Momma always told me food tastes better when someone else makes it...

October 27, 2009 5:25 PM

Help me get my head straight about cooking! It's not that I don't like it, per se...

I'm not exactly wild about it, though. I have a very few recipes I'm comfortable making, because I know they're going to turn out well. These include spaghetti sauce (for real, not from a jar), macaroni and cheese (again, for real, not from a box), salade nicoise, roast chicken, bean burritos, pasta carbonara, and risotto. I don't like trying new recipes because I don't know if they're going to be good, and it seems like a waste to spend all that time cooking only to discover that your efforts have been in vain. I'm afraid to cook without a recipe, because I totally lack creativity when it comes to food. I don't know what tastes go well together, for example.

My roommate is a total foodie, and he does most to all of our cooking. On nights that I cook, he usually comes up with the meal plan. Most days, he'll ask me what I want for dinner, and I can't even begin to think of anything.

In the next couple of years, I'm planning on moving in with my boyfriend, who also likes to cook but isn't as fond of it as my current roommate is. I want to expand my repertoire and boost my cooking confidence by the time we move in together, so the labor is more equally divided. (Yes, I know I'm thinking about this waaaay far in advance, but it's also not the sort of thing that resolves itself overnight, is it?)

How do I become more creative in the kitchen? Since I think a large part of my mental block about cooking is a confidence issue ("But what if it's gross?"), how do I become more confident about cooking? For you people who know by 2 PM what you want to eat in 6 or 7 hours, how do you know? What's the thought process that accompanies that realization? Most of all, how do I get over this enormous reluctance to cook anything more complicated than a fried egg for dinner?

Thanks, guys.

posted by coppermoss to food & drink (30 comments total)

I think the only answer is to just start cooking more. It really boils down to practice, the more comfortable you are tasting as you cook, the easier it'll be for you to fix any recipe that yields mediocre results. For nearly every middle of the week meal that I cook, I'm just pulling stuff out of the fridge and pantry and making whatever comes to mind. There are a limited number of ways to screw up a meal, as long as you don't repeat your mistakes you'll be able to turn out a delicious meal without much thought or effort.
posted by foodgeek at 5:33 PM on October 27

I know what you mean. My wife can look at a bare refrigerator and whip something together that's pretty respectable. Me, I have to make one of the few things I know how to make.

As for cookbooks, I'll put in a good word for New Best Recipes from America's Test Kitchen. If you follow their recipes to the letter, they are bulletproof. Some are pretty involved, but some are dead-simple. Some come with a lot of variations so that once you've got the basic version down you can branch out, or just look at the parts that they treat as variable and which parts are constant. Joy of Cooking is also a good resource.

Also, I think it helps to recognize that sometimes you are experimenting in the kitchen, and it's in the nature of experiments that they'll sometimes fail. You can always order out for pizza if it goes wrong enough.
posted by adamrice at 5:38 PM on October 27

I have this problem too-- i make about eight dishes regularly because I KNOW they'll turn out well-- (meatloaf, lasagna, some soups, pasta sauce, etc) but otherwise I try to cook one new recipe every week or two that just appeals to me.

Sometimes it turns out awful (damn you eggplant!) and sometimes it gets added to my list of "confirmed tastiness." But if I challenge myself just once every week or two, I don't feel so hard on myself if it doesn't turn out so well.

I don't know if you subscribe to any magazines that have recipes (Martha Stewart, Real Simple, etc) but I try to tear out whatever recipes look interesting and put them on my fridge as the next thing to try when I'm feeling adventurous.

Also, rarely are my mistakes "inedible." Adding a lot of dried chili peppers, or eating meal X smothered in ketchup or barbecue sauce, can render even the blandest meals tolerable. So cut yourself some slack and start experimenting!
posted by np312 at 5:41 PM on October 27

If I'm making something new, then I make sure I have a plan B that is fast and tasty and relaxing. It could be take-out, it could be macaroni and cheese from a box. And then, if the food sucks, it sucks, but I shrug and let it go and make something else. It does feel like a big waste of time, but to me, it's worth investing five hours to find one really good dish to add to my repertoire, and I do a lot better than 5:1.

