What’s your number?
July 29, 2013 by SusieIs it 5? 6? 8? 10? This summer’s cookbooks are having a silent contest for the hearts of cooks who subscribe to the “quick and easy” school of cooking. How many ingredients do we want to see in a recipe? Salt and pepper don’t count, by the way.
America’s Test Kitchen puts its bid right front and center with The 6-Ingredient Solution. Like J.M. Hirsch’s High Flavor, Low Labor, these recipes lean on flavor-packed ingredients (Peppadew peppers, chipotles, pre-made pesto, herbed Boursin cheese).
Raghavan Iyer’s upcoming Indian Cooking Unfolded sets the threshold at 10 ingredients. It’s not much, when you consider that many basic Indian spice mixes have at least that many ingredients.
10 sounds pretty reasonable to me, for the way I cook. I wouldn’t blink at 12 or 15 either. But it also seems to depend on so many other factors, like whether one of the ingredients is a nested sub-recipe (if there are two, that’s often enough to make me throw up my hands in frustration). Or how much prep is called out next to the ingredient (say, “finely chopped,” as opposed to “roasted, peeled, seeded, and pureed”). Even the visual layout of the page might affect how open I am to a long list of ingredients.
How about you? Is there a number beyond which you won’t go? Is there an “ideal” number you find yourself gravitating towards?
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