5 ms·

I am not much of a cook but everytime I cook, recipes never work. Sometimes, it seems like that if you follow the receipes measurements exactly, your food almo

by kaji88 12y ago

I am not much of a cook but everytime I cook, recipes never work. Sometimes, it seems like that if you follow the receipes measurements exactly, your food almost never tastes like what you expect. There always needs a bit of human discretion. As such, I find video recipes to be far more effective. You can see them cook and get a feel of what "cook meat until brown" really means, or what is a "sprinkle of green onion"

jghn 12y ago
For a lot of ingredients it's simply not going to be possible to follow exactly. For instance, suppose it calls for "1 jalapeno, chopped" - jalapenos will vary greatly in size and heat. Other ingredients will lose potency over time, so who knows how yours compare to theirs. Another problem is that many recipes use the wrong metric for ingredients in the first place - most things should be done by weight, not volume. But yes, in terms of cooking (as opposed to baking) one should never expect to follow a recipe exactly, no matter what. Everything should be tasted and modified to adjust along the way. Eventually one gets a sense of what those phrases really mean, particularly if you see the same person's recipes repeatedly.
kevinconroy 12y ago
I've found that part of the problem is that there's a very bad user experience with recipe formats. They assume that one will get all ingredients out first and will only start to follow the instructions once everything is ready. Almost no one does that all of the time. The back and forth reading that you have to do results in errors because you lose your place, skip a step, add an ingredient in the wrong order, etc. That really impacts the results. In this vein, I've been working on a format that lets you just go top to bottom with much better results. Would love to hear your thoughts. http://www.makebetterfood.com/recipes/ http://www.makebetterfood.com/recipes/
- jack-r-abbit 12y ago
  Your format is most certainly NOT for me. I am one of those people that do get all ingredients out first. I also get all my required measuring instruments out ahead of time. I also read the entire recipe so I can plan my steps. A normal recipe format is ideal for me. Your format is confusing to me. But everyone does things differently. I'm sure your format has an audience. Good luck.
  - jghn 12y ago
    In fact, it is much better to do what you describe. My cooking life became much easier once I learned to get a proper mise-en-place going. By the time I actually turn on a burner or anything like that, everything is fully prepped and ready to go in a pre-measured container.
    - sk5t 12y ago
      How can you do a mise for, e.g., one-off home baking? In the case of familiar recipes I find it easier and cleaner to use a JIT process...
      - jghn 12y ago
        I don't bake, I only cook so your specific example I don't know. I'll also admit that when I'm dialing something in ("needs more X") that obviously that's not prepped ahead of time. Anything else I find it easier and cleaner to just have a bowl of X ready to go. It goes in the dishwasher within minutes of using it, and my cutting board and such was already cleaned.
- sk5t 12y ago
  I like your format very much, and it's close to how I usually transcribe recipes if transcription is necessary... poking around through the "wall of ingredients" of an unfamiliar recipe is extremely time-consuming and a great source of errors. Worst of all are the recipes that specify total quantity of an ingredient, but only in the detail advise to reserve some of it to be used in two different steps.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  There's a fairly well established alternate format (active format) for recipes that addresses the concern you identify, which is pretty similar to your format but with the action for each step ahead of the steps ingredients; is also fairly common for standard format recipes to break into seperate pieces based on where separating prep makes sense. I'm think of you aren't breaking on natural prep separations but just on traditional recipe steps, then the action-first approach of the active format is superior (since awareness of the actions is essential to planning prep), but for people with less kitchen experience (or that want to spend less effort analyze the recipe before executing) the standard format--possibly with explicit prep separations--is the best way to go. Failing to prep before starting execution is a common source of failure, and while separating pero can work, doing prep one action at a time rarely works well.