Seconding adamrice, both New Best Recipes in specific and making sure that you have a reliable cookbook in general. I tried to make scones once and wept at the tasteless hockey pucks. Second try, I used the New Best Recipes version, and they were made of yum.

The last thing is making a distinction between dishes that turned out badly and foods you don't like. Often if I'm experimenting with a new vegetable, I'll try out the simplest possible preparation of it (Mark Bittman is great for this. Actually, speaking of reliable recipes, I've never made anything bad from How To Cook Everything.) It's not worth spending an hour on some fancy endive dish only to find out that I don't really like endive.
posted by Jeanne at 5:46 PM on October 27

I think this is related to how much you liek to actually eat. People who aren't that excited about food are less likely to experiment for the fun of it. My husband is like this, he is one of those people who would actually have a meal in a pill, just to get it over with, and he cooks three dishes, exactly the same way every time.

If you don't enjoy food that much, or it isn't such an excitement for you, I would recommend to stick with the classics that you have tasted before. It is a lot easier to make something that you will be able to recognize from the moment you start making it.

Videorecipes help a lot too. Videojug.com has a ton of classic recipes from the easiest (I swear they have a video on how to boil an egg) to the most complicated ones (Hollandaise, for example). In the recipes you will be able to see how things are supposed to look and it's more difficult to get lost.
posted by Tarumba at 5:48 PM on October 27 [2 favorites has favorites]

(disclaimer: I'm not really much of a cook)

In addition to practice, I've found necessity to be a great teacher. If you don't want to just make eggs, wait until they run out and don't buy more. Then see what else you have around. Combine it. Sometimes it will be awful and sometimes not. (It helps if you are cooking for yourself.) If you're not a fan of recipes, it can still be a good idea to get yourself a cookbook and work your way through it. (This one is a current family favorite.) Make notes on whether you like the recipe or how you could do it differently next time.
posted by ropeladder at 5:54 PM on October 27

As someone who went through a similar self-improvement program about a year ago: practice is key. As is the willingness to conduct an accurate post mortem. Whether things go wrong or right, you have to take some time to assess what happened, and why.

If you are like me, you will find that there is a constellation of problems happening in the kitchen. For example, I found that I was habitually not chopping things finely enough, because I had a dull knife. It was frustrating to try and do all that cutting, so I stopped short. Presto, purchase of a knife sharpener fixed that problem.

I also found that most of my major cooking disasters happened when I was tired, or overly hungry, or both. I have learned not to try cooking a proper meal under those circumstances.

I started by picking one ingredient at a time. Let's say squash, since those are in the stores right now. I would spend the week researching "what do I do with a squash"* here and there, until I had chosen a recipe.

Then I would plan to cook the new dish mid-Sunday afternoon. That's a time slot where I feel I have ample time to work without feeling rushed. And it's early enough that if the recipe goes badly, I can still get something to eat.

Now that I cook about 18 out of every 21 meals in a week for myself, I still rely on the list of "old standards." But it's a much longer list, so I don't feel like I'm eating the same thing over and over again (unless I want to).

I have also accumulated a list of standby ingredients that I always have on hand, in case of the sudden cooking whim. You'll learn what you're likely to crave on short notice, and start keeping those ingredients around. As well as a list of ingredients (baby red potatoes comes to mind) that are versatile enough to use in just about anything.

Don't think too big at this point. Just start by picking one new recipe a week. You can do it!

* Cut it in half and scoop out the seeds. Drizzle a bit of oil on a cookie sheet, and set the squash on it, face-down. Bake at 350 for 30-60 minutes depending on the size of the squash, or until it has a soft, almost pudding-y texture. Sprinkle with either brown sugar or salt and pepper, and you're done!
posted by ErikaB at 5:55 PM on October 27 [1 favorite has favorites]

I like to cook, so I'm not exactly in the same boat, but I can share how I decide what to cook. For my sanity, I plan out a week's worth of menus on Sunday. Grocery shopping happens Monday morning (my day off) so I'm able to get all the ingredients I need for the week and don't have any last minute this-sounds-good-dang-I'm-out-of-cheese moments. Sometimes it happens that I'm not in the mood for whatever's on that night's menu, so I'll either switch up the nights or make an easy standby (salad and grilled chicken, omelettes, bean burritos, etc).

