Purpose of Recipes

I love recipes.  I must since I own about 30 or more (emphasis on the “more”) cookbooks.  I like to read through them and think about making different dishes or whipping up a wonderful desert.

But I think much of my actual cooking doesn’t involve recipes. I will refer to a recipe if I am trying something new but much of the time, I just put things together based on past experience and what I think will taste good.

That said, I think a recipe would have come in very handy today.  I had to make chicken salad sandwiches for the funeral at my church. I have made chicken salad on numerous occasions but it was always a small amount and would make about six or eight sandwiches.  Today I was making somewhere in the vicinity of 30 sandwiches, albeit small sandwiches.

I really wasn’t sure how much chicken, celery, onion or mayo to use in order to make the sandwiches.  I asked a friend and she said she usually uses the large pack of split chicken breasts and goes from there.  Ok, good starting point.  If I know the quantity of chicken, I can probably figure out the rest.

So I thawed out the four split chicken breasts I had in my freezer and bought two more to make the equivalent of the large package they sell at the store. I then roasted them in the oven with salt and pepper, let them cool and then put the in the fridge to cool overnight.

This morning, I took the chicken off the bone and removed the skin.  I then chopped it into tiny little pieces (rather than shredding it which is what I do when making large sandwiches). I ended up with a large bowl of chicken.

How much celery and onion should I add to this large bowl of chicken?  I studied it and proceeded to chop up a large, sweet onion and five stalks of celery into a small dice.  I added these two ingredients a little at a time to the chicken and tossing it together until I felt that the mixture had the right proportion of chicken to vegetable.

Next I started scooping in mayonnaise. A few large spoonfuls at a time, mixing it with my hands. I would mix a while, study it and then add more mayo until I reached the right texture and flavor I was trying to create. Then I added salt and pepper and tasted it again. Perfect!

Now to make the actual sandwiches.  I cut open the rolls and began loading them with the chicken salad.  I filled 26 rolls (four of the rolls came completely apart and I couldn’t use them) and then ran out of rolls.  I was left with about three cups of chicken salad.

This was then I realized the purpose of recipes.  If I had an actual recipe for making 30 chicken salad sandwiches, I would have known the proportion of ingredients and I wouldn’t have spent so much time contemplating the ingredients.  This is why other people try out recipes, calculating the correct amount of each ingredient and stating how many people the recipe will feed.  They do this work to save the rest of us from doing it. That is the purpose of using other people’s recipes and cookbooks.

Then again, it was fun to just put it together without a recipe and to make it my own.  They really did taste good, or so I was told from those who ate them at the reception after the funeral.

If I had measured everything as I went along, I would write down the recipe and post it here. But I didn’t.  I’ll try to remember to do that next time.  Or simply use a recipe.  Nah…. knowing me, I will probably just wing it again.