Good Ingredients Do Most Of The Work

There is a type of recipe that makes you tired before you've even started cooking.

Three components. Seventeen ingredients. A sauce for the thing that already has a sauce. Something toasted separately. Something pickled yesterday. A garnish that somehow requires another pan.

All introduced with the words “quick and easy”.

There is a place for cooking like this.

A long Sunday. A birthday. A weekend when cooking is the activity rather than the thing standing between you and dinner.

But it isn't what makes someone a good cook.

Good cooking starts much further back.

A decent tomato.

Good bread.

A tin of beans.

Eggs.

Potatoes.

Garlic.

Butter.

Olive oil that actually tastes of something.

Salt.

Heat.

Knowing what to do with them.

You don't need extravagant ingredients to make very good food. You need good versions of the basics and enough understanding not to ruin them.

Good ingredients do most of the work.

Good doesn't mean expensive

This is important.

We are not suggesting you replace everything in your kitchen with the most expensive version available.

That would be a fairly miserable way to cook.

A good ingredient is one that does its job properly.

Sometimes that is a beautiful tomato in August.

Sometimes it is a 70p onion.

Sometimes it is a tin of tomatoes because the fresh ones available in February taste predominantly of water.

Frozen peas are good ingredients.

Tinned beans are good ingredients.

Dried pasta is one of the greatest ingredients ever made.

Potatoes are cheap and capable of being the best thing on the table.

The point isn't expense.

It is knowing which things matter, buying them well when you can and then actually using them.

Start with the things you use all the time

If we were building a kitchen from nothing, we wouldn't start with truffle oil.

We'd start with salt.

Olive oil.

Butter.

Vinegar.

Lemons.

Garlic.

Onions.

Eggs.

Beans.

Pasta.

Rice.

Bread.

Tinned tomatoes.

A hard cheese.

A few vegetables.

The things that quietly become dinner over and over again.

Get those right and an enormous number of meals become possible without buying twelve new ingredients every time you want to cook.

That is the kind of kitchen we believe in.

Not an impressive pantry.

A useful one.

Simple and careless are not the same thing

Good ingredients make cooking simpler.

They don't make attention unnecessary.

If you are making tomatoes with olive oil, the tomatoes need seasoning.

If you're roasting potatoes, the oven needs to be hot.

If you're frying an egg, the pan cannot be approached with fear.

If you're cooking vegetables, colour is generally your friend.

If something tastes flat, taste it before reaching for another ingredient.

Does it need salt?

Acid?

More heat?

More time?

More oil?

Often the difference between food that tastes fine and food you immediately want another plate of is not an obscure ingredient.

It is enough of the basics.

Use enough

This is where home cooking can become strangely cautious.

A tablespoon of oil because the recipe said a tablespoon.

A tiny pinch of salt.

Medium heat because high heat feels slightly confrontational.

Then the food tastes flat and we assume it needs something more complicated.

Restaurants understand something useful here.

They use enough.

Enough salt.

Enough butter.

Enough acid.

Enough heat.

Enough oil.

They taste constantly and adjust.

There is no secret sachet of restaurant flavour hidden under the counter.

A lot of the time, they are simply less frightened of the ingredients already in the dish.

Olive oil is a basic

This is one of the reasons we started with olive oil.

It isn't an occasional ingredient.

It is one of the foundations.

It starts dinner.

Garlic, onions, chilli, herbs and spices cook in it. Vegetables roast in it. Eggs fry in it. Sauces begin with it.

And then it comes back at the end.

Over beans.

Across pasta.

Into soup.

Onto tomatoes.

With bread.

The better the oil, the more it can contribute on its own.

But the important part is that it gets used.

A very good bottle sitting untouched in a cupboard isn't doing much for dinner.

Learn a few things properly

You do not need a repertoire of 400 recipes.

You need a handful of things you understand.

Learn how to roast vegetables until they actually have colour.

Learn how much salt pasta water needs.

Learn what happens when garlic goes too far.

Learn to dress a salad without measuring everything.

Learn how to make beans taste like dinner.

Learn when a pan is hot.

Learn what acid does.

Learn when something needs another pour of olive oil.

Once you understand the basics, recipes become ideas rather than instructions you are frightened to deviate from.

That is when cooking becomes considerably more useful.

Dinner can be three things

Tomatoes.

Bread.

Olive oil.

If all three are good, there isn't much left to do.

Salt the tomatoes.

Toast the bread.

Pour the oil properly.

Maybe garlic.

Maybe basil.

Maybe anchovies.

Maybe nothing.

Or beans, greens and bread.

Pasta, butter and parmesan.

Eggs, potatoes and something sharp.

None of this is extravagant.

That is precisely the point.

The food we come back to most often is rarely built from the longest ingredient list.

It is built from a few things that deserve to be there.

Get the basics right

This is probably the closest thing DRZZL has to a cooking philosophy.

Good ingredients do most of the work.

Not expensive ingredients.

Not rare ingredients.

Not ingredients you need to explain to everyone at the table.

Good ones.

Then your job is fairly straightforward.

Use enough.

Season properly.

Give things heat.

Taste what you're cooking.

Know when to stop.

Do those things often enough and something useful happens.

You stop trying to cook impressively.

You just start cooking well.