Fixing the Problem with Recipes
I have always been bothered by two things when looking at recipes — regardless of whether it’s on a cooking blog or professionally prepared cookbook:
Unending paragraphs of boring drivel
The need to bounce back and forth between instructions and the list of ingredients
For recipe blogs, I sort of get it — it’s a livelihood thing and they need to drive traffic, ads, etc. With cookbooks, it can be neat to entertaining to read the backstory about a specific ingredient, locale or technique - but in moderation! And in my opinion, after (or clearly separated from) the recipe!
This is compounded by the second issue: all of the information I need at a given step is never in the step so it’s a frustrating loop of scrolling to the top (hopefully) where the ingredients are and then struggling to find the step you were on in the sea of back-story.
Working Towards a Solution
Well on this website, the opening will be kept to a minimum and a ‘grab it and go’ recipe will be presented right at the start with everything you need to run off an make the dish. Free. No signups, no nags, just grab it and go (although a hat-tip would be appreciated).
This will be a bit of a work in progress as I experiment with what works.
A dedicated shopping list.
More often than I care to admit, I’ve forgotten about an obscure ingredient only to make to remember halfway through cooking and have to scramble. Now there’s a dedicated grocery list: nobody wants to be scrolling through recipes at a grocery store - you just want a list of items you need to pick up.Some ingredients may be unfamiliar (especially if you’re not the one buying the groceries), so a rough grocery store department should help narrow down a search
For more exotic (or specific) ingredients, I may call out an exact product name and/or picture
I’ll roughly categorize how/where the ingredient is used; this way, if you don’t have (or can’t find) an ingredient, you can decide if it’s something you can skip it
I won’t include allergy, dietary restrictions or substitutions. That’s an endless rabbit hole.
I may be slightly vague on quantities if I feel it doesn’t matter or doesn’t add value. Some examples
Fries: I’m not going to say how many potatoes to cut up, if you want more fries then prep more potatoes
Indirect ingredients: if a step requires you to ‘baste with honey’, I’m not going to call out how much honey you need to have on hand
Staple seasonings and spices: my assumption is that if you have exactly 1 pinch of salt in your kitchen, you should just get some salt. The exception to this is if a dish requires a substantial amount of an ingredient i.e., 4-cups of soy sauce)
All the information you need at each step, provided in that step
No more bouncing back and forth between the instructions and the ingredients: if you need to dice 3 onions, the step will specifically say to dice 3 onions.Sample plating instructions
If you’re cooking something that you’re not familiar with, plating it may be a bit unclear - I’ll try and provide some sample plating steps and a sample picture
Sample Recipe (version 1.0)
The recipe is sized to fit in a 4.3x6.3 lamination pouch, like this one — perfect to have on hand in the kitchenVersion History
v1.0 (20200222)
Made for 4¼” x 6¼” lamination pouches
Available as Word Document, PDF or image
Each instruction contains all of the information needed for that step
Dedicated shopping list: includes approximate grocery department for each ingredient & where it’s used
Sample plating instructions + final picture
Early draft / things to expand on
Rough cooking time(s), breaking down by stages for more complex recipes
Approximate serving sizes
For more exotic ingredients, perhaps explicit product names and/or pictures
For some complicated steps, perhaps a picture for the expected result
