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Although I am forever yoked to recipes, what I see as a major element of cooking is being able to improvise - if something goes wrong, knowing how to fix it.

For me, it's a mise en place. Whether I'm following a recipe or just making something up off the cuff, it helps me so much to have everything in front me, ready to go.

being comfortable with the ingredients and the recipe.. if youre doing a recipe for the first time youre going to be nervous and that may affect how it turns out..im a new cook and it happens all the time..my husband helps me the first time and then after that im golden with that recipe.

Knowing how to salt food.

For me it's time. Knowing when to be patient so that ingredients set and flavors marry. Knowing when to be hasty and get ingredients moving before they burn. And perhaps most importantly, knowing that you're not gonna get it right the first time.

For me, it's having fun doing it, and trying to get better every time.

Practicality-- don't waste food, respect it.

tasting and seasoning is really important. I taste as I go. patience is pretty darn important, too.

Knowing how to salt food, of course.

Fire.

Somebody had to say it. ;)

Followed closely by fun.

The most important element of cooking is developing a sense of what tastes right and being able to adapt to achieve that in your dishes.

Timing is everything. :)

The most important element of cooking?

Love.

Without a doubt the most important thing is Timing. You gotta have that little clock in your head whispering to you so that each dish is done at the same time, and ready to be served.

Eye of the Rabbit, you beat me too it. Timing is essential.

Many beginning cooks want to over beat, over season, or flip the protein too quickly and it really hinders appearance and flavor development. Experience helps to decide when a dish needs fussing and when you need to walk away.

The most important element of cooking is simplicity--when a recipe has 20 ingredients listed that I have to mail order or travel great distances to procure, chances are I won't make it. Give me any group of ingredients--fresh herbs, spices, veggies, fruits, cheeses--that I can buy at a Farmer's Market and I'll love making it and it will taste great. If the dish has tomatoes in it, I want to taste the tomatoes, not a bunch of other things that got mixed in with it!

tasting food before you serve it

An open mind and a willingness to experiment and have fun.

Taste- doesn't matter if it looks good if it doesn't taste good.

Patience. Realizing that, like everything else, "practice makes perfect". So the first batch of carmelized/scorched onions or the first attempt at hacking apartment a squash isn't how it will be _every_ time if you keep at it.

That and the patience to let things rest, I can't seem to do that every time though!

Having a sense of how ingredients work together -- much of which can come only from experience. Knowing approximately when to add this or flip that or turn down the heat is key.

The cook. Cooking well isn't just the sum of technique, knowledge, a nice knife, good ingredients, etc. There's something innate in a "good" cook that ties it all together...I'm not sure it's an eligable entry if I don't put a name to it, but you know it's there when you meet a good cook.

Salt

I agree with the flavoring with seasonings. it can definitely make or break the food.

Passion, and a sense of adventure. The desire to get into the kitchen and create delicious food; try something you've never tried before, and if you screw it up try it again to make it right. A new recipe is an unexplored treasure. Some days I just can't wait to get through with work and start cooking.

The most important element of cooking has got to be the proper use of fire.

The most important element of cooking is heat - the management of heat makes the proper crust on a steak, the proper thickness of a roux, the proper rise of dough, and everything else proper. There's no way to cook without heat.

For me, the 2 most important things are good, sharp knives and quality ingredients. If I have to choose between the 2, then I would have to say the quality of the ingredients.

And I will also admit I really enjoy Ruhlmans blog, it is a quality blog along w/OF COURSE this one!!!! I guess my word for the day is quality.....

My number one then= Fresh and as high quality as possible, be it vegetables, meat, herbs, spices, etc. ingredients

Practice. My Mom started me cooking with her 55 years ago, and I watched in amazement when she glanced at recipes, modified them based on cupboard ingredients, seasoned in her palm (not spoons), and imparted a passion, a zing, a deep appreciation for good tastes, good presentations, and good company. Cooking is my recreation and mental discipline.

coastalvicar

Balance and soul.

To get the first right you must be willing to try, try and try again. Note what you think could be improved about the dish or menu you just served and try it out the next time. Keep doing this until you know you've gotten it right. And know when to stop messing with it. Consistency matters.

For the second, soul, you have to cook with care, taking into account a lot of intangibles: Who are you cooking for and what do you know about them? Can you make something that will spark off memories? What's the nature of the occasion-- is it formal enough to justify fois gras or would your guests be happier with macaroni and cheese?

Patience. To know that things will turn out right, and trying not to speed things up.

You need as few processed ingredients as possible. Try to make everything you can from scratch. Fresh is best. Fresh real food, not food made in a lab, is the key to good meals.

Heat. Without it you're not cooking. With inadequate heat you can wreck the best ingredients, and with too much heat you can run afoul as well.

Knife work and an understanding of how to use salt in the right proportions.

Enough people have already said "salt" so that I can use them as cover for my complete lack of cooking knowledge. I just want the book.

Now, in a confident, authoritative tone... Salt is the most important element of cooking.

love, passion or soul. whatever you call it if you are not emotionally connected to your food then ugh

Seasoning. Taste as you cook & adjust as necessary.

