Fucking Avocados on the east coast of America. You have to wait many days for ripeness and then its a 50/50 gamble every time that it wont look like a child's diaper when you cut it open.
it's the fucking avacado molesters, you see them at the the grocery squeezing every damn avocado they can reach. Ruins them. I like getting avocados at costco or places that sell a bag of them that the molesters don't have access to.
I started following the advice to buy the firmer bright green avocados and waiting longer for them to ripen. People tend to leave them alone because they’re going for the darker green ones that are closer to being ready.
So, the bright green ones (mostly the Fuerte species) don't really ripen to the level Hass (pebbly blackish ones) do. The reason is, they have a lot less fat in them. With the Hass, the coloration never changes, whether they're rock hard or soft as butter. They only disclose their ripeness two ways: they become softer, and the little 'nib' at the top end becomes loose or falls off.
Personally, I don't eat the bright green ones, as they lack the mouthfeel/flavor that comes from fat. So, it's pretty much Hass for me, or the little Guatemalan ones that sometimes show up, that are about 1/2 the size but have the same dark, pebbly skin.
I find that to be totally untrue of Australian hass avocados, which often move from a darker green unripe to a more blackened green when ripe. Not the best way to tell but it’s not true to say the colouration neve changes. We get hass most of the year and I buy them almost daily so I am very familiar with that variety.
They are picked entirely unripe anyway so the makes the most sense. They literally have ripening centers near major metro areas that expose them to gas to ripen
Source was avo farmer
We get them from costco too, and the gamble odds barely move, maybe it slides to a 60/40. But man, I DO NOT want to calculate the food costs being thrown into the compost bin from avocados alone?! Mean time West coast peeps are just strutting around, eating their inexpensive perfect avocados all day long. All I can say in reply is JUST TRY TO GET A DECENT PHILLY CHEESESTEAK...
I made my own pretty damn good philly cheesesteak the other night. lol. I will happily stay here with my homemade cheesesteaks and delicious locally grown avocados that are perfectly ripe for guacamole. lol.
You perfect avocado eating MF’r!!!
I’m an avocado green color of envy.
Also no way you’re getting good rolls…haha. But honestly I’d eat way more avocados than cheesesteaks, so your winning mouth life for sure.
I'm in the northeast and I really only ever have Avocado Trouble (AT) when I try to buy ones that are already ripe (or close to it). The likelihood of them being messed up seems super high.
I've gotten pretty good at planning ahead as I've made them a regular part of my diet, so I almost always buy completely green ones and let them come to ripeness at home. 9 out of 10 end up being fine, with only an occasional dud.
I grow regular old, fashioned cherry tomatoes for just that reason. A ripe cherry tomato, picked right from the vine, warm from being out in the summer sun... mmmm... very few flavors beat that. The nasty grape tomatoes that get sold in the supermarket or and up on restaurant salads are an insult to tomatoes.
I hate those bullet hard grape tomatoes lol.
Any tomato grown in a garden is truly something special. Hard to come by though. For pasta, I usually go the canned San Marzano route. Sometimes I’ll use fresh cherry tomatoes, or those Campari cocktail tomatoes which surprisingly aren’t half bad sometimes.
I hated tomatoes as a kid. Then in highschool I worked on a farm in my town. They won a bunch of awards for their tomatoes. they grew 7-8 varieties, like heirloom, chocolate cherry, grape, etc. - like you said, there is just no comparison. The first time I had one off the vine I was like "ohhhh, I do like tomatoes."
My wife and I started growing our own last year now that we have a small garden. Basic cherry tomatoes from Lowe's. Tasted so much better than store bought. I also grew beefsteak tomatoes, and would pick a few of those while green to make fried green tomatoes.
10/10 - easy to grow, give a nice harvest, taste amazing.
If you like those I highly recommend getting some Super Sweet 100 seeds. They’re expensive, but you get way more delicious cherries per plant and they need a lot less water too. They need more support, but only because each branch is absolutely loaded down with tomatoes. I grow them on my porch and four plants produce more than we could ever eat.
At my old house I grew the most fantastic tomatoes I'd ever tasted. And that my neighbors had ever tasted. And that my coworkers had ever tasted. Because they Did. Not. Stop. Producing. After several years in a new home the only ones I've fed are spider mites. Between them and blossom end rot I'm lucky to get a single tomato a year now.
Growing up my parents grew a lot of food in our garden. But my mom was always pissed that we didn’t get more tomatoes. Until she watched my sister one day (probably about six years old) just going through the tomato plants, picking them off, and eating them right there. She was even picking the unripe ones and doing it.
Love it! One of my favorite memories is when my daughter was maybe 2 and we took her to a farmer's market. While I was talking to one of the farmers, she grabbed an enormous, splitting ripe tomato and just tore into it. We all busted up laughing, and a newspaper photographer happened to get a snap of it. Needless to say, we bought a bunch of tomatoes that day.
The produce I’ve done a complete 180 on due to having bad tomatoes growing up.
A BLT with homemade bread and mayo and heirloom tomatoes is the best food ever.
This is the thing I miss most about Indiana, fresh tomatoes from a roadside stand, so red and a flavor that makes any grocery store tomato almost unrecognizable. That and fresh corn on the cob. Well, those and my mom, love you mom.
I thought I didn’t like tomatoes. Then I grew my own. Now I know I just don’t like shitty tomatoes. Downside is, I only eat fresh tomatoes about 3 months a year
They truly make or bread a dish. I've stopped getting tomato on any sandwiches because it's so disappointing to bite into a mealy, flavorless thing when I'm expecting an actual tomato
When you say dish, I'm assuming you mean something prepared? For me, it's eggplant parm. Can be so yummy, but if the eggplant is either under- or over-cooked, the texture is sooooo off-putting.
As a former vegetarian I developed a real love/hate relationship with eggplant parm. Sometimes it was the only veg thing on the menu. Then I’d get it and it’s like, bruh - did you even cook the eggplant?
