What is Intuitive Cooking?
You’ve heard me banging on about “Intuitive Cooking,” but what does it really mean?
This Fennel “Al Forno” could just as easily apply to another vegetable or pasta without a recipe.
I once attended a cookbook writer’s panel that had some very disharmonious experts on their panel. The man on the stage, a chef with experience as a restaurateur and at least one cookbook under his belt, sneered condescendingly at his peers on the panel.
“When you are a chef,” he said, throwing his arms into a shrug, “You don’t need a recipe!”
The way in which the chef said his sentiment was not generous to his colleagues at all, and it seems a little bullish to be downplaying the importance of the very thing he was supposed to be speaking about.
And yet— there is a valuable lesson to be taken away from what he is saying.
Recipes are an important part of building culinary skills and expanding a cook’s repertoire, but learning to cultivate specific techniques is a much more freeing way to cook than relying step by step on a book do get your desired result.
This contradiction is why, when asked by a friend or family member to give them a particular “recipe” of a dish I made, I often can’t help them without backtracking quite a bit. There is no recipe; there are ingredients and techniques which you can learn to apply on your own. Learning to look at the general procedure of a recipe once and then forging your own way forward. The heart of intuitive cooking is to feel comfortable estimating your ingredients, working with what you have on hand, and adjusting to the particular quirks of your home kitchen equipments. It is at the same time simplistic and nourishing, kitchen alchemy for your practical needs and your soul.
Kitchen techniques are not just for chefs in restaurants to keep sacred. Often historically, these skills have been taught at the home and passed down from generation to generation. A return to intuitive cooking is instead a culinary reeducation for our current time.
Lessons about getting scrappy and resourceful are just as relevant now as they were back then, although likely for different reasons. We may have access to all the ingredients in the world, but that doesn’t mean we have the time to cook well. Being speedy and discerning with our time and materials is as the more important in a world with limited time and endless unhealthy options in front of us.
Why should you care about intuitive cooking? Three factors in particular come to mind.
Health
The health factor is an important facet of intuitive cooking. As you become more in tune with your cooking instincts, you also gain greater awareness of how what you’re eating makes you feel. It becomes easier to incorporate more produce into your diet deliciously and seamlessly.
These claims come from common sense, but they also are backed up by research. The American Journal of Preventative Medicine’s study in 2017 found that those who cooked at home were more likely to comply with dietary guidelines than those who frequently eat out.
Resourcefulness
Ever looked at a recipe and got discouraged with the number of ingredients you would need to buy? Intuitive cooking is about learning to adapt to those situations using what you have on hand already, likely ending up with a result more to your liking than you would have initially anyway. Intuitive cooking is an important way to dig deep on what you already purchase, keeping down clutter and streamlining your process.
Joy
Cooking is for sustenance, but it should also be for joy. Learning to make your food experiences (both preparing there food and eating it) more delightful should be a priority on some level. If you have to do it all of the time, then shouldn’t it be fun? Being fully present to the experience of making your own food can make the whole event less of a slog.
Turning on your full presence in the kitchen might even spill over to other areas of your life. Using cooking as a mindfulness practice may improve your mood in your everyday actions as well.
How do we start intuitive cooking?
You may be saying, “Lauren, that’s all very good and well, but how do I start cooking intuitively?”
Just like any scenario involving intuition, you have the ability to listen to your surroundings and know what to do. The trick then lies in cultivating your instincts.
For example, my cutting board in my kitchen is set facing away from the stove, but I can still have things cooking behind me without fear of them burning. This case may seem a little simplistic, but I know that the food behind me is okay because I am using my other senses. I can hear that the oil is not too hot and I can smell that nothing is burning. The New York Times wrote a great article about this years ago, asserting that learning to sharpen your senses in the kitchen is the easiest way to improve your cooking.
The umbrella answer for improving your skills, however, is practice. In my free intuitive workbook I give lots of examples of ways you can become less recipe-dependent if you are a recipe junkie. However, it really comes down to trying new techniques, and assessing what works and what doesn’t. If you are not a recipe junkie, then recording your progress is still important. It allows you to honestly assess what is working for you and what doesn’t, so you can become a true whiz in the kitchen.
What is your experience with intuitive cooking? Do you prefer to stick to recipes, or do you like to freestyle it all of the time? I’d love to hear from you!
