You read that right. I hate reading recipes. Well, most recipes. They're generally a list of ingredients with amounts, sometimes with minor instructions (eg. 2 cloves garlic, minced), underneath of which are further instructions, sometimes written in paragraph form, and sometimes the steps are numbered.
In some of the books I have, the ingredient list and instructions are side by side and sectioned off so that a batch of ingredients correlate with a set of instructions, then the next section will have another batch of ingredients correlating with their instructions.
And it's all so... wordy.
Before I started culinary school, I learned to rewrite recipes before cooking them so that a) I could understand, in my own way, what needed to be done, and b) I could format them in a manner that was easy to follow during the chaos that could ensue during cooking. This is important because before you cook you have to understand what you're doing. Unfortunately, recipes often tell you what to do but not necessarily how to do it.
What does that mean? Well, when a recipe tells you to saute mushrooms on medium high heat for two minutes, do you know what saute means? Let's get rid of the word saute and place it with cook. Okay, now we have a more generic term. We'll cook the mushrooms on medium high heat for 2 minutes... except the mushrooms are burning and they've only been cooking for a minute-and-a-half! So, let's change for two minutes to until brown. Well, not all mushrooms brown, are they? That's just a generic term cooks use to describe caramelization and the Maillard reaction (another post, another day, folks). So let's change that to until dark. How dark? Um... twice as dark? Really dark? And what if it takes a really long time? Perhaps the burner you're using doesn't have high enough heat, even though it's on medium high. Can you bump up the heat? Or is it supposed to take a long time? Well, it's supposed to take two minutes, right? Oh, wait, we changed that...
Yes, that's kind of a worse-care scenario. Not everyone gets that confused while following a recipe, but then again, some people do. I have met people that are learning how to cook but following a recipe is still confusing to them; I met two girls who went shopping for a casserole recipe that stated six stalks of celery were needed. Not being cooks, and therefore not necessarily being familiar with cooking or food terminology (or plant terminology, for that matter), they didn't know what stalks were... so they bought six bunches of celery instead of one bunch with six stalks. That is a lot of celery left over!
Following a recipe can be difficult for people learning how to cook, or inexperienced cooks. Even experienced cooks can probably have a difficult time following a recipe if it is written in a complicated manner, and yes... I've seen some complicated recipes.
The thing is, a recipe can't necessarily teach a person how to cook. They're not technical manuals; they can't - or rather, don't - teach technique. It can state what to do with food in order to cook it, which should result in a specific dish, but it doesn't explain the subtleties of a saute and how to make adjustments. It doesn't explain what a braise is and why you need to do it for a particular piece of meat and why you shouldn't substitute another particular type of meat. There are technical things that are left out of a recipe that help keep the text of a recipe shorter than it otherwise could be.
So... um... what is a recipe then?
A recipe is, quite simply, a set of instructions designed to instruct the user how to assemble a dish.
Think of a recipe like a map or GPS. If you have your driver's license, you know how to drive, right? (We're not going to debate the quality of your driving here...) But, just because you know how to drive, doesn't mean you don't necessarily know how to get to every destination you need to drive to. Thus, a map or a GPS can provide some sort of guide or instruction designed to provide you a route from where you are to your destination. This is a recipe.
There are two words of note: assemble and guide. Just because you're told or shown how to assemble something, doesn't mean you have the technique behind the methods to assemble the dish that will result in awesome, blow-your-mind food. Or even to assemble it well. Or, in some cases, assemble it so that the outcome remotely looks like edible food. The recipe also acts as a guide because recipes are generally written in a step-by-step manner where the the steps are (hopefully) arranged in a chronological manner so that each task is presented in an order that allows efficient assembly. For example, if making pizza, you wouldn't necessarily want to prep all your toppings and then start your dough, because the dough needs time to rise and rest. Prepping beforehand would just make the entire process longer. A good recipe will have you make the dough first, then prep your toppings, then instruct you to stretch the dough, assemble the pizza, then bake. Think of it like this: You wouldn't want to be lead around in circles all over town by a GPS when you could have made a right, two lefts, and a final right, would you?
