5 Ways (Genius) Recipes Can Change the Way You Cook (2024)

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Today: What makes a recipe genius? The answer is simple.

The question I find myself answering most often (other than "What's the 52 in Food52?" Hint: It's because of the calendar, not the number of cards in a deck.) is "What makes a recipe genius?"

I've been writing the column Genius Recipesfor close to fouryears, and the Genius Recipes cookbookis coming out in eightdays (!!!), so by now I have my answer down. It's simple: A recipe is genius if it will change the way you cook. But that tends to manifest itself in a handful of different ways.

Below, I've explained the five most common ways a recipe can be genius, and partly for a selfish reason. Genius Recipes is powered by this community and our collective cooking knowledge, curiosity, and intuition. Most of the recipes I feature—and the most unexpectedly brilliant ones—come from tips from you. So I'm reminding you all of your mission: If you see a recipe that fits one or more of the following criteria, send it my way. Pretty soon I can start forwarding my emails about that pesky 52 to you too.

1. It simplifies a technique.

Everyone always said you had to do it one way. Boom—you don't! Gumbowhere you don't have to stir the roux for an hour. Potato gratinthat you don't have to layer. Tomato sauceyou don't need to chop a thing for.

2. It solves a problem.

What to do with already seasoned mashed potatoes? The fading herbs left from other recipes? Rock hard peaches? How do you make a salad a day ahead? We've got solutions!

3. It uses an unexpected ingredient.

A salad whose secret ingredient is ice cubes. Fudge made of tofu. Salad dressingmade with the dregs of the bottle of red wine. A cake made of parsley. They made thesewaffles made with cornstarchor fish dusted with Wondrasound pretty tame.

4. It uses the best technique after testing a whole lot of alternatives.

Sometimes I go on the hunt for the best roast chicken(or ratatouille, or pizza, or banana bread), and test every promising recipe I can find. Dara Moskowitz Grumdahlof the radio show Off the Menutold me she thought the book would save her from "decision fatigue," which is exactly what I wanted to do. I am more than happy to suffer the decisions and the just-good or great versions till I find something genius.

5. It sounds just a little insane.

Whipped cream on asparagus. Meatballs made with 2 cups of water. Broccoli—cooked—forever. A hunk of beef tenderloin, wrapped in a dishcloth, thrown in the coals. If it sounds crazy, it might be just crazy enough to work.

Photos by James Ransom

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I'm an ex-economist, lifelong-Californian who moved to New York to work in food media in 2007, before returning to the land of Dutch Crunch bread and tri-tip barbecues in 2020. Dodgy career choices aside, I can't help but apply the rational tendencies of my former life to things like: recipe tweaking, digging up obscure facts about pizza, and deciding how many pastries to put in my purse for "later."