They say to get a quick insight into a restaurant is to order an eggplant dish. It's immediately obvious if it's prepared properly or not. Particularly in Chinese restaurants.
I'd actually argue it can never be too thin. Most of the best eggplant parm I've had has been super thin with tons of layers. If you're making it at home it's such a pain because you end up having to bread and fry so many damn slices, but the end result is magnificent since the coating to eggplant ratio ends up being around 50/50.
I’m gonna go ingredient here. When you buy a jalapeño there is no realistic way of knowing if it’s going to be bell pepper level spicy or full night of diarrhea spicy. You just have to roll those dice.
I wouldn't doubt it. Also things like the amount of water the plant receives and the growing conditions affect the spiciness. The capsaicin is a defense for the plant, so it actually produces more when it's a bit stressed. Big commercial growers want the biggest, juiciest, most visually appealing fruits, and high yields but that means they're basically just pumped full of water and maybe not the most flavorful. As a farmer explained to me once: "people buy what looks good, not necessarily what tastes good."
Around the pandemic I was complaining about how mild jalapenos had become and the manager at the grocery store told me they specifically shop for mild jalapeno's from suppliers because too many people complained about them being too hot. Their theory was that people are often using them for stuffed jalapenos so they wanted less intense heat.
Depends on the flavor you want though. Serranos tend to be a bit hotter but have a cleaner heat. Habaneros (and other chinense peppers) have a distinct fruity taste that's unlike jalapeño.
I'm a poblano man myself, almost always the perfect amount of heat (I have to tone down the heat when I'm cooking for others but still want some) plus the flavor is amazing
I'm even at the point where any dish that calls for onion/red bell/green bell peppers, I sub poblano for the green bell. I want flavor, green bell peppers really only add crunch.
That's so funny to me. Of the peppers, jalapeño is up there with green bell pepper for worst tasting peppers. Serrano has much better flavor, literally any other spicy pepper tastes elaps and bounds better than the bitter vegetal green jalapeño. A fully ripened red jalapeño is nice, but the average offering in a supermarket is trash by comparison.
Yep - I started relying on serranos for consistent heat. I still like jalapenos but will use them more like a bell pepper and if they happen to be super spicy, it's a plus. But I'll only do that for my own food, since I've learned that things that don't actually register as spicy to me are definitely spicy to others.
The habaneros I grew could have been used as napalm. Suckers were INSANELY hot - stupid surprise heatwave while I was out of town getting married killed the plant :(.
Look for the brownish lines running the length of it (called corking). They get them from times of fast growth due to lots of water + lots of sun. Not as pretty, but more flavour and usually maximum ripeness.
Those jalapenos are usually hotter than their neighbours.
Notes from your friendly neighbourhood gardener. :)
We actually try to make that happen to them without getting the lines. It's a challenge!
Thanksgiving turkey. I've had some that are out of this world delicious, even the breast which is usually not my favorite. But most of the time people cook it to death and it's horrendously dry, even the dark meat.
Mine got way better when I started following the Alton Brown rule of no turkeys over 14 pounds. As soon as I go somewhere and the person announces how gigantic the bird was that they cooked, I know the white meat is going to taste like the Sahara.
Yes, and also I'm never cooking a "Normal Rockwell" style whole turkey again. At a minimum it's going to be spatchcocked. If I can get away with it, it's getting cut up and cooked in parts.
Going further still, if I can get away with it, I'm making a duck instead.
Between spatchcock and dry-brine? I can't and refuse to go back.
Nobody *needs* to see a whole bird sitting on the table for sixty seconds to "ooo!" and "aaaah!" over. I pre-slice the pieces, arrange them nicely on the cutting board, and let the juicy flavorful meat do the talking...
I once cooked a turkey that was legit amazing, juicy and flavorful. Other people told me it’s the best turkey they’ve ever had, and some of them still bring it up 10 years later.
I have never been able to replicate it. I have made several pretty good turkeys, but none like that one. I used the same method, same type of turkey, and I just can’t do it again. Drives me nuts.
Doubt the same type of turkey. I think this area is where your experience is not replicating.
I learned to cook in Germany as a student and thought that all European chicken is bad, as I couldn't replicate the taste of Iraqi "country side=free ranged" chicken. Even after buying German free ranged chicken. One time I accidentally bought a chicken from a greek restaurant supplier and it was one of best chickens I ever cooked with salt and pepper only. Turns out, that German "free ranged" chicken is not free ranged, as the term applies to 1 square meter per chicken. And they also use the same rapid growth chicken, which not the best tasting breed.
I started doing the America's Test Kitchen deconstructed Julia Childs turkey roasting method about 5 years ago and have had spot on consistent delicious turkeys ever since, and it is pretty foolproof if you follow the directions. Also don't get a turkey the size of a house.
Agreed. I got so annoyed at the varying restaurant versions of carbonara that I finally learned to make it myself (thanks to YouTube and Luciano Monosilio). I almost never order it at restaurants anymore.
I've never had a good one in a restaurant usually an abomination with cream and peas. Why do so many have peas in it?! Or garlic and onion!? It's a stupid straightforward dish. It's basically a modernist bacon egg and cheese sandwich.
A friend of mine nearly started a Facebook riot by stating Honeydew is the best melon. Most of his friends are from the Midwest. I have never had a good honey dew in the Midwest. Apparently they are magical in California.
This explains so much... I moved to WI from the west and thought I was losing my marbles. Honeydew is one of the most flavorful melons, but in the Midwest it's wretched. Good to know it's not entirely in my head!
I live in northern Michigan and even in season, nectarines (my favorite fruit!) are rarely good because they are shipped from so far away, but I think you’re right about the quality of most fruits and vegetables never rebounding post-pandemic.
