Recipes and how NOT to follow them

I have received a few emails and some friends who keep asking me to post some recipes.   Here are the reasons why I don't.  Simply put recipes are really a set of guidelines and procedures of how a dish is made.   Thats how I like to look at them and then follow them and adjust them to my needs and circumstances.

It is a proven fact that if you give 20 people the exact same recipe the same ingredients and precise instructions you get 20 different results from amazing to horrible.   Proof of this is on the many recipe sites and the ratings a dish gets from 5 star to 1 star.    The reason for this is really simple its a matter of understanding your ingredients and the food you are about to prepare.

Lets look at some examples.

Baking has some of the most precise recipes out there.   X amount of grams and x amount of time with x amount of heat.   However if your stove is off by a few degrees or you over or under mixed the ingredients the results are different.   Are your eggs large,  medium or how fresh are they.   Did you properly sift the dry ingredients ?  There are dozens of reasons why a simple recipe that is very precise in its instructions may not turn out as planned even though you followed it to a tee.

Vegetables another simple preparation has a ton of variables also,  how fine is your onion diced,  just how caramelized was it sautéed to,  the type of onion (organic or gmo)  one having more flavour and punch then the other.

Spices are yours fresh,  was it toasted, how fine is the grind,   when and how you add it to your dish all make a huge difference.  Even the temperature you add your spices in can make a big difference in the final outcome of your dish.

Fruits and Berries,  how sweet are they ?  Firm, Ripe, Overripe, Organic, all make a difference also.

Meats,  the list is endless here for example in ground beef the quality, the grind the fat content all plays a critical role in how the dish would turn out.   For example if you brined a chicken you would want to use less salt in the gravy or rub.

The above are just a few examples of the different variations and circumstances that can make or break a recipe.

Once one understands that a recipe is really a guideline for a particular flavour profile then you truly will understand how to create that dish with what you have on hand and available to you.   A recipe is more about the chef preparing it then the following of the text verbatim.

Cooking is more about practice,  attention to detail,  adjusting and learning while you cook then just following a recipe.  But most importantly cooking is about having fun and realizing that every day is just another learning experience that makes your dishes better.