The process

It starts with one simple question: what high quality ingredients will be available when our boxes go out to the Culiniste community? If a recipe doesn’t start off with awesome ingredients, there’s really no amount of spices or seasoning that can save it. A full month before a menu goes live, our sourcing team meets with our purveyors to exchange thoughts on ingredients that’ll be at their best when the time comes to source them. Sneak peak: we’ve got fresh peas, asparagus and artichokes coming your way in April! Next, we plan out 6 original recipes for each week of the month, making sure that there’s a little bit of fun for everyone: our meat lovers, our seafood enthusiasts, our vegetarian friends..not to mention our junior Culinistes!

That’s it right? Well, not quite! Before we actually get to the 6 recipes that make it to print each week, we’ll often test 10-15 that don’t make the cut.

The science

Balancing taste, texture and aroma can be a tricky endeavor. Ever get that feeling that there’s something missing in a dish? It’s probably because it’s heavy in one of the basic flavors (sweet, salty, sour, bitter or umami) and missing in another. Too bitter? Needs some salt (soy sauce, olives, bacon). Too rich? Reach for some bitter (dark greens, grapefruit). Dish falling flat? Time for some umami (parmesan, anchovies, mushrooms).

Next, we measure out the perfect quantities of every ingredient, remove any steps that can save time in the kitchen, and ensure that each dish is nutritionally complete – with lean proteins, healthy fats and essential carbs – so that every Culiniste box contains only recipes that are good to eat, good for you, and fun to make!

The art

Like any creative process, everyone develops their very own approach to recipe development – and ours is continuously evolving. We love to play with beautiful colors or evoke the wonderful nostalgia of classic dishes. We’re lucky to find inspiration just about everywhere we look: in cookbooks, restaurants and travels (to name a few). But a recipe only becomes our own when we sit down to write it out in our own words, threading in details that reflect our personal experience cooking it.

Let’s get cooking! Check out this week’s recipes.