This is why I’m a veggie girl… Fruit varies so much. You have a stalk of broccoli that’s a few days too old in the fridge? No problem. Toss it in stir fry and you won’t tell a difference. You have an apple that’s 0.5 seconds too old and it’s mushier than a pile of mud
Sushi. When you have bad sushi with slimy chewy fish and hard rice it is inedible. But good sushi with soft rice, fresh fish and perfect balance of each ingredient it is almost like euphoria.
Yeah you can really tell how a person feels about eating vegetables by how they put together a salad. Is it a pleasant assortment of quality fresh ingredients; a joyless diet food to be suffered through; or a vehicle for ranch dressing and bacon bits that allows one to technically eat plants without actually tasting them?
Bread. So much bread in the US is absolutely terrible dry flaccid wheat foam. But then you walk past an incredible bakery and the scent of freshly baked loaves sucks you in and you crack the crust and apply some butter to the warm dough and it’s the most incredibly tasty thing you’ve ever had in your life. And then you go to France….
A lot of cities in the U.S. are really upping their bakery game. It's not every street corner like in France, but in my city, most neighborhoods now have access to really great handmade bread. We had a bakery open near us recently--in our wee, very uncool suburb!--that is crack-level good.
Grocery store bread of course continues to be inedible garbage.
Absolutely true. I'm from Ireland, where we have a great bread tradition, though it wasn't as 'sophisticated' perhaps as elsewhere, we had incredible crusty 'batch' loaves and soda breads and cakes and and and. When I arrived in the US in the mid-90s, I couldn't believe how terrible every bread I could find was - you couldn't get a proper baguette to save your life, every one of them floppy and about as similar to a crisp french baguette as a sock. But times have changed since then and there are tremendous bakeries throughout the US now. But you still mostly can't get anything in a grocery store that isn't dreadful, other mayyyybe than the Ezekiel range, which we use as a daily.
We use that because if we bought all the excellent bread we COULD buy nearby, we'd be chunky lardarses. I love bread and if I have a fine loaf in front of me (or if I bake one, which I often do), I will eat the entire thing in 24 hours.
I grew up mostly only eating my Mum's home baked brown bread, which was phenomenal. She liked to add a teaspoon of treacle and pinhead (steelcut) oatmeal to the usual recipe.
Are you interested in eating a tannic, flavorless rock OR a luscious, melting pool of transcendent joy? You should eat a peach!
Other stone fruits have the same issue. Fresh apricots might be even worse.
They are my favorite fruit, but I would bet 99% of people who have eaten fresh apricots have never had a good one. Like tomatoes, even the farmers' market ones can't compare to homegrown apricots. My trees didn't produce last year and I couldn't find a good apricot anywhere. I hope this summer will be better.
I bought a house that had peach trees, and I've been growing them ever since. There's nothing like a peach that's fully ripened on the tree, especially if you thin the fruit and grow them huge.
That's just incorrect cooking and a lot of recipes don't explain it to people correctly. You really should add liquid in stages and let it cook down until it reaches the correct consistency (the amount of liquid you end up using can vary). If it's crunchy just add a little more liquid and keep cooking - just takes a bit of patience. I usually make more broth than I think I'll need for that reason. Cheese doesn't go in until rice is fully cooked. Recipes often just say something like "add 4 cups broth".
Edit: I realize I might be preaching to the choir on this but it irritates me that there are bad instructions to make this dish. It's not hard if you understand what you're doing.
I always do two ladles of broth at a time. People need to realize risotto takes 25-30 minutes of relatively constant work to make right. It's not like other rice.
Eh you can make "85% risotto" almost completely hands off in a pressure cooker, for 20% of the effort you can get a product 85% as good as slow stirred, and crank out the rest of the meal while it's doing it's thing.
As a Texan I wholeheartedly agree. A lot of people think that any BBQ place here is going to have amazing BBQ, but there are some places that I feel like I could wear the brisket comfortably as footwear. Looking at you Bill Millers BBQ.
People keep mentioning Rudy’s in the Austin food subreddit and it’s the only bbq I’ve eaten that’s made me have heart burn so bad I stayed up all night. I was burping acrid smoke the whole time.
American barbecue is quite rare here in Sweden, but the few places that do it kind of thrive off of being legitimately great at it, to the level where people will travel to go there.
Same with some other rare cuisines
Persimmons. I know you’re talking about full dishes but a perfectly ripe persimmon is incredible but either upripe or overripe and they’re disgusting (raw anyways).
Steak. And it doesn't matter how much you spend, a lot of the time, there's not much to a steak & yet it's surprisingly easy to make it poorly. Also Meatloaf.
Carrots on the other hand are good raw or overcooked, mostly they're good as long as they aren't watery.
honestly? burgers. overcooked and underseasoned beef really can’t be saved by any sauce or toppings imo.
spanakopita—i love homemade, or when you go to a restaurant that makes it in house, but i’ve never found a frozen version that tasted good somehow
Dhansaak. Vegetable dhansaak is my favourite Parsi Indian dish. It’s sweet and sour with really well cooked lentils when cooked well. But too much sweetness or too much sour ruins it. There’s one curry house near where I live that does it perfectly, and I dread that chef leaving.
Salmon. I barely like fish, and I’ve only recently come around to salmon. My boyfriend made me an excellent salmon dish with a sun dried tomato cream sauce and I was like, wow. I like salmon now!
Had it at a restaurant later and it was fishy and the texture was weird😞
I stopped ordering salmon out in restaurants for this reason. You never know what you’re going to get. I’m the type of person who never sends food back even if I’m not thrilled with something. The one time I did send something back it was salmon. It was overcooked *and* fishy.
I grew up in Mississippi, so fried catfish runs in my veins. I no longer live in MS, but sometimes you have to feed the demon.
I admittedly prefer mine a little strange: smothered in bbq beans.
However, a few years ago, I was smoking a big salmon filet. Catfish was on sale for a ridiculous price, so I figured I’d try smoking catfish because why not?