And where do I get my recipe ideas? I have a recipe binder I've compiled of familiar favorites, and aside from cookbooks, my main source of inspiration is food blogs. Reading someone else's experience with a dish and seeing pictures eases some of the "what if it doesn't work" anxiety. Of course I don't always like every dish someone else raves about, but if there's a problem with the recipe, they tend to point it out in their blog post so there's some forewarning. I recommend browsing food aggregate websites like tastespotting or foodgawker and clicking on dishes that sound interesting.
posted by Bella Sebastian at 5:55 PM on October 27 [5 favorites has favorites]

when i make a dish i like, i try to write it down. over the last 2 years i've come up with a list of 15 or so staples that i revolve through my cooking. i try to find recipes that have similar ingredients, so i can change my mind at the last second if i really don't want the thing i planned (for instance, if i have a cans of tomatoes i can make chili, pasta, stew, or baked chicken). i shop a week at a time so i'm buying 7 meals or so. since i only really have the stuff for 7 full meals (or 10-12 if i jumble around some ingredients), it narrows down the things that i have to decide on. having 10 things you can cook instead of all the recipes in the world that the grocery store can provide for will really help the mid day indecision.

taste as you go. at first, follow the recipe to a T, tasting at every single step. then at the end, taste again with a critical tongue/eye. consider what seems off (too bland, too soft, too brown on the bottom...). next time when you're cooking that recipe, try to change/increase/decrease/omit one thing and see if the end product is better than the one you had the first time. keep doing this. if you find something that works, write it down!

pay attention to the flavors that other people put in food. start trying to take note of spices you like. ours is a garlic/onion/basil/chili powder/cumin heavy household, other people really like cilantro and lemon pepper (not all together, mind you). if you find that you really like potatoes and curry powder then search google for potatoes and curry powder. see if anything seems new and exciting and within your skill set.

when googling recipes i usually find the name of the dish i want to make (often times by searching for an ingredient or spice or region) then i open 5-10 tabs from different sites, read all the recipes and lists of ingredients, and then either pick one if it seems far and away better or i take parts from all of them - like, "ok, these all use a fat of some kind so i'll use butter, but the recipe that calls for butter wants me to use condensed cream of mushroom soup but this other recipe that uses oil wants me to use cream and mushrooms, so i'm going to take the cream and mushrooms from the 2nd recipe". sometimes this plan screws up because i didn't take into account water content or how the fat reacts to the other ingredients or what have you.


which conveniently brings me to my last point - my single greatest trick in the kitchen - have a "throw it in the oven" back up plan in case you screw up the big thing you're preparing. if i'm trying a new recipe, or one that i'm not totally proficient at, i'll have something in the freezer just waiting for the "OMG, this is TERRIBLE". that way, i can feel more relaxed to try something new because i won't be ruining dinner if it fails. every single meal that fails will teach you something, so it's never a waste. it's easier to keep that in mind if you're still fed when the failure happens.
posted by nadawi at 5:56 PM on October 27

I don't like trying new recipes because I don't know if they're going to be good, and it seems like a waste to spend all that time cooking only to discover that your efforts have been in vain.

Keep in mind that unless you seriously fuck up, whatever you cook will end up being edible. Pretty to look at? Maybe not, but you (probably) won't die from eating it.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 6:01 PM on October 27 [1 favorite has favorites]

I don't like trying new recipes because I don't know if they're going to be good, and it seems like a waste to spend all that time cooking only to discover that your efforts have been in vain.

Your profile says you live in Chicago. First, remember whatever you are cooking is one meal. You have a roof over your head, chances are good that you will eat again within a few hours. Second, if it turns out that badly, you can always make breakfast.

