The Lazy Genius Podcast - #93 - Cook Without a Recipe

Episode Date: January 28, 2019

Are you afraid to go off script on a recipe? Or maybe you’re not afraid, but things never turn out just right when you riff in the kitchen. This week, I’m sharing a handful of concepts that if you understand them in concept will start to change your cooking experience tremendously. I’m not saying you’ll walk away from this episode a master chef, but your confidence and understanding of what can make you become better will definitely change. Companion Links for this Episode: Download my super helpful eBook The Swap all month long to help you make a clear path through your stuff. It’s available through January 31. Have questions? Shoot me an email or send me a DM on Instagram. My favorite cookbooks that teach you the only skills you need to cook: Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat (there’s a new-ish Netflix show of hers by the same name) and The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg. Join me on Instagram on Thursday around 12:15 p.m. EST for my weekly LIVE discussion. Download a transcript of this episode. This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, you are listening to the lazy genius podcast. I'm Kendra and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 93. Cook without a recipe. Oh, this is my favorite. Talking about food is one of my favorite things. And it is such a priority for me personally that you feel empowered in your kitchen. Not to be Martha Stewart and be perfect, but simply to like walk in unafraid. with a small but powerful arsenal of tools and skills so that you can gather around your table with less stress. We have, we like love the table, right? We love being around it, but we kind of hate getting there. Helping you bridge that gap is literally my favorite thing ever. So I am so

excited for today's episode. Just a quick reminder though, before we get going, the window to buy my decluttering ebook called The Swap, the Lazy Genius Guide to Decluttering for Life, is quickly closing. It's available for a few more days just until the end of January, and it is meant to offer you a simple but effective path through your stuff and help you get into rhythms where you'll never want to burn down your house and start over again. Check out the show notes by swiping in your podcast app or by going to the lazy genius collective.com slash lazy slash recipe. You can get all the info from this episode and a link to the swap and see if it's right for you. It is likely for you if you want to abandon ship and start over and haven't found the solution you need in the dozens of decluttering books and blog posts you've read over the years. I was you once, so I created what I could not find and maybe it's what you need to.

So the swap is available until January 31st. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask me on Instagram or on email. You can email me at Kendra at the lazy genius collective.com. Okay, let's talk about cooking without a recipe. There are two main skills you need to cook without a recipe. One is kind of big, but we'll call it one. It is how to develop flavor and texture and ingredients. And then the second is to know what ingredients go together.

Both of these skills are honed with practice. Not every meal is going to be home run, you guys, by a long shot. but if you continue to practice and pay attention to what works and what doesn't, you'll get confident in the art of trying. The problem with cooking is that we think we need to master recipes, but really we are on a journey of mastering flavors and textures and making everything on the plate or in the bowl friends with each other. We're going to get into a few concepts here in this episode, but I want to make sure that this is clear. You will not walk away from this episode being a master chef. You will love.

likely be the same as when you started. But your confidence and understanding of what can make you become a better cook, it will definitely change. The actual cooking can only improve with actual cooking practice. So get in there and burn some stuff. But today, I'm going to share a handful of concepts that if you understand them in concept, it's going to start changing your cooking experience tremendously. Okay. First, I'm going to mention my two favorite cookbooks that teach the only skills you need to really cook. And neither of these books really have many recipes. If you follow me on Instagram at The Lazy Genius, you have likely heard me talk about them both, perhaps a little obsessively. But I will mention them again here, obviously. And the

links will be in the show notes. The first book is called salt, fat, acid, heat. And the second book is called the flavor Bible. The flavor Bible is literally a Bible. It is an encyclopedia of what foods are friends. It's just lists of foods and the foods that go with them. And then salt, fat, acid heat explains how those four things, salt, fat, acid, and heat are the only things you need to understand to be a good cook. Seriously. Just those four things. And by the way, if you want a beautiful visual experience, the woman who wrote salt fat acid heat has a four-part Netflix special by the same name that is magical. It's so pretty. It makes you so hungry. She is possibly like the most enthusiastic, charming person I've ever seen around food. It is just such a great thing

to watch if you haven't yet. Okay, let's set a scene, shall we? It is, it's a Tuesday afternoon. You were busy over the weekend and didn't meal plan anything. No problem. Yesterday you had pasta because Mondays are pasta Mondays. decision works so that's great but you don't have any plans for dinner be on right now your crew is busy doing homework or having screen time or something and you have maybe 15 minutes to get a head start on dinner before all the children need your attention you pull down a favorite cookbook to find a recipe but you don't have the right ingredients for any page you flip to now you have 11 minutes left you open the fridge hoping that like a complete meal will jump out at you and then you cry a little

