Slopalong: Cooking with Jack Monroe

Hollaaa · Nov 6, 2022

I'm just going to get it out of the way upfront. Dire.

I sprung for a fresh clean vessel and decided to jettison quite a bit of the marinade. At this point it was pretty wet and I was already repulsed by the idea of wet hot chicken skin. Into the oven for an hour it is. I put the pineapple rings on before it went in and did a slop-free version for my SG. I diverted from the instructions here and put extra sugar and cinnamon on the pineapple for caramelisation purposes.

I put two thighs in skin side up and two skin side down, as an experiment. My Old Harold takes the skin off anyway but I love a bit of crispy chicken skin.

It smelled quite nice while it was cooking and I went away and did something else for a bit.

I decided to swap cooking dishes at the halfway mark because what looked like bin juice had seeped out everywhere. Grim.

I made a tit ton of coconut rice as ~~a back up plan~~ an accompaniment and some mixed greens. I put green food colouring in some of the rice, as per the Instagram Live, but it came out yellow. Should have been an omen, really.

Why yes, that is a:

#authentic. It came with the house 15 years ago, do you want me to stop breathing?

Dinner may be served, but after a full hour at 190, and an extra 10 minutes at 220, it is not fully cooked. The next image really does need a spoiler.

Review from me: smells like your hands after you've got sweaty from holding coins, doesn't really taste of anything, chicken went in the bin.

Review from OH: I've eaten it but please never make it again.

Review from SG: I know you said my chicken is different but it was cooked in the same oven so can I just have the rice?

I ate her chicken. She has disappeared to her room with a donut.

These are the leftovers, which went back in the oven for an extra 20 mins and now they finally appear to be fully cooked.

I have made the executive decision not to use any of the tips for leftovers from the recipe and dispose of them in the food waste bin. Not sure how the bones would make a spicy stock if the flavour didn't even penetrate through to the meat. If nothing else, it might keep the foxes from trying to get into the bin.

I've also made a donation to just about match the cost of ingredients to an independent local charity which does a bit to help with access to food, and a lot for people struggling with their mental health.

So far so good on the upset tummy front, but I'll let you know if anything changes.

Lazarus · Nov 6, 2022

Taking the lead from other generous contributors, I’ve made a £10 donation to Liverpool Domestic Abuse Service. And for transparency, in case of doubters (although I’m not Jack and I’m sure the fraus won’t doubt me) I’m leaving here a screenshot from the website and a copy of the (dated) transaction from my bank.

Well done @Hollaaa that looks rank. You done a great job, and once again are demonstrating that Jack’s recipes are inedible.
I’m not fussed that my post was removed, but I also donated £10 to a local domestic abuse charity after my recipe trial today. That was in no way relating the charity to Jack, btw. Instead just something that’s very personal to me, as im sure your donation is to you, too.
At least something good has come out of this.

MavisBeacon · Nov 6, 2022

I cannot for the life of me figure out why she cooks chicken thighs skin side down - that's the best bit! Wet cooked chicken skin is slimy and gross, roasted crispy chicken skin is food of the gods

Madonna_Claws · Nov 6, 2022

Madonna_Claws said:
Slopalong with Madonna_Claws presents: Tinned Potato Fishcakes

Forgot to add - the recipes says it should make 6 to 8 fishcakes. It made 8, so for once Jack's amount is correct. Not sure how many people they would feed - I'd say two or three fishcakes each as a starter or for lunch, maybe served with a bit of salad.

Also, I *think* this is one of the recipes she served to Mary Portas et al at a 5-starcrestsurant and "they couldn't tell it was all from tins!" <cue gummy snort>. Like bollocks it was...

Lucky Escape · Nov 6, 2022

Lucky Escape said:
Goulash

First, a note about the name: goulash is a flexible and adaptable dish and there are hundreds of variants, so I'm not going to complain too much about the name. However, there's no caraway and not much paprika flavour - this is primarily a tomato-based dish, and is yet another variant on Reconstructed Baked Beans.

Ingredients

View attachment 1708994

I already had everything apart from the baked beans - so 50p for those, everything else was free.
I used a tsp of bouillon powder rather than a stock cube, and forgot to get the sugar out for this photo but did remember to use it at the right time.

