ROAD TEST: Do three ingredient recipes actually work?

Three ingredient recipes sound almost too good to be true.

They’re quick and really, really ridiculously easy to make. But are they really all they’re cracked up to be?

The Debrief Daily team decided to road test some of the popular recipes. This is how they turned out …

1. Pulled Pork – Rebecca.

I have to say as a cook book lover and collector I’ve never been one for internet recipes. But I am a convert.

This 3 Ingredients pulled pork is extraordinary. I have made pulled pork so many times with about 12 different herbs and spices and all kinds of liquid flavours. Never again.

Of course as with any recipe, complex or not, it’s about the quality of the original ingredients. And so I got an expensive and high quality bottle of BBQ sauce from the fancy butcher, a nice bottle of ginger beer and I cut most of the fat off a nice roll of pork. Still you could cook an old shoe in a slow cooker and it would be palatable after 6 hours on slow heat with those gorgeous flavours.

Verdict? This is now my go-to recipe for pulled pork. Yum.

2. Nutella Brownies - Laura.

I have always wanted to try these brownies but refuse to keep Nutella in the house (I know I'd eat it by the spoonful). So when the idea for our three ingredient recipe challenge came about I nabbed the Nutella brownies faster than you can say 'open for suggestions'.

I based it on this recipe which claimed I would need just 1 1/4 cup of Nutella, 2 eggs and half a cup of plain flour.

As per instructions, I added all the ingredients into a bowl and mixed until the mixture was smooth - about 2 minutes.

Warning, this recipe will use an entire jar of Nutella.

Instead of pouring into a square tin, I like thicker brownies so poured into a smaller one.

Since I condensed the mixture into the smaller tin - they took a bit longer to cook than the recommended 15 minutes at 175 degrees C, I pulled them out after 35 minutes when they were fully cooked.

Verdict: They were nice and easy, but the mixture was a bit dense and took the Nutella taste away. Honestly, I'd rather swirl the Nutella through my go-to brownie recipe. Would I make again? Probably not.

3. Peanut butter cookies - Bern.

I made the 3 ingredient peanut butter cookies.

The recipe required:

1 cup of peanut butter
1 cup of sugar
1 egg

So yes, it’s basically a heart attack in a biscuit but should be hard to screw up though right? Apparently not when I’m making them.

Here’s how these “chewy, dense peanut buttery unforgettable memories from childhood memories” were meant to look like when finished:

And here’s how mine turned out.

Apart from the fact that they weren’t chewy but had more of a ‘brick consistency’ (I could literally throw these biscuits against the wall and put a hole in it) they tasted okay. Even if they did put my teeth under unnecessary stress

.

Now, I could blame the fact that I had the oven tuned up a tad too high (Obviously I need to work on converting Fahrenheit to Celsius thing) or the fact that I only had raw sugar to use but really, I think it all comes down to this; most recipes have a more than three ingredients for a good reason it makes them taste better.

Overall verdict: don’t bother.

4. Peanut butter cups - Dina.

To make these peanut butter cups you'll need:

Chocolate chips
Peanut Butter
Salt flakes

The result:

Ok. So they look mildly impressive but they taste as they sound - like 3 ingredients.

I may as well have spread a bit of peanut butter on a piece of chocolate and seasoned it with salt.

Overall verdict: Bit of a waste of time really!

5. Banana bread - Bern.

This recipe requires a slow cooker and:

5 bananas
2 ½ cups of self raising flour
1 can of 375ml condensed milk.

This is really simple (and actually didn’t suck!)

Line your slow cooker with baking paper and turn to high.

Mix the ingredients in a bowl until mixed into a heavy batter and pour into slow cooker.

Put a tea towel over the cooker and put the lid on. Set the timer for 2 hours and you’re all done.

Verdict: Simple, quick (to assemble) and I probably would make again.

Have you tried any three ingredient recipes? Let us know in the comments.

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