In the recent cookbook thread, someone claimed that becoming an excellent baker takes a great deal of time and practice. I’ve heard this said of becoming an excellent cook, as well. But outside of nouvelle/haute cuisine, isn’t it really just a matter of getting really good recipes and then just following them to the letter?
I’m talking about delicious meals with a reasonable amount of wow factor and sophistication, but not going overboard.
FTR, I am not a gourmet chef, but can hold my own.
Practice makes perfect.
I’ve been cooking nearly every day for over twenty years, and I still screw up some things, and I can still look at a recipe and say “Hey, that looks gooood,” and it turns out lousy. But I’ve been able to make dinner guests ooh and aah for quite some time now.
No, following recipes to the letter doesn’t always work, if you’re unsure of yourself in the kitchen. You can also improve on recipes a lot of the time, if you know what you’re doing.
To become an EXCELLENT chef/baker takes a lot of time, practice and work. But take it from me, becoming a decent, competent chef or baker really isn’t very difficult.
Even now, I have no real instincts as a chef. But I’ve learned through experience that, if you have a good recipe, and you simply follow the instructions, cooking isn’t that tough. I consider myself a so-so cook at best, but I’ve managed to make loads of scrumptious dishes just by following the instructions.
Even if you don’t really understand chemistry, you should be able to follow the lab instructions in a standard high school chemistry book, and your experiments should turn out just fine. Similarly, it’s hard to screw up a dish if you just follow instructions.
IMO, to become an excellent chef/cook takes talent*, which not everyone possesses. One should have a good palate and be able to discern ingredients and “what is missing” to complete an otherwise ordinary dish. This is not to say, as astorian says, that one couldn’t become competent by following recipes and cooking things by rote.
[sub]*Plus the practice and hard work bit[/sub]
Especially baking, which is actually not at all tolerant of improvisation. You can be a great baker just by carefully following instructions.
I think an important element is not over-reaching your skill level. Many people are under the mistaken impression that “good food” must be fussy, complicated, and require some sort of assembly. (Martha Stewart-itis) Nothing could be further from the truth. Simple food cooked well will wow them every time. If you can make a roast chicken and mashed potatoes, for example, people will think you are a good cook.
Also, my advice is: Don’t work with too many unfamiliar techniques or ingredients at once. This is where terrible (and sometimes expensive) mishaps occur. Make basic things very well, then get more complicated a little at a time. A great cookbook to help you along this path is Simple to Spectacular co-authored by Mark Bittman.
I’d consider myself a competent amateur cook.
Baking is something where you need to follow recipes religioously until you get the ‘feel’ of ingredient proportions.
Cooking meals can be a little more forgiving, but the temptation for the inexperienced cook is always to add too many different flavourings and ending up with something that doesn’t really taste of anything in particular.
My favourite stupid boast is that I never take a recipe book into the kitchen (this is true, as I feel it can inhibit the ‘soul’ of my cookery), but because of this, only the other day I completely left out the sugar from my pumpkin pie filling, blech!
I have seen two atrocious cooks develop into excellent cooks over a few years by reading and trying lots of recipes from Bon Appetit magazine. One of them now cooks professionally. The other is my husband.
Trial and error is important, as is practice, practice, practice. Knowing how to recognize a good recipe is also important. Bon Appetit rarely has bad recipes, so it’s a pretty safe source to cook from and you can learn a lot about food in general. Try simple recipes and techniques first. Follow recipes very carefully.
If you have any talent at all, you will soon graduate to culinary improvisation.
And one important factor: Good equipment is necessary. It needn’t be expensive or elaborate, but it’s hard to make a good roux in a paper-thin frying pan.
I think it is. Anyone who can read can follow a recipe and duplicate a great dish. To me, the measure of an excellent cook is someone who can walk into a kitchen or store, grab some stuff and make something wonderful without a recipe, just by using feel, taste, etc. Or go to a fine restaurant, have a great meal, then go home and duplicate it the next weekend. Being well rounded is another. How many guys can cook a steak on a grill that will make you scream, but can’t cook a chicken in an oven or fry a fish? It takes time, experimentation, talent, and patience to learn what foods/spices go with what, what mixes, what compliments, cooking methods, etc. Anyone can chuck a rib roast in an oven for a couple of hours and make a very good Joy of Cooking dinner. Not many can make that same roast dance the mambo for dinner theatre at the table, making all restaurant orders of prime rib a dissapointment.