Method

First, I finely sliced the onions and garlic. She doesn't explain why you should do this rather than say, chop the onions and crush the garlic as I would normally do, but I wanted to follow the instructions as closely as possible.

Next, I added them to a cold pan along with the paprika and 4 tbsp of oil. As you can see, I tried to recreate my Tattle avatar but my artistic skills leave something to be desired:

View attachment 1709023

I switched the heat on, and left them to fry gently. At this point, I have to admit that I deviated from the instructions as written by stirring occasionally. I simply didn't realise that she told readers to stir at every other point in the recipe but not here. Sorry! I hope I haven't ruined it.

After about two minutes, the paprika started to turn a dark brown colour and began to smell a little burnt. The smell got stronger over the next 7 or 8 minutes until the onions and garlic had softened.

View attachment 1709042

Paprika has a high sugar content, and is therefore quite delicate. It would be more usual to wait until the onions had softened and then turn the heat down. The paprika could then be stirred in immediately before the tomatoes were added - this would allow the flavour to infuse into the oil without letting it burn.

As it was, I added the tomatoes, bouillon powder, sugar, and half a can of water, stirred it together, and brought it to a low simmer. Meanwhile, it was time to rinse the beans:

View attachment 1709066

She tells us to do this by blasting them with cold water. The water pressure in my flat turns out to be high enough to mush up some of the beans, so I assume that this was sufficiently blast-like.

After fifteen minutes had passed, the sauce was still fairly liquid:

View attachment 1709073

I was tempted to give it more time to reduce down but decided to stick to the instructions, so went ahead and added the beans. I stirred well, and simmered the mixture for a further ten minutes.

If the intention was to simply heat the beans, this turns out to have been too long - the beans were beginning to fall apart. At the same time, the sauce was still quite liquid:

View attachment 1709090

Results

View attachment 1709098

Taste: 2
Tomato blandness. I added a pinch of salt (none listed in the ingredients or method), and it brought out much more of the tomato taste, as well as what little remained of the paprika warmth. Unfortunately, it also brought out the burnt taste - so it was probably better without.

Texture: 1
Too watery. Too oily. The sliced onions were odd - slicing is good for onions if you're going to be caramelising them, but here they were just slimy; they should have been diced.

Look: 2
Mashed up beans, onion rings, and splotches of oil.

Process: 1
She hasn't tested this properly. The paprika is added too early, which means it tastes burnt rather than giving a sweet warmth. 4 tbsp of oil is excessive - half that would have been enough, and it should have been the first thing into the pan. The instructions about stirring are inconsistent. There's too much liquid (and there'd be even more with value tinned tomatoes rather than the fancy brand I used), and not enough time for it to reduce down. The beans should be treated more gently and heated for half the time. It needed seasoning.

And most importantly, there's no need to have rinsed the baked beans. Adding them whole would have avoided the need for the half-can of water and the tsp of sugar, and would have made a thicker, more appealing sauce.

Nutrition: 1
I reckon this is about 1,060 kcals, with about 38g of protein when you account for the rinsing.
She says this serves 4, so that's 265 kcals and 9.5g of protein per portion - about 13% of the calories and 20% of the protein needed in a day.
...but 45% of the calories come from the oil, so this terribly balanced.

Overall rating: 1 - Dire
I actually gave this a 2 initially, but reading it back I've changed my mind: it can't possibly be a 2 when every single bit of the method is wrong.

If this had been tested and the worst errors fixed, it could have been a 3. To get higher than that, I'd want to see:

not rinsing the baked beans,

giving some affordances for the trickier elements (trying to keep the beans intact for instance, or mentioning that a tsp of vinegar would help the taste if the paprika was burnt),

fixing the nutrition - perhaps by adding a baked potato and maybe some cheese, or serving with bread or rice, or frying up some cooking bacon before adding the onions.

This has the feel of something that's been concocted as an intellectual exercise - as if she's asked herself the question "how can I put these three tins together in the same meal, whilst using some of my trademark flourishes?", and has written down the first answer that came into her head.