- pimlottc 12y ago
  You should take a look at Cooking for Engineers. They've come up with an interesting diagram shorthand for recipes that, while rather reductionist, provides a nice quick reference when you're in the thick of things. An example: http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/200/Osso-Buco http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/200/Osso-Buco
  - coldpie 12y ago
    That's hilarious! As soon as I saw that diagram, I knew how to read it. I write recipes I copy off the internet onto paper in a similar format. List of ingredients, along with a word or two about what to do with them, draw a line next to the whole grouping and an arrow into the next step where that result is used.
- ClassicFarris 12y ago
  One thing that your recipe format helps with is timing, which is one of the things that I always found fun about cooking. Which is, how to have everything work to come out about the same time. So how do you prep and cook, and work in a special detail at the same time. Do you have plans to incorporate full meals on the site, such as a meat dish with two sides and how to cook them all together, to come out at the same time?
sliverstorm 12y ago
It really is a skill & a set of knowledge. You can't expect to be good without practice (sometimes lots of practice). At the beginning it is things like mistaking whipping cream for heavy cream, not knowing what "browned" looks like, or other "rookie" mistakes that basically translate to "not actually following the recipe". As you get more ambitious, you start to tackle things like baking that require an intuition for how much to knead, how sticky is too sticky, etc. Or you start to try recipes that run many things in parallel. Last time I made chicken sauteed in butter, each step was easy enough, but suddenly they have to be done in parallel and the sauce has to be done before the chicken and the potatoes need to be ready at the same time and everything has to happen fast... That was the moment I felt I really understood "cooking", when the timer for the sauce timer was beeping and the chicken was smoking and the potatoes were getting cold.
fensterbrett 12y ago
http://www.cookingforengineers.com http://www.cookingforengineers.com http://www.cookingforengineers.com/forums/index.php http://www.cookingforengineers.com/forums/index.php
rickdale 12y ago
I agree 100%. Check out the 4-Hour Chef if you get the chance. After going through that and practicing cooking I find that I am better at discerning information about recipes and cooking overall.
noonespecial 12y ago
Recipes are to cooking as sheet music is to playing music. Just being able to read it is not really enough to know how it should sound.
jerf 12y ago
"As such, I find video recipes to be far more effective." My path to learning to cook was to watch nearly the entire run of Good Eats, picking out recipes that seemed like fun, but more focusing on using the knowledge and skills to do my own thing. The host of Good Eats and I appear to have radically different tastes, so, ironically, whenever I've actually made one of Alton's recipes from the show that taught me how to cook, neither my wife or I have liked them. Perhaps some I simply messed up, but certainly not all of them. But with what I learned from that show I've become at least "decent". Couldn't cook in a restaurant or anything, but I can perform one of the higher skills of home cooking, "see what's left in the pantry -> make something from what you have -> get requests for the 'recipe'".
- hobs 12y ago
  Agreed, he is teaching you the fundamentals, and how things interact on molecular levels on up and dissipates a lot of cargo culting, from a purely tv show perspective its a show that's worth watching.
peterwwillis 12y ago
Video recipes aren't really recipes, they're instructional guides. They instruct how to cook and provide lots of detail in a compressed form. A recipe is just the design parameters. You won't be able to write the app with just design parameters; you have to know how to program first.
3minus1 12y ago
Watching videos has been very helpful for me. My favorite is Chef John because he is informative and entertaining http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/ http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/