So, whether you're an experienced or inexperienced cook, it's a great idea to rewrite recipes before using them. And, if you're intent on teaching yourself to how cook using recipes, one of the best ways to start is to rewrite them. We'll get into how and why next time.
What does that mean? Well, when a recipe tells you to saute mushrooms on medium high heat for two minutes, do you know what saute means? Let's get rid of the word saute and place it with cook. Okay, now we have a more generic term. We'll cook the mushrooms on medium high heat for 2 minutes... except the mushrooms are burning and they've only been cooking for a minute-and-a-half! So, let's change for two minutes to until brown. Well, not all mushrooms brown, are they? That's just a generic term cooks use to describe caramelization and the Maillard reaction (another post, another day, folks). So let's change that to until dark. How dark? Um... twice as dark? Really dark? And what if it takes a really long time? Perhaps the burner you're using doesn't have high enough heat, even though it's on medium high. Can you bump up the heat? Or is it supposed to take a long time? Well, it's supposed to take two minutes, right? Oh, wait, we changed that...
Yes, that's kind of a worse-care scenario. Not everyone gets that confused while following a recipe, but then again, some people do. I have met people that are learning how to cook but following a recipe is still confusing to them; I met two girls who went shopping for a casserole recipe that stated six stalks of celery were needed. Not being cooks, and therefore not necessarily being familiar with cooking or food terminology (or plant terminology, for that matter), they didn't know what stalks were... so they bought six bunches of celery instead of one bunch with six stalks. That is a lot of celery left over!
Following a recipe can be difficult for people learning how to cook, or inexperienced cooks. Even experienced cooks can probably have a difficult time following a recipe if it is written in a complicated manner, and yes... I've seen some complicated recipes.
The thing is, a recipe can't necessarily teach a person how to cook. They're not technical manuals; they can't - or rather, don't - teach technique. It can state what to do with food in order to cook it, which should result in a specific dish, but it doesn't explain the subtleties of a saute and how to make adjustments. It doesn't explain what a braise is and why you need to do it for a particular piece of meat and why you shouldn't substitute another particular type of meat. There are technical things that are left out of a recipe that help keep the text of a recipe shorter than it otherwise could be.
So... um... what is a recipe then?
A recipe is, quite simply, a set of instructions designed to instruct the user how to assemble a dish.
Think of a recipe like a map or GPS. If you have your driver's license, you know how to drive, right? (We're not going to debate the quality of your driving here...) But, just because you know how to drive, doesn't mean you don't necessarily know how to get to every destination you need to drive to. Thus, a map or a GPS can provide some sort of guide or instruction designed to provide you a route from where you are to your destination. This is a recipe.
There are two words of note: assemble and guide. Just because you're told or shown how to assemble something, doesn't mean you have the technique behind the methods to assemble the dish that will result in awesome, blow-your-mind food. Or even to assemble it well. Or, in some cases, assemble it so that the outcome remotely looks like edible food. The recipe also acts as a guide because recipes are generally written in a step-by-step manner where the the steps are (hopefully) arranged in a chronological manner so that each task is presented in an order that allows efficient assembly. For example, if making pizza, you wouldn't necessarily want to prep all your toppings and then start your dough, because the dough needs time to rise and rest. Prepping beforehand would just make the entire process longer. A good recipe will have you make the dough first, then prep your toppings, then instruct you to stretch the dough, assemble the pizza, then bake. Think of it like this: You wouldn't want to be lead around in circles all over town by a GPS when you could have made a right, two lefts, and a final right, would you?
So, whether you're an experienced or inexperienced cook, it's a great idea to rewrite recipes before using them. And, if you're intent on teaching yourself to how cook using recipes, one of the best ways to start is to rewrite them. We'll get into how and why next time.
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