The Importance of Being Able To Alter Recipes

Another skill that will become important down the road is the ability to alter recipes.  Right now, I plan for leftovers.  I love leftovers, whether it's being able to have an easy lunch the next day, or making a double batch of lasagna for dinner so that one can be frozen for use later in the month.  But as the reality hit me a few years back, I realized the electricity may not be around forever, or it may not be reliable enough for safe food refrigeration.  I would need to be able to prepare just enough food for the upcoming meal so that leftovers wouldn't spoil and waste precious food.  I'm really going to miss that someday.

That means I'm going to have to be able to alter most of my family's favorite recipes.  It's something we all go through to some extent as children grow and then strike out on their own. When the children were younger and our family was growing, it was easy to simply double a recipe to feed everyone.  But scaling down has different challenges.  How to you go from one egg to one half?  Or what if you have to reduce a recipe to make one or two loaves instead of three?  That's a bit more math than is sometimes easily done in the head.  Well, it was easier when I was younger.

Even if all the ingredients are bulk, reducing the amounts called for can be a challenge.  But when you need to go from one full can to one-half or one-third of a can, that can mean some serious waste.  However, if the canned goods can be replaced with dehydrated or freeze-dried ingredients, the waste is eliminated.

For example:

Instead of doing what I should have been doing one day, I was surfing the web and somehow stumbled upon a recipe for Southwestern Wheat Bread.  I tweaked it a little bit, and it turned out great.  The family all enjoyed the change of pace.  The original-but-adapted-a-little-bit recipe is below.

Southwestern Wheat Bread
1 3/4 cups warm water
1 tablespoon yeast
1/2 cup cornmeal
4 cups whole wheat flour
4 cups white flour
2 tablespoons oil1 tablespoon salt
1 can (4 oz) diced green chilies
1 can (4 oz) chopped olives, drained
1 can (15 oz) corn, drained
1 large onion, chopped
1-2 jalapenos, seeded and chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese, optional


Dissolve yeast in warm water.  Stir in remaining ingredients and knead ten minutes, adding more flour if necessary.  Let rise one hour in a warm location.  Punch down dough, divide into three pieces, and form three loaves.  Place in greased 4x8" loaf pans and let rise again.  Bake at 375 for 35-40 minutes, or until done.

Comments:  The only thing I didn't really like is that it makes three loaves.  It's fine when life is all hunky-dorry and the bread can be frozen for later.  We all really like fresh homemade bread around here, and we like a change of pace, but three loaves of most anything but sandwich bread is a little much to go through.  Unfortunately, when refrigeration is limited down the road, opening cans of green chilies, olives, and corn to use only a third of each to make one loaf of bread isn't going to work well, either.

But there is a workaround, and that is dehydrating the vegetables.  Now I already buy dehydrated onions.  They're easy enough to do at home, but the smell is pretty potent and it's so cheap to buy them at the Home Storage Center.  So that leaves the chilies, jalapenos, olives, and corn.  Frozen corn is super easy to dehydrate.  Buy frozen corn, dump on dehydrator tray, return in 8-12 hours, cool, and package for longer term storage.  With olives, just open the can, drain well, spread them on the dehydrator tray, and check them after 5-6 hours.  Green chilies and jalapenos can be done the same way, or you can pick them fresh from the garden and then dehydrate them.  And this way, it's so much easier to measure out just what is needed for making one loaf of bread.

Southwestern Wheat Bread using dehydrated vegetables

3/4 cup warm water
1 teaspoon yeast
1/4 teaspoon sugar
3 tablespoons cornmeal
1 1/3 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/3 cups white flour
2 teaspoons oil1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon dehydrated diced green chilies
1 tablespoon dehydrated chopped olives
3 tablespoons dehydrated corn
2 tablespoons dehydrated onions
1 teaspoon dehydrated chopped jalapenos
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/3 cup shredded cheddar cheese, optional

Rehydrate the dehydrated vegetables in warm water for 30-45 minutes before beginning to make the bread.  After the vegetables have rehydrated, add the yeast and sugar.  Stir in remaining ingredients and knead ten minutes, adding more flour if necessary.  Let rise one hour in a warm location.  Punch down dough and form into a loaf.  Place in a greased 4x8" loaf pan and let rise again.  Bake at 375 for 35-40 minutes, or until done.

Links to related posts:
Quick and Dirty Dehydrating
Home Storage Centers  

For further reading:
https://www.thespruceeats.com/how-to-scale-a-recipe-995827
https://www.cookkeepbook.com/how-to-duplicate-scale-recipes
https://mykitchencalculator.com/
https://skillet.lifehacker.com/divide-multiply-or-adapt-any-recipe-in-one-click-with-1730632423

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1.14.23