Don't worry about trying new recipes
Published in the News & Record on July 26, 2006.
Trying new recipes is a crapshoot — a combination of research, experience and luck is necessary for good results, along with the willingness to eat hot dogs for dinner when a recipe fails spectacularly.
I bring this up because a friend of mine wrote to me a couple of weeks ago asking for some general advice on trying new recipes.
"So the question is, when you come across a dish that you are dying to try, where do you start? Do you just plunge in and attempt the first recipe you find? Do you do research? Does it depend on whether it's a familiar cuisine?"
First of all, your familiarity, or lack thereof, with a cuisine should never stop you from trying something new. Though I wouldn't recommend trying a new, completely unfamiliar recipe on a large group of people, there's nothing to say that your spouse or close friends can't act as guinea pigs once in awhile. Heck, my husband does it all the time, and he's still around to tell about it. (That's probably because he's never once asked for hot dogs when I decide to experiment.)
The first thing I do is to look for similar recipes. Sometimes I have to look no further than my head; other times, it takes a lot of Googling and looking up recipes in the indexes of many cookbooks.
Once you find a couple of recipes that are similar, you can compare ingredient amounts to see if the one you want to use seems way off on anything. For example, if your recipe calls for 1 cup of butter, and all the others you find call for 2 tablespoons, you might want to go with one of the others.
Searching online is helpful for many reasons. Typically, the sites I read have user comments on each recipe — a quick indicator on whether it's worth trying. Comments also can provide tips that might not be clear in the original recipe, as well as variations.
There is a ton of magazines out there with tips to satisfy anyone. Cooks Illustrated is one of my new favorites, with illustrated techniques and in-depth articles on trying different recipes in every issue.
Finally, once I decide on a recipe, I look up any unfamiliar terms or ingredients. There are several great reference guides out there — I recommend anything, online or in the bookstore, by Alton Brown.
In the end, there is only so much you can do before you just have to cross your fingers and dive right in. Don't be afraid to mess up, and don't worry about veering from the recipe. Trust your instincts, and if all else fails, take notes for next time.