on the inside when that doesn't happen you do you do you do you do you do you do you do you do you see a pack of chicken thighs that you bought on sale the day before, but you ran out of time to prep them, which means you need to eat them tonight or else they're going to destroy everything in your fridge with that rotten chicken stink. You also see a pack of like almost slimy mushrooms in the fridge that you need to eat and then like a couple of wrinkly sweet potatoes on the counter. All right, these are, this is what you got. These are the ingredients that you have and you're a little sad about it, but that's the way it is. Now, you could open your laptop and Google chicken mushroom sweet potato recipe and might actually find something helpful.

I actually did that before I hit record just to see. And there are actually a lot of options. But you could spend your remaining nine minutes looking for the perfect recipe rather than actually cooking. So here's where you start. Here's your first question. Do the ingredients go together? Now, you can check the flavor Bible, which is what I do. when I'm wondering if foods go together to see what it says. If you don't have the flavor Bible, Google the combination, just like I said, and see if you get a lot of results. You don't have to read any of the results. But if you like, if people have published recipes using these ingredients that you have, then chances are those ingredients are already friends. So step one is done. Are they

friends? Yes, they are. All right. So let's move on. Question two. How do I make these ingredients tastes great. Now this might feel like a rule dome question because essentially like that's the goal of cooking, right? But when you know the things that help any and all foods taste great, you can answer that question with actual helpful answers. Because isn't that where we get stuck with cooking? Like if you stare at chicken, mushrooms and sweet potatoes and ask yourself like, how do I make these taste great? You're likely going to yell at like nobody. That's the point. This is why I need a recipe. But you actually don't.

Recipes are great. But here's how you cook those foods without one. The way you make ingredients taste great is to consider four elements that I mentioned before from that book. Salt, fat, acid, and heat. We're going to try to go in a more like chronological order, though, for this conversation. So we're going to go salt, heat, fat. fat acid. We moved the heat up a little bit.

But we're going to start with salt. Okay, salt doesn't make things more salty. It makes things taste more like themselves. I've been saying this for years. You don't need to be afraid of salt because salt brings out the best in everyone. It brings the best out of every ingredient. Now too much definitely makes things taste salty.

But as you practice and season, like with your own fingers and your own version of what a pinch is, you'll start to recognize how much salt to add to certain foods. And salt can come in forms other than just little white crystals from a box. Cheese adds salt. Certain meats like bacon and sausage add salt. Olives and capers add salt. It's all about the dance of how everything interacts with each other, like how they all become friends. So you're looking at your chicken. The best way to get the most flavor out of your chicken, regardless of how you cook it, is to salt it early. So do that now

while you think about how the meal is going to come together. And when I say early, 10 minutes early is helpful, an hour early, a day early. Like, you can salt your chicken up to like 36 hours early and it's going to be a delight. Okay. Now, vegetables, they don't have the same protein structures that meats do. So you don't want to necessarily salt those early. It doesn't do anything. It just draws out, well, it does do something. It draws out the moisture from the vegetables, and then they get kind of dry and gross.

So you don't want to do that. But salting meat early, especially chicken, is the best. So salt your chicken. You're already halfway to good flavor. And in a little bit, when you start cooking, remember that you will want to season your vegetables well with salt. And it's going to make your mushrooms taste like earthy and rich. not muddy and gross. It will make the sweet potatoes pop with their sweetness and not be like just

kind of bland and annoyingly sweet. Salt makes things pop. So know that you'll get really far in cooking without a recipe if you recognize the value of salt. Okay. Next step is heat. Heat obviously cooks the food and depending on the intensity of the heat you'll get different results. Chicken cooked over low heat over a long amount of time will have a much different texture than chicken cooked over high heat for a short amount of time. Heat affects the way the proteins and the meat interact with each other. So when you cook things lower for longer, the proteins relax a ton. They like stop holding hands and then they they pull apart. Like if you were playing Red Rover with low and slow chicken, you would win every time. They just get really lazy.

The meat is super tender. But as you know, if you've ever cooked chicken in the crock pot, It's not like you can serve a piece of that chicken. There are no more pieces. It's so tender. It comes apart. That's where the chicken's laziness comes in. But if you saute a piece of chicken or roast a piece of chicken with high heat over a shorter amount of time, the proteins bind together differently.

