I know it has had a huge impact on what I do in the kitchen, and I wonder if my experience is similar to most folks. (I think I might be a little bit more extreme than general.)
The most general change is the way I approach recipes, post-internet. Before, I used to settle on a recipe book that seemed okay, and browse for things to make out of it for as long as I had it. First attempt at a recipe would be totally by-the-book. If I liked it enough, it would get transcribed into my recipe book. Any adjustments would be made to taste based on notes made in the book.
Now, my approach to a recipe is much different. Eg; It’ll go: “I think I’ll make cabbage rolls tonight,” and the initial prep is browsing several different cabbage roll recipes. I’ll narrow it down to a couple or few that look most appropriate based on personal taste, available ingredients, and outfitting of the kitchen, and generally come up with something that’s a synthesis of the shortlist. This ends up as a text file that gets synced to my old PDA, and that’s what I refer to in the kitchen. (Somehow the PDA doesn’t end up as spattered and stained as my old recipe book did.) I find this approach leads to a much higher rate of succeess than the old “Pick a recipe and make incremental improvements to it” method – but maybe I’m just getting better in the kitchen.
Another way that IT has changed my kitchen habits: My multitâche de cuisine spreadsheet template. This is something that makes making large meals possible for me. Multitasking/timing has always been my weakest point.
Now, if I want to make a large, multi-component meal, I have a template that I plug a target competion time into, and all of the other cooking times & procedures. All the prep is done ahead of time, and I just work to the schedule sheet - it just takes a minute to set up, and because of the way that the values are inherited, it’s easy to adjust if there’s a late start.
I had folks over for dinner on Saturday and served lamb korma, aloo gobi, daal tarka, channa masala, vegetable pakoras, beefy basmati, and garlic naan. Total time in the kitchen was <2hrs, and everything made it to the table on schedule. Thank you, Excel Mobile - easily as effective as flying Gordon Ramsey in to call me a donkey for a week.
How about y’all? How has IT changed your methods in the kitchen? Revolutionary? Not a whit? Somewhere in between?