Haptain Cook!

August 12, 2005 1:37 PM

Any general tips or rules of thumb on how to help improve my improvisational cooking skills?

I love to cook, but sometimes I prefer using whatever's sitting around the kitchen than using up 40 minutes to go to the grocer to get just 2 or 3 items. Sometimes I succeed (salad dressing in a sandwich), and sometimes I fail (pasta with eggs). I need some pointers on how to mix-and-match properly, or maybe some key ingredients that work well with everything (garlic powder!).

posted by Mach3avelli to food & drink (30 comments total)

I am confirmed MacGyver in the kitchen - so much so that I often get more satisfaction from successfully MacGyvering a simple meal than using a recipe to make a sophisticaed one. IMHO:

1) Keep it simple. The more random flavors you combine, the more likely it is that you will wind up with two great tastes that don't taste great together. Also, I try to avoid using prepared condiments when Macgyvering - thats when you run into weird taste combinations that you can't control.

2) Keep some good basics on hand. Garlic powder is fine, but fresh garlic is even better - just about anything tastes good when sauteed with freshly minced garlic. I always have it in the kitchen. Staples will vary according to taste and preferred cuisine, but some that I couldn't live without are: kosher salt, fresh pepper, good olive oil, good dry spices (oregano, thyme, cayenne pepper, crushed red pepper, etc. to your taste), chicken broth.

3) Go with what you know. Its better to modify a recipe or technique that you already know than to try to invent something from scratch. Substitute one spice combination for another, or one meat or vegetable for another (this doesn't always work), etc.

4) Cook more. The more you cook according to recipes, the more you develop an instinct for what does and doesn't go together. Also, good cooking techniques are as important as ingredients. Its important to know what the best cooking methods are for different types of foods - baking vs. sauteeing vs. boiling, etc. - and how long to cook different things for. You can indeed put eggs in pasta (think alfredo sauce), but you need to know how eggs respond to different cooking methods.
posted by googly at 1:52 PM on August 12, 2005

Take inspiration from restaurant menus. I often see combinations on restaurant menus that I never would have thought of at home. When you consider a new combination at home, think how it would sound on a menu. I never would have thought of roasted red peppers on a turkey sandwich without this approach.

By the way - pasta and eggs sounds awful, but with egg noodles and eggs you can make a great Jewish kugel!
posted by kdern at 2:08 PM on August 12, 2005

googly has all good advice there, one big thing is to have good ingredients around. good spices and better pasta and fresher stuff makes all the difference when your experimenting.

btw pasta actually works great with an egg or two, just pasta, an egg, some bacon, and salt, pepper and olive oil. throw the egg in at the very end.

i really like the allrecipes.com ingredient search. it will give me a direction to go with something and then i just improvise with the other ingredients i have on hand.
posted by yeahyeahyeahwhoo at 2:32 PM on August 12, 2005

nothing wrong with eggs and pasta -- uova in purgatorio, that's the thing.

third on the go with what you know and cook more, those are the most important bits.

mmmmmmmmacgyver.
posted by dorian at 2:46 PM on August 12, 2005

Watch a lot of cooking shows. I'm a good "make do cook" and a big part of that is just having watched a lot of cooking shows over the years, and doing a lot of cooking. Learn to use your eyes and nose when cooking, and learn how to adjust your tasting depending on what point in the cooking process you're at. I actually use a lot of prepared condiments and spices when cooking (prepared curry pastes, cajun seasoning, that sort of thing), but I always use something alone or with something I already know when using it for the first time.
posted by biscotti at 2:53 PM on August 12, 2005

Googly's advice is obviously perfect. If you pay more attention in the market, it will be much easier in the kitchen. As you cook more with recipes, over time you'll become better at improvising.

Along the lines of more concrete advice, I've heard that this book does exactly what you asked: Culinary Artistry. It discusses what combinations of flavors match well. Also what flavors define different world cuisines. And how chefs combine dishes to build up their menus.

Also, the standard kitchen references should be good for this, too.