They are linked arms like Navy SEALs lined up playing Red Rover. You are not getting past that. Although they can still be tender and juicy, but they hold together as a piece. So your question with heat is often about time. How much time do you have? If you only have half an hour, low and slow isn't in the cards because you don't have the slow. So for quicker meals, you need direct heat that's usually fairly high. All right. So with chicken, mushrooms and sweet potatoes, how do you decide the heat? If you have half an hour, you don't have time to roast whole sweet potatoes or low and slow your chicken. So you might think you're going to saute the chicken and the mushrooms and essentially. skillet to get some crispy texture that's not going to take forever. And remember this, that when you saute food in a skillet, the less you move the food around, the more color and therefore texture you will get. Crispiness comes from being still. It happens when the food stays in contact with the heat and some fat, which we'll talk about in a second, without being disturbed. It's a bit of a diva that way.

So when you put your chicken and mushrooms in the pan, give them room to breathe, don't cram them together, and don't move them for several minutes to give that texture a chance to develop. This episode is brought to you by Defender. With its 626 horsepower twin turbo V8 engine, the Defender Octa is taking on the Dakar rally. The ultimate off-road challenge. Learn more at landrover.ca. Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Haboniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon.

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And remember that salting those potatoes, once they're steamed, will make them taste most like themselves. Okay, but have you ever had a steamed sweet potato or like a russet potato with, just salt or like a baked potato with just salt. I mean, it's fine, but the flavor's not going to wow you. You know why? There's no fat. Let's talk about fat next. Fat is like the train that carries flavor. A dish without fat is not as good as a dish with fat. This isn't me being all like, eat whatever you want. Healthy eating is a sham. I mean, I do kind of believe that like diet culture, healthy eating in our diet culture is a bit of a sham. But giving fat, it's due in cooking. It isn't to like stick it to the man. It's not to be like anti-health. Fat is important in getting a flavorful

dish because without fat, the flavors have nowhere to nestle. They have nothing to take them anywhere. And without fat, you don't get texture. You can't achieve crispiness without fat. I don't care what the infomercials of those weird skillets say, you have to use some sort of fat. It is necessary. And understanding the role it plays is going to make a huge difference in cooking without a recipe. So, all right, so let's get back to your three ingredients. You're going to saute the chicken and mushrooms.

You need to pick your fat because you have to have at least a little. Olive oil will add a very different flavor than butter well. And just like you get saltiness from things other than salt, you can get fat from things other than oil. avocado cheese they both add fat and richness so does the natural fats in your meat that's why it's really hard to get boneless skinless chicken breast to taste like anything because they have no natural fat in them to help the process now chicken thighs do have some natural fat so you're likely to get a richer flavor when you cook them that's why i love chicken thighs so if you're deciding

what fat to cook the chicken and mushrooms in. You might think about the fat for the mashed potatoes first, the sweet potatoes. Butter definitely feels like the way to go there. So maybe you're going to choose to saute the chicken and mushrooms and butter to make the chicken and mushrooms and the mashed sweet potatoes flavor friends. Now butter doesn't like to hit very high heat though because it burns up really quickly and it does better when it's holding hands with a stronger fat. So if you want the flavor of butter, but the sturdiness of oil, use both. Put a pat of butter and some like canola or grape seed or vegetable oil or something in the pan. You get the flavor of one and the ability to cook at a higher heat without burning the butter. So the butter and oil are giving texture to your chicken and mushrooms. They are also allowing flavor to develop in those foods along with the salt that is going to help with flavor.

And then the fat for your mashed potatoes is almost like a condiment. Like you want to taste the butter. It is there for creamy texture and a rich butter flavor. That with enough salt, you guys, is sublime. I'm not a huge fan of sweet potatoes, but when their natural sweetness is offset by a good amount of salt and rich butter, there is nothing like it. It's like, oh, it's so good. Okay. So the last step is acid. This is the one that's most overlooked. In the book, Salt, Fat, Acid Heat,

the author, Samin says, acid is salt's alter ego. While salt enhances flavor, acid balances them. So a lot of times I talk to friends about recipes that didn't work or like they're in the middle of cooking and they're trying to troubleshoot something. I get text and boxes like that all the time. Things like, I made this chicken and cream sauce thing, but it tastes boring. What do I do? So I always say to start with salt, because usually people don't salt their food enough. I say, does it taste too salty? No, it doesn't. Okay, so add a little more salt until it starts to sing. Then, if it's still not quite there, I suggest adding a bit of acid. Acid balances everything out. It cuts the fatiness and richness in foods. It makes sweet things less cloying. There's some

