find a professional cook book. these books teach you how to calculate recipes and scale them (even in relation to whether something is a side dish or mains, they also include tips on calculating waste/trimmings and what to do with them). check your local library. i think there is a starter course from the culinary institute of America, in German there is “der junge Koch”
I have found that there are different skills you need to learn if you’re going to make food for 1-2 people vs 4 people or 6+. You’ll find that you can’t simply scale up every recipe you have and that some recipes would require a commercial kitchen to achieve for larger groups. The best you can do is know your kitchen and equipment and its limitations. For example, if I make crab cakes, I need a pan to fry them up in. My pan only fits 4 cakes and you need 2 per person. So what is the solution if I’m cooking for 4 people? You can add another pan if you have one and have another burner open or you can set the oven to a low temp to keep the first batch warm while you cook the second batch. Some items I will cook in the oven instead on the stove if I’m cooking for more people, but then you need to make sure you’re not using the oven for something else. Aside from that, lots of things scale up well. I’m actually living temporarily with my parents and will scale up certain dishes simply by doubling the amount. If I make pesto with chicken, I have a large cast iron pan that I cram 4 chicken breast halves into and then add pasta to a pot in twice the quantity. Then of course there are large scale meals. I’m taking 6+. I usually try to utilize an outdoor grill in this case and make lots of sides ahead of time that can be served cold or warmed up. I hosted Thanksgiving once and I had to make a planner for the meal to make sure I had all the pots and pans I needed at the right time. Don’t know how people do that every year, but it was fun to do once and I learned a lot. I had to cut dishes out because I only had so much oven space or burners or dishes to put them in. In the end, you’ll learn with practice.
I understand where your coming from. If you are used to cooking “by the seat of your pants” for one scaling to a group is more complex than just increasing the amounts.
A couple things that can trip you up:
Prep: Bigger ingredient amounts mean you probably should prep them before starting. E.g I can peel and dice one potato in the time it takes water to come to a boil. 6 potatoes, not so much. Do a mise en place.
Seasoning: taste more often and consider aiming for a more “average” palette. E.g I like my food with very low salt but more pepper, but I don’t do this when cooking for others.
Pans: larger sizes mean you might have to do some steps in batches (browning) or use two pans where you could have used a single pan for one (e.g. split the pan and brown meat at the same time as cooking onions). Create pans/trays to hold the parts of the meal that are partially cooked. When making a lot of something, a little prep and organization makes things go smoothly since you might be repeating the same task several times, so if that task is a little quicker, you get a big benefit. Whereas you might not want the extra prep pans to wash when cooking for one, when cooking for more the better organization actually makes it go quicker.
You still can cook by taste/eye/instinct for the ingredients and amounts. It’s just that planning and organization becomes more important.
I’ve been vegetarian for 22 years or so now, and the recent uptick in vegan food reminds me of the early years of being vegetarian. When I first started there were very few options to eat out where I lived (more rural area didn’t help) and not even a lot of good grocery options. Eventually places started offering in house attempts at vegetarian mains, which led to wildly variable quality, and eventually we saw some standardization across restaurants. It’s rare now to get a vegetarian dish at a restaurant that is terrible.
The article mentions mass market vegan butter being pursued, which makes me hopeful that restaurants will start introducing more vegan meals, and upping their game on that front. The more options for people the better, and as much as the article romanticizes the boutique shops with their in house versions, that isn’t achievable for most restaurants who would otherwise tuck one or two options into their menu.
It depends if you can get it where you are, but Flora plant butter is really good, I’ve used it for cooking and just as a spread and seems to work well.
Over the past five or so years, I’ve watched the vegetarian frozen food section at my supermarket expand from one little freezer door with some Annies meals and Bocca burgers to five or six sections carrying even generic store-brand vegetarian and vegan meals. I don’t often buy prepared food but I like walking by to see what they have. Same with milk options - it went from a shelf with either soy or almond to a full section of different nut milks and flavors.
Some of the wildest changes to me have been at festivals and events. It used to be that you got french fries or onion rings or popcorn and that was about it. Then they started making efforts, as misguided as they could be, like just slapping steamed veggies on a sub roll and calling it done, or serving pasta and plain tomato sauce. Now I go to festivals and there’s usually at least one really good vegetarian option at every stand, if not an entire stand serving just vegan and vegetarian options. I look forward to seeing what unique choices there will be rather than trying to eat ahead of time so I don’t have to worry about it.
Read the article - that’s really not the case anymore. My wife is a baker, and she makes Vegan deserts all the time, I can tell you first hand that when done well, Vegan deserts are every bit as delicious as “normal” ones
I would say it depends on what you are making. Some home vegan baked goods are a fair bit of extra effort to get just right. But honestly, things like croissants are always a pain, which is why I eat them when I got out, versus muffins which I make at home.
Some of my household is vegan, and it’s amazing how much things have changed in the last 5-10 years. It’s no longer a downgrade for the rest of us when we cook/bake vegan stuff. Although I still think that the best vegan meals are from cuisines that inherently embrace veganism/vegetarianism.
Not vegan myself, but I think the move away from mock-meat and mock-dairy opens up more interesting food opportunities. Vegan food is way better when it’s not trying to cater to non-vegan palates.
Definitely, instead of a pretend burger or chicken. I get why some people do it, and we do it a home quite a bit with pretend mince etc. I always feel a bit of a cheat though and am trying and steer my wife away from that.
Sesame oil in ramen definitely takes it to the next level. Another fun addition is liquid dashi concentrate, which lends a nice deep umami flavor.
The other umami adder that’s worth playing with is fish sauce. I find that as it cooks it loses its aroma, making it easy to use in a wide variety of recipes.
Please elaborate. I have a vegetarian here and have not found a vegan dashi. The best I can do is use kombu in my ramen/Asian/miso-based soups (but not in Euro-centric soups, like Senate Bean Soup or Cauliflower-Potato). I’ve got a decent vegan Worcestershire sauce, and would love a link for a good vegan dashi base to add to my cooking toolkit.
For me what made a huge difference was adding acid, specially for stews. A hearty splash of vinegar or soy sauce while stewing, or even a dash of lime just before serving takes it from “meh” to “seconds please!”.
I think halloween for me is more sweet treats than savoury, how about cooking up an afternoon tea? You could cut sandwiches into ghosts and pumpkins with some cookie cutters. Make some cute muffins, cakes, etc. Here’s a few I’ve seen.
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