Food & Beverages

One of the biggest barriers to experimenting with food recipes is the ingredients. Often people give up when they see a long list of ingredients that they must buy at the store before they can even tackle a recipe. It seems easier to stick with simpler dishes. Yet one of the cooking techniques of the experienced cook is to make substitutions.

Individualizing Food Recipes
When an inexperienced cook reads a recipe, they are hesitant to make substitutions or use other ingredients. The fear is that without those exact ingredients, and in those precise measurements, it wont come out tasting right. However once you get the hang of making substitutions, you will feel a lot more confident in the kitchen, and be able to individualize food recipes to your own taste.

For example, in any meat dish, whether its a casserole or stew, there are vegetables and spices. In a hearty dish, you can add or subtract anything you like. If you dont like carrots, dont put them in. If you like garlic, put a lot in. The meat holds the dish together, and the flavors are up to you. The same holds true of soups. Tomato soup recipes, for example, can include potatoes, basil, milk, cream, white wine, onion, garlic or chicken stock…in other words, all or none of the above. Its up to you.

You can also experiment with cakes and baked goods. Cooking recipes usually have flour, some kind of rising ingredient (baking soda or baking powder), sugar, and enough liquid to bind it together. In the old days, people only put milk and eggs in their cakes if they could afford it. In colonial days, the richer a family was, the more butter they put in a cake. The richest was pound cake, so named because it calls for a full pound of butter. You can put as much butter or shortening as you like in your scratch cake, because it simply adds a richer flavor. Its fun to experiment, and if you stick to the basic proportions between solids (flour) and liquids (milk, eggs, or sour cream) the recipe will come out fine.