And would everyone please stop hating on eggs and pasta. Add a little cured pig and you've got good eats. Seriously, don't give up on that combination. Try this: Spaghetti carbonara. Of course, since the recipe is so simple the real work is finding the best ingredients. Find the best eggs that you can.
posted by stuart_s at 2:58 PM on August 12, 2005

My girlfriend swears by the principle of balancing sweet and salty. In a sweet dish, use a little salt to bring out the flavors. In a salty dish, use a little bit of sugar to bring out the flavors. This simple rule brings out some suprisingly complex flavor.
posted by FearTormento at 3:02 PM on August 12, 2005

What googly said was good, I agree:

Keep it simple, it took me a while to learn but 3 spices are almost always better than 8 in a dish.

Garlic helps anything, except Mac N Cheese, (I ruined that dinner)

Learn about balancing sweet and sour and learn how to counter possible mistakes (ie; something is too harsh/sour/bitter add some honey or sugar or the opposite with some good red wine vinegar, also you can unsalt something too salty with a couple slices of raw potato to draw out the salt)

Actually just vinegars in general are great, I keep at least half a dozen around and have learned to use them creatively (red wine vinegar makes my chilli rock, balsamic makes everything rock, tarragon vinegar as salad dressing base, etc)

Take notes, I forgot so many great touches before I started taking notes.
posted by Cosine at 3:15 PM on August 12, 2005

1. Don't just watch cooking shows, watch good ones that will really teach you. On the Food Network, Molto Mario is a good one. On PBS, Lidia Bastianich's show and Jacques Pepin's latest show are good ones. These shows will teach you the essential dishes that can be made 10,000 different ways, most likely with whatever you have laying around. This brings me to the more general, important point:

2. Keep it simple. Everything you put in food should have a reason to be there. Get away from the dried-spice mentality. For some reason, there's this perception among novice cooks that dried spices are somehow really useful or fundamental to cooking. Garlic powder might be useful on a rare occasion, and it might make a not unwelcome addition to some foods, but you'll get yourself into trouble thinking that any one ingredient (especially a dry spice) is a magic source of perpetually great flavor.

I mentioned those particular cooking shows at the beginning of my comment because they will teach you simple preparations like salads, risotto, pasta with a quick or slow-simmered sauce, sauteed meat, and steamed fish. These dishes are simple to prepare, high in flavor, and well-liked by most people. They're great ways to get acquainted with flavors.

I'll disagree with Cosine and say don't take notes. Only prepare food at the pace at which your mind can continually assure its quality. Start with an idea, a flavor in your mind's eye, and check that against what you've got in front of you.

Think FRESH ingredients, and think versatile staples that work in most of your favorite dishes; this will help you avoid 40-minute trips to procure a few odd items.


googly's advice is great, but it's important that I point out that Eggs don't go in pasta alfredo. Ever. As already noted, pasta with eggs can be great and very classic (e.g. pasta carbonara).


And next time, instead of garlic powder, try going with the fresh stuff.
posted by rxrfrx at 3:43 PM on August 12, 2005

All I meant about notes was; if you try something and it works great then write it down so you can do it again.
posted by Cosine at 3:59 PM on August 12, 2005

Again with the "cook more" advice. On the experience I've gained from trying to cook my way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking (um, and the recipes), I can whip up something with nothing more than a shallot, vermouth, stock, butter and a piece of meat that will make you weep and beg for more -- in twenty minutes or less.

Also, subscribe to Cook's Illustrated; they have a very educational approach, on which you can quickly build.

Screw! most of the Food Network shows; they're mostly for people who want to feel like they know about food but -- with the glaring exception of Alton Brown -- are more food pr0n than actual edification.
posted by mimi at 5:08 PM on August 12, 2005

I cook this way. The upcoming MeFi cookbook has me wondering as all of my recipes are a handful of this and a pinch of that, until it tastes right, and not a one is down on paper. It is the easiest, most creative, and most rewarding way to cook (unless you are baking, in which case you may supply the NHL with a steady supply of hockey pucks). I like to find a recipe, for ideas, then adapt to the ingredients available and my taste. Keep tasting as you go. Practice makes perfect. You still need to learn the basic principles like how to make a butter sauce (or whatever, as some skinny folk never go there), but all of these are about feel, not exact science. The golden rule is do not be afraid to deviate. [You will make some awful stuff this way, but how else can you learn unless you have an accomplished chef guiding your every move, and even then you need to pull away to do your own thing. I eat my mistakes. It makes me humble, and motivates me to not screw-up the next time]
posted by caddis at 5:09 PM on August 12, 2005

