How do I develop new recipes?
Oh, and another tasty chicken recipe!
Where do I find the inspiration for meals and new recipes? It's my mood, the weather, and the ingredients I have on hand. Instead of planning menus by the day, I stock my pantry, refrigerator, and freezer for the week. This gives me the flexibility to decide which meal to cook the day I am going to eat it.
The next question is, "How do I thaw everything in time?" I don't recommend leaving food on the counter because of safety concerns, but putting a tightly-sealed package of frozen chicken in a container of cold water will thaw it quickly.
The real question is how do I develop a recipe? My nose is the answer. I know my mood and what flavors I want. When I make tuna salad, for example, I go to my spice cabinet and open random jars. Whatever smells good that day is what I use. And, every day is different.
That worked well until my younger son continued to ask me what I did differently with a recipe. Turns out, he likes consistency, and I wanted to perfect recipes for iwannabeacook. When I'm in the kitchen cooking, typing recipes into my laptop isn't possible, so I keep a notebook. Here's a picture with my notes for this week's recipe.
This notebook contains every recipe I make. The different ink colors tell you how many times I've edited the recipe. The color of the date, red in this case, shows the color of the original notes. The blue ink shows the edits right after making the recipe. In this case, commenting on the cooking and marinating time. The black ink shows afterthoughts with variations.
What you don't see is a large X or the words "REDO." Those happen. The tags sticking out of the side of the notebook mark recipes that are still under development and need more work. Sometimes the taste or cooking time was off, but other times it isn't the time to present a recipe. For example, I have a Christmas cookie recipe that is finally perfected. I can't release it until the holiday season because no one else wants to think about Christmas cookies in May. No worries though, I'm already working on November/December recipes.