I’m always looking in magazines, in books, and online at recipes and finding quite a few that look rather tasty. But while scanning these and picking which ones I want to try, I rarely end up following them to the letter. I look at them more as inspiration and I take plenty of liberties to adjust them as I see necessary.
For new cooks, this may not be the best approach as you are working to understand how everything comes together. But as you taste the final product and decide if it came out as you expected, you start to learn how to adjust things going forward. It may take a while to get to the point that you feel less bound by the recipe and its directions, and tread lightly with changing up the recipe for baked goods because that is really more of a formula. But you will get to the point where you know how to make the proper adjustments for your tastes and the people you are cooking for.
You will notice in the recipes that I include on this site that my ingredients lists are often less precise, and in the directions I suggest alterations and adjustments. That’s because that I don’t look at the recipe as a set of hard and fast guidelines. It gets you started, and then you can add your own creativity along the way.
Salsas and sauces are two where I rarely follow an exact recipe, and I probably never do those the same way twice. I have a basic template in my (very jumbled) mind, but often those depend on what I have in the fridge. You can find my quick and easy salsa recipe here, but if I were to make that right now, it would not be exactly the same as the recipe. If I have a couple of green onions sitting in the veggie drawer, I might cut them up and throw them in. Half a roast or fresh poblano? Throw it in. One lonely habanero in a bag by itself? Throw it in.
Any or all of those additions work well in the salsa, and there are plenty more you can add as well. Now, I’m probably not going to throw a habanero in spaghetti sauce, unless I happen to be making a spicy version of that dish. (And now that I have suggested it, I think I might go make a spice version of that dish). I’m going to make sure the ingredients fit with the flavor profile, and the more cooking you do the better you are at judging that.
Just don’t look at that recipe as an ironclad set of rules that you have to follow. Even in baking I take some liberties, and that rarely leads to an oven disaster. Find your inner creativity and experiment with recipes (mine usually involves spicing things up), knowing that they provide the inspiration, but you have the final say on what does into the dish.