I am a horrible cook, but a very excellent baker (if I do say so myself). It’s not that hard to do, but it does take an investment of time. I also think baking, a precise science, lends itself well to personalities who like to organize and quantify things (ENTP, anyone?)
One thing that really helped me was picking one recipe, and then just trying it over and over to see what happens when you use semi-sweet as opposed to milk chocolate, or whole wheat vs. white flour, or melted butter as opposed to just mushy butter, or even bottled water instead of tap water. This gives you a good sense of how these things contribute to the overall result. Baking is nothing if not greater than the sum of its parts.
Make good notes on your recipes. Mark down if the baking time seemed to be just a little too long, or if you would prefer something slightly less sweet. Or if you replace the oil with applesauce (a low-fat trick), and decide the result is completely awful (it’s a trick that doesn’t work as well in every recipe). These are the things that I always say I will remember, and then when I pull out the recipe six months later, I find I don’t actually remember so well at all. I write in my cookbooks, even the fancy ones.
HOLD IT A SECOND, FOLKS. I THINK SOME OF YOU ARE OFF TRACK…
First, I specified an “excellent cook,” not an excellent chef.
Second, why is it that Mangetout, etc. say that they can make some marvelous dishes (from recipe), yet then conclude they are merely “competent” cooks? If the dishes you serve are excellent, then you are, by definition, an excellent cook. Being an excellent (home) cook is not contingent on creativity or improvisational flair.
Here’s my point: I am firmly convinced that I could get 50 outstanding recipes for assorted entrees–borrowing from noted chefs, Gourmet, Bon Appetit, etc–and, following them to the letter, I am certain I could convince most everyone I serve that I am an outstanding cook–and I would be. Again, if you can turn out excellent dishes, then you ARE an excellent cook. (A chef is another matter.)
Outside of the nouvelle/haute realsm, who really cares if a home cook is creative, experimental, or original? It’s all in the taste, texture, aroma, and presentation.
Couldn’t disagree more with your definition of excellent cook.
Let me indulge in a fantasy here:
It’s a beautiful summer day. Ukulele Ike, with his lovely wife and adorable children by his side, is walking through the farmer’s market. There! He sees some Thai long eggplant. The next stall has stiffneck garlic and purple basil. He starts to think of a wonderful dish he had a year ago at that little place on 20th street… He buys the goods, goes home, and whips up a delicious Thai eggplant dish. His lovely wife and adorable children burst into applause and do the dishes.
Ukulele Ike is an excellent cook.
Tsunamisurfer cracks open his trusty cookbook, picks out a recipe, and goes to the stupidmarket. He buys the ingredients, even though the asparagus isn’t quite in season. He goes home and makes an excellent dish. His lovely wife and adorable children say “That was great! Thanks!” The do not applaud, and they do not do the dishes.
Tsunamisurfer is a good cook. A truly excellent cook wouldn’t have purchased that asparagus.
To quote Thomas Edison:
“Genius is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.”
As mentioned above, it’s how you get to Carnagie Hall; practice, practice, practice. A lot of cooking technique is sheer outright practice. Not only must you acquire the skils to chop and prepare the ingredients you need to learn how to select them as well. The massive amount of knowledge needed to attain competency as a cook can be quite daunting. Try to remember that even dwarves started out small.
What many people fail to realize is that a lot of cooking relies upon rather repetitive techniques. You need to master them in order to have the time to move on to other methods and styles. Be it cutting an onion into fine dice or correctly hard boiling an egg (with a creamy yolk), these require repeated practice. Once you have these methods under your belt, the fun begins. The part of cooking that cannot be learned or taught is the inspirational aspect. It is something that just plain “clicks” after many moons of plying the craft.
To look at a seafood counter and see the perfect filet of salmon, to walk down the produce aisle and see quintessentially ripe berries for dessert. This is where the inspiration kicks in. You slowly learn to adjust your menu to the best of what you find at the store. Yes, it is fun to try book or magazine recipes, but some of the most rewarding cooking comes from synthesizing out of the prime ingredients that you encounter during your shopping. Recognizing those ingredients when you stumble across them is one of the most difficult to acquire skills of all.
