What's your method to creating new recipes?

[BBQBenny]

Be it a rub that is yours or a barbecue sauce that's your creation. Do you guys start from scratch? Start with an existing recipe and make changes in ingredient amounts or ingredient substitutions? Do you start with an existing BBQ sauce as a base and add to it?

Many different ways to skin a cat, and I'd like to see the various ways that folks create their own tastes.

 

[tallbm]

Be it a rub that is yours or a barbecue sauce that's your creation. Do you guys start from scratch? Start with an existing recipe and make changes in ingredient amounts or ingredient substitutions? Do you start with an existing BBQ sauce as a base and add to it?

Many different ways to skin a cat, and I'd like to see the various ways that folks create their own tastes.

Hi there and welcome!

Well it depends on the cooking dish/situation for me.

For seasoning/rubs I start with the base of Salt, Pepper, Onion, Garlic (SPOG) for basically any meat. If you look at all of the seasonings and rubs out their most of the time first 4 listed ingredients (they must list in order of most used to least used) are SPOG.
Start with SPOG and then branch out from there to make any kind of seasoning/rub needed for the dish:

• Mexican/Tex-Mex - add ground cumin, chili powder, maybe paprika and/or cilantro depending on the dish
• Pork Butt/Rib seasoning - simply add Paprika, I don't add sugar to my seasonings or rubs. I let the BBQ sauce handle the sweet component for my BBQ... I think no sugar for BBQ seasoning is basically a Texas thing as well
• Steaks and Chops for grilling - add ground cayenne pepper or a similar ground red pepper to kind of mimic what Montreal Steak seasoning does
• Chinese - add ground ginger and replace Salt with Soy sauce. Use toasted sesame seed oil rather than olive or other vegetable oils for the extra Chinese flavor
• Cajun - add cayenne pepper and bay leaf as needed
• etc. etc.

For sauces like a BBQ sauce it depends. If it's a thicker tomato based sauce then I use ketchup as one of the ingredients, if it's a Carolina style bbq sauce then I use tomato juice and add ingredients from there. I don't care for the hardcore vinegar only bbq sauces so mine will have some form of tomato AND some brown sugar for sure but wont necessarily be super sweet. Also being from TX I prefer to have my sauces be savory as well as have little kick to them vs no spicy kick at all.

When it comes to things like Enchiladas, Mole, or Spaghetti sauce I just buy a decent version of the sauce off the shelf and then doctor it up from there.

For Salsa, it is rare for me to buy anything off the shelf. All that Pace and Pace wanna be stuff is absolutely sickening to me. I make my salsa using a good canned whole peeled tomato and then add all the other ingredients and seasonings from there.

My gravy however always comes off the shelf either in packet form or jarred form. I'm fairly lactose intolerant so no milk is ever around to make white gravy and I to this day have never been able to find a decent recipe to make brown gravy from scratch so I stick to some good and simple brown gravy packets or jarred stuff.

That's about all the sauces I can think of. I hope this info helps :)

 

[Hawging It]

I have been making my own BBQ sauce for 30 years but I start with high quality store bought sauce then start adding the extra goodness to it. Never had gravy from a jar. Make my own both brown and white. Learned the gravy making from my grandma many years ago. Lived to be 98 and used lard in everything.

 

[jcam222]

For both rubs and sauces I start with a recipe I find. If I like I enough the first time I modify it over time to make it my own.

 

[noboundaries]

After I taught myself to cook using a Fannie Farmer cookbook, I've never met a recipe I left intact. I ALWAYS make changes.

I rarely baked because my wife said you can't change bread, cake, and pastry recipes. Well, she was wrong. I've started creating my own bread, bran muffin, and pie recipes, but usually start by researching what other people are doing to learn techniques, then make the ingredient changes I want. Same for rubs, sauces, and bbq.

I make all our whole wheat and seeded breads now, using a technique and ingredients that make them moist and delicious. Her coworkers will see her sandwiches at work, ask her where she bought the bread, and when she tells them I made it, their response is not printable here. And, the breads only take two hours start to finish, not hours and hours.

Heck, tonight I make a Potato and Roasted Veggie Cream Soup and never referenced a recipe. I did write my recipe down, though, because I have issues remembering what I did if it turns out great. Tonight's soup was a hit.

I'm in the process of putting together a low-salt rub for smoking almonds. Still testing. Might use commercial, but really want to put my own together.

YouTube is a GREAT idea generator. I go there all the time.

 

[chef jimmyj]

There is very few NEW creations. In the US, 99.9% of every Spice Rub, Sauce Recipe or any dish for that matter, can be traced back to some origin, either in the States, 100 to 200 years ago, if we are talking BBQ anything, or to the countries our ancestors came from, for other dishes. Only Molecular Gastronomy can be considered relatively New, as it was created only a couple of decades ago.
You can't make anything that has not been done before...BUT...You can research what's been done in the past, either by Type of Food, Regional Variations or Country of Origin. Then, to make it Your Recipe, when you adjust, add or delete ingredients to your liking.
My Tangy Finishing Sauce, is a variation on North Carolina Vinegar Sauce. NC Sauce is usually pretty basic, Apple Cider Vinegar, Hot Pepper Flakes, S & P and a bit of Ketchup or other Tomato Product. After looking at a variety of Recipes, I pulled some ingredients from here, some from there and then added what I like. I played with the proportions until I was happy with the result. After posting the recipe on SMF, others tried it, liked it as well and my Tangy Finishing Sauce, took off being shared hundreds of times. Some guy's have taken my recipe and tweaked it to their taste, making it Their Finishing Sauce.
So that's the Secret, do some research, then follow the Recipe As Is, or You Do You, and make it Your Original Recipe...JJ

 

[Steve H]

I agree with chef jimmyj I may have created a couple of recipes over my years. Though it is hard to know for sure. Just because I thought them up. And didn't see them them elsewhere. Doesn't mean I was the first. I'm like most others. I'll find a recipe. Like it. But modify it a bit, or allot, to fit my own liking.

 

[xray]

If I find a recipe, I like to make it “as is” when trying it for the first time and then make any changes afterwards to suite my taste.

If I don’t change a thing, the author or poster gets full credit. Once I start changing things up a bit it’s a new recipe.

Everything old is new again.