What You Need to Know About Recipes
Posted by Jeff Young
in FamilyFoodHomemaking
on Saturday, September 18, 2010 2:55 PM
Have you ever followed a recipe from a friend perfectly, only to have your dish turn out drastically different (and worse!) than your friend’s? Have you had this experience with recipes from websites or cookbooks by famous chefs? If so, I have some good news for you.
Recipes aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be.
A recipe is simply a list of ingredients and a set of instructions. When we get a recipe from a cookbook or a website, we tend to assume that the instructions are correct. We tend to believe that if we follow that recipe exactly, it will deliver what is promised. But that doesn’t always happen, does it? Why not?
A recipe may not turn out right for any number of reasons. Maybe you substituted onion powder for the real deal. Maybe your oven temperature is off by a number of degrees. Or maybe you didn’t fully understand what braise meant. There are so many things that we can do to mess up a recipe.
But have you ever considered that the recipe was faulty from the beginning?
I am not saying this is true across the board. I’m not laying blame on all those recipe sites. But, in general, chefs are terrible at writing recipes. Your friend gave you a recipe that she had cooked. You know it works, if you follow the instructions. After all, you’ve been making Aunt Sally’s spaghetti sauce successfully for years. But, that 30 minute meal from Rachel Ray... It just doesn’t work!
Cooking is work. But it is also an art. You have to practice. And when you practice an art, you are really just playing intentionally.
Chefs are artists. When they are cooking, they might be too busy creating in the kitchen to write things down. And having someone follow you around with a notebook is kinda distracting. Besides, chefs simply know how well different ingredients play together. So… Chefs, like many of us, might try to write out a recipe from memory. Not always a reliable method, is it?
But let’s say the chef did write out the recipe as she cooked. You followed it perfectly, but it still did not come out right. What then?
Have you ever watched Throwdown with Bobby Flay on Food Network? Where does Bobby work his magic? In a “test” kitchen, a commercial kitchen. It’s stocked. The stoves and ovens are calibrated perfectly. There are crew members who set everything up for him (mise en place). Bobby just needs to show up and work his magic. Any mess he leaves behind magically disappears. That doesn’t happen in my kitchen. And, I’m willing to bet, it doesn’t happen in yours either.
As a matter of fact, I have one burner on my stove that doesn’t work. My oven… oh my goodness! My oven is the smallest oven you have ever seen. The previous owner (and builder) obviously did not like to bake. I also have serious doubts as to the integrity of the temp gauge on the oven. But over the last 4+ years, we have become familiar with our kitchen’s quirks, and we compensate for them.
Trying to replicate a dish in your own kitchen that was originally created in a commercial kitchen automatically poses problems. One of the reason’s I love Emeril’s Louisiana Real & Rustic cookbook is that the recipes were not developed in a commercial kitchen. True, it’s a Cajun / Creole cookbook, and, yes, there are lots of traditional Louisiana recipes in it. But that’s not the only reason it’s one of my favorites. You see, Marcelle Bienvenu collaborated with him on that project, and she insisted that the recipes be tested in a real kitchen. The kind of kitchen that I cook in. The kind that you cook in too. [You can find my interview with Marcelle Bienvenu in episode 30 of the Catholic Foodie: Give Me That Louisiana Cookin’! at catholicfoodie.com.]
Preparing a successful meal from a recipe is tricky. Understanding how ingredients work with each other, and understanding the various processes of cooking is essential. And you only get that by practice. Or by playing in the kitchen.
So, the next time you get ready to prepare that delicious recipe you found in that glossy cookbook, remember to loosen up, have fun, and change whatever you want to change. It’s all about making it the way you and your family like it.
Bon appetit!
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I have much better luck with recipes I find online. In general, I’m pretty good at following directions and knowing when to tweek things to make the food taste good. My husband, on the other hand, knows how to combine different flavors to make something awesome. He also knows that he has to keep track of quantities so that I can repeat the process for him the next time he wants it.