Confidence. Confidence in your technique, but also confidence in your cooking knowledge so that you can adapt a recipe to your liking, and also read a recipe and say, "That doesn't sound right... I'm going to do it this way."

patience. essential when something takes time, attention, precision, or creativity. also patience is important when trying again when something goes wrong. this is also true in life as well as cooking.

I think the most important element of cooking is sharing your meal with someone. Watching them as they take that first bite... and then the reaction, for me it's total hyperbole, when it's good, it feels like I'm God's gift to cooking, when it's bad, I'm ready to give up trying to make, say, pastry crust altogether... until next time I try something new.

Paying attention. Whether you're following a recipe, reducing stock or just grilling a panini, without a clear awareness of what you're doing you will make all manner of mistakes. I think this is often what is meant when people say "cooked with Love". It's how I funnel my love into the eats, anyway :)

Practice, practice, practice. Then practice some more.

And taste as you go.

I'm going with heat, something I'm still trying to beat the curve on. I have to keep reminding myself it's my friend, not my enemy.

Heat.

By controlling how hot a sugar mixture gets you can make marshmallows, cotton candy or ice cream or let it go all the way to caramel, for example.

The most important element of cooking is contempt - you must despise your ingredients, treat them cruelly and with a generous dose of spite, savagely beating - or, if you're making a simple puree, blending - them into submission and bending them to your iron, hateful will, so that your finished dish is something that will make all the miserable bastards you foolishly surround yourself with more miserable still upon their being served it. Also, a complete lack of patience is essential. And the only things more to be avoided than salt and pepper are, in order of importance, knowledge of basic cooking techniques, joy in the process of cooking, creation of so-called "flavor", and the use of quality ingredients.

The second most important element of cooking is a sense of whimsy.

The most important element of cooking is perseverance.

Repetition untilevery move is instinct. Only then are you really in control: alternative techniques, flavors, and combinations open up before you. Only then can you really understand and be responsible for the result instead of relying on luck, goodwill, and written recipes.

The person/people you eat with.

That, or salt.

Heat. Thus spake my husband. I would have said salt.

The most important thing in cooking has nothing to do with what you cook or how you cook it.

The most important element in cooking is your audience. You see it in cooking shows (where the food's always judged), in restaurants (where the critics help us pick a restaurant before we've eaten there), and in each and every home (where parents/guardians keep trying to feed picky eaters). If it wasn't for the audience there'd be no world-famous chefs, no four star ratings, and -- most importantly -- no food porn.

I think the most important thing in cooking is a kitchen that doesn't suck.

The most elemnt part of cooking is experimenting and try everything. Don't be scared just have fun and learn.

Balance.

Good recipes, good ingredients, decent cookware.

Overcoming fear of deviating from recipes.

Desire -

The desire to play with food & fire and see where it takes you.

The desire to create wonderful food that is greater than the sum of its parts.

The desire to tell your stories through the food that you cook, eat, and share.

The desire to feed and nourish the tummies and souls of those you love.

I'll let Patience Gray say it for me:

“The art of cooking is the release of fragrance and the art of imparting it. Fragrance: the bay laurel, Lauris nobilis, a sacred tree, how brightly, how fiercely it burns. Gather its dark leaved branches in summer if you can. Sweet the influence of rosemary, its ungainly shrubby stems bursting with pale lilac flowers. Pungent the mint trodden underfoot on the way to the orchard. Peppery and sweet the scent of wild marjoram, origano, self-drying in July on droughty limestone hillsides; lemon-scented the clumps of wild savory, poor man's pepper, producing its minute snapdragon flowers in August, picked by quarrymen on their way down from the quarry. Irresistible the bunches of herbs sold in the market place by an old man who bothers to gather them, shrubby sprigs of thyme nibbled by hares in high pastures and green-leaved sage, and clary. Holy the Byzantine perfume of coriander leaves and seeds, recalling the smell of incense burning in a Greek chapel perched on the spine of a bare mountain. Passer-by, grasp the invitation proffered by fennel flowers and seeds on brittle stalks leaning out from the hillside. Savour the strange sweet taste of juniper berries, blue-black, picked in September on a chalk down where nothing much else grows. Wander through the maquis in spring when shrubby sages, thyme, rosemary, cistus, lentisk and myrtle are in flower. Inhale the fragrance of the wilderness.”

— Patience Gray, Honey From a Weed, p. 94

the most important element of cooking: fresh ingredients.

a product is as good as its parts.

For me, the most important part is knowing when the food is cooked properly. Even in shows like Top Chef and Next Iron Chef, you have the chefs not cooking the food properly...

In my experience, its crucial to have patience when cooking. Some things just can't be rushed: stocks, braises, stews, soups, tomato sauce, yeast bread. Trying to do these things quickly will either fail completely, or produce inferior results.

The absolute most important thing is proper seasoning, but no last minute seasoning, regardless of how well done, can replace the flavors created by the proper application of time.

The most important element of cooking .........NOT burning down the house !!!!!!!!

Attention to detail. You have got to sweat the small stuff.

