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It helps me to avoid recipes and instead come up with ideas based on my tastes and the things I have available. Going to the grocery store is then less about "s

It helps me to avoid recipes and instead come up with ideas based on my tastes and the things I have available. Going to the grocery store is then less about "shit, they're out of $ingredient" and more about "wow, the salmon looks really fresh this week". The actual act of cooking is the same--instead of focusing on following and mucking up someone else's recipe, I get to feel creative as I build something based on what sounds interesting. It's kind of like a mini side project. Alton Brown is probably not an ideal source for recipes for you since he really goes all-out with ingredients and prep, but he's a fun way to learn about the science of cooking. His methods are hacker-ish, and that he doesn't follow same-old-same-old recipes helped me to stop worrying about doing things the "right" way.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
That approach sounds like something coming out of experience. I hope to reach that level one day; right now my mind just blocks when it starts thinking about composing ingredients, and I revert back to the two or three recipes I know. I wish I started cooking as a kid, I was less anxious to experiment then.
- freebs 12y ago
  You can start by putting together a list of ingredients you like. Many of these will be common ingredients for multiple recipes and go together in different ways. Nearly every time I go grocery shopping I get these things because my SO and I like them. EG: chicken, beef, tomato, onion, peppers, mushroom, cheese, rice, quinoa, pasta, potato, carrot, broccoli, spinach, asparagus, corn, sauce, etc. Make sure you have a good stock of different spices, salt, and pepper. Start with something simple like just chicken pasta and each meal add in something from above suited towards your taste. As you run out of ingredients you'll realize you can still make good dishes. If you run out of pasta you can skip it completely or sub it out with quiona. I often play the "lets see what I can make with what is still in the fridge" game :D
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Thanks for the tip. Yeah, the game of "lets see what I can make with what is still in the fridge" sounds totally fun! :D.
    - el_benhameen 12y ago
      Yeah, you were right in the above comment that that ability does come from having some experience. But the "let's see what's in the fridge" game is a great way to get that experience! You'll undoubtedly mess a few things up, but that's just the process of learning.
      - TeMPOraL 12y ago
        It's weird... the more I think about it, the more I ask myself - "it's just like programming, another cool skill to master - why I'm so afraid of experimenting?"...
        joshdotsmith 12y ago
        If I could upvote this a thousand times, I would. The problem, however, is that making a mistake in programming is not so painful. Making a mistake in cooking costs money and is often pretty embarrassing. I can easily see why you'd be more afraid of experimenting here.
        TeMPOraL 12y ago
        Agree strongly RE embarrassing part - for now I just gave up on experimenting while cooking for friends; I tried it once, and they laugh at me ever since. Costs is also a factor, but I notice I'm afraid of experimenting even with small dishes and cheap ingredients the fridge is stocked full of. I'm starting to realize now that it's just a stupid fear I need to overcome. I'm glad this thread forced me to think more about my attitude towards cooking.
        12y ago
- nikhilalmeida 12y ago