That said, cooking is a fun thing to me, it relaxes me. Sometimes, yea, my meals are not so good. But for the most part, cooking can be adjusted as you are ding it. It's not like baking, at least.
posted by kellyblah at 6:06 PM on October 27

At this point, it doesn't sound like you need advice on how to be creative, but rather just how to get motivated.

This thing about being afraid to try because you'll feel bummed if you fail - is that a general life issue for you? If so, push yourself to JUST DO IT! Get the experience. Embrace the failure as part of the path.

If it's just too overwhelming (starting IS the hardest part): a) take a class, b) cook with someone more experienced (your current roomie?), c) buy a good book on general cooking technique.
posted by c, as in "kitchen" at 6:07 PM on October 27 [2 favorites has favorites]

You don't have to spend a lot of time cooking until you come to love it and become more ambitious.
Start off with quick recipes like these and then you won't feel as though you've wasted a lot of time preparing something that you're not really happy with.
Get a cookbook (with pictures) that is specifically for 'quick meals' hint: they usually have quick in the title. Flicking through the book and finding what looks appealing will help you decide what to make for your next meal.
I specifically mention getting a cookbook with pictures because you then know what the dish is supposed to took like in the end and you will be more confident that you are taking the right steps while you are cooking (Oh! so that's what it means when it says julienne the carrots).
posted by tellurian at 6:08 PM on October 27

Could you ask your roomie if you could be his sous chef?

I totally agree that practice and experimenting is key, but I would also do some reading. Being familiar with techniques and terminology is half of the fun. Do some browsing in your local book store. It's really amazing how much info is available...and seeing the tremendous variation is inspiring.

There are tons of pretty simple recipes that can knock your socks off. MeMail me if you want a bitchen recipe for Fettucini Aglio Olio! It's a little different but very easy and tasty.

Good luck and go cook something.
posted by snsranch at 6:21 PM on October 27

There's a lentil stew simmering merrily on the stove as I type. (Roommate's idea, but with some leeway for cautious experimentation.) I would welcome recipes from your heavy rotations!
posted by coppermoss at 6:34 PM on October 27

One part of your comment is interesting: nervousness affects taste. I cook the way an engineer cooks and therefore Cooking for Engineers works well for me as do recipes from Cook's Magazine / America's Test Kitchen. My partner cooks intuitively and very well, so she does the heavy lifting in the kitchen.
posted by jet_silver at 7:24 PM on October 27

The fear of something not turning out well is definitely overblown - challenge it. Rarely, really rarely, is something actually inedible. Sometimes it's not what you dreamed of, but is fine. Most likely it won't be a total loss.

But if you don't risk those moments, you will also never know the incredible moments: when you plan to cook something new, assemble the ingredients, smell it coming together and start feeling pretty good, and finally dishing it out and tasting it, together with your loved one over a little candlelit place setting - and both of you locking eyes and thinking/saying:

Oh my LORD that's good.

That's what makes the risk taking worth it.

And I'd also note that those moments don't come with the weekly standbys. My chicken pot pie and mac and cheese are really good, but not eye-rolling/knee-buckling. Those transcendent meal experiences only seem to come with new or rarely-made dishes. So push your boundaries and try something new once a month, at least.
posted by Miko at 7:24 PM on October 27 [1 favorite has favorites]

It's funny - I just made kind of a "master list" of things that I *know* we like at our house, because I was feeling like we make the same 5 or so things all the time - I wanted a tangibe reminder that there's more to life than the handful of things that I tend to fall back on. Turns out there's more than 20! Having said that, there's a relatively small list of things that I always have around the kitchen - I know that with these ingredients I can do something badass:

Good canned tomatoes (we stock Pastene Ground Kitchen Ready tomatoes, YMMV)
Italian sausage
eggs
thick cut bacon
broccoli
good parmigiano and reggiano
thin chicken breast cutlets
various dried pasta (including orzo)
basmati rice
ground beef
lemons and limes
good canned white beans
garlic
potatoes

With these ingredients and herbs from the back yard, I can make a pasta all'arrabiata, a pasta all'amatriciana, carbonara, sausage and white beans, a good Lebanese grilled chicken with rice pilaf, a Turkish kofte and rice, chicken scampi (shrimp is the devil's own seafood), breaded chicken cutlets with steamed broccoli or with oven-roasted potatoes, this really cool sausage, pasta, broccoli, no-sauce thing I make, Mario Batali's Gramigne recipe, and even straight up pasta with garlic and olive oil.