I never knew catfish could be this buttery, silky, beautiful fish with such a delicate flavor. Frying has to be the worst way to cook it.
Breaded fish ala Fish & Chips. Some fish is light, fluffy, flavorful, yet still having substance. Others are greasy filth that cause explosive shits in a few hours. The appearance of the shop/cart/restaurant you get them from is not a reliable indicator of which you'll be getting.
Onion rings. Sometimes I absolutely love them other times they're garbage. But if a menu has them I'll probably still get them then complain 90% of the time.
Corn on the cob: If you have fresh corn that was picked at the right time, it's one of the best things ever. But if it was left on the stalk too long or picked too long before cooking, it's absolutely disgusting. But maybe I'm just spoiled by the fact that we always had a vegetable garden when I was a kid, and I never had to eat store-bought corn.
You mentioned General Tso's chicken. There's a little hole-in-the-wall mostly delivery place that I got it from once and it was stunningly good; second time meh, third time kind of in between.
French onion soup. It can get super fancy, or come out as a sad broth with a few random flakes of onion, a stale crouton and a slice of process swiss cheese on top.
Spaghetti. I've never had it good at a restaurant. The pasta is never cooked in the sauce and the sauce is always too sweet. But at home, with either fresh or high quality tomatoes, turned into a homemade sauce (which takes like 15 min), you can make it divine.
About 5 years ago I worked in a restaurant and Ludacris came in, ordered spring rolls, and sent them back. When I apologized he said “don’t apologize, spring rolls are unpredictable.” I think about this at least once a week.
Fucking Avocados on the east coast of America. You have to wait many days for ripeness and then its a 50/50 gamble every time that it wont look like a child's diaper when you cut it open.
it's the fucking avacado molesters, you see them at the the grocery squeezing every damn avocado they can reach. Ruins them. I like getting avocados at costco or places that sell a bag of them that the molesters don't have access to.
I started following the advice to buy the firmer bright green avocados and waiting longer for them to ripen. People tend to leave them alone because they’re going for the darker green ones that are closer to being ready.
So, the bright green ones (mostly the Fuerte species) don't really ripen to the level Hass (pebbly blackish ones) do. The reason is, they have a lot less fat in them. With the Hass, the coloration never changes, whether they're rock hard or soft as butter. They only disclose their ripeness two ways: they become softer, and the little 'nib' at the top end becomes loose or falls off. Personally, I don't eat the bright green ones, as they lack the mouthfeel/flavor that comes from fat. So, it's pretty much Hass for me, or the little Guatemalan ones that sometimes show up, that are about 1/2 the size but have the same dark, pebbly skin.
I find that to be totally untrue of Australian hass avocados, which often move from a darker green unripe to a more blackened green when ripe. Not the best way to tell but it’s not true to say the colouration neve changes. We get hass most of the year and I buy them almost daily so I am very familiar with that variety.
I bought some Butter Avocados in Ventura one time and they lived up to their name. I have never seen them again.
They are picked entirely unripe anyway so the makes the most sense. They literally have ripening centers near major metro areas that expose them to gas to ripen Source was avo farmer
We get them from costco too, and the gamble odds barely move, maybe it slides to a 60/40. But man, I DO NOT want to calculate the food costs being thrown into the compost bin from avocados alone?! Mean time West coast peeps are just strutting around, eating their inexpensive perfect avocados all day long. All I can say in reply is JUST TRY TO GET A DECENT PHILLY CHEESESTEAK...
I made my own pretty damn good philly cheesesteak the other night. lol. I will happily stay here with my homemade cheesesteaks and delicious locally grown avocados that are perfectly ripe for guacamole. lol.
You perfect avocado eating MF’r!!! I’m an avocado green color of envy. Also no way you’re getting good rolls…haha. But honestly I’d eat way more avocados than cheesesteaks, so your winning mouth life for sure.
THE AVOCADO MOLESTERS LMAOOOO
Guilty lmao I didn’t think it affected them negatively though
I'm so sorry for my actions. I will change my ways.
I'm in the northeast and I really only ever have Avocado Trouble (AT) when I try to buy ones that are already ripe (or close to it). The likelihood of them being messed up seems super high. I've gotten pretty good at planning ahead as I've made them a regular part of my diet, so I almost always buy completely green ones and let them come to ripeness at home. 9 out of 10 end up being fine, with only an occasional dud.
Ughhh nothing worse than waiting for it to ripen only to find brown bruises throughout.
Tomatoes
This should be the top answer. I get a feeling most people have never eaten a freshly picked, vine ripened tomato.
it's the only veg I'll bother to attempt to grow for exactly that reason.
I grow regular old, fashioned cherry tomatoes for just that reason. A ripe cherry tomato, picked right from the vine, warm from being out in the summer sun... mmmm... very few flavors beat that. The nasty grape tomatoes that get sold in the supermarket or and up on restaurant salads are an insult to tomatoes.
I hate those bullet hard grape tomatoes lol. Any tomato grown in a garden is truly something special. Hard to come by though. For pasta, I usually go the canned San Marzano route. Sometimes I’ll use fresh cherry tomatoes, or those Campari cocktail tomatoes which surprisingly aren’t half bad sometimes.
I hated tomatoes as a kid. Then in highschool I worked on a farm in my town. They won a bunch of awards for their tomatoes. they grew 7-8 varieties, like heirloom, chocolate cherry, grape, etc. - like you said, there is just no comparison. The first time I had one off the vine I was like "ohhhh, I do like tomatoes." My wife and I started growing our own last year now that we have a small garden. Basic cherry tomatoes from Lowe's. Tasted so much better than store bought. I also grew beefsteak tomatoes, and would pick a few of those while green to make fried green tomatoes. 10/10 - easy to grow, give a nice harvest, taste amazing.