This is where the practice comes in. Only after buying shoe leather grade meats do you finally appreciate that perfectly marbled steak. Only after winding up with a bottle of watered down soy sauce do you learn to love a good tamari. It is in these nuances that truly fine cooking is born. There is some element of inate talent involved. I spent years trying to teach one person to cook who was quite simply bereft of the palate or schnoz to ferret out the minor differences in flavor and taste as spices were added to a sauce. This is relatively rare, much like a “tin ear”. A lot of successful cooking invloves prior exposure. To obtain that requires one central component; an adventerous palate.
If you are willing to try new flavors and combinations, odds are that you will be able to develop your skills to the point of excellence. The timid and narrow minded will find it rather difficult to ascend the ladder of ability in the kitchen. Patience and determination are rewarded far more often than convention and risk-free endeavor. A good cook must be willing to challange their own frontiers to improve themselves.
I strongly recommend that you stop by The Ultimate Recipe Thread for a visit. A majority of the recipes that I have posted there are relatively simple to execute and will bring you into close proximity with authentic flavors and preparations. My own philosophy of comfort food style cooking makes for straightforward combinations and presentations.
As to excelling as a baker, that is another matter entirely. Baking, much like candymaking is a skill unto itself. Exact measurements are the rule as opposed to the exception. My own baking skills are marginal at best. So I will declare that such techniques are more a result of truly empirical methods than just brave experimentation. Nonetheless, good baking relies heavily upon many of the same disciplines as good cooking and is not out of reach of a skilled cook. It just requires more dedication. I believe that JavaMaven will back me up on this one.
As you can see, I can go on for hours about this. Cooking is truly its own reward. I have often extolled cooking as one of the most gratifying of all arts. Very often, comensurate to the time and effort put into a recipe the payback is just as great. All the hours you spent slaving over the proverbial hot stove come back in the form of a delectable and sumptuous meal. Few artforms have such a tangible and immediate compensation for the effort involved.
Man, I could listen to that Green Bean’s stories all day.
Hey, Green Bean! Tell the one about the time tsunamisurfer and Ukulele Ike both entered the Pillsbury Bake-Off!
[hijack]
My wife and I bought ourselves a kitchen-aid stand up mixer for Chrismas last year, and, this weekend I made bread (using the mixer). It was very simple, very fun, my daughter helped, the whole house smelled wonderful, and, when it was done we slathered the still warm bread with butter and honey and had two, big thick slices each. It was delicious! And was extra good as toast yesterday and this morning.
[/hijack]
I tend to agree that there’s a world of difference between a good cook, and an excellent cook. A good cook has a grasp of the techniques, can follow a recipe, and turn out delicious meals (hell, if a rank amature can bake a couple loafs of bread, a good cook should be able to whip up a mean recipe). An excellent cook has to be able to do more (and I tend to follow Green Bean’s logic as to what that extra is).
Lord, Do I Have To Teach These People Everything???
Yo–Zenster, Green Bean, Ukelele Ike, Turbo Dog–let me give you folks a little heads up.
You aren’t cooks. You are CHEFS. This revelation may embarrass or discomfort you, but your cooking skills transcend what is normally found. Hey, it doesn’t matter if you’re professional or not, you are C-H-E-F-S. Get it? You have culinary flair. You can improvise and substitute, and still wow the crowds. You push the envelope, possess a refined aesthetic, and understand nuance.
Let me say this once again: I could get some killer recipes and whip up meals that would make people scream with ecstasy.
Am I a great cook? Yes. A great chef? Nope. Ultimately, who cares? I still get the chick–and lots of applause.
Back to you, Ike.
(my bolding)
I will respectfully disagree here. Baking does (generally, and for the most part) require more precision than cooking. The sticky part is that simply following directions isn’t always enough. The scientific side of baking relies on standard ingredients, but, in most kitchens, those ingredients aren’t always standard. Your flour may hold more or less moisture, due to humidity; one person’s extra large egg may be another’s jumbo (a small difference…but what if you’re using 8 of them?); your ground spices may be older and less potent; any recipe involving fresh fruit will certainly need to be adjusted for moisture content, etc.