Despite the obvious science of it, cooking is such a subjective experience. I find it nearly impossible to name the most important element. Perhaps that sounds like a copout, but aren't these answers evidence of its amorphous, personal nature? Love is just as important as salt; desire is essential, and so is knowing when to use a recipe and when to use wild abandon. A really good knife and fresh, even homegrown, ingredients are wonderful. But, maybe the most important element of cooking is learning how to make it your own, and mastering the basic skills to give you the freedom to do so. (Something I am most definitely still working on.)

The most important element about cooking for me is properly salting your food. So many people are afraid of the possibility of over salting that the food isn't properly salted.

Confidence. Believing that you can take it a step beyond the recipe and make it your own.

Timing. It is still one of the hardest things for me to get as a home cook. IF my mother hadn't stressed the importance of this while she was teaching me to cook as a little girl, I don't think I would have gotten it for quite awhile. Being able to time things so they all come out finished together involves thinking through the texture of everything you are cooking, whether it's building ingredients for a soup or stir-fry, making spaghetti sauce or just the timing of all the different dishes you make being finished at the same time. Most people only realize the importance of timing once a year; Thanksgiving. That's when even the average cook thinks about timing, in getting up early to start the bird so that it will be done with the other things to be prepared.

The most important element of cooking, for me, is simply (though not always simply!) doing it. I can read about stocks, sauces, pastry, knife skills, seasoning and other important fundamentals. Without action, however, the knowledge is wasted. I can't develop my knife skills if I don't chop an onion. I can't make a great stock, if I don't make a stock at all. So, I must cook. For myself, for others. It doesn't matter. Just cook!

Fresh, fresh, fresh! Freshness does matter! The most memorable dishes created in my kitchen were inevitably inspired by the ingredients or a single ingredient available in the market that day. By the same token, many creations will not ever taste exactly the same way twice but every one will be an adventure if you keep yourself open to what is offered to you daily.

The most important element of cooking is knowledge. Knowledge of ingredients, knowledge of technique, knowledge of taste and seasoning, knowledge from reading, and knowledge of self.

Desire. You have to want to cook. You have to be able to look at your ingredients and want to make something better with them. You have to want to please the people you love with good food. You have to know that even at the end of a long, hard, day, the desire to cook overpowers wanting to order a pizza, eat a frozen dinner or go totally half-assed on a meal.

Bringing flavors together in a harmonious way. Pairing different foods, spices, and flavors is much like pairing a wine with your meal. It took experience for me to learn this.

Perseverance.

Ingenuity and innovation. Being able to make good food even in less-than-ideal conditions is very important.

The most important element of cooking - and one that most amateur cooks never grasp - is an awareness of the chemical processes that cooking unleashes on your ingredients. What is high heat doing to the sugars and proteins in your meats and veggies? What will acids do to them? What is happening to beef collagens at 170 or 180 F? Heat, cold and enzymatic action change the flavour and texture of everything that you prepare in predictable ways. Mastery of these underlying chemical processes is essential to creating in a culinary environment.

Giving a damn. Caring about the food is, primarily, what turns a poor dish into at least a decent one.

I would say patience. And organization.

Imagination is the single most important part of cooking. For without it we'd all be sitting around the cave eating raw fruits and vegetables and gnawing on fire roasted meats!

good judgment - having a sense of what's happening to the food and knowing how to orchestrate everything in the kitchen to make it turn out fabulous!

I am hooked on 'The French Laundry' cookbook, so this seems to be the obvious pre-quel.

Seasoning. The ability to know how much salt (and pepper) to put on your food is the difference between mediocre and extraordinary.

Simplicity, fresh ingredients and a sense about how to combine them effectively. .

I think that one of the most important element of cooking is to have a sense of adventure when cooking and eating. If you lack that, you're lacking wonderful opportunities to try new things and discover new flavors.

Innovation, preparation, sharp knives, interest and happy eaters are the most important elements of cooking!

Understanding how to shop for the best products available, grown or raised as close to home as possible. That's what it's all about.

If at first you don't succeed, try try again.

Personality. Otherwise food from all chefs would taste the same. :)

Notes. I think that imagining a meal in terms of bass lines, trumpets, melody, and so on does things to the way I conceptualize out dishes that I can't quite explain, but makes everything harmonize in unexpected but surprisingly coherent ways.

A solid understanding of science and experimentation. Otherwise, you can't plan a meal without constantly running the risk of ruination because you can't anticipate the possibilities.

Hmm, maybe I should just stick to reading McGee and This.

The most important element of cooking is the food you have. I am in culinary school and have heard many celebrity chefs and writers reiterate the feeling 'the chef is only as good as the food he's working with'. You can have the best talent, skill, passion, equipment and knowledge, but if your product is bad, so is your result. It's all about the food.

a love of good food, a generous spirit, high quality ingredients, and paying close attention to the process.

i have a friend who doesn't have a lot of money, keeps very strictly kosher, and who cooks very simply, but her food is always extraordinarily delicious. she just has a certain je ne sais quois that adds to the taste of her food.