The internet has been a great source of recipe ideas for any aspiring home chef, but most folks still do their due diligence and check the comments or the reviews. This is where the eagle eyed viewer will find posts by folks that either decided to wholeheartedly ignore the instructions or make bizarre substitutions.
So we’ve gathered the best (or worst) of these reviews for you to marvel at. Get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and if you’ve encountered something like this, feel free to leave your thoughts and experiences in the comments section down below.
#1 Imaginary Soup Wasn’t Good
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#2 On A Recipe For Microwave Cheesecake
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#3 Review From An Orange Juice Recipe
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We have all been there, scrolling through a food blog, dodging pop-up ads for lawnmowers and reading a 4,000-word essay about the author’s childhood summer in Tuscany, only to finally reach the recipe for a classic chocolate cake. You scroll down to the comments to see if people enjoyed the moist crumb, and instead, you find Brenda from Ohio.
Brenda gave the recipe one star and wrote a three-paragraph manifesto because she replaced the flour with almond husks, the eggs with a handful of soaked chia seeds she found in the back of the pantry, and the sugar with a splash of sugar-free maple-flavored syrup. “This cake was a gritty, soggy disaster,” Brenda laments, “I will never trust this chef again.”
#4 Won’t Somebody Think About The Shrimp Haters?
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#5 This Is Horrible Fudge
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#6 On A Recipe For Carne Asada
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This bizarre behavior is a cornerstone of the internet experience, and it highlights a fascinating collision between human overconfidence and the cold, hard laws of chemistry. It’s a phenomenon often fueled by the Dunning-Kruger effect, where individuals with a limited understanding of a skill, in this case, culinary science, overestimate their ability to “wing it” and then project their failure onto the expert who provided the instructions.
#7 First Time Seeing One In The Wild
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#8 Jax Saying What We’re All Thinking
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#9 This Is A Smoothie, Not A Carrot Cake
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The fundamental issue is that many home cooks fail to distinguish between cooking and baking. Cooking is an art, it’s a vibe, it’s a soulful conversation between you and a clove of garlic. If you don’t have shallots, you use onions, and the world keeps spinning. Baking, however, is a rigorous laboratory experiment where the ingredients are not just flavors, but chemical reagents.
#10 If AI Says Go For It, So Do I
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#11 Used Cherry Tomatoes… In A Cupcake Recipe
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#12 Sorry Folks, Turns Out Eggs Are Dairy
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When a recipe calls for baking soda, it’s looking for a specific pH reaction to create lift. If you decide to swap it for lemon juice because they’re both “sour,” you aren’t being a creative Maverick, you are sabotaging a structural process. Research into the chemistry of baking shows that even minor deviations in fat content or acidity can lead to a complete structural collapse.
#13 Wait, There’s Ginger In Ginger Crunch?
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#14 Just Eat The Incomplete-Protein Soup, Steve
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#15 Thanks For Nothing, Recipe
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Yet, the internet is full of “culinary alchemists” who believe that a recipe is merely a loose suggestion, like a “Yield” sign on a deserted country road. They approach a sourdough starter with the same reckless abandon that a toddler approaches a finger-painting kit, and when the result doesn’t look like the professional photograph, they don’t blame their own substitutions, they blame the person who spent six months perfecting the ratios.
#16 Didn’t Make The Recipe, Instead Rated A Local Takeout Version
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#17 I Didn’t Have Bananas
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#18 Inability To Read
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Then there is the psychological aspect of the “unhinged review” itself. Why do people feel the need to broadcast their self-inflicted failures to the entire world? It often stems from a desire for social validation or a need to regain a sense of control after a frustrating experience. According to studies on the psychology behind online reviews, many people post negative feedback as a form of “altruistic punishment,” believing they are warning others about a “bad” product, even when the “badness” was entirely their own fault.
#19 Your Recipe Didn’t Warn Me That My Family Doesn’t Like Black Olives!
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#20 Username Checks Out
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#21 Found A Goldmine Under A 3-Ingredient Recipe
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In their mind, they didn’t ruin the brownies, the brownies failed to accommodate their unique vision of using mashed black beans instead of butter. This cognitive dissonance allows the reviewer to remain the hero of their own kitchen story while the recipe creator becomes the villain who “purposely” wrote a misleading guide. It is a digital age version of shouting at the rain because you forgot your umbrella, except in this version, you also give the rain a zero-star rating on Google.
