Inside the test kitchen
I'd say this is how the sausage gets made, but I have not tried making my own yet.
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I thought this week I’d take my readers behind the curtain and show you how I go about writing and testing new recipes. I think the recipe writing process is pretty opaque for a lot of folks, and hopefully you find this at least somewhat interesting.
Last week, I made my first attempt at a new pasta recipe. I thought it made a lot of sense on paper, and was excited to see how it turned out once I brought it to the kitchen. Unfortunately, it was a pretty spectacular flop that caused me to go back to the drawing board. It’s not fun having a recipe turn out to be a clunker, but the things I learned will help inform my choices going forward. I’ve made some pretty significant revisions, and I’m ready to take another crack at it soon.
Who is she??
The recipe writing process usually starts with me browsing the internet looking at recipes. One of my favorite things to do is to mash up two different types of dish into one cohesive plate, and I get a lot of ideas just by looking at what other people are doing. Sometimes it will be a particular ingredient that grabs my attention, or it will be a cooking technique that I think can be applied with other ingredients.
Once I have a fleshed out idea in my head, I start writing. The ingredient list and instructions come together fast; probably less than a half hour. I try to keep to a standard recipe formula where the ingredients are listed in order of which they’re used, and the instructions are clear as possible. I also try my best not to mix weight and volume measurements. This is much less of an issue in cooking than it is in baking, but I try hard to be consistent. (Oh, which reminds me, if you ever are making one of my recipes and find a typo, an error, or something that doesn’t come across as a clear direction, please let me know. I try to proofread my work at least once if not twice, but I’m far from perfect and editing your own work invites lots of errors that others would find easily).
Once I have a draft completed, I cook. The recipe testing process for professional chefs and cookbook writers is famously arduous, with every little variable being changed and tested until the optimal recipe is determined. I’m a serious home cook, but I’m still a home cook, and I have neither the time, nor the budget, to constantly tweak ingredients and ratios. My process is much more simple: If it’s good, it’s good, and if it needs changes, I make changes. I’m not trying to eat the same dish every night for two weeks in pursuit of the perfect recipe.
My wife Ashley gives me a lot of feedback with new recipes, and her input is invaluable for ensuring my recipes don’t play into my blind spots. For instance, I have a much higher tolerance for spice than she does, so she often keeps me from overdoing it. Sometimes I know immediately that a dish is ready to be published, but a lot of the time it needs little tweaks. Sometimes it is as easy as slightly modifying seasoning levels, but other times the whole conceptual framework of the dish needs to be changed. To go back to my current dish in progress, we both agreed that some of the ingredients in the dish did not work together at all like we thought they would, and the ingredient list would need to be edited down substantially for the dish to work. We also agreed that the ratio of ingredients was way off, with one in particular being so overabundant that it made the dish physically more difficult to eat. I’m being somewhat secretive and vague here to keep the recipe a surprise, but I’ll reveal the offending ingredient here is peas. Peas!
Once the dish has been edited, it gets put back into the queue for our weekly dinner menu. Like I said earlier, I am not a professional that can spend days at a time cooking the same thing over and over again until it’s just right. It makes the process significantly longer, but I am not trying to turn our dinners into a test of endurance. And from here I repeat as necessary until I think the recipe is ready to be shared with the world. It usually takes at least two times to get it to where I’m happy with it. Thankfully, my wife and I are quite good at identifying problems and the correct solutions so long-term trial and error isn’t necessary.
But sometimes, you get far down the road with a dish and you find that it just may not be any good. It’s not a good feeling, but it’s better to junk a dish rather than share something I don’t 100% stand behind. As a DIY food writer, every time I publish a recipe I’m putting my name and reputation on the line. The last thing I want to do is have someone make one of my dishes and think I’m a huge dummy. Well, they can think I’m a dummy for lots of reasons, but I don’t want it to be because my recipe is bad.
For instance, the first recipe I ever wrote was for chorizo mac and cheese. It came out perfect the first time, and I think it only needed extremely minor edits. One of the next ones was this attempt at some kind of pasta cacciatore with a sauce that consisted mostly of ground beef, onions, peppers, and mushrooms. Sounds okay in a vacuum, but it turned out like maybe the world’s worst bolognese. The sauce was a thick, dense sludge of beef, vegetables, and tomato paste, and it was quite unpleasant to eat more than a small portion of it. That recipe never saw a second attempt.
So there you have it. That’s my process. There’s not a lot to it, but I try to minimize the number of repeat attempts by being deliberate about every single ingredient that goes into a dish.
I’ve been writing this newsletter for almost a year now, and I’ve had a blast sharing things with you. The feedback I’ve gotten from readers has been wonderful, and I value each and every one of you.
In that spirit, I would like to get some more input from readers about what they would like to see more of going forward. I can tell from the stats that recipes are a hit, but is there anything else that you would be interested in seeing in this space? Do you like it when I go off-script and write about things unrelated to food and cooking? This is your space as much as it is mine, so let me know what you want to see. I don’t think I’m in danger of starting a podcast (haha…………………..unless), but I’m open to ideas for new recurring features. Let me know in the comments, or as always, email me at peterberkes@gmail.com.
Sunday I made a thing I'd made before, a white bean, leek and escarole gratin. Previously? It was this delicious hearty cheesy comfort food. Sunday? Sad greens topped with cheese flavored sawdust. Part of the reason, I think, was the recipe called for ingredients by type - 1 leek, 1 head escarole, and the proportions got screwed up.
Something I find interesting with recipes are the ones that take you through the failures to get to the success- if version 1.0 had too many peas, v2 was too spicy, no one talks about v3, etc. It not only takes you through the process (admittedly, "food" and "too much detail" are pretty much my hobbies), but can also help understand the end result better. Understanding *why* there's only 1 cup of peas and not 1.5 is usually entertaining, and also gives me a base to put my own spin on whatever you did.
Also, I appreciate anything that shows the process so the messaging isn't "made this for hubs and YUMMO", it shows that food recipe development is both work and, at times, absolutely infuriating.