Fun, creativity key to cooking up the perfect dish

As college students, it can be difficult to create a delicious meal every night or even every time you get a chance to cook. And let’s be honest — a dinner of Ramen noodles or Hamburger Helper every night can get very boring. So how can you make it a better dinner, both in taste and even how it looks (because a bowl of white Ramen noodles gets depressing after a few minutes)? One simple but key ingredient that is usually never recorded in the cookbooks: creativity.

Creativity can turn any boring meal into a great masterpiece. Cooking can be seen as a form of art, so that would make creativity in the kitchen just as important as it does when writing a poem or painting a picture. Just think about the TV chefs you may see. Their plates taste delicious, but they also look amazing — so good you almost don’t want to eat the plate. But that’s not the only way that you can be creative.

Let’s take that bowl of Ramen noodles for example. How can you turn that into a creative dish? This is the moment when you can let your imagination begin to run a little bit wild. You can add all sorts of different spices and even additional foods to the plate. If you have a pack of chicken-flavored Ramen, add some chopped-up pieces of chicken breast meat to it. You have shrimp-flavored Ramen? Toss a few shrimp into it and make it like a shrimp pasta bowl (add some Old Bay seasoning as well).

You never have to stick to the basics when it comes to cooking food. Yes, follow the directions, especially if it’s your first time cooking, but after one or two tries, get bold. Get creative. Add something different. Try another spice, replace one ingredient with another, change it up a little bit. The important thing to keep in mind when you are cooking is to let your personality shine through your own food. Add your own style and flavor to it.

I’ll give you a good example: Many people know me for my cornbread recipe. But how I make it is vastly different from most recipes. But that is why so many people love to eat it; it’s different but delicious. Adding my own creativity to the recipe made it my own (and one that I guard carefully to avoid any duplication).

The point is that you don’t have to always cook the same thing the same way every time. Feel free to branch out and try new and different things. You never know how something will come out and taste unless you try new things. You never know what you may like and how things may taste. Isn’t college supposed to be about exploring new things? Why not apply that ideology to your cooking as well? So get in that kitchen and start cooking and make something brand new. Have fun!