by kaji88 12y ago

jghn 12y ago

For a lot of ingredients it's simply not going to be possible to follow exactly. For instance, suppose it calls for "1 jalapeno, chopped" - jalapenos will vary greatly in size and heat. Other ingredients will lose potency over time, so who knows how yours compare to theirs. Another problem is that many recipes use the wrong metric for ingredients in the first place - most things should be done by weight, not volume. But yes, in terms of cooking (as opposed to baking) one should never expect to follow a recipe exactly, no matter what. Everything should be tasted and modified to adjust along the way. Eventually one gets a sense of what those phrases really mean, particularly if you see the same person's recipes repeatedly.

kevinconroy 12y ago

I've found that part of the problem is that there's a very bad user experience with recipe formats. They assume that one will get all ingredients out first and will only start to follow the instructions once everything is ready. Almost no one does that all of the time. The back and forth reading that you have to do results in errors because you lose your place, skip a step, add an ingredient in the wrong order, etc. That really impacts the results. In this vein, I've been working on a format that lets you just go top to bottom with much better results. Would love to hear your thoughts. http://www.makebetterfood.com/recipes/ http://www.makebetterfood.com/recipes/

jack-r-abbit 12y ago
Your format is most certainly NOT for me. I am one of those people that do get all ingredients out first. I also get all my required measuring instruments out ahead of time. I also read the entire recipe so I can plan my steps. A normal recipe format is ideal for me. Your format is confusing to me. But everyone does things differently. I'm sure your format has an audience. Good luck.
- jghn 12y ago
  In fact, it is much better to do what you describe. My cooking life became much easier once I learned to get a proper mise-en-place going. By the time I actually turn on a burner or anything like that, everything is fully prepped and ready to go in a pre-measured container.
  - sk5t 12y ago
    How can you do a mise for, e.g., one-off home baking? In the case of familiar recipes I find it easier and cleaner to use a JIT process...
    - jghn 12y ago
      I don't bake, I only cook so your specific example I don't know. I'll also admit that when I'm dialing something in ("needs more X") that obviously that's not prepped ahead of time. Anything else I find it easier and cleaner to just have a bowl of X ready to go. It goes in the dishwasher within minutes of using it, and my cutting board and such was already cleaned.
sk5t 12y ago
I like your format very much, and it's close to how I usually transcribe recipes if transcription is necessary... poking around through the "wall of ingredients" of an unfamiliar recipe is extremely time-consuming and a great source of errors. Worst of all are the recipes that specify total quantity of an ingredient, but only in the detail advise to reserve some of it to be used in two different steps.
dragonwriter 12y ago
There's a fairly well established alternate format (active format) for recipes that addresses the concern you identify, which is pretty similar to your format but with the action for each step ahead of the steps ingredients; is also fairly common for standard format recipes to break into seperate pieces based on where separating prep makes sense. I'm think of you aren't breaking on natural prep separations but just on traditional recipe steps, then the action-first approach of the active format is superior (since awareness of the actions is essential to planning prep), but for people with less kitchen experience (or that want to spend less effort analyze the recipe before executing) the standard format--possibly with explicit prep separations--is the best way to go. Failing to prep before starting execution is a common source of failure, and while separating pero can work, doing prep one action at a time rarely works well.
pimlottc 12y ago
You should take a look at Cooking for Engineers. They've come up with an interesting diagram shorthand for recipes that, while rather reductionist, provides a nice quick reference when you're in the thick of things. An example: http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/200/Osso-Buco http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/200/Osso-Buco
- coldpie 12y ago
  That's hilarious! As soon as I saw that diagram, I knew how to read it. I write recipes I copy off the internet onto paper in a similar format. List of ingredients, along with a word or two about what to do with them, draw a line next to the whole grouping and an arrow into the next step where that result is used.
ClassicFarris 12y ago
One thing that your recipe format helps with is timing, which is one of the things that I always found fun about cooking. Which is, how to have everything work to come out about the same time. So how do you prep and cook, and work in a special detail at the same time. Do you have plans to incorporate full meals on the site, such as a meat dish with two sides and how to cook them all together, to come out at the same time?

sliverstorm 12y ago

It really is a skill & a set of knowledge. You can't expect to be good without practice (sometimes lots of practice). At the beginning it is things like mistaking whipping cream for heavy cream, not knowing what "browned" looks like, or other "rookie" mistakes that basically translate to "not actually following the recipe". As you get more ambitious, you start to tackle things like baking that require an intuition for how much to knead, how sticky is too sticky, etc. Or you start to try recipes that run many things in parallel. Last time I made chicken sauteed in butter, each step was easy enough, but suddenly they have to be done in parallel and the sauce has to be done before the chicken and the potatoes need to be ready at the same time and everything has to happen fast... That was the moment I felt I really understood "cooking", when the timer for the sauce timer was beeping and the chicken was smoking and the potatoes were getting cold.

fensterbrett 12y ago

http://www.cookingforengineers.com http://www.cookingforengineers.com http://www.cookingforengineers.com/forums/index.php http://www.cookingforengineers.com/forums/index.php

rickdale 12y ago

I agree 100%. Check out the 4-Hour Chef if you get the chance. After going through that and practicing cooking I find that I am better at discerning information about recipes and cooking overall.

noonespecial 12y ago

Recipes are to cooking as sheet music is to playing music. Just being able to read it is not really enough to know how it should sound.

jerf 12y ago

"As such, I find video recipes to be far more effective." My path to learning to cook was to watch nearly the entire run of Good Eats, picking out recipes that seemed like fun, but more focusing on using the knowledge and skills to do my own thing. The host of Good Eats and I appear to have radically different tastes, so, ironically, whenever I've actually made one of Alton's recipes from the show that taught me how to cook, neither my wife or I have liked them. Perhaps some I simply messed up, but certainly not all of them. But with what I learned from that show I've become at least "decent". Couldn't cook in a restaurant or anything, but I can perform one of the higher skills of home cooking, "see what's left in the pantry -> make something from what you have -> get requests for the 'recipe'".

hobs 12y ago
Agreed, he is teaching you the fundamentals, and how things interact on molecular levels on up and dissipates a lot of cargo culting, from a purely tv show perspective its a show that's worth watching.

peterwwillis 12y ago

Video recipes aren't really recipes, they're instructional guides. They instruct how to cook and provide lots of detail in a compressed form. A recipe is just the design parameters. You won't be able to write the app with just design parameters; you have to know how to program first.

3minus1 12y ago

Watching videos has been very helpful for me. My favorite is Chef John because he is informative and entertaining http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/ http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/