Ronni
Well-known Member
- Location
- Nashville TN
I don't often use recipes these days, unless it's a dish I don't make very often that's a little complicated. I have a couple Thanksgiving dishes like that, but for the most part if I just throw stuff together to make what I want. Occasionally I'll ask for a recipe from someone, or look up recipe suggestions if I'm trying to use up produce from the garden or an abundance of something. But even when I do that, I use the recipe mainly as a general guideline rather than a hard and fast series of steps.
I mentioned that to a friend I'd gotten a recipe from....I didn't have cream cheese so I used garlic and cream cheese spread, no fresh roma tomatoes so I substituted a combo of fire roasted diced canned ones and dried, no sour cream so I used half and half etc. It called for ground beef or turkey. I had neither so I used sweet italian sausage, and replaced the spices the recipe called for with a others that leaned more towards the italian side of things. When I was done, my dish bore little resemblance to the original recipe, but it was still delicious.
She was amazed! She said there's no way she could do that! If she didn't follow recipes to the letter the dish was seldom as tasty. If she tried substituting ingredients in dishes she routinely cooked, it often didn't end well etc. I was surprised, and figured that it's just because I've been cooking longer than her so I have more experience in the kitchen.
On the other hand, my daughter cooks this way because she learned how to cook from me, so she started out with the idea that there were no hard and fast rules, other than basics like baking powder makes baked goods rise, you can use corn starch as a thickener instead of flour, heat too high will curdle dishes with milk, sour cream etc in them, and like that.
So then I started to think about it. I actually have no idea if other cooks do this? Do you have to have a recipe? Do you vary what you put in dishes, depending on what you have on hand, or the kind of flavor you want to end up with? Do you cook intuitively?
I mentioned that to a friend I'd gotten a recipe from....I didn't have cream cheese so I used garlic and cream cheese spread, no fresh roma tomatoes so I substituted a combo of fire roasted diced canned ones and dried, no sour cream so I used half and half etc. It called for ground beef or turkey. I had neither so I used sweet italian sausage, and replaced the spices the recipe called for with a others that leaned more towards the italian side of things. When I was done, my dish bore little resemblance to the original recipe, but it was still delicious.
She was amazed! She said there's no way she could do that! If she didn't follow recipes to the letter the dish was seldom as tasty. If she tried substituting ingredients in dishes she routinely cooked, it often didn't end well etc. I was surprised, and figured that it's just because I've been cooking longer than her so I have more experience in the kitchen.
On the other hand, my daughter cooks this way because she learned how to cook from me, so she started out with the idea that there were no hard and fast rules, other than basics like baking powder makes baked goods rise, you can use corn starch as a thickener instead of flour, heat too high will curdle dishes with milk, sour cream etc in them, and like that.
So then I started to think about it. I actually have no idea if other cooks do this? Do you have to have a recipe? Do you vary what you put in dishes, depending on what you have on hand, or the kind of flavor you want to end up with? Do you cook intuitively?
