Living a No Recipe Lifestyle means that other people’s ideas on how to cook things really don’t affect me. I live without rules, I cook without recipes. Learning to cook is empowering, and it gives me great power over my food choices.
I can cook better than I ever have because I don’t follow recipes anymore. They’ve let me down too many times.
However, if I don’t have written instructions, how do I create amazing meals at home? There are 5 elements, or necessary skills that I use to be able to cook the way I want, with the ingredients I desire.
The first way to cook better is to change your thought process a bit. You must admit to yourself that recipes are good simply for ideas. Blindly following someone else’s idea of how something should be cooked is destined for frustration.
At some point, you’ll discover your cookbook has been lying to you.
There are too many variables in recipes for the home cook to duplicate them exactly as the photo shows. First, the test kitchen and the photo studio are two separate places, they did not meet. Secondly, products can be different sizes, stoves different temperatures, pots and pans of different materials, making recipes difficult to duplicate.
The second way to cook better is to learn some basic knife skills. The Chef’s Knife will be your best friend in the kitchen if you use it skillfully and safely. There are no moving parts, it washes clean easily and can be used to cut hundreds of items quickly.
Third, stock your pantry. If you want to cook without recipes, that means you’ll be using the ingredients YOU desire. Why not keep some of your favorite flavors on-hand? I urge people to buy soy sauce, chili paste, coconut curry sauce, salsa, or adobo sauce to quickly change the flavor profile of any dish.
You’ll cook better when you perfect one cooking method, and simply change the flavors. That’s my fourth tip. Understand the different types of heat used in cooking.
The essence of cooking is the transfer of heat to food. Regardless WHAT you’re cooking, HOW you cook it is most important. The difference between the direct heat of the sauté pan versus the indirect heat of the oven will give dramatically different results.
Lastly, sauce-making is a very important skill in the kitchen. A good sauce can help a badly cooked piece of chicken, but a bad sauce will ruin the best one.
Actually, all of sauce making comes down to one concept, gelatinization of starches. Quick and easy pan sauces are made by starch molecules absorbing liquids and swelling. This is what makes sauces smooth or lumpy.
Grandma used a cornstarch slurry, but there’s a turkey gravy thickener that Grandma ignored. Roux is made from fat and starch, usually butter and flour. It gives a much better flavor than cornstarch, and with just a few tries, it’s easy to perfect.
You will definitely cook better when you stop trusting recipes entirely, use your kitchen knife, stock your pantry, use the correct heat, and learn how to make sauces. Then, an endless supply of dinner ideas will be at your command, now able to cook from anything you have on hand.
See the 5 Secrets to Cook Better video
“Burn Your Recipes” and Cook Like a Chef at Home with my cooking DVDs!
The Complete cooking DVDcollection for cooking without recipes.