Are recipes today over complicating cooking?

Who doesn’t love a new recipe book? The thrill of learning a new technique or tip that could take your dinner game up a notch. There also isn’t probably a person reading this that has been enthralled in a cooking show from prep to completion like it was a novel you couldn’t put down.

The rise of modern day celebrity chefs have sure added a lot of flavour to our lives but has their changes to the classics and the apparent need to sprinkle chopped parsley on almost every completed meal over complicated things?

Anthony Bourdain is one of those chefs that likes to keep it simple.  He likes to travel the world and experience what others are doing, but when he’s home, it’s simple ingredients and the passion for cooking. Take scrambled eggs for instance.  Almost everyone thinks that they know how to do the “perfect” scrambled eggs.  There are chefs that use think cream, ones that use buttermilk; then there’s Crème fraîche, ricotta cheese, and still, there the ones that sprinkle chopped parsley on it when it’s done.

To Anthony though the name says it all.  Scrambled eggs. Fresh eggs, a pinch of salt and pepper, and a hot pan with a little foaming butter. Lightly beat the eggs, careful not to over beat them as you want a good mix of white and yellow. Cook in the pan using a figure eight stirring method to introduce a bit of air into the cooking to get them nice and fluffy, then serve.  Easy.

This isn’t to say that it’s wrong to add different flavours and styles into your cooking.  It’s variety that’s the spice of life and the variety of spices that are the spice of cooking. There are those that believe the kitchen is akin to the art studio where creativity flows and new dishes and created. A place to explore your creative side with spices, meats, vegetables, and pastries.

It can also be a place of history, like with this YouTube channel where a woman teaches depression era cooking in it’s simplest form.

Although, sometimes it’s also a place where someone just wants some eggs, scrambled, and without chopped parsley on it. 

Do you think some recipes today are too complicated?  Do the classics get messed with too much or is cooking just always ever evolving?