> On the other hand, I refuse to make recipes found on the internet. They work extremely rarely if you’re like me and don’t have a sense of “what the authors really mean when they say X.”
What I do is look at about half a dozen recipes online when I am trying something new. I compare them and make my own recipe based on that. Through practice I can usually glance at them and see pretty quickly what they are doing differently and similarly.
Most dishes come out really well because I can get a feel for the dish before it's made and I have the freedom to make changes based on what the different recipes say (and my intuition). I'd encourage everybody to take this approach and not follow just one recipe.
As an example, my first stop for instant pot recipes is Amy + Jacky and they’ve yet to steer me wrong: https://www.pressurecookrecipes.com/instant-pot-cheesecake-n...
The only time I need to stray from those is for various kinds of ethnic cooking, in which case, a cookbook devoted to them serves a lot better than a website with a bunch of machine generated boilerplate at the beginning.
[The Joy of Cooking]: https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Cooking-Fully-Revised-Updated/dp/... [Better Homes and Gardens]: https://www.amazon.com/Better-Homes-Gardens-Cook-Book/dp/069...
I've since added the America's Test Kitchen cookbook to my collection. (Others, too, of course.) It's very explicitly a cookbook developed by chefs testing out recipes and fine-tuning them to get them just right.
Unfortunately, I rarely have the time & energy to cook from scratch these days, and the majority of the recipes I actually make come from Blue Apron—but they're also a pretty good source, and make some damn good dinners in a very practical amount of time.
For someone who didn’t learn to cook growing up, that book is a godsend.
On the other hand, I refuse to make recipes found on the internet. They work extremely rarely if you’re like me and don’t have a sense of “what the authors really mean when they say X.”