  I learnt by starting to cook Indian food when I moved here. A lot of Indian food has the same set of spices and similar procedures. Soon I realized that I can experiment with the ingredients and vary the spices to change flavor and it did not have an adverse impact on the final outcome. That caused me to loose the trepidation of experimenting in the kitchen and I do it with all cuisines now. And it has worked out well, cause I generally can manage to put a meal together with whatever is left in the fridge.
- Symbiote 12y ago
  Years ago I bought a vegan cookbook, which had week-long recipe plans in it. I'm not vegan, but without the "meat + sauce" or "meat + veg" options the recipes had to be so much more inventive. It gave me some good ideas, a taste for chickpeas, and a willingness to add beans to anything that looks boring. A flatmate has a book called simply "Saucen" (German for "Sauces") which provides a good basis for many meals.
gshrikant 12y ago
>> It helps me to avoid recipes and instead come up with ideas based on my tastes and the things I have available. I've been trying to learn how to cook ever since I moved roughly 3 months ago. My early attempts at replicating others' recipes had paid off decently so I attempted the hack-stuff-together approach on a couple of occasions. It did _not_ go well. :-/ I ended up with a ton of wasted ingredients not to mention the significant amount to time spent in prepping and later, cleaning up. That said, I agree that (with a bit of experience) this approach to cooking is a lot more fun. As a comment elsewhere on the page says, cooking for yourself could sometimes be a pain (especially after you get home from work) and thinking of it as a side project really helps.
- joshdotsmith 12y ago
  You can see the link to my site elsewhere, but I'd be happy to help more thoroughly if you're interested. The ability to do this is not a reflection of your ability to think creatively but rather that you need to understand why you're using certain things and what effect they will have on your dish.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  3 months isn't a long time. I think one way to build up intuition is to cook a recipe with a very short list of ingredients multiple times, with small variations (like the size of cutting things up or cooking time or whatever). One thing Good Eats consistently does is talk about whether an ingredient has a functional purpose in a recipe, and what that purpose is. Other cooking resources do that too, but usually not as well.
  - joshdotsmith 12y ago
    This right here is exactly right. If the reasoning is mentioned at all, it's usually incidental and not intentional. When we talk about salt in the seasoning step of our pan-sautéed chicken lesson, we wrote: "Salt "brings out the flavor" in chicken by reducing our perception of bitterness in foods. This, in turn, leads to an increased perception of sweet, sour, and umami (savory) flavors." This is obviously a rather trivial example, but hopefully you see how generalizing this (and similar nuggets of information) can help.
joshdotsmith 12y ago
Alton Brown is our guiding light for CookAcademy. (Our chef ironically also happened to be on Cutthroat Kitchen!) Mark Bittman writes about the stages of learning how to cook and you are pretty advanced relative to others. Many of us haven't gotten to the point where we can realistically come up with ideas based on tastes because we don't know how they interact. Generalizing these ideas requires understanding how and why things work, which is exactly why Alton Brown is so useful to so many people. He breaks down the reasoning behind something so that you can generalize it the next time, or in a different dish, or apply a principle to something new altogether.
- el_benhameen 12y ago
  Exactly! You put that much more eloquently than I could've. I'm glad to hear that you're creating a product that makes that learning philosophy accessible.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