#22 Peanut Butter Tasted Too Much Like Peanut Butter
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#23 Didn’t Make It… Delicious!
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#24 On A Panzerotti Recipe. Deep Frying Isn’t Good For Her Tummy
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The most hilarious part of this trend is the sheer audacity of the substitutions themselves. We’ve seen people replace heavy cream with lukewarm water and a prayer, or swap out yeast for “a very positive attitude,” and then act shocked when their bread has the consistency of a hockey puck.
#25 Allergic To Chickpeas
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#26 I Didn’t Know A Frosting Recipe Could Be Woke
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#27 Leslie’s Struggling Over Here
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There is a specific brand of optimism required to look at a recipe for French macarons, the most temperamental cookies on the planet, and decide that now is the perfect time to see if you can make them keto, vegan, and nut-free using only cauliflower and hope. While food science research confirms that ingredient functionality is the backbone of food texture and shelf-life, these reviewers remain undeterred.
#28 Rebecca Wasn’t Having It
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#29 “Suffice To Say, I Added 10x The Amount Of Chilis And It Was Too Spicy. One Star“
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#30 Encountered One In The Wild
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They are the explorers of the digital frontier, boldly going where no palate has gone before, usually into the trash can. Ultimately, these unhinged reviews serve as a great reminder that while the internet gives everyone a voice, it doesn’t always give everyone a thermometer or a measuring cup.
#31 Why Read The Recipe
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#32 Brenda Can’t Cook With Too Many Ingredients
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#33 Math Is Hard
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#34 Tutorial Video Too Short, How Will I Make Chicken Korma Now?
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#35 Violet Laments American Health Care
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#36 Doesn’t Understand Weight vs. Volume
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#37 Didn’t Read The Recipe And If It Turns Out Bad, I’m Blaming You For It!
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#38 Obligatory “Come On, Eileen…”
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#39 On A Recipe For Chickpeas And Kale In A Tomato Sauce
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#40 One Star Off Of A Brownie Recipe Because It’s Not Healthy
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#41 “Where’s The Recipe?”
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#42 Then Why Did You Even Comment?
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#43 I Subbed Three Major Ingredients And It Was Gross…5 Stars!
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#44 I Will Admit
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#45 Or Spelling. (On A Broccoli Cheese Soup Recipe)
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#46 Chia Seed Pudding
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#47 George Is Not Having Susan’s Nonsense
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#48 You Didn’t Say Where To Buy Chickpeas (Found On A Falafel Recipe)
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#49 Finally Came Across One Myself While Looking For A Beef Stew Recipe
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#50 “I Do Not Want To Buy An Air Fryer”
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#51 I Tried Making This By Guessing The Amounts
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#52 One Star To Punish Your Use Of Eggs In A Dairy-Free Cake
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#53 “It’s The Recipe’s Fault That I Have No Common Sense!!!”
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#54 I Layered Yogurt And Cookies Until “Dessert” Happened
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#55 Didn’t Have A Crust
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#56 Apparently, Dill Is A Perfectly Acceptable Substitute For… Tahini?
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#57 The “Yikes” Response From The Creator Made Me Laugh
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#58 Get It Together, Dave
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#59 Nowhere Did It Say To Proof Overnight
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#60 At Least They Didn’t Rate It Poorly?
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#61 Accusations Gone Wrong
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#62 Oh My God I Finally Found One In The Wild
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#63 Charles Would Like To Know How To Add Buttermilk After Baking
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#64 Susan Changed Her Mind
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#65 American Can’t Use Grams
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#66 Where In The World Would You Get Zucchini Blossoms???
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#67 Found On A Beurre Blanc Recipe
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#68 Chinese Recipes Too Complex For The Average Working American
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#69 Croissant Clapback
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#70 I Also Don’t Know What She Did Wrong
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#71 Found On A Recipe For Key Lime Pie
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#72 Too Hot For Too Long, Trial And Error?!
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#73 Banana Bread
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#74 You Don’t Know How To Cut Cake!
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#75 “Complete Fail… First Off That’s Way Too Much Sugar So I Used Half The Amount”
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#76 Who Tf Uses Salt And Pepper?
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#77 Oh No, Raisins!
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#78 This On A Matcha Green Tea Cake Recipe
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#79 Blaming The Recipe For Having A Crooked Oven?
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