Does anyone else do "Iterative cooking"? I like to make sometime, and then make it again, with a little tweak to make it better. I record all of my ingredients and amounts of everything so I can cook consistantly. It's my dream to make some favorites, and make them the same way every time.
Constant tweaks are normal. I do them all the time. But I don’t record everything. So the same meal will come out slightly differently every time. Recipes are great, but variation in ingredient quality require some adaption every time anyway. An apple is not always an apple. An eggplant is not always the same eggplant. Cooking “living” recipes is what makes this whole thing exciting.
Yes, quite often. I never record things though. Sometimes.that works, sometimes not. Making notes while I am cooking ruins my workflow, and takes away from valuable cleaning/ tidying time.
Sometimes I take a photo so I can look back at it later.
Every week I pick just a few recipes and cook from scratch for every meal. If there are any notable particulars, I have a recipe page on notion. If I learn anything, I add it to the recipe. Sometimes I add pictures of good examples.
Sometimes it gets repetitive during the week, but I try to keep it interesting with small variations. It is much cheaper to have one dinner for the week as well.
I don't record any of my ingredients, but I do constantly tweak anything I regularly make, I'm always interested in how pizza dough, stir fry, steaks. Everything can be just a little bit better than the last time I made it.
I've grilled filet mignon 2-3 times a month since August. The local butcher has it for under half what we'd pay in a restaurant and It's a really comforting ritual when things get overwhelming. I fire up the charcoal, pour a glass of wine, listen to something really antisocial on the Bluetooth speaker, and cook stuff.
I've got the process down, the thermometer app keeps a history of everything I've cooked, and I'm spending most of my time experimenting with prep now, tasting rubs or marinades beforehand and seeing how they turn out.
I can't bring myself to keep a bbq journal. The idea really stresses me out for some reason, so I mostly rely on memory and taste. The one thing I actually record is a really abbreviated recipe in my regular journal and how it ended up. I also grill other stuff (just did really good chicken thighs), but I tend to focus on one thing and keep going until I have it figured out.
My iterations are all recorded. I store them on Google drive but they're printed. Recipe starts at version 1. Each change is a single line thru (so the previous value is readable) and the new value written close by. It's on paper because I don't want sticky fingers touching my phone. After 3 or so revisions, I update the digital version.
All recipes are formatted the same.
Title.
From (source description)
Ingredients listed in order of addition
Steps outlined with 1 verb per bullet. (listing 10 actions in 1 step drives me absolutely batty.)
I dont cook very often, but when I do, I have a meal prep recipe that I try out. I look over the recipe in the book, copy everything to my notes app, and then try cooking it. After cooking, I review my process, and generally make tweaks to the recipe like changing order of items I cook in, or change the method of how I cook. And because it's meal prep, I then later note down how long reheating takes in the microwave.
I do exactly the same! I do not cook very often (once a week), but I keep a google doc with all my recipes and tweaked them carefully until I was satisfied with the result. Along with the quantities, I also note stuff like the power I have to use when cooking this or that (+ the duration).