contrast there. It makes starches less blah. There is an entire chapter on acid in this book, salt, fat, acid heat. And there's way more than I'm going to ever be able to say here. But for the sake of learning to cook without a recipe, you need to simply know that acid balances things out. If the flavor is as enhanced as it's going to be from the salt, if the texture has been achieved with the fat and the flavors have transported through the entire dish, but something is still missing, you probably need acid. Acids are overlooked because we don't always even know what they are, but acids you might choose from are things like a squeeze of citrus from like a lemon or a lime, vinegars, wine, hot sauce, yogurt, like plain yogurt, tomatoes, even mustard. So for our

chicken mushroom sweet potato dinner you don't necessarily need to add acid everything because the whole plate is dancing the sweet potatoes are likely really happy on their own with their salt and their fat but you want to balance of the entire plate the chicken thighs and the mushrooms they have those rich earthy flavors but all of that together with those rich buttery sweet potatoes it might be tasty but like a little a little heavy a little bit much so before you take the chicken and mushrooms out of the pan, add a quick dash of red wine vinegar, or throw in like a dollop of Dijon mustard and swirl it around. And you will be shocked at how everything suddenly comes together. Now, it might go the other way, too. Something might be too acidic. And you need to balance it the other way with fat and salt and flavor.

Think about tomatoes. Have you ever tasted plain old tomato sauce from a can, like the kind that doesn't have salt or anything in it? It's not great. And it makes your mouth puckering. because it's like really acidic. That's why to make a good tomato sauce, you start with garlic in olive oil and fat so that the garlic flavor, it's going to travel on that olive oil train through the entire pan of sauce. And then you add the tomatoes and some salt to neutralize the acid. You might even add a pinch of sugar if it needs to be neutralized even more. It all works together. It's all a dance. It's all balance. And understanding that is going to help you cook without a recipe. Okay, so I realize that this is like, this feels super involved when it comes to cooking

dinner. But as you practice these concepts, as you ask yourself these questions of like, do these go together? How can I make these ingredients taste the best together with the time that I have? You're going to find that the decision making, it happens in just a minute or two, truly. It just takes practice and asking the right questions and being thoughtful about it. if you know how to develop flavor or if you just seek to continue learning how to develop flavor through techniques like roasting and grilling and sauteing some of which i've done full episodes on which i'll link to in the show notes for you if you see that salt enhances flavors and makes everything taste like itself if you recognize the role that fat plays and creating texture

and transporting flavors throughout the dish. And if you know that acid balances everything out, you can cook anything without a recipe, truly. I know it feels crazy. I know it feels like I'm an insane person right now. I'm telling you the truth. This episode has a fraction of the answers. There's so much to learn, but no one learns it all at once.

Everyone learns it bit by bit through practice, through actually cooking. Okay, now if cooking without a recipe just is too terrifying, like it's just not even on your radar. Do this instead. Follow your recipes, but start to pay attention to salt, fat, acid, and heat. Pay attention to how the ingredients play or don't play well together. When you make a recipe and follow it and it tastes really good, think about why. How did those four components work together to make something good? you'll start to see how salt, fat, acid, and heat show up in food.

And then maybe, just maybe you are going to feel more confident to cook without a recipe. I know this is a lot and also at the same time, very little. But you have to start somewhere. And I hope that this is an encouraging start for you to love your kitchen, just as much as you love your table. You can do this. You can learn to cook and you can even learn to cook without a recipe. Don't forget, I will be live on Instagram this Thursday, around 1215, Eastern time. I will answer any questions you have about this episode, as many as we can fit in in 15, 20 minutes.

And if you have any questions like before then, you can email them to me or you can look for an Instagram post on my feed on Thursday. And you can pop your questions in the comments on that post. Don't forget, you have just a few more days to get the swap. if you're interested, check the show notes for all the info, links to all the cookbooks I mentioned, the episodes that I've already done about like how to know if a recipe is any good, how to, how to grill, how to roast, how to cook chicken, all this stuff. You can go to those show notes and look. It will be the lazy genius collective.com slash lazy slash recipe. That is all for today, you guys. I'm Kendra. And until next time, be a genius about the things

that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'll see you next week. ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life? Because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.