Free Yourself From Recipes With Multiple Golden Proportions of Cooking

Following a recipe is a great way to get started in the kitchen. However, once you learn how to combine ingredients, you can use multiple selection ratios that govern dozens of different dishes and free yourself from recipe restrictions entirely. This is how it works.

Why proportions are stronger than recipes

Cooking can be challenging, but it becomes easier when you realize that many recipes are based on very simple math. Once you figure this out, you can always make a batch of freshly baked bread or a rich and savory sauce, or mix a simple syrup to sweeten your cocktails or drinks. Knowing these ratios is a relief (you’ll never buy a ready-made box or concoction again), and they serve as a platform from which you develop your skills and experiment with your favorite flavors. Think about it: After you’ve learned how to bake any bread, you only need to make a few minor changes to turn it into something special, whether it’s sourdough or spiced bread, or trying something completely new that you are talking about. dreamed. no prescription required.

Professional chefs understand the power of these relationships (although they don’t call them such); they are part of any basic culinary education. This is why professionals don’t have to fiddle with a recipe every time they need to make bread, and why a good chef can instantly scale a recipe from a family of four to a banquet of four hundred without worry.

We touched on this subject many years ago, when talking with Michael Rulmanom about his book ” ratio: simple codes, which lie at the heart of everyday cooking craft” . At the time, we focused on the kitchen tricks that inspired the book, but it’s worth figuring out how to apply these old-fashioned tricks in your own kitchen.

Know Before You Start

Before we start, you will see many ratios that require “x parts of one ingredient for every y parts of another ingredient.” When a ratio calls for “parts,” they talk about the same weight measurements in all directions. This means you have to get a little smart – instead of thinking “3 cups of flour and 1 cup of water”, you need to think “10 ounces of flour and 6 ounces of water”, because the “cup” of flour can change. To solve this problem, get a good kitchen scale – a tool we find invaluable for both better cooking and healthier eating. Once you get into the habit of weighing the ingredients , scaling the recipe to feed the crowd, or downward to feed yourself, becomes ridiculously easy.

Basic proportions: bread, pie dough, pasta and pancakes.

Despite being one of the most staple foods, many of us still struggle with baking bread. But while baking is more precise than other cooking methods, it is not as difficult as you might think. You will need these basics in almost any way.

Here are some of the basic bread to dough ratios you can find right now:

• Bread is usually 5: 3, flour to water (plus yeast / baking powder and salt) . Almost any bread dough follows this general ratio. You will also need to add salt (a pinch is enough for a small batch, but a general rule of thumb is about 2% by weight of flour) and yeast or baking powder for leavening (1 teaspoon baking powder for every 5 ounces of flour or 1 teaspoon of yeast for every 16 ounces / 1 pound of flour). Hence the endless possibilities for the flavor and type of bread you want to make. You can add herbs like rosemary or thyme for savory breads, or lemon and poppy seeds for savory quick breads.
• Pie dough is always 3: 2: 1, flour to fat and water . This one is pretty versatile, barring any of your mom’s secrets for the perfect pie crust, such as using vodka (although that actually applies , too ) or minimal dough handling. Just remember to keep the fat as cool as possible.
• Pasta is always 3: 2, flour to egg . Fresh homemade pasta is a wonderful thing, but it doesn’t have to be some kind of craft item that you can buy from the specialty market. Making your own is as easy as manually stirring flour and eggs into a dough and rolling it out. When proportioning, count one egg per person and weigh everything again. 3: 2 tells you how much everything should weigh, not how many eggs to use.
• Cookies 3: 2: 1, flour to fat to sugar . Of course, this will be slightly different depending on what you plan on adding to your cookie, but basic sugar cookies match this ratio very closely. If you’re planning on adding a ton of chocolate chips or anything else relatively sweet, you might want to cut back on your sugar intake a bit. If you’re planning on adding something thick, like peanut butter, it might be worth reducing the fat a little. However, it’s a good starting point for any cookie recipe.
• Pancakes are usually 2: 2: 1: 1/2, flour to liquid, egg and fat (butter) . It’s a little more complicated, but you can just mix everything in this ratio and get delicious pancakes. The key point here is that the best pancakes require a little sugar (a few teaspoons), maybe a teaspoon of vanilla extract for flavor, a few teaspoons of baking powder to make them fluffy, and so on. Here you can experiment, but the main thing is to understand that simple pancakes are really light. The liquid you use can be milk or water, it’s up to you, and the fat can be butter or butter (although I would recommend the latter).
• Pancakes are always 1: 1: 1/2, liquid to egg and flour . If you’re ready to take it to the next level, good (Western-style) crepe dough is very easy to make (and much easier than actually making pancakes, which requires a good non-stick skillet). It’s just milk, egg and flour. You can add flavorings such as herbs or some ground spices to the dough to make your pancake dough stand out.