You might also want to find folks like mimi to cook with. Mmmm.
posted by caddis at 5:11 PM on August 12, 2005

I keep a jar of minced garlic in oil in the fridge for the days where I don't feel like like stinking up my fingers (still no garlic press after all these christmases and birthdays, sigh). Haven't used garlic powder in years.

Remember that a bit of sugar can really cut down on the acidity of certain things, such as spaghetti sauces and phad thai.

You can never have too many red/green peppers on hand. Their price (especially red peppers) can fluctuate like gasoline, so I buy a few pounds of them when they are really cheap, then chop them up in various combinations (strips, diced, chunks, separate, mixed) put them in ziplock bags (I put a pepper's worth in each bag) and keep 'em in the freezer. They keep well, and can usually just be thrown right into a sauce or stir fry, they'll get a bit softer than usual but not much. I also do the same with combinations of diced celery, carrot and onion for soups, sauces and whatnot).

Get some basil plants in may when the nurseries are selling them, I get a box of six for $1.99 and they sustain themselves for the whole summer and early fall.

Oh, and improvise on everything except baking. Until you're a pro that is.
posted by furtive at 5:24 PM on August 12, 2005

Dear god! I also wanted to point out the great How to cut vegetables flash site but he's taken it off line. Nooooooooo!
posted by furtive at 5:29 PM on August 12, 2005

If you have a favourite cuisine, try learning more about it. Improvising is easier within an idiom. Eg, if you always have salt, pepper, good oil, parmesan, onions, tinned tomatoes and garlic lying around, then you have the basis for improvised Italianate dishes with whatever else comes to hand.

To amplify what furtive said, there is no shame in having a few staples that suit your cooking style. There was a great AskMe thread some time ago about what a minimally-stocked pantry should have in it. Improvisation is a hell of a lot easier when you have a basic direction provided by your larder.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 6:26 PM on August 12, 2005

And apropos balance - I always think about balance within a dish, or balance within a meal. For example, maybe in a sauce you have acidity and sweetness balanced - or maybe you don't, your sauce is sweet, but the sauce is accompanying something sour flavoured. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's fine to have an extremity in one dish if it's counteracted by another.

Personally I like to stick with the pseudo-Italian approach. Simple, strong flavours, underpinned by good quality basic foddstuffs like oil/pasta/rice/[insert staple here]. Complex flavour mixtures usually require repeat experiments to fine-tune.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 6:29 PM on August 12, 2005

One definite way is to just cook. After you have made, for example, a few stews you'll find out that they're nearly all the same at the heart. At that point you should have this mental sense of what makes the foundation for a stew and what makes it unique.

Very often, out shopping list will contain items like "bargain meat" or "interesting seasonal vegetable", then we'll pick up other things to support it. So if I see that the bargain meat is lamb, then we might get spinach, feta or tofu and make something akin to saag paneer with lamb, which is really just lamb stew.

Learn from your successes as well as your failures as well as from others. Here's a free one: you can't substitute peppermint extract for vanilla extract 1:1. Dad tried that in a cheesecake once. Brrrrr.
posted by plinth at 6:34 PM on August 12, 2005

Great question. Read recipe books.

No, really. They're a much more thorough and interesting source of info than most cooking shows (Good Eats possibly excepted). The more recipes you read, the more ideas you'll have for creative inspiration next time you're playing around in the kitchen, and the more time-tested knowledge you'll have backing you up as you go. Each book is different; noticing the variations on similar recipes will open up your thinking about what and how to combine ingredients.

