux. Normally one would use a 3-to-2 ratio.

What their recipe made was not a roux, but something resembling a dry cookie dough. I scrapped the roux and made it the normal way and got better results.

Originally Posted by AmbrosiaWriter

When I find an online recipe I tend to scan through the comments on it like on allrecipes.com - you just gotta realize some people will be like "This recipe is amazing but I changed <insert changing the entire recipe so it's completely new>." Or "This recipe is awful I made it <insert completely different ingredients and cook time."

I do that a lot myself. A lot of times a recipe calls for some ingredient I can't get out here in the sticks unless I order it from online. Their comments for "I couldn't find "X" so I substituted "Y" and it was yummy" are a great help.

Sadly, far too many of their comments are "I didn't have "X", "Y", or "Z" so I substituted [some ingredient that makes no damn sense]. I also didn't have the time to do [step] and so I just glopped all the ingredients into the pot and put it into the hands of fate and what I got was something that tasted like ass. The recipe sucked and the person who posted it was a freaking moron"

Really folks? You don't' get any of the ingredients, don't follow the steps and it's the fault of the recipe and the author?

Baffling.

[Tanasi]

I'm a big fan of Alton Brown, he and his test cooks actually work out the details and will give warnings. He'll even answer some questions on Twitter.
I also like ATK and Cook's Country. I don't have the current season's recipes but I do have the past seasons and I've generally had good luck. Except for baking you can fudge a little on most recipes but don't forget you fudged when it doesn't work out. Another good source that is free is Recipe Secrets. They're a great bunch of folks especially Kitchen Witch. If you sign up with them be prepared to get deluged with email as that 's how the site owner pays for it and makes his living. I've also been getting a lot of recipes off of face book lately but before we make something my youngest daughter and I carefully go over it and try to see where we might go wrong and compensate. This past December my daughter graduated with her bachelors degree in education (she's 18) but now she's going to go to culinary school this fall to get her "chefin" license. She wants to teach home-ec type classes in schools that no-longer can teach home-ec type classes.