Critical Recipe Literacy

My partner Megan is a librarian, and one of the goals of librarians like herself is to teach something called information literacy. Information literacy is the ability to critically analyze any information you encounter, approaching it with a skeptical eye, understanding how it was produced, by whom, and for what purpose. With the incredible amount of information bombarding us daily from a variety of sources, the ability to pull signal from the noise and assess claims of validity is more important than ever.

What does that have to do with cooking? Well, in my experience, most new chefs (myself included) get their start following recipes, and don’t think much about where the recipe is from. If you’ve already tasted the dish the recipe produces, and the recipe itself is clear and well-written, there isn’t much concern. But a lot of the time, my first inclination was to toss the name of whatever I wanted to make into a search engine and hope for the best. Usually, the first hits are from big crowd-sourced recipe aggregators or heavily monetized mommy blogs. Decent, maybe, but not consistent.

I recently discovered an online course for teaching students how to check their sources, which shares what it calls the SIFT Method: Stop, Investigate the Source, Find better coverage, Trace claims. I’ll try to translate each one to looking at recipes.

Stop

Before grabbing the first recipe you see, stop and take a look at it. Does it make sense? How much detail is given? Are there any steps that are vague or unclear? Any equipment required you don’t own? Is this a dish going to have the flavor profile you want, or is it going to be too sweet, sour, spicy, salty?

Investigate the Source

Where does this recipe come from? A lot of the top hits are blogs that focus on trendy diets. There’s no reason to make a Paleo or Whole 30 version of your dish if you’re not eating the Paleo or Whole 30 diet. What experience do the authors have? One of my favorite food blogs is The Woks of Life. It’s written by a Chinese-American family that has been in the restaurant business for decades, and they are absolutely legit. Not only are the recipes incredible, but they have a detailed breakdown of Chinese ingredients and techniques.

Find Better (or Trusted) Coverage

As mentioned previously, I have my own personal Culinary Mt. Rushmore to draw upon. This means that whenever I see I recipe, I’m always wondering “How would Alton Brown do it?” I don’t always want to cook Alton Brown’s version, mind you. But one of the tremendous benefits of the Internet is the ability to cobble together your own recipes from many sources. If I have a source I trust, I can use their recipe as a foundation, and then look for variations on it, pulling what I like from multiple recipes. Does it always work? No, but looking at multiple recipes to compare and contrast not only provides better results, but will also often teach me something about how the dish is generally made.

Trace the Claims

All cuisine comes from somewhere, even if that somewhere is the inside of a corporation’s laboratory. This step is admittedly optional (when it comes to looking at recipes, at least!) but I enjoy tracing the origins of whatever dish I’m making to better understand it. When was it developed? Who ate it? Do some people make it completely differently than others? Where could I go to eat the best version of the dish in my city (if possible)? All of these add to my understanding and appreciation of the food I’m about to make.