7 Ways to Get Creative with Your Cooking

Exceptional cooking is all about creativity. It’s about trying out new ingredients and flavors and creating dishes that you can be proud of. If you’d like to spice things up in the kitchen, there are plenty of ways that you can boost your creativity and inject an element of fun into your cooking.

1 . Search for New Recipes

If you want to get creative with your cooking, you’ve got to shake things up a little. Do you find yourself  always cooking the same things over and over?  Repeating the same recipes too often is a surefire way to get bored in the kitchen. Start off by researching a few new recipes – check out cooking influencers, recipe books, and blogs, and actually give the recipes a try, rather than just saving them!  To start, try this chicken piccata recipe from That’s Low Carb.

You might also like to try out a few recipe apps to find more inspiration. Recipe apps come with many great features, from tips and meal plans to timing tools. With the right resources, it’s much easier to creatively expand your meal plans.

2. Make Up Your Own Recipes

Once you’ve started experimenting with lots of different recipes, you’ll feel far more confident. At this stage, you might like to improvise a little and start making up your own recipes. The first step is to take recipes you know and love, and swap out a few of the ingredients. It’s fun to incorporate new flavors to make the recipe your own. After a while, you’ll get an idea of which flavors and textures complement each other. It’s this kind of experimentation that will help you to create more original recipes, so be brave!

Why not create your very own hand-written recipe book? Here you can include all of your favorite recipes from the web and cookbooks, plus recipes that you’ve created yourself. You can include pictures, notes, and plenty of new ideas.

3. Get Inspired by Podcasts

If you want to get really creative in the kitchen, there are lots of podcasts that you can use to get inspired. Here are a few gems to start you off:

Recipe Club

Join top Chef David Chang to learn some tasty new recipes and cooking tips. You don’t need to be a pro to cook these tasty dishes. Each week David chooses a new ingredient and challenges chefs to cook a dish, before declaring the recipe club winner.

Tanyas Table:

This is a fantastic podcast to learn about dishes from different cultures. Recent episodes have included interviews with award-winning chefs, including Karen Ackunowicz and Edourado Jordan.

4. Take Cooking Classes

One of the best ways to get cooking inspiration is to sign up for a cooking class. There are so many different classes to try, whether you’re an amateur or a skilled cook. It’s worth taking a specialty cooking class; try Spanish cooking, Thai cooking, or dessert workshops to get started.

Cooking workshops can be more fun with a friend, so consider asking one of your pals to come along with you. You can opt for an online class or in-person, depending on your schedule. In-person classes can be more fun, whereas online classes can offer an element of convenience.

5. Foraging & Wild Cooking

Why not try foraging or wild cooking? Foraging means exploring the outdoors to gather natural ingredients. These ingredients might include nuts, berries, plants, vegetables, fruits, or mushrooms. You can choose to go foraging alone or book a foraging and wild cooking class. If you go foraging alone, you’ll need to learn which plants are safe to eat. It a good idea to read a foraging guidebook and learn as much as you can, before you get started.

6. Experiment with Spice Blends

One easy way to get creative with your cooking is to experiment with spice blends. Choose a few spices that complement one another, mix them all up and make your own marinade. Cooking is all about making a recipe your own, and daring to try new flavors. To give you some great ideas, try reading a few books about spice blends and marinades.

7. All the Practice

If you want to experiment with new recipes you’ll need lots of people to practice on. Hosting dinner parties is a great way to try out new dishes and get feedback from your friends. When you’re planning your event, you might like to check out these dinner party planning tips.

Getting creative involves plenty of trial and error. You might not always create a dish that you love, but you can always enjoy the process.

This post was contributed, and it was made possible by the support of our readers.

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