What annoys me in those cooking shows

Calgary, Alberta
July 30, 2012 11:56am CST
I am sure you guys can relate to this, You watched some cooking show you will learn to cook a new dish. Youa re tired of your generic meals and you want something new and exotic. Lets say you want to learn a dish from another country and try it at home. Then the moment you watched it.....Damn where the heck are you going to buy those freaking ingredients. There will be those herbs and spices that cannot be found in groceries or those seasonings with names you cant pronounce or buy. Its like watching a Japanese cooking show and you will see ingriedients like Mentaiko, potato starch, Mirin Flour, pickled sakura blossom, kembo kelp.... or watching a French Cuisine recipe show, where the heck will I get Farine De riz, hazelnut oil, balsamic vinegar, Worcestershire powder,sugar cube(seriously the sugar have to be a cube) and other hard to find ingredients.... Damn those hard to find, hard to spell and hard to remember ingredient! Cooking shows, you exist to make cooking easier.
4 people like this
10 responses
@indahfth (11161)
• Indonesia
30 Jul 12
I like to watch cooking shows. Because, I like new recipe. I rarely do, try recipe on a cooking show. Moreover, if the ingredients used, I did not recognize. But, if the ingredients I recognize, and easy to get, I sometimes, trying to cook. I like to record new recipes, who knows someday I may try it.
1 person likes this
• Calgary, Alberta
30 Jul 12
Its really awesome when the recipe looks delicious and the ingredients are easy to find. yeah I did cook some of them that I saw on those shows as a form of adventure. There are meals that I really want to learn so i don't have to visit a restaurant to try them,. Since you are from Indonesia... Iwill ask you a question, i cant find kechap manis in the groceries in my country. what will be a good replacement for it?
@indahfth (11161)
• Indonesia
30 Jul 12
Kechap manis is a sweet soy sauce. soy sauce made from black soybeans. Soy sauce colour is black. I am sure, you can find it. I can tell, soy sauce can not be replaced with other ingredients.
1 person likes this
• Calgary, Alberta
30 Jul 12
so soysauce with sugar or honey will be a good replacement for it? It looks thicker than regular soy sauce, so i assume its going to be syrup like, Thanks for some hindsights. i think I know how to replace it. I can now make a certain Indonesian dish,kechap manis is the only reason why i cant make that dish, because i thought its a special kind of sauce that cant be replaced.
@topffer (42156)
• France
30 Jul 12
Rice flour and Worcestershire powder are not used in French cooking, so do like those giving you a "French" recipe with such ingredients : adapt the recipe with your own ingredients. I believe all of us have the same problem for foreign recipes, and an "adaptation" is not easy when you don't know the taste of an ingredient : it is not a crime to replace a balsamic vinegar by a cider vinegar, but it is impossible to replace hazelnut oil, which tastes really like hazelnuts... By the way, cubes of sugar are practical for a coffee or a tea, but nobody in France would have the absurd idea to use them for cooking : we have powdered sugar for this.
1 person likes this
@topffer (42156)
• France
30 Jul 12
If it comes from a French chef, then he adapted the recipe to the US taste. Anyways, I have experienced several times that it was very difficult to do French cooking out of France, because of this ingredient problem. I wanted once to do a cassoulet in UK : I spent a lot of time to find small beans suitable for a cassoulet, but I could not find the right meat : sausages tasting like those from Toulouse are unknown in UK. And it is an easy dish... Basic ingredients have indeed English names : "farine de riz" is "rice flour", but it is quite not used in French cooking. I have found only 2 desserts using it in a large cooking site, that I can call "French" ; all the other recipes are from Asia.
1 person likes this
• Calgary, Alberta
30 Jul 12
Its an American cooking show that promises "authentic" french cuisine but base from a real French like you are those damn Ingredients he talks about doesn't seemed highly used in France. That damn chef even have ingredients with French names, Dammit, I bet those things may have English names, he just want to make his show sound French.
1 person likes this
• Calgary, Alberta
30 Jul 12
so Farine de riz is just rice flour? damn that stupid chef, He have to torture his audience for an ingredient that is damn available everywhere. I remember watching a recipe that uses chervil, I dont know where in the heck i can find chervil, I stayed in the grocery's spice/herb isle for hours.
1 person likes this
@kalav56 (11464)
• India
31 Jul 12
This is bound to happen if you try cuisine from all over the world.In India, however, many things are available in big departmental stores in cities and though they are expensive people who can afford such prices and who are keen on such items can easily try them out.As for my part, I love to watch these shows but I confine myself to Indian cuisine and that too only vegetarian.
