Cooking

[Caesar]

I love cooking but one thing I really suck at is improvising. Most stuff I cook, I cook to a recipe - when I go off piste, everything tends to go pearshaped. I really envy people who can just go to the fridge and make a coherent dish out of whatever they find there.

It seems like people who are good at inventing in the kitchen know all these little rules for what goes together and what is going to taste nice. For example, the sweet/sour/salty/spicy rule for putting together an Asian dressing.

Anyone got any tips? I'd really like to learn a few more of those rules so that I can make more interesting food on a day-to-day basis, without having to always shop to a recipe.

 

[mantis]

I love cooking but one thing I really suck at is improvising. Most stuff I cook, I cook to a recipe - when I go off piste, everything tends to go pearshaped. I really envy people who can just go to the fridge and make a coherent dish out of whatever they find there.

It seems like people who are good at inventing in the kitchen know all these little rules for what goes together and what is going to taste nice. For example, the sweet/sour/salty/spicy rule for putting together an Asian dressing.

Anyone got any tips? I'd really like to learn a few more of those rules so that I can make more interesting food on a day-to-day basis, without having to always shop to a recipe.

Taste as you go, add a little bit of different spices & herbs, until you get the required taste.

 

[Caesar]

That doesn't help at all.

 

[mantis]

That doesn't help at all.

Well sorry, that's what I do. I quickly look at a recipe for the main ingredients & then wing it, I never measure anything, just add things slowly until it tastes good.

 

[Caesar]

'Add stuff until it tastes good' is not particularly descriptive though. What's the required taste that you're aiming for? What are the guidelines for mixing specific flavours? What herbs and spices are good substitutes for one another? What stuff should you avoid mixing?

Like, the 4S rule for Asian dressings is good because you know you are aiming for a specific flavour profile which means you can mess around with the specific ingredients a bit depending on what you have on hand.

 

[Messenger]

'Add stuff until it tastes good' is not particularly descriptive though.

The point is that its completely subjective and experiential.

 

[The Speaker]

I love cooking but one thing I really suck at is improvising. Most stuff I cook, I cook to a recipe - when I go off piste, everything tends to go pearshaped. I really envy people who can just go to the fridge and make a coherent dish out of whatever they find there.

It seems like people who are good at inventing in the kitchen know all these little rules for what goes together and what is going to taste nice. For example, the sweet/sour/salty/spicy rule for putting together an Asian dressing.

Anyone got any tips? I'd really like to learn a few more of those rules so that I can make more interesting food on a day-to-day basis, without having to always shop to a recipe.

If you're not much chop at improvising in general, I don't know that it would be any different for cooking.

 

[MrCharisma]

This looks alright , think you gotta pay though. https://www.foodpairing.com/en/what-is-foodpairing/

 

[stralia]

Learn the fundamentals and get your techniques down. Improv is only practical with a good knowledge base.

Heston Blumenthal's cooking chemistry is a good place to start.

 

[Simon_Nesbit]

I'm the opposite. If I ever follow a recipe it ends up NQR. Much prefer to 'play' with tastes as I go. (Then, no matter what it tastes like.....I meant it that way!)

Using a stir-fry as an example, I make a flavour base out of spice/sweet/sour/salt. I'm always heavy on the spice though, so tend to have to 'soften' the dish as I go. Because I do it so often, I've got a "sweetmix" concoction in the fridge. (dissolved brown sugar in a combination soy-sauce/oil/water). If it's too hot, I'll add a few splashes near the end when I add my herbs.

I pre-prepare everything, it's nothing for me to spend twice as long prepping as actually in the wok.

Spice is usually a couple of fresh chillies, switching between the warm large ones and stronger chillies. Rarely do I go hotter than Jabanero though. I had a bhut joloki (sp?) plant but it never grew proper fruit, closer to capsicum in heat.

Sweet is almost always brown sugar or honey. Mucked around a bit with molasses, golden syrup - hell anything goes in at times - but sugar is 'safe' and easy.

Sour is generally lemon juice, I'll cook with lemon and lime juice by the pan, add extra as needed to "clean" the taste. A lot of 'asian' vegetables have a slightly sour taste anyway (for my mass-produced western tastebuds anyway).

Salt - Balsamic, Kecap Manis (sweet soy), Dark Soy, and the variations thereof, either fish or oyster sauce.

I generally don't make very thick, coating sauces - i prefer a 'back of spoon' consistency that is absorbed by the rice/noodles, which seems to provide a depth of flavour.

 

[Caesar]

The point is that its completely subjective and experiential.

I know, but there's underlying principles and stuff. That's the thing I find really good about cooking courses for specific types of food - they tend to teach you to cook a bit more sympathetically in the sense that it's less about following a recipe and more about aiming for a specific taste outcome, and knowing which ingredients will help you get there and which ones won't.

I'm sort of at the stage with cooking that I know what tastes good together (in terms of basic pairings) but I don't really know why. Which means that when it comes to improvising I am a bit limited.