It's clear that it hasn't been tested. A confident cook is likely to avoid most of the problems by ignoring her instructions, but for anyone else this recipe is going to lead to waste and disappointment.

Three hours later, I have even more evidence of the lack of testing that went into this recipe:

That's the excess liquid I poured off from the pan, as I packed up the leftovers. It's about 140 ml of water and 15 ml of oil.

When you consider that I served up about a quarter of what I'd made, that means that pretty much all of the 200 ml of water the instructions told me to add were unnecessary. She's such a bleeping fraud.

Nonah · Nov 6, 2022

MavisBeacon said:
I cannot for the life of me figure out why she cooks chicken thighs skin side down - that's the best bit! Wet cooked chicken skin is slimy and gross, roasted crispy chicken skin is food of the gods

It’s been a while since I dabbled with meat but if you’re browning them in a pan you’d do the skin side first then flip them over. Maybe she’s confused.

Lazarus · Nov 6, 2022

If only @CarolineWhoHasHands was still here to see these trials of Jack’s recipes. Especially as she was complimentary about most of the ones she tried. Perhaps she could have told us where we’d gone wrong.

Hollaaa · Nov 6, 2022

Nonah said:
It’s been a while since I dabbled with meat but if you’re browning them in a pan you’d do the skin side first then flip them over. Maybe she’s confused.

I reckon she did it for the name alone and the idea of how it might taste (or completely fail to cook properly) never crossed her mind.
Edit: you know it's bad when you get a vom react from Geets.

Nonah · Nov 6, 2022

Hollaaa said:
I reckon she did it for the name alone and the idea of how it might taste (or completely fail to cook properly) never crossed her mind.
Edit: you know it's bad when you get a vom react from Geets.

Yeah it’s this one isn’t it.

Geetbo · Nov 6, 2022

I am actually shocked by how bad that pineapple chicken looks.

How is she so bleeping tit!?

I’ve not done mine as I forgot I was doing a beef pot roast today and I think my OH would have LEFT if I had served up corned beef chilli instead.

IcanSpellBéchamel · Nov 6, 2022

Well slung @IcanSpellBéchamel, chapeau!

Tasteless slop with chewy bits sounds like a 3 - Middle class to me, all in favour? The highest scoring recipe so far

[/QUOTE]

3 is reasonable; it was salty and tasteless but edible. However the recipe suggests that leftovers can be reheated another day (and indeed, I intended to make arancini with the leftovers).

However, the leftovers separated into liquid plus dried-out rice in the fridge overnight, so I had to abandon the arancini plan. No amount of stirring could get the mixture to meld together. So if I could knock half a point off, I would.

Being able to use up leftovers is vital on a budget - many years ago when I was married to my ex we had a really tight food budget and using leftovers as the base of another meal was the only thing that kept us & the kids from hunger some weeks.

I briefly toyed with making a thick cheese sauce, adding the rice, and frying balls of the mixture as a sort of mash-up of arancini and mac’n’cheese balls but my Old Harold who hasn’t LEFT) began to look as murderous as only a Frenchman

confronted with bad food can. So as I said, it went into the compost bin.

Like others, I’ll make a donation to a local food bank.
Jack’s recipes and her performative £20 shops do so much damage to people. She’s a bleep.

Day3TShirt · Nov 6, 2022

Hollaaa said:
I'm just going to get it out of the way upfront. Dire.

View attachment 1709517
I sprung for a fresh clean vessel and decided to jettison quite a bit of the marinade. At this point it was pretty wet and I was already repulsed by the idea of wet hot chicken skin. Into the oven for an hour it is. I put the pineapple rings on before it went in and did a slop-free version for my SG. I diverted from the instructions here and put extra sugar and cinnamon on the pineapple for caramelisation purposes.

View attachment 1709524
I put two thighs in skin side up and two skin side down, as an experiment. My Old Harold takes the skin off anyway but I love a bit of crispy chicken skin.

It smelled quite nice while it was cooking and I went away and did something else for a bit.

I decided to swap cooking dishes at the halfway mark because what looked like bin juice had seeped out everywhere. Grim.
View attachment 1709539

I made a tit ton of coconut rice as ~~a back up plan~~ an accompaniment and some mixed greens. I put green food colouring in some of the rice, as per the Instagram Live, but it came out yellow. Should have been an omen, really.

