Recipes are much like road maps, a guide to help you navigate the process of getting food to your food truck customers. Following recipes is a good thing, but too much of a good thing can work against you in your food truck kitchen.

When developing your final food truck menu you and your staff should use recipes as a guide and always remember that it is never a good idea to pop something into the oven or pan, walk away, and come back only at the beck and call of your food truck kitchen timer.

The best chefs are able to do is to develop an intuitive sense of how ingredients work in dishes. This will free you from the shackles of measurements and gives you a lot more flexibility.

Don’t Follow Recipes With Blind Devotion

Cooking isn’ always an exact science and unless you’re baking, which is an exact science, you have to find a balance between your recipe and reality. Oven strengths vary; an electric cook top may not heat your sauté pan as quickly or evenly as a gas range. Check your food periodically and if your chicken breast is starting to burn after 4 minutes in the pan, lower the heat and flip it, even if the recipe says cook for 5 minutes per side.

Cooking is an art; the perfect storm of practice, common sense and skill, in that order. So relax, cook more often and have fun while you are doing it.

While it’s important for your staff to follow your recipes once they’ve been developed. When you are developing the recipes for your food truck we hope you now understand why great chef’s don’t follow recipes blindly.

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