1. We must be flexible with what we have
Recorded recipes are never flexible. They just report what you need, how much you need, and what you should do. They never consider your own circumstances, because they are recipes made by another person using that person's circumstances. Instead of working with a fixed recipe, the basic principle of cooking is understanding ratios and proportions, your own personal tastes, and what you have in your refrigerator and pantry.
2. We must understand why, not just what or how
Recipes just explain what you should do and how you should do it. They don't explain why something must be done. Understanding the chemistry of cooking is necessary in becoming a good cook, because you may use the same underlying principles with different ingredients and experiment. Cooking is an art.
3. Cost-effectiveness and efficiency
The recipe calls for carrots; you have daikon in your refrigerator. The recipe calls for onions; you have leeks and green onions. The recipe calls for celery; you have bok choy. The recipe calls for chicken for the soup base, but you have shrimp. The list goes on and on. Instead of buying the exact ingredients, you may just use what you have currently in your pantry and refrigerator. In this way, nothing is wasted, and everything is used!
4. Awesome and novel tastes and smells
The traditional chicken noodle soup recipe usually requires chicken, water, seasoning, carrots, onions, celery, and egg noodles. If you don't have those ingredients, then you can always innovate by combining shrimp, water, seasoning, daikon, leeks, green onions, bok choy, and rice to make shrimp rice soup. Same concept, different dish! If you want to go vegetarian, omit the shrimp and get daikon rice soup!
5. Adaptability to our hectic modern lives
In modern times, two-parent households are the norm. With both parents working, who has the time to stay at home and prepare traditional foods the old-fashioned way? Instead of pining for the old lifestyle, we must adapt to changing times and make food that is nourishing, simple, fast, and convenient.
What Girls & Guys Said
Opinion
1Opinion
I don't agree. There are people who really care about cooking and there are people who just want to eat. Recipes are for those who just want to eat and don't want to learn about concepts. I mean, do you really need to know the theory behind the four-stroke engine in order to drive a car? Do you even care to know what a four-stroke engine is?
I love food and I love to cook and as such, I think that people who cook for themselves are doing themselves a huge favor. In my view, the ones who mindlessly follow recipes people who are already taking huge steps forward. Do I think it's better if they actually understood the concepts of braising, sweating, searing, and collagen to gelatin conversion? Of course, but in terms of how it affects their life, I'm not sure it's really that helpful to most people.
Just in case you wanted to better understand your car.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_heat_engine
Or you can skip it because just like understanding cooking concepts, the reality is that it's not going to change your life.
I find that most people who say they disagree with the claims I've made end up agreeing with me in some form or another; they just interpret what I've said differently and based their judgments on their interpretation than my own interpretation.
i am a lot creative on cooking