How to Cook with No Recipe?

[ncbill]

I do a few things:

Say we have LOTS of leftover ham. Well, I have a few recipes for ham, but that won't have enough variety. I'll google 'leftover ham recipes.' I look at the images, select one new thing (ham/veggie strata), then read a half dozen recipes for ham strata. Look for the similarities and make it up from there. For example, most of the strata recipes use half-and-half. I have heavy cream on hand, so I'll substitute.

I usually make a menu early in the week, and plan dinner depending on our activities.

Also, at the grocery store, I'll often see a bargain that I want to incorporate into the menu. Say bell peppers. I'll revise my plan on the fly: Monday fried rice, Tuesday stuffed peppers, Wednesday carnitas, etc. Sometimes I even put the new dinner idea into my phone.

Finally, I keep some emergency meals (frozen dinners, egg salad) on hand in case I really screw up.

Used to buy the 'ends' from Honeybaked Ham before everyone & their brother caught on.

Home-made ham salad = bliss...

 

[davebarnes]

“Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

 

[Z3Dreamer]

One thing that helps: To be born Italian. Italians do not use recipes. They add ingredients based on heart and feelings.

Of course, they keep the best ingredients in the house, so they have many choices.

 

[CardsFan]

I make beef jerky (with my 35 year old Ronco dehydrator). I know what to put in my marinade, but I NEVER measure. The last batch I made DW says "this is the best you have made in a long time, what's different?"

Damned if I know

 

[donheff]

Master Recipes is another cookbook aimed at equipping cooks to master techniques (eg a basic sauté) and then showing how to implement variations on the theme.

 

[pjigar]

We never shop based on recipe. We do have a list of base ingredients in our mind so when we run short on those, we restock. While restocking, we always keep an eye on specials and sale items and double up on those. Produce gets stocked weekly (again without any recipe in mind). We plan meal based on ingredients available in the fridge and house. Our recipe (when we cook) is based on ingredients only, proportions are always gut feel decisions. Both me and DW whip up good meals as we have been told by others. This is the only way we learned from our moms.

 

[EarlyBirdly]

I tend to cook without recipes. Baking is the exception. The way I would describe my cooking style is that it is technique based. I have learned basic techniques that can be applied to any meat; searing, stewing, roasting and sauteing. I have also learned basic sauce making techniques and vegetable preparations. Once you learn the techniques, they can be applied to a wide variety of food.

Boom. That's the ticket...Techniques and then personal experimentation. It works for baking also.

Below is a baking technique that can be used for most cookies, cakes, etc. greatly improving nutritional quality.

Just made some Brownies yesterday...Replaced sugar with organic unsweetened applesauce and raisins, butter with EVOO, white flour with almond flour. Major excellence...8 brownies disappeared yesterday. ( Yeah, I know. Too much of a good thing.)



Here's my latest kick ( technique ) for an easy dinner:

(Braising is the basic technique)


- 2-3 lbs. of any meat

- Any vegetables you enjoy ( root vegetables work best )

- Any liquid, sauce, seasonings you enjoy

Place all in 4 qt Dutch Oven. Make sure quantity of liquid/sauce is enough to come approx. 1/4 - 1/2 way up the side of the meat and veggies.

Bake (with lid on tightly) at 350 for 1 hour and then reduce to 250 and cook one more hour. Do NOT open oven door or mess with it. Serve it with a salad. DONE.



Bird Man

 

[ggbutcher]

The Basics are in the Recipes, If You Look Closely...

In my youth, when I separated from the Air Force to go to college, the biggest trauma was when they cut up my meal card...

Trying to figure all this out in my first semester, my mom started sending me recipe cards. 5"x8" index cards, nicely typed in the old Remington, with recipes for things like 'cooking rice' (an important Cajun skill), chicken and sausage gumbo (making a roux; the vegetable "trinity" of onions, bell pepper, and celery; dealing with a stock) spaghetti and meat sauce (well, her probably thinking through easy meals), oh, and cush-cush, a simple steaming of corn meal to make a breakfast cereal (not Moroccan cous-cous, I'm still trying to figure out what that is... ), a few others with which I was able to survive quite nicely in my pursuit of the baccalaureate.

With the exception of baking, those recipes covered most of the basics of cooking, After a while, I began to see the fundamentals of flavor and texture, mixing and applying heat, through the application of those recipes, varying things from time to time, and sometimes using those basic activities as departing points for new things (for me, omelettes and other egg dishes).

My father-in-law was a bit more studied in the ways of the stove, and I learned a lot more watching him and my wife, who is a pretty good baker. But, it was still mostly variations on the essentials expressed in those index cards. A few years ago, I passed them on to my son...

