The Recipe Rock Star (aka... you)

Potato Recipe in Progress from the missginsu photostream at Flickr

I know how it works. It happens to me all the time.

You're paging through a book or magazine, or clicking around on the web, and there it is: an irresistible recipe, singing out from the page with a sonorous siren's strain. You skim the headnote. It makes your mouth water.

You clip it, print it, or scribble it. You stalk the ingredients and the equipment. You bar the door to the kitchen and warn away foolish intruders. You take up your tools and you look to the page for guidance. You chop. You toss. You fling, and you flip. And then, you fail.

Smashed to the rocks. Devoured by monsters. Your hard-earned money, precious time and good intentions splattered into a mess on the stove.

It's too watery. It's too dry. It's salty. It's greasy. It's boring. It's weird.

What went wrong? (Hard to say.) Can it be fixed? (Maybe.) Was it me or the recipe? (That depends.)

I've been working a lot with designing, writing and editing recipes lately, and I've been hearing a lot from people about what's gone well... and what's been disastrous.

I want you to be a virtuoso at the stove. I want your friends to be impressed with your savvy. I want you to be able to look at a recipe and say, "Pfeh! This won't work at all!" and know, deep down in your being, that you can make that thing so much better.

Most of all, I want you to be confident in your abilities and proud of what you make. You will not just competently, consistently produce delicious food... if I have my way, you will rock in the kitchen.

With these thoughts in mind, I'm launching a new feature: The Recipe Rock Star.

You'll be that guy who can play his way through a song after hearing it just once. But with food.

So! Let's begin.

Recipe Rock Star Lesson #1: Use the power of one focused minute.

This step will seem simple and stupid, but it might save you much in the way of suffering. (I know this from sad, sorry experience.)

Diligently gathering the your ingredients and lightly skimming the recipe isn't enough. You must take one minute of the time you've dedicated to doing this project and read every line of the recipe. Don't skim it. Read it.

I'm embarrassed to think of the number of times I've been stopped cold by a little note buried in step #6 that says "chill and marinate overnight" or "cure for 8 to 10 days" or "serve over cooked rice." (Rice!? What rice? Where did it tell me to make rice?)

I'll probably emphasize this again, because it's important. In the same way that not all advice is good advice, not every recipe is well-written. Many recipes published by seemingly reliable companies, cooks and writers are confusing, incomplete or overly vague. Just as often, recipes will be perfectly accurate, but you'll get snagged along the way by a missing piece of equipment (A fluted tube pan? What's that?*) or a serving suggestion tacked on at the end (the afore-mentioned cooked rice thing, for example).

Yes, you're excited to get going on the project. Just take one minute to stop, focus, read the instructions very carefully, and use your critical thinking faculties to check for anything suspicious.

The single, focused minute is a powerful investment.

In Lesson #2, we'll have a look at what cooks call "mise" (MEEZ). 'til then, happy cooking!

* These often go by the traditional brand name: "Bundt Pan"