Recipes Are Only Guidelines

If you are a novice to cooking, recipes can be a great way to learn the art. To be sure, the more recipes you learn, the more you will figure out what works best for your style and taste; in other words, what goes together and what doesn't. But if you already have some cooking under your belt, so to speak, you'll soon realize that recipes are not chiseled in stone, but quite open to interpretation. Maybe you like more of this and less of that, and soon you have your own recipe.

If you enjoy cooking, or are cooking for a special diet, this is very necessary. Usually when I cook, if I'm cooking something I'm not totally familiar with, I'll read a few recipes to get the gist of it. But then I do it my own way. This is why I only use recipes as a guideline.

One thing to remember when using any recipe is that more is not always better. That is to say, if it has an ingredient that you like, it may or may not be better to add more. Chefs will tell you that quite often a 'hint' of a particular flavor is better. That's quite often the 'trick' to a good recipe. Just a pinch of this and a dash of that can go a long way.

By the same token, once in awhile you might come across a recipe that adding a little more of a particular ingredient makes it better. Maybe you like a little more salt or garlic (it's my opinion that it's hard to have too much garlic). Your experimentation will tell you what's right for you. Make notes if you have to, but soon you will have a knack for cooking and know what you are doing by improvising. It's kind of like having a green thumb.

Salt is one thing that always improves the flavors of foods. When a recipe calls for a pinch of salt or so, I ignore it. I can't taste food if it doesn't have salt or sugar on it, and I've discovered that adding salt while cooking brings out the flavor much more than adding it at the dinner table.

Sugar is another secret. I actually don't recommend this one if you have problems with sugar, but a little trick in the better restaurants is to add just a small pinch of sugar to vegetables while they are cooking. It not only brings out the flavor, but it helps them keep their color. A pinch of sugar won't hurt most people, but be careful if you are diabetic or on a low carb diet.

The best thing to do is experiment. Follow several recipes until you get a knack for it, then try a few things on your own. I've made several dishes that my friends and family ask me for the recipe for, and yet I can't give them any particulars. That's because I just took a basic recipe and improvised. I doubt that I ever cook any recipe the same way twice these days, and yet most of the time I am very satisfied with my results.

Cooking is a 'knack' and you can do it if you have an interest in it. You can create your own very one of a kind recipes and always look forward to the creativity in the kitchen. The real trick is ... getting someone else to clean up the kitchen when you’re done :)