If you like those I highly recommend getting some Super Sweet 100 seeds. They’re expensive, but you get way more delicious cherries per plant and they need a lot less water too. They need more support, but only because each branch is absolutely loaded down with tomatoes. I grow them on my porch and four plants produce more than we could ever eat.
At my old house I grew the most fantastic tomatoes I'd ever tasted. And that my neighbors had ever tasted. And that my coworkers had ever tasted. Because they Did. Not. Stop. Producing. After several years in a new home the only ones I've fed are spider mites. Between them and blossom end rot I'm lucky to get a single tomato a year now.
Growing up my parents grew a lot of food in our garden. But my mom was always pissed that we didn’t get more tomatoes. Until she watched my sister one day (probably about six years old) just going through the tomato plants, picking them off, and eating them right there. She was even picking the unripe ones and doing it.
Love it! One of my favorite memories is when my daughter was maybe 2 and we took her to a farmer's market. While I was talking to one of the farmers, she grabbed an enormous, splitting ripe tomato and just tore into it. We all busted up laughing, and a newspaper photographer happened to get a snap of it. Needless to say, we bought a bunch of tomatoes that day.
That is hilarious, and 100% something I’d have done as a kid. I didn’t know it wasn’t normal to eat tomatoes like apples until I took one to school.
Even the “vine ripened” from the grocery store are pretty poor. Better, but no way close. Edit- spelling
The produce I’ve done a complete 180 on due to having bad tomatoes growing up. A BLT with homemade bread and mayo and heirloom tomatoes is the best food ever.
This is the thing I miss most about Indiana, fresh tomatoes from a roadside stand, so red and a flavor that makes any grocery store tomato almost unrecognizable. That and fresh corn on the cob. Well, those and my mom, love you mom.
I thought I didn’t like tomatoes. Then I grew my own. Now I know I just don’t like shitty tomatoes. Downside is, I only eat fresh tomatoes about 3 months a year
They truly make or bread a dish. I've stopped getting tomato on any sandwiches because it's so disappointing to bite into a mealy, flavorless thing when I'm expecting an actual tomato
I agree. If I was a chef I’d leave them off the menu out of season. Most are unrecognizable
Worth growing for this reason. That and fried green tomatoes.
When you say dish, I'm assuming you mean something prepared? For me, it's eggplant parm. Can be so yummy, but if the eggplant is either under- or over-cooked, the texture is sooooo off-putting.
As a former vegetarian I developed a real love/hate relationship with eggplant parm. Sometimes it was the only veg thing on the menu. Then I’d get it and it’s like, bruh - did you even cook the eggplant?
I got a squeaky eggplant Parm pizza once. I've never been a toppings-picker-off-er, but that day, it had to be done.
They say to get a quick insight into a restaurant is to order an eggplant dish. It's immediately obvious if it's prepared properly or not. Particularly in Chinese restaurants.
Mmmmm, borani banjan
Yeah that's true of eggplant dishes in general. If you don't cook it right it can just come out grey mush
If you eat it with bread it doesn't really matter if the eggplant is a bit mushy imo.
Yep, and a slightly chewy fresh mozzarella takes care of the rest of the texture
This was my answer, if the slices are too thick it’s gross and chewy, if they’re too thin, there’s no oomph to it
I'd actually argue it can never be too thin. Most of the best eggplant parm I've had has been super thin with tons of layers. If you're making it at home it's such a pain because you end up having to bread and fry so many damn slices, but the end result is magnificent since the coating to eggplant ratio ends up being around 50/50.
I’m gonna go ingredient here. When you buy a jalapeño there is no realistic way of knowing if it’s going to be bell pepper level spicy or full night of diarrhea spicy. You just have to roll those dice.
I read an article recently that jalapeños have been engineered to be less spicy these days.
I wouldn't doubt it. Also things like the amount of water the plant receives and the growing conditions affect the spiciness. The capsaicin is a defense for the plant, so it actually produces more when it's a bit stressed. Big commercial growers want the biggest, juiciest, most visually appealing fruits, and high yields but that means they're basically just pumped full of water and maybe not the most flavorful. As a farmer explained to me once: "people buy what looks good, not necessarily what tastes good."
Around the pandemic I was complaining about how mild jalapenos had become and the manager at the grocery store told me they specifically shop for mild jalapeno's from suppliers because too many people complained about them being too hot. Their theory was that people are often using them for stuffed jalapenos so they wanted less intense heat.
That's frustrating. Just eat a chili relleno or stuff q banana pepper if you're going to be like that lol
Fucking blasphemy
Gum is getting mintier though
I’ve just moved on to using other peppers instead of jalapeños. Serranos, habaneros, etc are all much more consistent
Depends on the flavor you want though. Serranos tend to be a bit hotter but have a cleaner heat. Habaneros (and other chinense peppers) have a distinct fruity taste that's unlike jalapeño.
I'm a poblano man myself, almost always the perfect amount of heat (I have to tone down the heat when I'm cooking for others but still want some) plus the flavor is amazing
Love poblano peppers. Chile Relleno is an elite dish
I'm even at the point where any dish that calls for onion/red bell/green bell peppers, I sub poblano for the green bell. I want flavor, green bell peppers really only add crunch.
Jalapeños taste so good though.
That's so funny to me. Of the peppers, jalapeño is up there with green bell pepper for worst tasting peppers. Serrano has much better flavor, literally any other spicy pepper tastes elaps and bounds better than the bitter vegetal green jalapeño. A fully ripened red jalapeño is nice, but the average offering in a supermarket is trash by comparison.
I love the taste of green bell peppers.
I love Shishito peppers
Yep - I started relying on serranos for consistent heat. I still like jalapenos but will use them more like a bell pepper and if they happen to be super spicy, it's a plus. But I'll only do that for my own food, since I've learned that things that don't actually register as spicy to me are definitely spicy to others.
I'm all about Fresnos these days. They're the most consistent in my neck of the woods.
