You're not bad at cooking, you're bad at failing.
Some tips on letting go of perfection to actually enjoy making food.
I am anxious in almost all angles of my life, until it’s time to make myself something to eat. When I’m hungry, I could make a mess, a million mistakes, bend rules back and forth, and still never feel the stress that typically accompanies my day-to-day imperfections. Whatever we call this innate exception to my otherwise calculated sense of self, it’s the very reason I have moved so fiercely in the land of all things food.
Here’s a list of tips to help you get you there:
1. Accept your fate.
There is a very low chance that your food will immediately taste good when you make a recipe for the first time, whether said recipe is expertly written or comes from the depths of your imagination. Author and pastry chef, Claire Saffitz, so succinctly explains,
“Even though baking is often labeled as a science…kitchens are not laboratories.”
And I will go even further to call out that you and I are not scientists. Her precaution is not just specific to baking. No matter the level of preciseness with which you follow a written recipe for chicken or cake, you cannot control their exact level of fats, the temperatures in your home or nonstick pan, and most importantly, you cannot control what you inherently find delicious. Your taste will always be different than other chefs and recipe developers.
Which is why a good recipe will ask you to…
2. Taste as you go.
“I don’t know what I’m tasting for,” is the most common reaction I hear against tasting as you go. You taste to know if you’re happy. What you do after tasting is a different step all together. But knowing how the flavors on your tongue makes you feel takes precedence before the steps that follow.
Refusing to taste as you go is akin to a painter refusing to mix colors on their paint palette before blindly swiping their decisions onto the final canvas. Does an artist always know exactly how many dots of green and blue will blend together in order to yield the exact shade of teal of the ocean in front of them? Monet would shoot you for assuming so.
A well-written recipe will ask you to taste the dish at particular points. But in case they don’t, feel free to taste your cooking at these critical points:
While stirring and simmering.
Whenever something simmers for 5 or more minutes. Taste. Read what ingredients will be added after this simmer and predict how you think those ingredients will affect what you’ve just tasted. Add them, and compare the outcome to your predictions.
When making a batter or minced meat mixture.
When making fritters, meatballs, or pancakes etc., take one teaspoon of the mixture and cook it on a hot, well-oiled pan. Taste the cooked portion of food.
After blending wet ingredients (for a sauce or dressing).
Sometimes, you may not even need to add more of an ingredient. Adding water to a sauce may be the key to balancing its flavors.
3. Understand the founding elements of flavor.
Four words: Salt, fat, acid, and heat.
Each element shows up in all cooking and baking. Once you identify how they show up in your everyday cooking, the better you will be able to manipulate them and make confident decisions in the kitchen. If you have any goal to become a better home cook, you have no choice but to either reading or watch Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.
Watch this video for a preview of why mastering this matrix will change the way you cook forever.
My recipe for charred chicken skewers is a great lesson in how I learned to balance these elements.