Yes, it's heavy on the pasta, but it's an easy cabinet staple that you can always fall back on. I try to make sure that I have at least three things I can potentially do with every "big" ingredient before it makes it on the regular shopping list. I can give recipes for any of these if you're interested.
posted by ersatzkat at 7:26 PM on October 27 [2 favorites has favorites]

I'm a vegetarian/vegan, so how I approach cooking may be a little bit different.

But mostly, I like to try things, whether it's a new recipe or some odd experiment. Sometimes those experiments fail, but the way I see it, it's only food. If it's not completely ruined, it's still edible. And mostly, it is "just OK" when it's not good.

I'd recommend finding some cookbooks you like -- I generally use the "three recipe" test -- if I flip randomly to three recipes I'd want to make, that's a cookbook for me. Cookbooks aren't always absolute authorities, but I think they can be good guides on what flavors go well together.

I'd also say don't be afraid to experiment with your staples. Add something new to your mac & cheese. If it doesn't work, you know to not do that the next time.

Cooking is fun. I love it. I currently only have an electric kettle and a veggie steamer, but instead of feeling limited, I've decided to see it as a challenge and seek out things I can make rather than focusing on what I can't. Just cook and see what happens.
posted by darksong at 7:44 PM on October 27

Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything was incredibly helpful when I was just starting to cook. Almost everything in it is good, and it's very easy to follow. Get yourself a copy, a new, improved edition just came out. There are so many fantastic food blogs, too--those can be really inspiring and fun to read, especially the ones that have detailed photos of every step. I like Smitten Kitchen and Orangette, but there are approximately 12.7 million other ones. Bittman also has a group cooking blog in the NY Times, Bitten, that has a lot of simple meals and columns about how the authors decide to cook something and what their process is when trying something new.

My cooking dramatically improved after I lived with someone who was a better cook. Watch your roommate cook once or twice a week, ask him to teach you some simple things or things you like, maybe do some of the prep work with him. Ask him to teach you as a birthday gift or something!

It's also hard to make something so bad you can't eat it. The most likely bad outcome is that it will be boring or it just won't be amazing, and you can't eat amazing all the time! The only time I've ever made something completely inedible was when the top of the salt shaker fell off and the dish was too salty to eat. So you'll mostly be able to eat anything you put some time into.

In terms of how I decide what to make for dinner, I know I need a couple of veggies, some protein, and some carbs for a balanced meal and to feel satisfied. So then it becomes more about what do I have in the fridge/what am I craving that day/what did I eat yesterday. I just plug into that formula and then it's easier to mix and match. You have a really good base--so build out from there! Roast some root vegetables while your chicken is roasting. Saute some vegetables and chicken and use that on your pasta instead of sauce. Put your homemade sauce on some chicken breasts and add some cheese.
posted by min at 8:05 PM on October 27

the case of the exploding blackened tilapia

sometimes cooking failures can be fun! and you always learn from your mistakes (i'll never try to superheat a light pan again after that incident!).
posted by chicago2penn at 8:34 PM on October 27

These include spaghetti sauce (for real, not from a jar), macaroni and cheese (again, for real, not from a box), salade nicoise, roast chicken, bean burritos, pasta carbonara, and risotto.