1 person likes this
• Calgary, Alberta
4 Aug 12
even a cuisine from a different region of your country will be frustrating as well because you know some ingredients are endemic in a certain region. I wont mind expensive as long as its available.
@Hatley (163781)
• Garden Grove, California
30 Jul 12
hi yes that annoys me too as sometimes some ingredients do not exist where we live and other times are in specialty places where anything costs an arm and a leg. lol. I instead look up recipes on the net and find most often that they have ingredients I already have on hand or can buy easily as they are in our US stores.
• Calgary, Alberta
31 Jul 12
I tried cooking Cincinnati Chili once, I saw it on Tv it looks delicious and there is this certain herb needed on that recipe, I cant even pronounce its name nor spell it... The cook say its not optional,so yeah its frustrating. I did enjoy my incomplete Cincinnati chili though but its not authentic cos I dont have that certain dried herb.
@asdomencil (4265)
• Philippines
30 Jul 12
I love to watch cooking shows too but I'd rather prefer the one here in our country because most of the ngredients they are using are really easy to find in the groceries. Watching other country's cooking show somewhat caught my attention too but I will rather prefer to get the cooking tips they are given but not the food itself because as what you said, they are using ingredients that are rare to find in the market. Sometimes, when the ingredients are easy to find, I have to try cooking it.
1 person likes this
• Calgary, Alberta
31 Jul 12
Umm our local cuisine is not as easy as it seemed, try to do a regional cuisine.... we have dishes where the ingredients is endemic to a certain province very far from manila. some seafoods and vegetables cannot be found in Manila.
• Philippines
2 Aug 12
Well, that is the problem when you are cooking with a different cause. Of course the ingredients are foreign and sometime,s the taste is also foreign. I remember drinking traditional Japanese tea and I almost spat it out in front of my host (good thing I didn’t or I will be considered rude). Anyway, it’s for the food enthusiast. I think for people in love with food, does;t matter whether they are harder to pronounce as long as they tatse good.
1 person likes this
• Calgary, Alberta
4 Aug 12
There are actually times when the foreign cuisine is much easier to cook. There are dishes from the other regions of our country that is impossible to cook in manila due to ingredients that is not available in the city, Ilocos have a species of mushroom that only grows there. Sinarapan fish is only found in lake Buhi.
@lynboobsy11 (11343)
• Philippines
31 Jul 12
I am with you Albert, I like watching cooking shows too but that's the real problem. Not ll ingredients are available here in our country, very frustrating when we want to cook international cuisine and the ingredients we have here are too expensive.
• Calgary, Alberta
31 Jul 12
Well even our local cuisine is sometimes hard, I wanna learn Bicolano Cuisine, That is part of our local cuisine but the ingredients of many Bicolano dishes is only found in Bicol. Bicol is very far from my location. I remember being able to taste ginataang lubi lubi from a restaurant. I tried cooking that dish on my own but that tree Lubi lubi dont grow in manila.
• United States
3 Aug 12
Yes that is one of my biggest peeves about cooking shows! I think they should either go with basic ingredients or suggest more common alternatives (it's rare they do that).
• Calgary, Alberta
4 Aug 12
or they can tell if that ingredient can be purchased online in a reasonable price. But yeah alternatives.
@NailTech (6874)
• United States
30 Jul 12
I watch cooking shows and know what you mean, it gets to be frustrated. So I just stick with the ones I know I can find the ingredients for. I'm not going to drive all over to find several or even one ingredient that I can't get a hold of, it's not worth it. I do like watching how it turns out though. I saw a show yesterday where the guy in a restaurant made something with eggplant butter and now I want to do a search on how to make that. I never heard of it before.
1 person likes this
• Calgary, Alberta
30 Jul 12
Thats the reason why I watch those cooking shows, I want to try something new, but the ingridients have to be attainable. some of them may be available in ebay but seriously waiting for a month of delivery just to cook a certain dish... I will buy a hard to find ingredient maybe if at least I know 10 dishes that needs it.
31 Jul 12
I really love to watch cooking shows and learn how they cook those foods and ended up not doing or trying to cook it because of the unknown ingredients. But what annoys me the most is the food looks very appetizing and I could not be able to taste it. :(
• Calgary, Alberta
31 Jul 12
Cooking shows should say what those ingridients tasted like so we can have idea for alternatives and replacements. because not all of those herbs and spices are attainable.