Is This The Best Way To Use A Recipe?

Years ago, I was talking about the then current high levels of unemployment with a person who was not aware that I trained at the Culinary Institute of America or that I had already worked for several years in the hospitality industry. He mentioned that he didn’t understand why people would want to apply for unemployment insurance payments when, “they can always get a job at a restaurant somewhere”. I must admit that I decided to let him remain unaware of my training and experience and to “bait” him a little bit. I asked him if he was referring to becoming a waiter or waitress and asked him to tell me more about what he meant. He said he was sure that anyone could wait tables and asked rhetorically, “How hard is it to cook?”, then answered his own question with, “You just follow a recipe!”. Of course his sense of conviction belied a shallow understanding of the restaurant business. Anyone who has survived long enough to be a successful server knows that the job requires skill, physical strength, adaptability and a significant level of social intelligence. I chose to ignore the wait staff side of his comment and to challenge him on the cooking side and told him that professional cooking is more than just following a recipe. There is also technique, process, time pressure, teamwork, and endurance that comes into play. Generally, you are preparing a dozen or so dishes at once. Many of those dishes have different requirements and each may involve different start and finish times. To his credit, he quickly realized that he may have been oversimplifying.

What Does This Experience Have To Do With Food Hacks?

Concepts Vs. Steps : Making Sense of Recipes

So what is it that separates the good cooks from the…..ah….the not so good? I think it is a combination of three things; Technique, an understanding of cooking concepts and the overall knowledge that comes from experience. I would argue that in many ways these three things are far more important than having a good recipe. In fact, if you possess technique, understand concepts and have sufficient experience you can very likely duplicate a meal simply by seeing and tasting the finished dish.

My mom could do it. I can do it and I bet you can too. Many of you have no doubt done so when a loved one asked, “ Can you make “_ _ _ _ _” like we had at Murphy’s Public House last week?”. Keep in mind that I am not referring to baking. In baking, success is much more dependent on chemistry and so precision in selecting and measuring ingredients is sometimes critical. In most other cooking however, given enough experience and a bit of tweaking, my guess is that most of us could come up with a reasonable copy of a dish without a recipe.

OK. So what?

I want to know in advance, almost instinctively, which new combinations of tastes will be enjoyed by me and the people I cook for and I want to use that knowledge to create new and interesting foods. Finally, I want to do this while having fun and making dinners. These are the goals of the Chef Hacker journey and I want all of these things for you too. We can discover these things and more, together as we work though recipes and ideas. So please join in and let us know what you think about these goals and share your culinary skills and experiences.

Call To Action!

Use the “Leave a Reply” section below and tell us….when you cook, do you follow a recipe closely or do you use it as a guide and improvise letting your creativity take over? Tell us about it. If you have a question, ask it. Do you want to know how to make a dish or see a technique? Let us know and perhaps I or some other reader of Chef Hacker Kitchen can write a blog or create a video in reply. Life’s about doing stuff so join in!