How did your cooking skills and food improve?

96~*: How did your cooking skills and food improve?
How did you get better at cooking without using recipes? I’m really curious because i just started but whatever i make turns out to be horribly nasty if i don’t follow any recipes.

Answers and Views:

Answer by seabreezecc
Follow recipes until you get the hang of using the basic spices and learn what to add to terrible tasting food to make it edible.

Answer by starryeyed75
I still use recipes and I have been cooking for ages. After a while, you will get a sense of what goes together and what doesnt. Have you tried recipezaar.com? Its my fav.

Answer by Tanvir I
If you keep going on and give it your best all the time your cooking will improve.The same thing happened to me but I kept practicing and one day I finally got it!

Answer by artiststree
Making basic meals without a recipe is easy, like an egg omelet or a meat loaf. But recipes at least give you a general idea as to what combinations of foods and spices go together as well as the quantities to use for various dishes. After so many times working with certain foods you can start to create your own dishes and make up your own as you go.

Answer by Loho
Its trial and error, it can take years to become a good cook, and build up a great selection of dishes you can easily cook, dont worry you’ll get there in the end.

Answer by “moonbuggyrover”
i know how to cook rice, and other soups and fried foods…..mom tried me if i am really good in cooking because we had our contest……i practised and practiced trying hard just to learn more….. and i did it… iwas able to know the steps o how to cook food w/o using copies or recpes…..belive me or not,,,,we won in the contest……….i know you can do it just like me!
GOOD LUK!!!!!

Answer by crispy
The more you cook, the better you’ll get at it. After you’ve made that spaghetti sauce a couple of dozen times,you’ll find you remember the ingredients and don’t need a reference. You might start adding extra things and experimenting. I’ve been cooking for a lot of years and still turn out a horribly nasty dish sometimes-keeps me humble.

Answer by jem p
i started at recipes. i follow the rules instructions etc. then i tried to justify why some ingredients must be added on such meal. whats the reason why we use butter oil instead of olive, why do we put garlic onion et al. coz if u know the answers to those u can create a recipe on your own. like life cooking has its reasons.

Answer by Daniel B
I am speaking from my personal experience of becoming a professional chef – so I hope this helps.

I thoroughly reccomend getting a basic level of knowledge in different methods of cooking first, and build a basic but solid foundation of core cookery skills. For instance, experiment with basic cookery techniques such as boiling, poaching (deep and shallow) grilling, roasting, etc. I would also concentrate on what are traditionally great flavour combinations – garlic and ginger, cheese and onion, tomato and basil etc. Once you have a basic knowledge of these, it is then time to step up your knowledge and start to think about texture, temperature, advanced flavour combinations etc. Regarding texture, think about the difference between a piece of fried bread, a piece of toast, or just a piece of plain ordinary bread. It’s exactly the same ingredient – you have just done a few basic different things to it. With regards to temperature, imagine eating a warm criossant fresh from the oven, compared to one that is stone cold out of the fridge. temperature affects flavour (pate for example requires a lot of seasoning becase it is usually served cold) and texture.

Analyse your favourite dishes and ask yourself – what are the flavour combinations, and what are the textures? What would that dish be like with a little more, or less crunch, without the sauce etc?

Stick to the basics first (and you need to truly understand them) and then progress into more experimental cooking.

That is the best advice I can give. Cooking improves when your understanding of the basic building blocks of cookery increases – how ingredients react to certain treatment, what ingredients do in combination with others etc.

Answer by Genius Cook
My cooking skills improved by making mistakes and learning by them. A few valid kitchen tools have helped over the years too. I’ve also become very picky when I go to market for anything from fish to meats to vegetables.

Answer by jen
i think u should still follow recipe’s because other wise it just going 2 be pointless and wasting the food iam a comis chef and i still use recipe`s not every 1 nos things of by heart

Answer by deb a
with experience and curiousity i have been cooking now for 30 yrs my mom and grandma were fabulous cook but i try alot more new things than they did they were both great southern cooks i like gourmet cooking and gullah

Answer by [email protected]
trial and error – i’ve been cooking and baking for years and still make some errors. my favorite thing to do is look up a recipe on either allrecipes.com or recipezaar and compare several. i’ve started using recipes as “guidelines” instead of following exact.
when baking, i find that most recipes from cookbook just don’t have enough spice and can be pretty bland. if it calls for cinnamon, i always double it….i want to be able to taste the spices.

good luck!

Answer by Ari
Just keep using the recipes. If you’re making the same types of meals over and over, you’ll eventually commit them to memory without realizing it. From there, branch out. For instance, once you know how to make meatloaf, you can now make meatballs, filling hamburgers, etc. If you can roast a chicken you can roast a turkey. It just comes with repetition.

Answer by Juddles
When learning how to cook, you need to follow recipes. Skill at combining the right tastes and textures takes time to develop. The recipes you use help you learn what goes good together.