Poll of the Day > I like to purposefully leave ingredients out of recipes.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Like leaving the baking soda or eggs out and see what happens.

Its not fun when its more predictable, but it was a useful learning tool when just starting out and also when getting into new food genres.

So you like ruining recipes on purpose for the learning experience? I feel sorry for your "patients".

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until one day you miss a key ingredient and

https://youtu.be/t102cydCS3s

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wow what a badass
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It it helps you come to a better understanding of cooking that will enable you to improve dishes by adjusting the recipes, then it's worth it.

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https://youtu.be/17Zr-FFpFaI

I once made a grilled cheese sandwich without bread, just to experiment. De-fucking-licious.

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Kimbos_Egg posted...

wow what a badass

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I do that too, but with my job instead of my cooking.

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Sometimes I omit ingredients, like certain vegetables for example

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I leave out ingredients, too. But normally because I don't like the ingredient. Or someone else who I'm making it for doesn't like it. But not usually to see what happens...
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that sounds fine, not sure why anyone would criticize you for that. experimental cooking, basically. no better way to learn than testing things yourself.

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I'm more a fan of getting a theoretical understanding of what each ingredient does rather than relying on experimentation and potentially ruining my food, but once I have that, I'll make tweaks or substitutions based on that understanding to see how it works. Some things work better than others, but I usually do end up with something edible enough, and given that that was my goal in starting to cook/bake in the first place, I'd say that's preferable to higher-stakes experimentation.

Of course, then there are the times that I forget ingredients altogether, but that's less of an experiment and more of a mistake.

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adjl posted...

I'm more a fan of getting a theoretical understanding of what each ingredient does rather than relying on experimentation and potentially ruining my food, but once I have that, I'll make tweaks or substitutions based on that understanding to see how it works. Some things work better than others, but I usually do end up with something edible enough, and given that that was my goal in starting to cook/bake in the first place, I'd say that's preferable to higher-stakes experimentation.

Of course, then there are the times that I forget ingredients altogether, but that's less of an experiment and more of a mistake.

Have you read anything like On Food and Cooking? That one is a bit older but still pretty good.

I've got a copy of The Food Lab.

https://www.amazon.ca/Food-Lab-Cooking-Through-Science/dp/0393081087

I should really read more of it. I've barely scratched the surface, but it's pretty cool to see the science behind everything. I'm generally more interested in baking, though, which he pointedly doesn't cover because it's not his thing and there's enough material in baking to fill several books of that size. I am, however, just finishing up a baking & pastry diploma, which has been pretty informative about the underlying theory (though sadly not to the extent I want, but I guess I can't really expect a detailed analysis of cocoa butter crystal formation in a community college course >.>).

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