View attachment 1709542
Why yes, that is a:
View attachment 1709548
#authentic. It came with the house 15 years ago, do you want me to stop breathing?

Dinner may be served, but after a full hour at 190, and an extra 10 minutes at 220, it is not fully cooked. The next image really does need a spoiler.

View attachment 1709553

Review from me: smells like your hands after you've got sweaty from holding coins, doesn't really taste of anything, chicken went in the bin.

Review from OH: I've eaten it but please never make it again.

Review from SG: I know you said my chicken is different but it was cooked in the same oven so can I just have the rice?

I ate her chicken. She has disappeared to her room with a donut.

These are the leftovers, which went back in the oven for an extra 20 mins and now they finally appear to be fully cooked.
View attachment 1709564
I have made the executive decision not to use any of the tips for leftovers from the recipe and dispose of them in the food waste bin. Not sure how the bones would make a spicy stock if the flavour didn't even penetrate through to the meat. If nothing else, it might keep the foxes from trying to get into the bin.

I've also made a donation to just about match the cost of ingredients to an independent local charity which does a bit to help with access to food, and a lot for people struggling with their mental health.

View attachment 1709586

So far so good on the upset tummy front, but I'll let you know if anything changes.

Bloody hell. That has made me feel a bit queasy tbh. If there’s an end of Slopalong awards ceremony, I nominate you for Most Fearless Slopper.

Hollaaa · Nov 6, 2022

Day3TShirt said:
Bloody hell. That has made me feel a bit queasy tbh. If there’s an end of Slopalong awards ceremony, I nominate you for Most Fearless Slopper.

Honestly it's fine, I'm heading home to Salford this week for a ~~few pints of Joey's~~ factory reset and I'll be right as rain after that.

FlirtyThirty · Nov 6, 2022

Hollaaa said:
I'm just going to get it out of the way upfront. Dire.

View attachment 1709517
I sprung for a fresh clean vessel and decided to jettison quite a bit of the marinade. At this point it was pretty wet and I was already repulsed by the idea of wet hot chicken skin. Into the oven for an hour it is. I put the pineapple rings on before it went in and did a slop-free version for my SG. I diverted from the instructions here and put extra sugar and cinnamon on the pineapple for caramelisation purposes.

View attachment 1709524
I put two thighs in skin side up and two skin side down, as an experiment. My Old Harold takes the skin off anyway but I love a bit of crispy chicken skin.

It smelled quite nice while it was cooking and I went away and did something else for a bit.

I decided to swap cooking dishes at the halfway mark because what looked like bin juice had seeped out everywhere. Grim.
View attachment 1709539

I made a tit ton of coconut rice as ~~a back up plan~~ an accompaniment and some mixed greens. I put green food colouring in some of the rice, as per the Instagram Live, but it came out yellow. Should have been an omen, really.

View attachment 1709542
Why yes, that is a:
View attachment 1709548
#authentic. It came with the house 15 years ago, do you want me to stop breathing?

Dinner may be served, but after a full hour at 190, and an extra 10 minutes at 220, it is not fully cooked. The next image really does need a spoiler.

View attachment 1709553

Review from me: smells like your hands after you've got sweaty from holding coins, doesn't really taste of anything, chicken went in the bin.

Review from OH: I've eaten it but please never make it again.

Review from SG: I know you said my chicken is different but it was cooked in the same oven so can I just have the rice?

I ate her chicken. She has disappeared to her room with a donut.

These are the leftovers, which went back in the oven for an extra 20 mins and now they finally appear to be fully cooked.
View attachment 1709564
I have made the executive decision not to use any of the tips for leftovers from the recipe and dispose of them in the food waste bin. Not sure how the bones would make a spicy stock if the flavour didn't even penetrate through to the meat. If nothing else, it might keep the foxes from trying to get into the bin.

I've also made a donation to just about match the cost of ingredients to an independent local charity which does a bit to help with access to food, and a lot for people struggling with their mental health.

View attachment 1709586

So far so good on the upset tummy front, but I'll let you know if anything changes.

