The way that the best cooks learn to make new dishes is through experimentation. Even if you are quite new to the kitchen this should not put you off, you should still be quite confident in experimenting and find the best recipes which work for you. The difference is that if you are quite green in the kitchen you may benefit from referencing cookery books as a starting point. If you pick a renowned cookery book then you can be sure that the recipes will be tried and tested. So as long as you copy the recipes exactly they should turn out OK. Then you can use that as a starting point to experiment with adding, removing or substituting ingredients to create your own variations of the recipe.
If you are ready to experiment, you should follow my top tips to make sure that the recipes you choose to experiment with from the cookery book go according to plan:
1. Don’t just choose a recipe to try at random. Read through a selection of different recipes in the cookery book and choose one which you think you can do. Don’t try and run before you can walk – try and choose a recipe where you have done some of the steps before and you are only learning a certain section of the recipe from scratch. This limits the sections of the recipe where everything may go wrong.
2. Check in the cookery book how much time the recipe will take from start to finish, including preparation, cooking and chilling if this is part of the recipe. Then make sure that you have that amount of time plus at least 15 minutes. This will help you from getting stressed out while you are working due to time pressures. There is nothing worse than knowing that you are running out of time and making mistakes due to time pressures.
3. Read the recipe in the cookery book all the way through before you begin to do anything. Then get all of the equipment and ingredients collected together before you start any preparation. This will help prevent you from having to keep going back and forward in the kitchen. Read the cookery book recipe through from start to finish a second time before you begin. Then you can check that you have everything and also make sure that you know how to do everything before you begin. Only start to prepare things when you are completely happy that you understand everything that you should be doing.
4. Make sure that you always wash your hands before you begin to prepare the food. Make sure that you have separate chopping surfaces and plates for raw meats, cooked meats, fish and fruit and vegetables. This will make sure that you do not cross-contaminate anything and ruin the dish with a good dose of food-poisoning. Also make sure that you wash your hands in between handling each different type of food item.
Although these tips will help you to re-create the recipe from the cookery book which you choose, they will not guarantee that it will turn out perfectly. The key is that you should not let one or two failures put you off from experimenting – even the best chefs had to learn somewhere!
