Recipe Reduction Tips

Recipe Reduction for Smaller Meals

Try these tips to reduce your recipes when cooking for one or two people:

• Use recipes that are easy to reduce. Eggs are hard to judge use 1 medium egg instead of 2 small ones.  You can also take out 1-2 tablespoons of the recipe liquids if the recipes call for it.  I like to use Eggbeater when baking it’s easy to divide and better for your heart.
• Canned goods are easily deviled into portions.  Drain liquids but save it so you can better eyeball the product. Freeze the unused portion for another dish.  Be sure to stir up canned soups, canned chopped tomatoes, or canned sauces before dividing out their content.
• Sneak up with your seasonings. You can always add more but cannot take back out! Nothing more sad then ruining your dish with too much of a spice. Do use measuring spoons if for nothing else you can repeat the recipe later if you like it.
• Reduce your estimated cooking time by about 5-10 minutes. Watch for brownness closely when baking cakes, breads, cookies.  I like to divide up the cake batter into 2 smaller pans cook until just start to brown take one out to cool and freeze for heating up later.  You can always add more time for casserole or stove top dishes.  Using a good toaster oven to bake is great for saving energy and prevent heating up your whole house!

Like all experiments, notes are an important tool to let you know which one worked!  If your recipe is a success the first try, you might want to do that again.
You can find recipe software that can do the calculations for you but unless you cook a lot it may not be cost effective or worth the trouble.

Conversion Table

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Tagged as: cooking for one, recipe reduction, recipe software