 

[cathy63]

If you enjoy reading about technique, I recommend "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" by Samin Nosrat. She's got a fun, bubbly personality that comes through in her writing. I particularly liked her chapter on salads and how to choose ingredients that will go well together instead of my more typical "everything in the fridge" method. She's also got a 4-part video series on Netflix, but I have not yet watched it.

 

[ckelly78z]

If you are going to shop without a list, add some time for exploring every isle to your shopping trip, and don't walk in the door hungry. Being in a hurry, and hungry will cost more money for less nutrition.

 

[nhcycling]

Fortunately I learned to cook by spending many a day by my grandmother’s side when I was a kid and many summers in Italy by my aunt’s side. They didn’t use recipes. They shopped daily. They bought what looked good. It stuck. I shopped and made meals for my family when I was a young teen and I really did enjoy it. To this day I do enjoy shopping at local markets and preparing a daily dinner.

 

[Aerides]

I will look for a recipe on occasion for something complicated or something I really haven't made before, but in general I shop with no list, and we eat pretty simply.

Depending what's on sale, I'm pretty much rotating between chicken, fish, seafood, and the occasional steak. Keep a variety of spices and seasonings, or have a couple of go to marinades I like. Then it's just a matter of what veggies or other sides I want and, again, mostly simply done.

Not much can be ruined with a dash of salt and a drizzle of olive oil.

 

[Bir48die]

One of my best friends is a master of creating dishes. He just makes sure there are plenty of ingredients in the house and off he goes. I cook quite a bit but need some parameters. As many do I just alter existing recipes to improve

 

[Chuckanut]

Knowing how cooking 'works' is the key to not being a slave to recipes.

I have read several books on the 'science' of cooking. Once people understand these basic concepts, it's a lot easier to make good meals. There is a very good reason we brown the meat before making beef burgundy or chicken stew. The maillard effect = flavor.

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat - a great four series show on Netflix.

 

[braumeister]

Knowing how cooking 'works' is the key to not being a slave to recipes.

I have read several books on the 'science' of cooking.

Probably overkill for most, but maybe worth mentioning:
The definitive book on the subject is Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking.

 

[ivinsfan]

I grocery shop without a list, other than listing if we need milk/eggs type of thing, so I don't forget to pick them up.

The vast majority of what I buy is simply based on what looks like a good deal, or interesting. I've always thought this saves money because I end up getting whatever meat is on sale.

So I end up with all sorts of stuff, then each day or even sometimes at suppertime, I look and say "what will we have for supper tonight?". And make something.

On rare occasion I use the internet search for: meatX, vegetable1, vegetable2, etc and get the inspiration from that.

I do always seem to have available rice, potatoes, onions, butter, spices, - basically all the basics.

One issue to be aware of is sometimes the cheap seasonality of something means you eat it a lot for a few weeks as it's such a good deal.
Currently asparagus is cheap, so I have 2lbs in the fridge and we ate 2 lbs last week.

This describes me exactly...and right now our Adli's is on a run where 1lb nice strawberries are between 1.49 and 1.25 we have eaten a LOT of strawberries recently.

 

[Sue J]

My favorite no recipe books are Tassajara Cooking and Food Matters by Mark Brittman (has a large assortment of basic recipe patterns in the back).

I still have my Tassajara Cooking book from way back in my pseudo hippie days.

I did the family grocery shopping for too many years. I had the basic stuff that I bought every week and then I'd browse around for things on sale or that just looked like something that I'd like to cook. DH does the shopping now but I still do most of the cooking. There is a bit of disconnect there as he doesn't buy meat/chicken/fish unless I specify the exact item and size. So we miss out on just finding something interesting and bringing it home.

As for recipes, I'll follow a recipe for the first time I make something new. Once I learn the technique I can easily repeat it or modify it depending on the ingredients on hand.

I used to love to bake, always using a recipe. With an empty nest I rarely bake since we don't need to have goodies within easy access.

 

[MBAustin]

I make a general plan for dinner for the week before I grocery shop on Wednesday. I check the store ad for any specials (particularly protein and produce) and check our schedules so I know if one night needs to be crockpot, etc. I also shop heavily at the Saturday farmers' market, but I've been doing this long enough to have a pretty good idea of what will be available so I can work it into the plan.

I use recipes largely as inspiration and rarely follow one exactly. I often add more vegetables, for example. But I do use them to get a variety of flavors during the week - one or two Asian-inspired is normal, one pasta dish, etc.

NYTimes Cooking newsletter (which you can get without subscribing) has a "no recipe Wednesdays" feature. (You do have to pay to subscribe to the cooking section to get most recipes.)