Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Sneaky cooking secrets

It's tuesday, which is Cooking time around here. I'm not doing a recipe today, I'm just going to briefly reveal a couple of the secrets of good cooks. Later today, we'll have a guest chef in to talk about how to cook perfect eggs.

Secret #1: Follow the directions.

Yup, that's it. Odds are these days that when you buy something, it has a recipe on it, or directions on how to cook it. So, um, do what the folks who made it said. Sometimes companies will have an ulterior motive, like giving out recipes that use their ingredients, but if the recipe sucks, no one will buy the ingredient (more than once). So the recipe or the directions (if it's a staple like rice or something) is generally going to produce food. A couple months ago, I got all kinds of huge compliments on a fantastic stirfry/chinese food spread I laid out. Check this out:
-Teriyaki pork (recipe from my brother. This one doesn't count)
-Beef with pea pods (googled "beef with pea pods recipe")
-chicken chow mein with vegtables (recipe on the back of the chow mein package)
-steamed short grain sushi rice (directions on the package)
-fried potstickers with spicy soy dipping sauce (directions on package, sauce from package)

Neat, eh?

Secret #2: Experiment in your seekrit laboratory, not on your dining room table.

My wife and I went through dozens of iterations of spaghetti before I ever had the balls to feed it to friends or extended family. Ditto teriyaki pork and BBQ chicken. Ditto all of those awesome homemade soups and the soda bread and all the rest. All of these things served as meals for us (and later, our kids) before we ever served them to anyone else.

Also worth mentioning is the huge number of things we've tried and gone "That was edible, but we're not going to try that again." Those are things our friends have never seen, and probably never will. Unless we try it again a few times, with different variations, and hit on one that works. Then we'll do it again a couple times to make sure that wasn't an accident, then we'll we'll cook it on a Friday Gaming night. "Shucks, this? It's pretty easy, you just blah blah, and remember to stuff the thing."

If you'll excuse me, there's a horde of angry cooks outside, demanding I shut up now. Later today, eggs!

James

Labels: Cooking isn't complicated

2 Comments:

Rednecked Rabbit said...: I'm really loving this segment on your blog. Its neat to read your take on cooking. And by the way, I totally agree that good cooking shouldn't be hard. I've got way too many other fun things to do to spend my life slaving over a stove...; 11:42 PM
James said...: Me too. It's fun to talk about and to dig down it why and what. Sometimes I forget to think about what I'm doing.

also, I've found over the years, that it's become less about the slaving, and more about the fun, which is the other reason I'm talking about it. Because, y'know, I've come to enjoy it.; 3:13 PM