Tasting as you go.

Heat fluctuates. Ingredients vary. Time compounds your decisions into consequences.

Most people don’t get into trouble because they make bad decisions.
They get into trouble because they don’t stop long enough to notice they’re off course.

Cooking exposes this fast.

If you’ve ever tasted something and felt that little internal nope, you already know what I mean. Something’s off, and you’ve already fed it to your family.

If you’re not stopping to check where you are, you’re not navigating. You’re just following steps, hoping they don’t lead you off a cliff. Sometimes that’s the appeal. Following a recipe to the letter shifts the blame and responsibility onto the author. It takes the heat off you. You don’t need confidence if you’re “just following directions.”

Tasting as you go isn’t about obsessing over seasoning.
It’s the pause. The recalibration. The moment where you ask, what am I actually building right now?

That pause matters.

Because the five basic tastes, sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami, aren’t goals. They’re signals.
Too sharp. Too flat. Too heavy. Too thin. Muddy. Hollow. Dense.

Pause -> Taste -> Name the signal -> Adjust one variable.

Recipes can’t do that work for you.

They can’t account for today’s tomatoes, today’s constraints, today’s distractions. They can’t tell you when “following the steps” has turned into sleepwalking.

So the most important step in cooking is often the one that doesn’t move anything forward.
The willingness to stop and ask, is this still heading where I want it to go?

This goes beyond food.

Projects drift. Relationships shift. Plans pick up speed. Without moments of reassessment, people confuse motion for progress and commitment for correctness.

Anthony Bourdain once said, “Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one’s life.”

Context comes from attention. Memory comes from presence. Neither happens if you never stop to look.

This is where tasting as you go earns its place.

This whiskey glaze, on paper, is straightforward. In practice, it demands awareness. Too much whiskey and it bulldozes everything. Too little and the sauce loses its spine. The balance isn’t found by following steps.

It’s found by pausing, tasting, and choosing the next adjustment with purpose.

With this recipe, you aren’t along for the ride.
You’re driving it.