This has made me feel sick. I made a lovely roast chicken today. How many people have wasted food with this bullshit? It needs to stop!!

Dogrose · Nov 6, 2022

IcanSpellBéchamel said:
I bought a poppy yesterday; I nearly added it as an extra garnish but the Royal British Legion deserve better.

Hollaaa said:
I'm just going to get it out of the way upfront. Dire.

View attachment 1709517
I sprung for a fresh clean vessel and decided to jettison quite a bit of the marinade. At this point it was pretty wet and I was already repulsed by the idea of wet hot chicken skin. Into the oven for an hour it is. I put the pineapple rings on before it went in and did a slop-free version for my SG. I diverted from the instructions here and put extra sugar and cinnamon on the pineapple for caramelisation purposes.

View attachment 1709524
I put two thighs in skin side up and two skin side down, as an experiment. My Old Harold takes the skin off anyway but I love a bit of crispy chicken skin.

It smelled quite nice while it was cooking and I went away and did something else for a bit.

I decided to swap cooking dishes at the halfway mark because what looked like bin juice had seeped out everywhere. Grim.
View attachment 1709539

I made a tit ton of coconut rice as ~~a back up plan~~ an accompaniment and some mixed greens. I put green food colouring in some of the rice, as per the Instagram Live, but it came out yellow. Should have been an omen, really.

View attachment 1709542
Why yes, that is a:
View attachment 1709548
#authentic. It came with the house 15 years ago, do you want me to stop breathing?

Dinner may be served, but after a full hour at 190, and an extra 10 minutes at 220, it is not fully cooked. The next image really does need a spoiler.

View attachment 1709553

Review from me: smells like your hands after you've got sweaty from holding coins, doesn't really taste of anything, chicken went in the bin.

Review from OH: I've eaten it but please never make it again.

Review from SG: I know you said my chicken is different but it was cooked in the same oven so can I just have the rice?

I ate her chicken. She has disappeared to her room with a donut.

These are the leftovers, which went back in the oven for an extra 20 mins and now they finally appear to be fully cooked.
View attachment 1709564
I have made the executive decision not to use any of the tips for leftovers from the recipe and dispose of them in the food waste bin. Not sure how the bones would make a spicy stock if the flavour didn't even penetrate through to the meat. If nothing else, it might keep the foxes from trying to get into the bin.

I've also made a donation to just about match the cost of ingredients to an independent local charity which does a bit to help with access to food, and a lot for people struggling with their mental health.

View attachment 1709586

So far so good on the upset tummy front, but I'll let you know if anything changes.

Well done, that looks dire! I’m a decent cook but tend to stick to things I know, and I don’t often eat chicken thighs, but won’t they have quite a different cooking time if they’ve got bones in? It’s not good enough for her just to say “ovens vary, check it’s cooked”. It’s irresponsible.

Hollaaa · Nov 6, 2022

Dogrose said:
Well done, that looks dire! I’m a decent cook but tend to stick to things I know, and I don’t often eat chicken thighs, but won’t they have quite a different cooking time if they’ve got bones in? It’s not good enough for her just to say “ovens vary, check it’s cooked”. It’s irresponsible.

It was so wet it never had a chance to roast, and it never steamed to the point of fully cooked. It was an effect more like slow cooking. The plain roast chicken (splash of oil, salt, pepper) was on a lower shelf in the oven and cooked to perfection after an hour and 10 but it really shocked me that I could have roasted a small chicken in 1.5 hours, 1hr 45, but a chicken thigh was going to take just as long. Mine is an electric oven, so mistakes like this aren't cheap or without financial consequences.

HotesTilaire · Nov 6, 2022

ContentCrunch said:
Breakfast sardines egg and spinach

1 tin of sardines (55p)
1 egg totally free because I bought them last week
Any spinach I had some night-beet salad which contained some spinach leaves. So I painstakingly picked them outView attachment 1708741

choose a mug with a fat bottom, no mention of greasing it with anything so… be prepared to scrape egg off View attachment 1708754

the recipe says crack your egg and pierce the yolk with something sharp to avoid explosionoes . This pencil looked pretty sharp View attachment 1708759

we are then instructed to open the sardines and save the oil… being a greedy goblin she eats the whole tin! But you don’t have to dear hearts look at the pitiful amount of oil really not worth saving is it? View attachment 1708769

do not cover with foil under any circumstances do you know how many 999 calls she took from people setting fire to themselves with foil in the microwave? No use cling film and duck biggest dave cover the egg and pierce with something sharpView attachment 1708774 View attachment 1708775

View attachment 1708776

she says 30 second bursts mine took 90 View attachment 1708780

my five year old came in from upstairs and said mummy I can smell cat food upstairs what’s that horrid smell?

