Useless additions

[Don Cuevas]

I was looking up a recipe for "Cinnabon cinnamon roll cream chesse icing", and found a nice simple one.
www.copycatrecipeguide.com/How_to_Make_Cinnabon_Cream_Cheese_Frosting

but on another site, www.food.com/recipe/copycat-cinnabon-rolls-with-icing-17359, it offered a recipe for the buns themselves. I was annoyed, irritated and contemptuous when I saw that the dough had "package instant vegetarian vanilla pudding".

I consider the instant pudding a useless addition to a sweet dough recipe. Why are there web sites and other recipe sources that include packaged crap in the ingredient list?

I also want to know what's an "instant vegetarian". I think many righteous vegetarians would be offended by that description. ;D

[Deleted]

Well, if "packaged crap" includes things like bouillon cubes, there are a number of recipes with major shortcuts.

[Don Cuevas]

I admit it; I have often used bouillon cubes, pastes and powders. But they aren't useless. They are fast flavor enhancers when you don't have 8 to 10 hours to make stock from scratch.

[htmb]

Don, the last stock you made from scratch sounded so flavorful, I could almost taste it. I haven't made a really good beef stock in many years, but I can still remember it being so delicious it was worth the trouble. I'm afraid most of my stock comes from a box these days, but i never use bouillon cubes, as they just taste too salty to me.

[lagatta]

Then there are all the strange and superfluous additions to/improvements of foods. Like baklawas coated in chocolate. (Gilding the lily?)

One sees so many of those in supermarket flyers, and in not-really-gourmet food purveyors.

[tod2]

Don, I'm with you on stock cubes , jellyied and powdered additions to stews/casseroles ( and in South Africa - a pot of meat and vegetables called a "pooitjie" (pronounced poy -key).
It was my absolute delight to wander the aisles of Sainsbury's and discover cubes made of porcini mushrooms! You know I bought the entire stock on their shelves....
Same with Chinese (Flava-it) Marinade for pork. I bought every packet on the shelf. Last night made 4 pork fillets rolled in the red sugery powder, then grilled them. Sliced hot or cold it was fantastic.
For your information the ingredients were:
Sugar, starch, maltodextrin, salt, colours(beetroot red, carmine, curcumin). Yeast extract, dried tomato, dried onion, dried garlic, Spices of aniseed, and ginger. Thickener (Guar gum) Citric acid, malt extract(barley).

All I know it turns the meat red and tastes great. I remember it as "red pork", somewhere in the distant past.

[Deleted]

I think that every single (West) African recipe that I have ever seen starts with "put a Maggi cube into a pot of water. "

[Don Cuevas]

Tod2: "a pot of meat and vegetables called a "pooitjie" (pronounced poy -key)."

And I was thinking a "pooitjie" was a naughty word.

[lagatta]

A "potjie" or "pootjie" is a little pot in Dutch (Is "pootjie" an Afrikaans variant?) With enough imagination, anything can be naughty. There is even a wikipedia entry about it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potjiekos

Dutch really likes diminutives. The most famous in English is no doubt the cookie (little cake).

[Don Cuevas]

No one understands me!