RECIPE, WHAT RECIPE
I consider myself an excellent home cook and often cook for friends and for occasions at work, more importantly I cook for my husband and 3 grown sons 6-7 nights a week. However, when I am asked for the recipe I rarely can give one because almost everything I cook is something that I have created from scratch and nothing is written down. Can anyone tell me the best way to develop recipes for my best dishes?
Add a comment:
Previewing your comment:
HTML Hints
Some HTML is OK: <a href="URL">link</a>, <strong>strong</strong>, <em>em</em>
Comment Guidelines
Post whatever you want, just keep it seriously about eats, seriously. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. Learn more at our Comment Policy page.
If you see something not so nice, please, report an inappropriate comment.
Start Talking!
Need a question answered? Have advice to share? Start a Talk topic now!
Sign up to get your questions answered and share advice.
9 Comments:
I have this problem too. What I do is I take a legal pad in the kitchen and start writing stuff down. I just started doing it more often. Have someone blind test your recipe as written.
JerzeeTomato at 8:38PM on 12/02/07
The best way tom learn to write recipes is to read recipes.
Find a format or style that makes sense to you, and then try to fit your ingredients and instructions into it.
Ingredients are simple, just list them in order of use. For instructions, just pretend you're talking to somebody in your kitchen, explaining what you're doing and why.
You can have somebody else test your recipe, or just follow it yourself, doing only what it tells you. You'll be surprised, but usually the most obvious points are what gets left out; ie: do you grease the (what size) pan, preheat the oven, how to test for doneness, etc.
srhcb at 9:29PM on 12/02/07
I find that it's hard to write down recipes when I'm in the kitchen and don't have a lot of leeway with time. What I've found that works well is to write down a recipe of what I think approximates what I use and do, and then I stick it on my fridge. As I go along, I make notes on it and then once I'm done, I add all my additions/changes. It's way easier than writing out the whole recipe as you go along.
And for the record, can I just state that I hate when people write recipes and list the ingredients completely out of order with respect to their order of use. Bad writing!!!
charm city cupcake at 9:55PM on 12/02/07
I make a conscious effort to write things down because I'll drive myself crazy if I make something everyone really likes and then can't duplicate it.
Writing things down also hones your ability to identify quantities of ingredients by sight.
chiff0nade at 7:06AM on 12/03/07
I'm right there with you with the inability to remember exactly what I did in the kitchen, except that I don't really want to have to go to the trouble of doing so; cooking dinner is sort of a decompression time for me, when I don't have to think about very much, except the things immediately in front of me.
If I just sit down at my desk, I can usually write out a recipe that will work nicely. But if I did that, then tried to follow it, I expect that I would find myself making all sorts of little adjustments as I went along.
Nicholas H at 10:27AM on 12/03/07
I'm just a home cook and I'm sure many of you go about cooking the same way: Look in the pantry, fridge and freezer and figure out what could become dinner, unless I'm making something tried and true and happen to have all the ingredients at hand. Unless I'm hosting a dinner party or holiday meal, I rarely sit down and write out a recipe of my own. More likely I'll throw a bunch of things together, or search recipes and either follow, or revise as I go.
If the meal was exceptionally good, I might try to recall the ingredients and steps and actually write it down. I usually think I'll remember, but some of the brain cells are in hiding and two months later, I'm lucky if I remember any part of it.
PerkyMac at 11:18AM on 12/03/07
Same problem here. I'm terrible for recipes. Not only do I usually wing it on quantities, but the ingredients are almost always flexible based on what's on hand, and even the techniques are somewhat inconsistent depending on available time, patience level, etc. Luckily, new DIL is asking for recipes, so I've been getting better at keeping track. Not great. Just a little better!
If possible, I invite the inquirer to watch me make the dish and take their own notes. This is the best way, because I can answer questions, and address things that come to mind as I'm working, and they get directions in their own "language".
Otherwise, the next time I make it, I try to at the very least jot down the ingredients and approximate quantities so I'm more likely to remember the method and can go back later and describe it. Also, I spend a lot of time waiting for certain dishes to "do something" where I have to stand around in the kitchen to monitor the progress. That's a good time to jot down notes about technique.
LoCo at 12:23PM on 12/03/07
Use a digital voice-activated recorder and transcribe the recipes later. List the ingredients in order of use, liquid before dry when applicable, and largest to smallest by category:
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1tsp mirin
dash tabasco
1 cup panko
I tsp salt
for example.
zapatista at 1:57PM on 12/04/07
Two things, actually.
One is similar to what others have mentioned. Keep notes. For example, I just got a blank journal and dedicated it to the lessons learned in smoking and BBQing. I filled pages just in things learned/tried/failed in smoking the Thanksgiving turkey this year.
The second thing is a family cookbook. My kid sister gave it to me years ago - hers and my mother's and grandmother's and other family recipes, each page typed and printed and encased in a plastic page cover in a 3-ring binder. I've continued to add to it as I've perfected or adopted or whatevered a recipe. For example, when I got tired of paying five bucks a tub for egg drop soup I googled 4-5 recipes, averaged them out, tried a dozen or so versions, and ultimately came up with the way I like it. That's now on it's own page in the binder. One holiday I gave a complete copy of the updated book to my son for his own kitchen bookshelf.
Nursie at 11:33PM on 12/04/07