Red rice
Cooking risotto with red rice is a mistake. What they don’t tell you is that it will take you the rest of your life. You will have a dowager’s hump and cataracts by the time it’s ready. Prince George will be King, North West will have married Sir Carter and the sky will be full of electronic flying cars. People will be living on Mars. Animals will be able to talk. Years from now, the rice will finally have absorbed enough water for you to not risk cracking your incisors on it. Just use Arborio and get your life back.
Low-sodium salt
The speed of the condiments world. Tastes like chemicals. Inevitably, you will use the big hole and not the smaller holes to accidentally pour a ton of it onto your roasting vegetables, making them all taste like cheap drugs.
Chestnut flour
What’s it even doing in your cupboard? How did it get there and what does it want? It’s been opened so you’ve obviously used it – but when? And why? Who were you when you bought it? What did that person want? What became of them?
Black pitted olives
You WILL spill the black briney water. That is going to happen. And then you’re going to get cross because it was all for an olive that, post-stone, has developed such a strong affiliation with rubber that it tastes like you’re chewing on a condom.
Matcha
Now everything tastes weirdly of powdered nuts. And furthermore, you don’t have more energy, nor do you have magical Inca-powers or the secret of eternal youth – but you ARE less well off because that half-empty packet practically cost you a month’s earnings.
Cream of tartar
What? Why? And….WHY?
Organic carrots
How you fondly remember that hour they spent in your company still firm and crunchy before ageing faster than Melisandre in Game of Thrones when she took her necklace off and immediately became a 200-year old woman.
Pomegranate molasses
“Yes, I made this recipe using pomegranate molasses,” said no one ever.
Coriander seeds
You grind and you grind and you grind and you grind and still they’re like gravel.
Red lentils
You only have to show them a pan and they abandon their form in every conceivable way. Mush.