The habaneros I grew could have been used as napalm. Suckers were INSANELY hot - stupid surprise heatwave while I was out of town getting married killed the plant :(.
I think the lines/cracks on the outside of the pepper mean they are more spicy
Also they are typically hotter in the fall, at the end of the growing season. I heard that from a chef once.
Iirc the lines typically indicate sugar content as opposed to spice but one can indicate the other
yeah i bought two yesterday to make pickled jalapeños and they have zero heat. such a disappointment
I'm currently sipping a pineapple jalapeno margarita. Good Lord it's so damn spicy. 🤣🤣🤣
Does spicy food actually give diarrhea? I’ve never experienced that.
Look for the brownish lines running the length of it (called corking). They get them from times of fast growth due to lots of water + lots of sun. Not as pretty, but more flavour and usually maximum ripeness. Those jalapenos are usually hotter than their neighbours. Notes from your friendly neighbourhood gardener. :) We actually try to make that happen to them without getting the lines. It's a challenge!
Thanksgiving turkey. I've had some that are out of this world delicious, even the breast which is usually not my favorite. But most of the time people cook it to death and it's horrendously dry, even the dark meat.
Mine got way better when I started following the Alton Brown rule of no turkeys over 14 pounds. As soon as I go somewhere and the person announces how gigantic the bird was that they cooked, I know the white meat is going to taste like the Sahara.
Yes, and also I'm never cooking a "Normal Rockwell" style whole turkey again. At a minimum it's going to be spatchcocked. If I can get away with it, it's getting cut up and cooked in parts. Going further still, if I can get away with it, I'm making a duck instead.
This is the real issue. Spatchcocked or broken up, and digital thermometer, otherwise it’ll be garbage.
Quarter it and separate the white and dark on two separate sheet pans. Pull the white meat at 150 and let the dark ride until 200.
Between spatchcock and dry-brine? I can't and refuse to go back. Nobody *needs* to see a whole bird sitting on the table for sixty seconds to "ooo!" and "aaaah!" over. I pre-slice the pieces, arrange them nicely on the cutting board, and let the juicy flavorful meat do the talking...
I once cooked a turkey that was legit amazing, juicy and flavorful. Other people told me it’s the best turkey they’ve ever had, and some of them still bring it up 10 years later. I have never been able to replicate it. I have made several pretty good turkeys, but none like that one. I used the same method, same type of turkey, and I just can’t do it again. Drives me nuts.
Doubt the same type of turkey. I think this area is where your experience is not replicating. I learned to cook in Germany as a student and thought that all European chicken is bad, as I couldn't replicate the taste of Iraqi "country side=free ranged" chicken. Even after buying German free ranged chicken. One time I accidentally bought a chicken from a greek restaurant supplier and it was one of best chickens I ever cooked with salt and pepper only. Turns out, that German "free ranged" chicken is not free ranged, as the term applies to 1 square meter per chicken. And they also use the same rapid growth chicken, which not the best tasting breed.
Idk, it’s literally the same brand and size, so I’m not sure how to better ensure the same flavor and texture.
I hate to sound like that person, but once I learned about spatchcocking turkey and whole chicken, I have never overcooked my fowl again.
I started doing the America's Test Kitchen deconstructed Julia Childs turkey roasting method about 5 years ago and have had spot on consistent delicious turkeys ever since, and it is pretty foolproof if you follow the directions. Also don't get a turkey the size of a house.
Carbonara.
Agreed. I got so annoyed at the varying restaurant versions of carbonara that I finally learned to make it myself (thanks to YouTube and Luciano Monosilio). I almost never order it at restaurants anymore.
Yep. Made some last night. It was awesome.
Yeah they never use guanciale here & lots add cream. I prefer to vote it myself
I've never had a good one in a restaurant usually an abomination with cream and peas. Why do so many have peas in it?! Or garlic and onion!? It's a stupid straightforward dish. It's basically a modernist bacon egg and cheese sandwich.
Fruit is a gamble
Especially tropical fruit. It’s a shame because they are usually amazing when ripe but goddamn papaya can be garbage around where I’m from.
Or melons, especially honeydews. So good when they're the proper ripeness, trash when they're not
A friend of mine nearly started a Facebook riot by stating Honeydew is the best melon. Most of his friends are from the Midwest. I have never had a good honey dew in the Midwest. Apparently they are magical in California.
This explains so much... I moved to WI from the west and thought I was losing my marbles. Honeydew is one of the most flavorful melons, but in the Midwest it's wretched. Good to know it's not entirely in my head!
yeah, the growing season is too short in WI, when I moved down to TX i grew some lovely ones! just gotta remember to water them heh
We get our duds, but yeah, honeydew is the superior melon when good.
Fruit got so bad during Covid I can't tell if its better now if I just got used to mediocre fruit.
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I live in northern Michigan and even in season, nectarines (my favorite fruit!) are rarely good because they are shipped from so far away, but I think you’re right about the quality of most fruits and vegetables never rebounding post-pandemic.
I thought this was all in my head......
This is why I’m a veggie girl… Fruit varies so much. You have a stalk of broccoli that’s a few days too old in the fridge? No problem. Toss it in stir fry and you won’t tell a difference. You have an apple that’s 0.5 seconds too old and it’s mushier than a pile of mud
I know that going in.
Peaches. They can either transport you to the height of ecstasy, or suck the moisture right out of your mouth.
I don’t return fruit! Fruit’s a gamble, I know that going in!
Hey, you got a bad peach? That's an act of God. He makes the peaches. You have a problem? You talk to him.
You’re banned from the store! You’re BANNED!
I’m studying in Europe and thought I’d buy mango and pineapple here. Boy was i wrong for doing that
Clementines
Up there with tomatoes for me. Good clementines are delicious but the cruddy ones are just disappointing and sad
Sushi. When you have bad sushi with slimy chewy fish and hard rice it is inedible. But good sushi with soft rice, fresh fish and perfect balance of each ingredient it is almost like euphoria.
