Absolutely Right...

That's what people who wrote the recipes did and you should follow them. Learn to walk before you attempt to run.

You need building blocks to start with though, after a few recipes you learn flavor pairings and can experiment a little easier; it can get a little expensive making recipes that simply don't work and turn out disgusting.

This is exactly what people used to do. Problem is that a great recipe was never reproducible. Then came Julia Childs. What a difference! It's no longer a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It's teaspoon of this and 1 1/2 teaspoons of that, reproducibly.

When I discover a great recipe, other people will be able to do it too if I write down exactly what I did.

So I will follow other people recipes to get their results. Not greatness; great food.

I took a culinary class so it really is a lot of learning recipes and cooking from there. When you learn the basics, then it's a matter of experimenting--like changing the amount used or the things that go in it.

Best thing i can tell you is get good with a knife. Buy a bunch of cheap veggies and practice. then learn meat temps. Always good to memorize mother sauces too.
Try and get real stuff to cook with not frozen or processed. Taste everything! nothing worse than spending time on something only to have one bad ingredient ruin the whole dish.

Well, a lot depends on taste and most of it is subjective. So cookign would basically mean technical skill and knowledge of what to do... and some general knowledge of what fits with each other and doesn't.

I guess it just comes or doesn't come, taste different things and use your imagination.

This post was edited by Holod on Sep 18 2011 09:06am

i wanted to be a chef. for a long ass time. then i met people who went to EXPENSIVE ass culinary schools, and let me tell you, you dont do it for the money. VERY FEW people actually make more than 30k a year as a chef (and thats with LONG ass hours, and weekends) working in one of the best local restaurants, the head chefs only made 15 bucks an hour, and worked about 70 hours a week, if not more (some were 15 hour days).

but, i still LOVE to cook, ive just become interested in other things like animation and gunsmithing.

you should watch the food network, ALL the time. learn from what the chefs on there do, and dont make anything by recipe. make it your own if you want to stand out. like for example, i make an excellent Turtle Cheesecake. the base for the cheesecake is one of the best ive ever had. so what i did, was take the base and add different things to it, and instead of making it a layered Turtle Cheesecake, i made it a Raspberry Dark Chocolate with toasted almonds piece of cheesecake. and trust me, this was like THE BEST cheesecake i have ever had (even compared to the cheescake factory) i used Dark Chocolate, for the center layer, and i also used a dark chocolate ganache that i put on top, and then decorated it with toasted sliced almonds, and made it my own.

inbox me if you have a recipe you want to make, and i can help you make it your own!

the food network gives people the false impression that cooking what they're cooking is extremely easy.

they don't show the teams of people helping them prep and cleaning behind the scenes.

also 15/hour for a head chef at one of "your best restaurant in town" is stupid...he is being underpaid...or is in a community where work is hard to come by

well, work is very hard to come by. but in regards to the food network, i do understand that. i watch the food network for ideas. it never hurts. if you want to find out about cars, what do you do? watch car shows. and talk to mechanics. i watched the food network and talked to chefs. i live in a pretty small town too.