By Chef Alexis Hernandez
The Myth About Chefs Sharing Recipes
There is this idea that chefs are always happy to hand over a recipe.
Ask nicely, and we will write it down on a napkin, tell you every step, and send you home with the secret.
Maybe some do.
I usually did not.
For years, I held back a recipe that was not even complicated. It was not foie gras foam or some impossible pastry.
It was stuffing.
My stuffing.
I wrote about the first version of that table in Wet Bread and Cuban Roots.
What Was In It
It had chorizo, mushrooms, dried cornbread, and tostones. Onion, celery, and garlic too, because some things still know their place.
It was not revolutionary.
It was just mine.
The recipe came out of a very specific time in my life, when we were trying to figure out what our table looked like.
Cuban on one side. Southern Indiana on the other.
There was no neat version of that in a cookbook.
So I started playing with it.
It took a few tries before it stopped feeling like an idea and started feeling like ours.
That is when it became hard to give away.
Why I Held It Back
Years later, I started serving it to guests.
By then it had settled into itself. Cleaner. More confident. The kind of dish people remembered.
That is when the questions started.
“Can I get the recipe?”
“I need this for my holiday table.”
“You have to write this down.”
I always said yes.
I also always found a reason not to do it right then.
More wine. Another cocktail. A change of subject.
It was not because I thought nobody else should have it.
I just was not ready to separate the dish from what it meant.
That stuffing was never just stuffing.
It came out of the years when we were building our own traditions and trying to make one table feel like it belonged to both of us.
What I Finally Understood
Eventually, I stopped guarding it so closely.
Not because I stopped caring.
Because I realized nobody was taking anything from me by making it.
They could follow the recipe.
They could get close.
But they would not have our kitchen, our timing, or the reasons I put those ingredients together in the first place.
And maybe that is what took me so long to understand.
A recipe can be written down.
What made it yours usually cannot.
When You Know It’s Time
Now I think timing matters with recipes.
There are some you give away easily. There are some you hold onto until they stop feeling raw.
Until they no longer feel like proof of something you are still trying to protect.
That stuffing was one of those.
It is out in the world now.
And I am glad it is.
But I still think it is interesting that the recipe people wanted most was never the fanciest thing I made.
Just the one that took me the longest to let go of.
Chef Alexis Hernandez writes The Other Side of the Stove. His work has also appeared in News of Sun City Center and South County, and he has appeared on Food Network Star and Cutthroat Kitchen.