That approach sounds like something coming out of experience. I hope to reach that level one day; right now my mind just blocks when it starts thinking about composing ingredients, and I revert back to the two or three recipes I know. I wish I started cooking as a kid, I was less anxious to experiment then.

freebs 12y ago
You can start by putting together a list of ingredients you like. Many of these will be common ingredients for multiple recipes and go together in different ways. Nearly every time I go grocery shopping I get these things because my SO and I like them. EG: chicken, beef, tomato, onion, peppers, mushroom, cheese, rice, quinoa, pasta, potato, carrot, broccoli, spinach, asparagus, corn, sauce, etc. Make sure you have a good stock of different spices, salt, and pepper. Start with something simple like just chicken pasta and each meal add in something from above suited towards your taste. As you run out of ingredients you'll realize you can still make good dishes. If you run out of pasta you can skip it completely or sub it out with quiona. I often play the "lets see what I can make with what is still in the fridge" game :D
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Thanks for the tip. Yeah, the game of "lets see what I can make with what is still in the fridge" sounds totally fun! :D.
  - el_benhameen 12y ago
    Yeah, you were right in the above comment that that ability does come from having some experience. But the "let's see what's in the fridge" game is a great way to get that experience! You'll undoubtedly mess a few things up, but that's just the process of learning.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      It's weird... the more I think about it, the more I ask myself - "it's just like programming, another cool skill to master - why I'm so afraid of experimenting?"...
      - joshdotsmith 12y ago
        If I could upvote this a thousand times, I would. The problem, however, is that making a mistake in programming is not so painful. Making a mistake in cooking costs money and is often pretty embarrassing. I can easily see why you'd be more afraid of experimenting here.
        TeMPOraL 12y ago
        Agree strongly RE embarrassing part - for now I just gave up on experimenting while cooking for friends; I tried it once, and they laugh at me ever since. Costs is also a factor, but I notice I'm afraid of experimenting even with small dishes and cheap ingredients the fridge is stocked full of. I'm starting to realize now that it's just a stupid fear I need to overcome. I'm glad this thread forced me to think more about my attitude towards cooking.
        12y ago
nikhilalmeida 12y ago
I learnt by starting to cook Indian food when I moved here. A lot of Indian food has the same set of spices and similar procedures. Soon I realized that I can experiment with the ingredients and vary the spices to change flavor and it did not have an adverse impact on the final outcome. That caused me to loose the trepidation of experimenting in the kitchen and I do it with all cuisines now. And it has worked out well, cause I generally can manage to put a meal together with whatever is left in the fridge.
Symbiote 12y ago
Years ago I bought a vegan cookbook, which had week-long recipe plans in it. I'm not vegan, but without the "meat + sauce" or "meat + veg" options the recipes had to be so much more inventive. It gave me some good ideas, a taste for chickpeas, and a willingness to add beans to anything that looks boring. A flatmate has a book called simply "Saucen" (German for "Sauces") which provides a good basis for many meals.

gshrikant 12y ago

>> It helps me to avoid recipes and instead come up with ideas based on my tastes and the things I have available. I've been trying to learn how to cook ever since I moved roughly 3 months ago. My early attempts at replicating others' recipes had paid off decently so I attempted the hack-stuff-together approach on a couple of occasions. It did _not_ go well. :-/ I ended up with a ton of wasted ingredients not to mention the significant amount to time spent in prepping and later, cleaning up. That said, I agree that (with a bit of experience) this approach to cooking is a lot more fun. As a comment elsewhere on the page says, cooking for yourself could sometimes be a pain (especially after you get home from work) and thinking of it as a side project really helps.

joshdotsmith 12y ago
You can see the link to my site elsewhere, but I'd be happy to help more thoroughly if you're interested. The ability to do this is not a reflection of your ability to think creatively but rather that you need to understand why you're using certain things and what effect they will have on your dish.
maxerickson 12y ago
3 months isn't a long time. I think one way to build up intuition is to cook a recipe with a very short list of ingredients multiple times, with small variations (like the size of cutting things up or cooking time or whatever). One thing Good Eats consistently does is talk about whether an ingredient has a functional purpose in a recipe, and what that purpose is. Other cooking resources do that too, but usually not as well.
- joshdotsmith 12y ago
  This right here is exactly right. If the reasoning is mentioned at all, it's usually incidental and not intentional. When we talk about salt in the seasoning step of our pan-sautéed chicken lesson, we wrote: "Salt "brings out the flavor" in chicken by reducing our perception of bitterness in foods. This, in turn, leads to an increased perception of sweet, sour, and umami (savory) flavors." This is obviously a rather trivial example, but hopefully you see how generalizing this (and similar nuggets of information) can help.

joshdotsmith 12y ago

Alton Brown is our guiding light for CookAcademy. (Our chef ironically also happened to be on Cutthroat Kitchen!) Mark Bittman writes about the stages of learning how to cook and you are pretty advanced relative to others. Many of us haven't gotten to the point where we can realistically come up with ideas based on tastes because we don't know how they interact. Generalizing these ideas requires understanding how and why things work, which is exactly why Alton Brown is so useful to so many people. He breaks down the reasoning behind something so that you can generalize it the next time, or in a different dish, or apply a principle to something new altogether.

el_benhameen 12y ago
Exactly! You put that much more eloquently than I could've. I'm glad to hear that you're creating a product that makes that learning philosophy accessible.