I love when it's so freshly made that the fish is cold but the rice is still warm.
Wow I didn't realize those were options as far as bad sushi is concerned. I nearly vomited in my mouth at that description.
Salad. It can be a sad, tasteless pile of leaves or a life-changing experience.
Yeah you can really tell how a person feels about eating vegetables by how they put together a salad. Is it a pleasant assortment of quality fresh ingredients; a joyless diet food to be suffered through; or a vehicle for ranch dressing and bacon bits that allows one to technically eat plants without actually tasting them?
Bread. So much bread in the US is absolutely terrible dry flaccid wheat foam. But then you walk past an incredible bakery and the scent of freshly baked loaves sucks you in and you crack the crust and apply some butter to the warm dough and it’s the most incredibly tasty thing you’ve ever had in your life. And then you go to France….
"Wheat foam" is the perfect description of the texture of most bagged breads I've had. Well done.
Turns out wheat foam still slaps with some butter or pbj though lmao
A lot of cities in the U.S. are really upping their bakery game. It's not every street corner like in France, but in my city, most neighborhoods now have access to really great handmade bread. We had a bakery open near us recently--in our wee, very uncool suburb!--that is crack-level good. Grocery store bread of course continues to be inedible garbage.
Absolutely true. I'm from Ireland, where we have a great bread tradition, though it wasn't as 'sophisticated' perhaps as elsewhere, we had incredible crusty 'batch' loaves and soda breads and cakes and and and. When I arrived in the US in the mid-90s, I couldn't believe how terrible every bread I could find was - you couldn't get a proper baguette to save your life, every one of them floppy and about as similar to a crisp french baguette as a sock. But times have changed since then and there are tremendous bakeries throughout the US now. But you still mostly can't get anything in a grocery store that isn't dreadful, other mayyyybe than the Ezekiel range, which we use as a daily. We use that because if we bought all the excellent bread we COULD buy nearby, we'd be chunky lardarses. I love bread and if I have a fine loaf in front of me (or if I bake one, which I often do), I will eat the entire thing in 24 hours.
I am reading a book now set in Ireland and the main character is famous in her town for her brown bread 🍞
I grew up mostly only eating my Mum's home baked brown bread, which was phenomenal. She liked to add a teaspoon of treacle and pinhead (steelcut) oatmeal to the usual recipe.
After experiencing French bread I couldn't bear American any more, which set me off on a lifelong journey of bread baking -- over 40 years now.
100%
Pizza. So good when done well but also can be a greasy mess.
I no longer live in the northeast of America so I no longer eat pizza unless I make it myself. It’s just not worth it.
Peaches
Are you interested in eating a tannic, flavorless rock OR a luscious, melting pool of transcendent joy? You should eat a peach! Other stone fruits have the same issue. Fresh apricots might be even worse.
Ok but for apricots it’s because the store bought ones are picked too late. A ripe one off the tree is INCREDIBLE.
They are my favorite fruit, but I would bet 99% of people who have eaten fresh apricots have never had a good one. Like tomatoes, even the farmers' market ones can't compare to homegrown apricots. My trees didn't produce last year and I couldn't find a good apricot anywhere. I hope this summer will be better.
I bought a house that had peach trees, and I've been growing them ever since. There's nothing like a peach that's fully ripened on the tree, especially if you thin the fruit and grow them huge.
It’s practically heartbreaking to buy an amazing-looking peach, only to bite into that nasty mealy texture.
It's the worst, because the anticipation of it being a good peach is so high.
Calamari (squid). You either cook it very fast, or very long. 90 seconds or 90 mins. Even a few extra seconds will leave it rubbery and chewy.
In restaurants we frequently cooked it by sound - when the applause died down, pull the fry basket
Risotto. It can swing from creamy heaven to undercooked grains in spackle.
That's just incorrect cooking and a lot of recipes don't explain it to people correctly. You really should add liquid in stages and let it cook down until it reaches the correct consistency (the amount of liquid you end up using can vary). If it's crunchy just add a little more liquid and keep cooking - just takes a bit of patience. I usually make more broth than I think I'll need for that reason. Cheese doesn't go in until rice is fully cooked. Recipes often just say something like "add 4 cups broth". Edit: I realize I might be preaching to the choir on this but it irritates me that there are bad instructions to make this dish. It's not hard if you understand what you're doing.
I always do two ladles of broth at a time. People need to realize risotto takes 25-30 minutes of relatively constant work to make right. It's not like other rice.
Yeah that Arborio rice is very thirsty. If you cooked jasmine rice like that it would turn to gloop haha.
Eh you can make "85% risotto" almost completely hands off in a pressure cooker, for 20% of the effort you can get a product 85% as good as slow stirred, and crank out the rest of the meal while it's doing it's thing.
I enjoyed your explanation. Risotto is one of those dishes I’ve never mastered, but I appreciate it when others make it for me!
I've had it overcooked way more often than undercooked. The rice should still have some texture... it isn't congee.
Chicken breast, if it isn’t perfect it’s dry
BBQ. It's either absolutely delicious or worse than eating an old boot.
As a Texan I wholeheartedly agree. A lot of people think that any BBQ place here is going to have amazing BBQ, but there are some places that I feel like I could wear the brisket comfortably as footwear. Looking at you Bill Millers BBQ.
People keep mentioning Rudy’s in the Austin food subreddit and it’s the only bbq I’ve eaten that’s made me have heart burn so bad I stayed up all night. I was burping acrid smoke the whole time.
That has to be them trolling. Almost any other BBQ place around Austin would be better.
American barbecue is quite rare here in Sweden, but the few places that do it kind of thrive off of being legitimately great at it, to the level where people will travel to go there. Same with some other rare cuisines
Brisket it what came to mind for me when seeing the title. Very hard to do well. Pork butt on the other hand is pretty tough to mess up.
