A Kitchen Resolution Worth Making: Follow the Recipe Exactly (Published 2021) (2024)

Most nights, I throw together dinner using whatever is in my fridge, picking dishes from a mental catalog of options and preparing them from muscle memory.

I cook professionally, so the food comes out nice. But it doesn’t make my heart race a little, doesn’t make me forget that I’m standing over my own stove because I’m tasting a place, a passion from somewhere far more thrilling than my kitchen.

I felt all that last month when I made Claudia Serrato’s recipe for carne con chile rojo. While cooking, I wondered whether I should substitute chicken broth for vegetable or raise the oven temperature, but I chose to follow her instructions to the letter. And I was rewarded with chuck roast braised so tender, it collapsed under my fork, readily shredding into fine threads to soak up a flame-red sauce fruity and hot with dried chiles.

My New Year’s kitchen resolution is to follow recipes exactly as written, to get to know their creators without altering the dishes to match my own experiences or tastes.

The obvious benefits are eating something delicious and learning something new, not as an armchair traveler or restaurant diner but as an active participant. The more nuanced reward is challenging my culinary framework, to keep moving toward a more expansive and equitable worldview. And my hope is that this form of cooking with empathy, if enough people adopt it, can lead to greater unity and understanding even beyond the kitchen.