For instance, I just discovered the joys of uncooked tomato sauces and have spent three nights this week blending olive oil, garlic, heirloom tomatoes and fresh spices, letting the mix sit at room temp for an hour and then combining it with hot pasta, cheese and lightly steamed veggies. It's all been surprisingly delicious, but last night after comparing a couple of cooked and uncooked sauce recipes I realized that I could combine the uncooked ingredients, let them marinate for an hour and then toss them in a hot skillet for a few minutes right before pouring it over the pasta and cheese. I think that'd release the already-strong flavors in an interesting way, without turning it into the usual hot mush, but have yet to see a recipe that straddles the cooked/uncooked line in that particular way. I can't wait to go to the local farmer's market Sunday to buy the stuff I need.

Anyway. Recipe books are your friend. Flip through, linger over the ones that look good to you, make mental (or physical) notes of what ingredients you want to pick up the next time you're shopping, and then just have a ton of fun experimenting.
posted by mediareport at 7:17 PM on August 12, 2005

1. Learn about the properties of various basic ingredients, how they behave in various situations. How does flour and gluten behave? How do eggs react in different situations? Chocolate? Yogurt? Meats? Mushrooms?

Alton Brown's shows are based around this. My old Joy of Cooking talks about this a lot; I'm assuming newer cookbooks do too. Julia Child and Jacques Pepin mention this kind of detail fairly often.

2. Pick up some of the basic combinations of classic cuisine. Wine vinegar, olive oil, tarragon, salt, pepper, dijon mustard = classic mustard vinaigrette. Some combinations are so well-known we almost forget them (turkey and cranberries), some you learn from studying the food of a culture (turkey, unsweetened chocolate, peppers = turkey mole). Old combinations are tried and tested, and they're what many people will expect. Good cooking isn't necessarily about being overly creative. Or another approach: good cooking can be about taking something very familiar and tweaking it just slightly.
posted by gimonca at 7:31 PM on August 12, 2005

I highly recommend Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page's book Culinary Artistry.

I have a lot of cookbooks, but room for only a very few in my tiny kitchen. This is one of those.
posted by trip and a half at 7:51 PM on August 12, 2005

How to Cook Without a Book is also good at giving you some basics of everything and some decent phrases with which to remember them.

Leafy salads:

"Drizzle salad with oil, salt, and pepper - toss until slick, dash of vinegar to give it a kick."

Or something. Good stuff.

I started as a curious kid with a working single mom and lots of free time in the kitchen. By high school I was the cook of the house and had a deep love for making something amazing from whatever was in the pantry.
posted by jopreacher at 9:13 PM on August 12, 2005

Oops. Did I say alfredo? I meant carbonara.
posted by googly at 9:23 PM on August 12, 2005

Nigel Slater's Appetite is a truly great primer here. Non-fussy, non-geeky, deeply satisfying recipes that are quick (or hassle-free) to make. And not just recipes: the introduction is a guide to honing your sense of taste.

The cardinal rule: Know what works well together. There are some combinations that are famous. That's because they work. Chicken, lemon and garlic. Beef and mustard. Etc. After a while, you'll get an instinct for flavours that will work. I think in terms of hot and cool flavours, acidity versus richness and sweetness, different textures.
posted by holgate at 9:50 PM on August 12, 2005

last night after comparing a couple of cooked and uncooked sauce recipes I realized that I could combine the uncooked ingredients, let them marinate for an hour and then toss them in a hot skillet for a few minutes right before pouring it over the pasta and cheese.

I make pasta sauce this way sometimes. It is great, and it is quick and simple. I like to cut the tomatoes into medium sized chunks and marinate them with some freshly smashed garlic, olive oil and basil leaves. If you do not want to wait, cook the garlic and then add the remaining ingredients for a few minutes. Longer cooking marries the flavors better but too long and you lose that fresh crispness of the tomatoes.
posted by caddis at 11:58 PM on August 12, 2005

Keep onions around. Chop an onion up in those veggies or in the meat...or whatever. Cooked or raw, onion is one of the finest seasonings. A kitchen without onion can hardly be called a kitchen.
posted by wsg at 1:12 AM on August 13, 2005

McCormick Sea Salt Grinder, & Black Pepper, or the Peppercorn Medley Grinder. I've bought sea salt in chunks and ground it, but it's never fresh. This makes a huge difference in taste, no matter what it is. You can buy this off the spice shelf in the grocery store, and it's always fresh because it sells well.