 

[nicky]

practise and don't be afraid to make mistakes

 

[stralia]

Gordon Ramsay's Ultimate Cookery Course is also good.

Caesar , there is really no short cut to knocking something (good) up on the fly. It's like guitar, you can smash out Wonderwall after a couple of lessons but improvising a jazz solo requires years of practicing scales, studying chord progressions and theory and knowing your instrument back to front.

 

[Caesar]

Caesar , there is really no short cut to knocking something (good) up on the fly. It's like guitar, you can smash out Wonderwall after a couple of lessons but improvising a jazz solo requires years of practicing scales, studying chord progressions and theory and knowing your instrument back to front.

I'm aware it's something that requires a lot of practice. I've just always found that I get a lot better at cooking a particular kind of food when I understand the basic tenets behind it. I don't think that's something you really get a hang of particularly well when you learn your cooking (as I did) mostly by making tons of recipes.

For example, I have cooked tons of Indian dishes but have always found the list of 20 ingredients and half a dozen to a dozen spices to be a bit overwhelming. I never really properly understood Indian cooking until I dated an Indian girl and she explained the trinity of salt-tart-hot that is the basic skeleton of pretty much every dish.

Once I started thinking about things in that context it was a lot clearer to me about what I was aiming for, and how the ingredients work together. It made it a lot easier for me to know why something didn't taste right, and how to fix it.

So that was basically what I was asking for - little tricks and rules like that which make cooking a lot easier. Maybe more experienced cooks just know that stuff intuitively, but I find it helpful to have it spelled out.

 

[stralia]

I'm aware it's something that requires a lot of practice. I've just always found that I get a lot better at cooking a particular kind of food when I understand the basic tenets behind it. I don't think that's something you really get a hang of particularly well when you learn your cooking (as I did) mostly by making tons of recipes.

For example, I have cooked tons of Indian dishes but have always found the list of 20 ingredients and half a dozen to a dozen spices to be a bit overwhelming. I never really properly understood Indian cooking until I dated an Indian girl and she explained the trinity of salt-tart-hot that is the basic skeleton of pretty much every dish.

Once I started thinking about things in that context it was a lot clearer to me about what I was aiming for, and how the ingredients work together. It made it a lot easier for me to know why something didn't taste right, and how to fix it.

So that was basically what I was asking for - little tricks and rules like that which make cooking a lot easier. Maybe more experienced cooks just know that stuff intuitively, but I find it helpful to have it spelled out.

I can empathize. When I started in the industry (Never let your kids become Chef's btw, bastard of a job), it was purely time, effort and expert guidance that got me proficient at cooking. The brute force method. Luckily today expert advice is just one youtube search away.

Cooking has too many variables and intricacies for you to get much in the way of valuable knowledge from a place like GD. A list of tips might sound like a winner but they will just become noise to the analytical mind.

Learn on a case by case basis from the best sources you can find.

 

[DivideandMultiply]

I love cooking but one thing I really suck at is improvising. Most stuff I cook, I cook to a recipe - when I go off piste, everything tends to go pearshaped. I really envy people who can just go to the fridge and make a coherent dish out of whatever they find there.

I am a pretty damn good cook and a fantastic lover. Like all things in life success lies in knowing the basics. Intuition and the ability to improvise, stem from practice and a solid grounding in the fundamentals.

Whilst there are some tricks, time invested and practice are your greatest weapons.

Now that the requisite platitudes are out of the way, check out the "How to Cook like Heston" series. Some of the dishes stray from basic to time consuming, but he covers the core things you need to know very well.

 

[Poseidon]

I like to put Arnotts milk arrowroots into warm milk for a tasty Winter treat.

 

[Bigeasy]

Marry a good cook.

 

[Stratton_Gun]

I make a mean piece of toast.....

 

[rayven]

I
Anyone got any tips?

Ever heard of colour coding? You can't go wrong in making dishes that mantis describes. With spices, basically the more crappy the meat the stronger the spice.

 

[chargers 09]

Sour cream improves every savory dish sevonfold.

 

[DrVanNostrand]

Stuff cooking, I'm heading out to Pizza Hut buffet for dinner

 

[Papa Juggs]

Learn your herbs and spices. Watch cooking shows.

Practice helps but not as much as fresh ingredients used well.

Burning anything will make a dish taste bad. Burn the oil, onions or spices and your dish can end up as a disaster in seconds. Heat control is critical. If your oil is smoking black turn down the stove.

Using salt and butter doesn't work for me. If you need them you've gone wrong somewhere.

I've never used a recipe. I just start with good fresh ingredients.

Perhaps we should have a bigfooty cooking club. Caesar picks and dish and we all go out and cook it and share our experiences.

Some people will find an exact recipe and others will just improvise.

 

[DrVanNostrand]

 

[Cruyff14]

If you're in the kitchen and not your partner, you're doing it wrong.