How many recipes do you get from the internet? How many do you search for from blogs such as mine, for instance? Does it matter to you if they have been tested before you head out to your local store to purchase ingredients and spend your well-earned money?
I do test every single recipe I publish: On this blog post, in my books, and in any and all of the articles I write for publication. As a recipe developer and food writer I take this extremely seriously. As I should. As you should too, because nothing is worse than to make a recipe from start to finish only to find out that it doesn't work. It is my responsibility to make sure that I've tested each recipe to the point where anyone can follow it as it is written and finish it with at least a modicum of success.
There is another reason why I take issue with people who write recipes and share them online without testing them and re-testing them first. And it's this: many people think they are not good cooks because recipes don't work out for them. That irks me. It's unfair because many times the recipes have failed them and not the other way around and because it causes many would-be-cooks to hang up their aprons and quit trying.
I have an on-and-off love affair with blogging (as witnessed by my long absences in between posts) and it's mostly due to the fact that I've become disenchanted with the fact that many of the recipes I see online are either lifted from published work (by someone other than the people posting them), or simply written nilly-willy without going through rigorous testing. The first, in my opinion, is theft (infringed copyright and lifting of someone else's written work); the second is irresponsible. Both are dishonest.
Here is the thing that stops many writers from testing their recipes: ingredients cost money. Unless publishers cover the cost of recipe-testing several times over until they've been tuned, it is a money-losing proposition for many who are just interested in exposure of any kind. And when it comes to online content, well honestly, most of it is unpaid work. There is no one but the person posting the recipe there to cover the bill.
In essence, you're gambling when you follow a recipe from the internet--for all you know, it's been vetted; but for all you know, it hasn't. It is up to you, the consumer, to decide whether or not recipe writers are to be trusted.
Granted, there are cooks who don't follow recipes, who take extreme liberties with recipes (and I don't mean substituting butter for oil, but rather going out on a far limb to try to reinvent a recipe without an iota of whether or not the ingredients can be interchangeable), and then guilt the recipe writer for their own culinary misadventures.
There are also cooks who make up their own recipes entirely during the process. Or cooks who decide that they can skip an entire cooking method and use a different one, only to be surprised at the dismal results. Nothing is wrong with any of these, as this is how all of us learn to cook at one point or another and how many new recipes are created (it's the trial and error way). However, those are not the fault of recipe creators.
True too, is the fact that beginner cooks serve themselves best by learning the basics first before moving on to more intricate dishes. However, once the basics are mastered, the road ahead should be made easier with properly tested recipes.
So does the fact that a recipe writer tests recipes before publishing matter to you? I only ask because it matters to me.
©Copyright Sandra A. Gutierrez 2019; All Rights Reserved. No part or whole can be used, lifted, or published without the express written permission of the author. Play nice.