As Mangetout suggests, “Baking is something where you need to follow recipes religiously until you get the ‘feel’ of ingredient proportions.” And that, IMO, is what separates “good” bakers (or cooks, for that matter) from “excellent” bakers (or cooks.) It’s having a feel for the bread dough or the mingling flavors in a stew and being able to make small (but important) adjustments. It’s having a sense of what the work-in-progress will eventually become and having the experience and skills to improve on the base recipe.
As an example, I am known for my pies. (I am the only person allowed to make them for family get-togethers. Though I appreciate the compliment, I sometimes wish that someone else could learn how to make them.) While I do follow a recipe, I have never measured the amount of ice water I use. I add water until the dough feels right. It’s a learned skill, and you have to learn it because the amount is always a little different. You can’t just add the 6 tablespoons and be done with it.
That said, Zenster is right on. You learn the basics first. And, yes, it does take time. But good, efficient technique allows you the time and energy you need to work creatively.
On preview…I’m certainly not a chef. Never have been, never will be. (I’ve worked in commercial kitchens, so I have some background, but no one would hire me in that capacity.) But I stand behind my statements. Following direction isn’t enough. Time and experience make the difference between someone who can usually whip up an impressive meal from a magazine recipe and someone who can salvage a failing meal from disaster when things don’t go as planned.
I’m a decent cook, albeit a vegetarian one. I really enjoy it, and herbs & spices are to me like painting; it’s adding snap and depth to the canvas. The order of addition and means of preparation are always a nice puzzle to solve.
I was the baker at an upscale Mississippi restaurant for two years. My concurrent profession was as a photographer. The two were similar because you took basic chemical principles and worked within that strict framework to create. Cooks I’ve worked with said that they didn’t like baking for that reason: that there wasn’t as much room to move.
Maybe this was because it was in a kitchen in the Deep South, where in the summer the temp would be over a hundred degrees. That was a real challenge in baking; dough rises faster, butter melts instantaneously (Haha, pie crust!)… but I enjoyed figuring out how to make it work.
So, you can follow recipes to the letter, but paying attention to the moment, whether in the atmospheric or market availability, and being able to improvise, is conducive to making things exceptional.
Damn, I’m missin’ my 40 loaf-a-day bread muscles!
Being an excellent cook is difficult if you have no talent for it. Easy if you do. And it does require not only talent, but a good palate, which not all people have.
With certain types of foods, I am an excellent cook. (I am also a very good baker, but as has been pointed out, that is a skill that is less tolerant of improvisation) More than once I have had people tell me that a particular dish I have made is the best they have ever had. What makes this especially rewarding is that I have been told this by people who have very sophisticated palates.
Most recently the “best I’ve ever had” kudos I received were for my vanilla and butter pecan ice creams, and it happened to be the first and second attempts at ice cream I had ever made. I started by studying a dozen or so ice cream recipes from various sources in order to understand what the real building blocks of good quality ice cream are. Having done that, I felt secure that I could alter the recipes to make them more to my liking. [sub](first step: cut the sugar in half. Second step: shun any recipe that calls for anything other than fresh cream and fresh milk, i.e. sweetened condensed milk. yar.)[/sub]
That is a key to being a great cook, is having a well-developed sense of what really tastes good, and knowing how to acheive that. It’s hard to do if you weren’t born with the equipment. Studies have shown that there is a wide variation in people’s abilities to perceive different tastes, based on how many taste buds they possess.
So, the question to ask yourself: do I have what it takes? Do most people seem to agree with me when I perceive something as tasting exceptionally good? Do I understand why A tastes great and B not so much so?
Good luck!
stoid
PS: There is a terrible danger in becoming someone who can whip up something fabulous any ol’ time: you will. And then you’ll eat it. This can lead to all sorts of unwanted results, as I can readily attest.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
I’m an excellent cook but a lousy baker.
The difference? Baking requires precision.
Respectfully decline, though I recognize the compliment.
A Cook is an artisan. A Chef is an Executive.
The chef watches over the kitchen while the cooks prepare the soups, the grills, the roasts, the veggies, the patisserie, and makes sure the schedules are kept and the dishes are prepared properly and there’s a little curly sprig of parsley next to every cutlet. The chef seldom gets his mitts dirty.
Nicolas Freeling, a novelist and professional cook, wrote a memoir of his years in French hotel kitchens, called KITCHEN BOOK, back around 1970.
Check it out, it’s a great read by a serious food guy who knows his way around his adjectives and prepositions.