For bonus points, the sea salt has about the same minerals in it as human blood, in about the same proportions. (We came from the sea.) If your body needs 4 molecules a day of something, it's probably in there. Good for your bones and teeth, and everything else.

I don't really care for black pepper, it's strong in any quantity, but the medley thing has black, white, green and pink peppercorns and coriander, and has a milder flavor.

I can't follow a recipe, too many years of cooking for large groups. When I cook for myself, I just pick a bunch of things I like and toss them together.
posted by unrepentanthippie at 3:51 PM on August 13, 2005

I have to suggest Garilc Pepper. I have grown to love this very much lately. Probably the best baked chicken breast I have ever had I make with this.

Take a nice size boneless skinless (I cannot get my wife to eat boned skinned chicken) breast or two in a small baking pan. Drizzle with Olive oil, Sprinkle with Garlic Pepper and Kosher Salt and bake at 350 for 30 minutes then I hit it with the broiler for a few to crisp it up a little.
Very very simple and very very good. Want to make it even Fancier? Line the baking dish with lots of onions (I cut the onion in half and then slice thin) betore baking. I use a metal dish for this. Bake the chicken on the bed of onions. Once the chicken is done, set it to the side to rest. Put the pan with the olive oil, chicken drippings, and onions on the burner on medium high. Cook this down until it starts to carmelize really nice and cook onto the pan a little bit. Deglaze the fond with about a cup of chicken stock and let that cook until it thickens some. It makes a wonderful thick sauce.

I obviously have to second onions.. And good good good extra virgin olive oil. If I go to one of my inlaws to cook I have to bring things like EVOO, pepper grinder, and kosher salt with me and my wife finds that funny for some reason.

I am a major late night mad scientist in the kitchen. I work thrid shift and on the weekends when normal people are asleep I am in the kithcen at 3am discovering new recipes. Last night it was making carmel about 3 different ways. The benefit of doing it late at night is noone knows if you messed up, and my wife often wakes up to delicious treats in the morning.
posted by JonnyRotten at 4:39 AM on August 14, 2005

I've bought sea salt in chunks and ground it, but it's never fresh. This makes a huge difference in taste, no matter what it is.

I was always under the impression that salt was salt, no matter what you do to it. Unless there are some substances in the salt that evaporate when the salt gets ground? And if freshly-ground salt is so important, why do chefs use the pre-ground stuff, and yet grind their own pepper? The shape of the crystals is important, and the grinder probably makes them into some shape that adheres to the food better (cf Alton Brown's salt show). Hence the better taste than regular salt. For similar results, try Diamond Crystal Kosher salt. It probably costs less, and you don't have to grind it.

The book that partly taught me to improvise in the kitchen was McGee's On Food and Cooking. If you understand the science of your ingredients, then you can combine them in novel and tasty ways. As everyone else has said before, practice is the key. Depending on your degree of adventurousness, you may produce some weirdly icky things, but you will also produce some excellent ones.

And as several other wise contributors have said, lose the garlic powder. Use the real stuff. The key to the best cuisine in the world is to use the best, freshest ingredients you can find. Now (in the northern hemisphere) it's the height of tomato season. So use them. And fresh herbs wherever you can. It's not hard to grow whichever plants you use the most on a sunny windowsill or patio, and snip off what you need when you're going to use it.
The Les Halles Cookbook is helpful with advice on finding the best, freshest ingredients in your area. And it has some good bistro-type recipes in it, too.
Many people fall into the trap of using prepackaged foods or ingredients in order to save time. This makes it far harder to control the flavors (especially the saltiness!) in your dishes.
Good cooking does not need be hugely elaborate or time-consuming to be delicious.
posted by Lycaste at 9:49 PM on August 15, 2005

I think the problem I've seen with sea salt in chunks is probably just that it's been in storage too long, or near something and it picked up odors or tastes.
posted by unrepentanthippie at 8:43 AM on August 19, 2005