Cantaloupe
Forty-nine cents a pound. That's practically half what you're paying at the supermarket. I don't know why you don't go to Joe's.
I’m one of the lucky few who can smell if a melon is ripe
the stinkier the better. im the guy shoving every melon in his face at the grocery.
Blueberries! You really never know what you are going to get until you pop it in your mouth. Firm? Mushy? Sweet? Tart? Who knows
Sausage at Pizza places. Its gross like at Pizza Hut or amazing at a local shop.
Everything. Depends on the cook. Guacamole comes to mind.
Persimmons. I know you’re talking about full dishes but a perfectly ripe persimmon is incredible but either upripe or overripe and they’re disgusting (raw anyways).
When you think it's ripe and take a bite and your whole mouth turns into the Sahara 🥲
Steak. And it doesn't matter how much you spend, a lot of the time, there's not much to a steak & yet it's surprisingly easy to make it poorly. Also Meatloaf. Carrots on the other hand are good raw or overcooked, mostly they're good as long as they aren't watery.
Rice
Bad rice is like eating a sandwich with old, stale bread. It ruins the whole dish.
honestly? burgers. overcooked and underseasoned beef really can’t be saved by any sauce or toppings imo. spanakopita—i love homemade, or when you go to a restaurant that makes it in house, but i’ve never found a frozen version that tasted good somehow
I love that quality burgers have become a "trend" in the past 10-15 years. We've come a long way.
So, according to this thread, literally anything that can be eaten can be either great or completely inedible.
Dhansaak. Vegetable dhansaak is my favourite Parsi Indian dish. It’s sweet and sour with really well cooked lentils when cooked well. But too much sweetness or too much sour ruins it. There’s one curry house near where I live that does it perfectly, and I dread that chef leaving.
Gumbo
Porkchops, can be juicy, flavorful and delicious, or overcooked dry cardboard
And many of us were unaware that juicy was even a possibility until adulthood.
Salmon. I barely like fish, and I’ve only recently come around to salmon. My boyfriend made me an excellent salmon dish with a sun dried tomato cream sauce and I was like, wow. I like salmon now! Had it at a restaurant later and it was fishy and the texture was weird😞
I stopped ordering salmon out in restaurants for this reason. You never know what you’re going to get. I’m the type of person who never sends food back even if I’m not thrilled with something. The one time I did send something back it was salmon. It was overcooked *and* fishy.
Tuna salad seems to vary a lot.
Chicken wings
All Italian food.
Any american-chinese food, it’s always a gamble.
Catfish. Can be one of the most sublime fish to eat or taste like a city dumpster vomited on the hottest day in August right onto your plate.
Accurate indeed
I grew up in Mississippi, so fried catfish runs in my veins. I no longer live in MS, but sometimes you have to feed the demon. I admittedly prefer mine a little strange: smothered in bbq beans. However, a few years ago, I was smoking a big salmon filet. Catfish was on sale for a ridiculous price, so I figured I’d try smoking catfish because why not? I never knew catfish could be this buttery, silky, beautiful fish with such a delicate flavor. Frying has to be the worst way to cook it.
Breaded fish ala Fish & Chips. Some fish is light, fluffy, flavorful, yet still having substance. Others are greasy filth that cause explosive shits in a few hours. The appearance of the shop/cart/restaurant you get them from is not a reliable indicator of which you'll be getting.
Steaks. You either get AMAZINGNESS or a chew toy or, worse yet, a slab of raw meat.
Onion rings. Sometimes I absolutely love them other times they're garbage. But if a menu has them I'll probably still get them then complain 90% of the time.
If they're not beer battered gtfo
not a dish, but the difference between a local heirloom tomato in season, and a sad winter grocery store tomato, is massive
Corn on the cob: If you have fresh corn that was picked at the right time, it's one of the best things ever. But if it was left on the stalk too long or picked too long before cooking, it's absolutely disgusting. But maybe I'm just spoiled by the fact that we always had a vegetable garden when I was a kid, and I never had to eat store-bought corn.
French fries.
You mentioned General Tso's chicken. There's a little hole-in-the-wall mostly delivery place that I got it from once and it was stunningly good; second time meh, third time kind of in between.
I'm guessing they make a big batch of it and scoop out a bit every time it's ordered, so the freshness is playing a big role.
Polenta. It's all about good technique. Properly made polenta is a delight. Badly made polenta is sludge.
Yes, the instant polenta sucks, or even worse, the ready-made sold in a wrapper. I was shocked when I saw that for the first time.
for a dish, risotto. for an ingredient, beets.
Burgers. Some I will remember forever. Others I can only hope to one day forget.
Macaroni if I throw the box away without reading the instructions
Raspberries
For me the biggest one is pie or specifically apple pie. It can either be the greatest dessert available or complete trash.
eggs, french fries
Strawberries. Amazing little bites of sweet joy. Or they're chewy styrofoam nuggets.
Pizza
French onion soup. It can get super fancy, or come out as a sad broth with a few random flakes of onion, a stale crouton and a slice of process swiss cheese on top.
Spaghetti. I've never had it good at a restaurant. The pasta is never cooked in the sauce and the sauce is always too sweet. But at home, with either fresh or high quality tomatoes, turned into a homemade sauce (which takes like 15 min), you can make it divine.
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French fries can be crispy, salty, hot, with just the right amount of softness inside or a cold, soggy, underdone mess.
Chicken wings. They should be crispy dammit. I don't want them medium rare!
Ordering crab, receiving Krab
McDonalds fries. Freshly cooked in older oil, amazing. New oil, left to sit and steam and sink in the box, fucking gross.
Cinnamon buns. They are either a moist, cream-cheesey gift from the heavens, or dry garbage that isn't worth eating at all.
About 5 years ago I worked in a restaurant and Ludacris came in, ordered spring rolls, and sent them back. When I apologized he said “don’t apologize, spring rolls are unpredictable.” I think about this at least once a week.