Recipes aren’t just made to be followed – they’re meant to be created. For so many dishes, there are thousands of perfectly tasty variations. And while a recipe may give you a good result, most truly great discoveries come from improvisation.
Whether you’re new to cooking, or improvising makes you nervous, or you just like to tweak recipes as you go, try these tools to build your own recipe, customized to your tastes. When you’re done tweaking, print out your recipe, and get cooking.
I won’t pretend that I’ve covered all the options in these recipe builders. Nor can I offer any guarantees that you will love everything that comes out of it. The point is to demonstrate the flexibility of these recipes: that any combination you choose will pretty much work – and since you’re customizing to your own tastes, there’s a good chance you’ll like your results better than a random stranger’s recipe.
Don’t feel bound by the constraints of these recipe builders, either. They’re only tools. They are programmatic, and limited by their very nature. So by all means take your customizations further: add or remove a whole step. Add brussels sprouts, or bacon, or triple the amount of cheese. It’s all guidelines, anyway.
The only rule is: have fun!