You've got a decent repertoire. The comfy way to expand it is to start riffing on what you already have mastered. Sub ingredients with similar variations. Sub out some herbs in your tomato sauce, or add pesto elements, use different cheeses in your mac & cheese and add tomatoes or bacon, make your nicoise with smoked trout and asparagus instead of tuna and green beans, slather your roast chicken in good paprika in addition to salt and pepper before roasting, use a mixture of different beans in your burritos and experiment with other types of chiles like chipotle or ancho, and risotto, well....risotto is how you use leftovers.
posted by desuetude at 8:45 PM on October 27

Personally, I hate cooking the same thing twice. So, maybe I'm not the best person to answer this, but I have a couple observations I might offer.

1) Study and practice technique. Much of the fear of failed dishes can be mitigated by knowing what they actually mean by "saute until tender" or "temper yolk mixture into sauce". If you know what the results and purpose should be of each step of your recipe, then it's much easier to have confidence that the final result will be tasty.

The best way I know to study technique is to watch cooking shows that do not emphasize "quick and easy" recipes. I like Alton Brown's Good Eats. Even if it's a little kitschy at times, he's very good at explaining exactly what he's doing and why. You'll pick up not only recipes, but generalized technique.

YouTube is also great for this sort of thing. You can just search for, say, "tempering eggs", and then watch somebody do it.

The next part of technique is to practice it. Choose very simple recipes that depend on different techniques, and then do them. Learn to temper an egg? Don't go and do a souffle your first time out; make some custard. Learn to cook salmon? Don't do something with a complex bernaise sauce at the same time; just cook a piece of salmon with some butter and thyme.

2) Ignore recipes that are described as quick, easy, 30-minute, etc. These so-called convenient recipes are often quite vile. Nothing will drive you away from experimental cooking faster than trying a slew of these, getting everything "right", and still having them taste like shit.

3) Until you've developed your palate (to where you can accurately imagine flavors), don't cook something you haven't eaten before. At the very least, don't cook something for which you have no frame of reference.

I would say easily half my cooking is recreating restaurant food I've had in the past. Don't be afraid of this... with very few exceptions, there's nothing they can do in a restaurant that you can't do in a well-stocked home kitchen. In fact, you can often make better versions of the dishes than they do, since you aren't concerned about turning a profit, nor on getting 400 dishes out and 150 tables turned over during service.

4) Unless you have a medical dietary requirement, please don't try to "cook healthy". Salt, butter, lard, shortening, oil, sugar, and corn syrup all taste delicious. Unless your doctor has told you otherwise, there's no reason to avoid those things. Especially salt. Far too many people cooking at home, in my experience, under salt everything. Putting salt on at the table is not equivalent to mixing it into the sauce or rubbing it on the steak.

Of course, if you don't like fried foods, or heavy dairy, of whatever, don't make them. But for the love of god, do not then try to find the "healthy" version of that dish. And do not make substitutions based on manufacturer's recommendations. The back of the low-fat margarine package says you can substitute it 1:1 for butter, but that's a goddamn lie.

5) Use top-quality, fresh ingredients. Cook from recipes that call for fresh ingredients--this sort of goes with number 2 above. Taste your ingredients in their natural and simple-cooked (boiled or steamed) states. Other than poultry and pork, there's very little you can't at least try a nibble of raw (people argue with me about eggs, but I've been eating them raw in things since I was 2).

6) Measure your ingredients. No, the pro cooks on TV don't look like they're measuring stuff, but they are. Until you know how much half a cup of wine is, or what color a tablespoon of curry turns your sauce, you should measure. And practice mise-en-place, which is a French phrase meaning "put in place"... everything should be measured, prepared, and waiting in little bowls before you start cooking anything. This keeps you from, say, burning the trout while you snip and mince the rosemary.
posted by Netzapper at 10:18 PM on October 27 [2 favorites has favorites]

The recipe binder and weekly shopping that Bella Sebastian described is exactly what my wife and I have been doing for a few years now. We pick four dinner recipes a week to shop for, and improvise other meals from leftover ingredients.

You might enjoy Tom Colicchio's Think Like a Chef, which starts with simple recipes meant to teach basic techniques, and progresses to more involved combinations. It does a great job of explaining why you're doing what you're doing, in straightforward, non-intimidating language, The recipes are really good, too.