Remember that these ratios are basic and always apply, no matter if you are doing a large or small batch. They also fail: if you find your pancakes aren’t as fluffy as you prefer, you’ll need a teaspoon or two of baking soda. If you find the cookies are too sweet, you can cut back on your sugar intake.

You might still want to check out a line-by-line recipe if you’re doing something specific, but one thing is for sure: once you finish your measurements and you know your basics inside and out, you look at these recipes for their additions and theirs. alternative ingredients, not for instructions. After all, you already know how to bake bread; you just want to know how to bake a special type of bread.

Besides baking: sauces, dressings and broths.

Proportional cooking is perfect for recipes with shared ingredients – which is why it works so well with breads, pastries, and other baked goods – but it’s not over yet. Many simple sauces, broths, and dressings are also governed by simple mathematics, simple “this to this, this” descriptions. Here’s what we mean:

• Vinaigrette is always 3: 1, oil to vinegar . Simple and easy – no matter what kind of vinaigrette you plan on making, this simple ratio should help you make it – and the best part is, once you start making your own, you’ll never buy bottled salad dressing again. Mix some balsamic with some good olive oil and you’re done. Expand the idea by adding some diced shallots or chopped herbs for added freshness and flavor.
• Mayonnaise 20: 1, butter to liquid (plus yolk) . Homemade mayonnaise is tricky, as this “liquid” is usually water and / or lemon juice. Depending on the type of mayonnaise you want to make, you can use more water than lemon, lime instead of lemon, whole lemon, no water, and so on. Egg yolk also plays an important role – usually about one yolk per cup of hard mayonnaise. Mix it all with a stand mixer, hand blender, whatever to get a good emulsion or proper suspension of this oil and liquid. Roelman notes in his book that most emulsions break down from a lack of water, not a lack of yolk, so don’t worry about a lack of eggs. Feel free to add other flavors – herbs, shallots, salt to taste, even cayenne pepper for warmth. As we said, the ratio is the baseline and the only limitation is your tastes.
• Pickles are usually 20: 1, water to salt . This ratio will give you a simple pickle, whatever you add to it. If you are collecting turkey, she will help you. A few pork chops, or some chicken you’re about to roast? Certainly. This is the perfect snack recipe, but the beauty of pickle is that not only does it keep the meat moist, it can also add flavor, which is why many pickles also add sugar, peppers, herbs, and other spices. I’m a big fan of Bon Appetit ‘s “Simple” Brine , which is a riff of Alton Brown’s classic pickle recipe . However, they all follow this simple rule.
• Stocks are usually 3: 2, water to the bone . Would you like to make chicken or beef broth? The next time you bake chicken (or even buy grilled chicken at the supermarket) or cook a boneless beef roast, save the bones. Then take a large, pretty saucepan (or use a slow cooker) and add 3 parts water to 2 parts bones from old food. This alone will give you a simple inventory. As usual, you can sprinkle it with salt, herbs, and other seasonings, but this base ratio will be maintained and you will have a supply that is good for anything.

This is also just the tip of the iceberg. Hollandaise follows the same rule (5: 1: 1, butter to yolk to liquid), but it’s a little more complicated and we don’t want to do it a disservice by simplifying it. Even custards and creams follow their own ratio rules, and once you learn to see them in the recipes you find, you can make as many variations as you like. While these ratios have been derived from various sources, Roelman’s book gives them considerable attention, and he even suggests several recipes for certain types of mayonnaise, the perfect consommé, and more.

If you are really interested in this and want to go to the next level, Rulman offers iPhone application for $ 5 , which focuses on relations (and has a built-in calculator to convert measurements for you), but his book is more than a bargain. …

Perhaps most importantly, learning a few simple relationships of the things you love (or want) to cook gives you the opportunity to ignore line-by-line recipes and explore your own favorite flavors and ingredients in dishes you already know and love. As Rohlman points out, when you understand how a ratio works, it doesn’t mean knowing one recipe – it’s like knowing all of them.

This article was originally published in October 2013 and was updated on January 25, 2021 to include updated links and information, add a new header image, and change content to match the current Lifehacker style.

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