View attachment 1708783

we only like sardinesView attachment 1708795

Mummy I can smell cat food upstairs
for thread title!

Grizzlybear · Nov 6, 2022

HotesTilaire said:
Mummy I can smell cat food upstairs
for thread title!

Second this, I cried laughing at this earlier

up there with @Hollaaa’s SG refusing plain chicken as it was guilty by oven association.

MavisBeacon · Nov 6, 2022

MavisBeacon said:
And we're out!
Comment from Mr Beacon "blimey, that's solid"
It smells quite nice, vaguely of pineapple, and it looks like bread. How bad can it be?
We are going to wait till after dinner (sausage and mash!) to try it as it seems more like a dessert than a main
View attachment 1709450

And at last we eat it!

So. It is basically a cross between a soft bread and a hard cake. The texture is weirdly spongy and crumbly, with a thicker layer around the bottom and sides (probably due to being too wet). Slight pineapple fragrance.

First reaction on tasting is that it's really bland, because no salt. Claggy mouthfeel due to the texture. There's a hint of pineapple but no coconut at all. It's really bland and spongy for bread, but not really sweet or crumby enough to be cake. Slight hints at being a soft yeasted cake like a kugelhopf, but not sweet enough, even with the pineapple.
Improved by the addition of a thick layer of salted Lurpak Spreadable, but because it is so crumbly and soft it falls apart while spreading.
Mr Beacon quite likes it, saying "The result is better than it had any right to be. It's not bread, but I like the texture"

overall ratings;
Ingredients: 2. Coconut milk was expensive, the whole lot cost about £5
Recipe: 1. tit. Proportions are all off with far too much liquid, very sloppy dough that's impossible to handle, no salt, why use Sr flour AND yeast?, very precise instructions about kneading (pointless because it was basically wallpaper paste) but nothing about what to do with the second rise in terms of covering it, needed to use the whole bag of flour just to get it solid (extra 250g),
Visual appeal: 3. Looks like a bready cake. Or cakey bread. Smells nice.
Texture: 2. Just quite weird - spongey AND crumbly at the same time. Not firm enough to be sliced and toasted.
Taste: 2. Incredibly bland, barely-there pineapple, no coconut. Paul and Prue would Not Approve.

Would benefit from:
-salt, dear God PUT SALT IN YOUR FOOD WOMAN
-picking either soda bread method OR yeast cake (probably soda bread I reckon, would be a fraction of the time)
-addition of some kind of solid element like dried pineapple. Or perhaps if you went the yeasted cake route then rum-soaked raisins would be nice, top it with a rum drizzle and dessicated coconut. That would be yummy.

Not sure what to do with the rest. Bread and butter pudding probably.

hoopdedoo · Nov 6, 2022

House of Carbonara said:
Seriously now - I believe we could start a revolution, ninnies! As we said before, put together a book of cheap, easy to make recipes. We could easily do it - just imagine how many people could benefit! Breaks my heart thinking how many inexperienced cooks will end up living on pot noodles and microwave meals because they are now convinced they can't cook.

I really like this idea, and would be happy to contribute. As an overseas frau I obviously don't know the food bank network in the UK or what would generally be low-cost ingredients there, but I completely agree that an anti-Jack cookbook that genuinely helped vulnerable people would be a good thing.

I also really really hope that if anyone here has contacts in the UK media, or can find the "contact me" form or email for a media outlet - please alert them to this thread. This isn't just one person having one Jack recipe go wrong - every single slopalong here has been a disaster. How many poor folks have wasted money on this crap, believing her shtick about thrifty eating. She needs to be exposed for the charlatan she is.