Robert Rodriguez's Ten Minute Cooking School videos are less informative, but fun.
posted by jon1270 at 3:02 AM on October 28

It takes a while to become an intuitive cook, but I think it's something that can be learned. A lot of it comes from being familiar with many different recipes and using them as templates for what works together. If you really want a definitive reference, I've heard good things about The Flavor Bible.

One advantage cooks have over bakers is that they can fix their mistakes as they go. Don't be afraid to put in a touch of seasoning, taste, and add more if the dish needs it. Start with salt; proper salting makes a big difference. Someone mentioned doing post-mortems, and going along with that it's good to keep trying variations on the same unfamiliar recipe. You've got a great resource in your roommate. Surely they wouldn't mind answering a few "do you think this would work?" sort of questions when you're trying something new?

I can't give much advice on meal planning since I'm lucky if I shop a day ahead, but most of it comes down to avoiding waste. And that's where the creativity often comes from: what you've already got in your fridge and pantry provide some constraints, and you figure out a few things to pick up at the store to make a meal out of it. Also trying to incorporate what's in season. Some recipes are pretty easy to riff on, like risotto and chili. (I recently saw a suggestion about using smoked beer in chile, and it works pretty nicely.)

I don't think I'm a whole lot more experienced than you, but I've started tasting as I go along, and developing some intuition, and when I improvise now it's rarely a disaster, which wasn't true a few years ago.
posted by serathen at 5:35 AM on October 28

Great advice in this thread. Aside from practice (practice practice!) I would say the key thing is to start understanding the ingredients in a recipe. Cooking has a lot of leeway for creativity and error - once you recognize the purpose of ingredients in a recipe, you can identify components that are vital (ie. without it or if the quantities were changed, the dish will be substantially different than intended - this is good or bad) or variable (ie. you can omit, substitute, or play around with the content and quantity and the dish will turn out fine).

In addition to learning cooking technique (a la Netzapper) Alton Brown's Good Eats is also very good for learning about the purpose of specific ingredients in a dish.

Eg. take your risotto. Vital component = rice and liquid. Without these, you literally cannot make risotto. Variables: type of rice (arborio is recommended. Why arborio? because its high starch content = creaminess = desirable in risotto. You could substitute another kind of rice but that might create a structural difference in the dish) and type of liquid (usually stock. Why stock? Because of its flavour. This means you can vary the liquid and the risotto will still come out fine but taste different, eg different stocks or even just plain WATER (or water + flavouring agent, like soy sauce).

Once you understand the purpose of each ingredient, it is easy to be more relaxed and creative about following recipes since you know the areas you need to have and follow closely and the areas where you can just wing it.
posted by kitkatcathy at 6:35 AM on October 28

The great thing about Cooks Illustrated is that on the page preceding the actual recipe they explain what ingredients/techniques they tried, what works and what doesn't, and it helps (me, at least) to understand the process a little more fully.
posted by electroboy at 6:58 AM on October 28

Nthing Good Eats, as it provides not just recipes and techniques, but the science behind the them. It's one thing to tell you to do something and magically get real food out of it, it's another thing to understand why and be able to apply it later on. There are DVDs available, or also some less legal ways to acquire.
posted by CharlesV42 at 8:53 AM on October 28

I base meals on what's on special, because that's what's fresh and affordable. Sometimes I base meals on cravings, like my current craving for meatballs. I recommend subscribing to a cooking magazine, and/or putting a few great food blogs into your daily reads. I love reading about food.
posted by theora55 at 3:43 PM on October 28

Nthing The Flavor Bible, which I got recently and have been having a lot of fun going through. It's great for "okay, I've got ingredient X — what would be good with it?"

Also, How to Cook Without a Book, which starts with some basic techniques which can be modified based on the ingredients you have. (Ignore the truly dreadful doggerel at the beginning of each chapter. Ugh.)
posted by Lexica at 8:31 PM on October 29