Chef's Recipes....

After looking at a few of the posts here, I've realized that most Professional Cooks don't ever REALLY disclose how much of a certain ingredient they put into a recipe.....

I'm a Pro and haven't really thought about this until now.

I've taught cooking classes when I had to write down recipes and I knew that it was my best guess when I jotted it down on paper...I may have left something out, sometimes on purpose(Yes, we do have our secrets), other times it's just because I'm not used to working strictly from something written down.

My real question is ...how much does the average home cook follow the "RECIPIE"

[Robin Garr]

My real question is ...how much does the average home cook follow the "RECIPE"

I'm not sure I qualify as an average home cook since I've got at least limited pro kitchen experience, and also write professionally about food (including creating recipes for other cooks to follow). But short answer, I rarely if ever follow recipes exactly. I read the recipe, think about how it will come out, and then generally make some tweaks either because I think it will improve the recipe or because I just want to change something about it for some reason.

When I'm inventing a recipe for publication, I'll generally take a lot of notes as I go (using a kitchen laptop), but even there, I'll more often than not "season to taste" and then go back and figure out what I did for the recipe.

I'm pretty much in Robin's camp. Initially, when I was learning to cook, I followed recipes religiously, which I think is a good thing in the beginning (following James Beard's maxim: "The kitchen is no place to get creative"). Now, I'll read a recipe and either follow it because it sounds okay, or I play around with it or substitute ingredients either because I want to or because I'm missing some apparently essential thing.

Baking, on the other hand, has been very different. I still play with recipes, develop them beyond whatever's there, according to what I'm looking for in flavor and so forth, but I keep notes along the way, because once I get what I want in a baked thing, I want to be consistent with it, so winging it would be disastrous.

And that's even truer for breads. I think every bread baker develops her own formulas, learning the basic fundamentals of how doughs work and then playing around til you get what you're looking for, but writing it all down step by step and keeping really good notes. It's painstaking and a little tedious. But for me, as I was learning, the best advice I found came from Steve Sullivan, the founder of the Acme Bread Company in San Francisco. Julia Child (I think) asked him what he attributed his success to, and he said, "Taking good notes." It sounds so simplistic, even trivial, but it's absolutely crucial.

Dan,

I also "play with my food" and don't adher to recipes as much anymore unless baking. But my experience with average home cooks from all of our cooking classes at GFE is that most adher religiously to recipes, particularly those from a chef. It's a comfort-level thing: they are not very comfortable and the recipe in hand is considered a bible. We spent a lot of time in some classes with attendees writing things down in gory detail if the chef had been less than detailed on procedures or quantity of ingredients in their write-up.

Personally I was really surprised at how uncomfortable some people are without recipes for even the simplest dishes: we found that they wanted us to write-up instructions for very simple appetizers (Ie. put this chutney on top of mascarpone).

Deb

I love to cook, and have absolutely no problem experimenting with this and that. My husband and I doctor pretty much everything up. My best friend, on the other hand, has almost set her kitchen on fire cooking spaghetti, and when we were little, almost burned her grandmother's apartment down making pop tarts.

My point is, some people NEED detailed, written instruction, no matter how simple, because they either aren't confident enough in their skills, afraid to experiment, or just plain can't cook.

I know when I give out my recipe for peanut butter pie, I'm not exact with the amount of peanut butter I put in, but it's never a set amount, anyway, I just do it until it tastes right. I'd venture to guess there's a least a cup of peanut butter per pie, though.

We will read over a recipe and get a good idea on quantities/proportions and pretty much wing it from there. Some of the best info we look for is suggested oven temps, that can be really helpful.

Dan as you know I have always been a "wanna be chef". I cook from scratch every day and I only follow a recipe with measurements when I bake. And if you ever had anything I baked you would understand why I don't. It is a timing thing that I can't figure out. So when I cook I do follow most of the items but taste as I go. Seems like the only thing consistent with my cooking is my choice of wine that I drink while doing it.