So, how does a recipe actually make the cut around here?

Everything you want to know.

Friends, I get asked this question a lot in my weekly Q&As. The truth is, the answer deserves so much more than a quick sentence or two in Stories. The answer is not simple, and it is definitely not as effortless as it might look from the outside.

So today I’m pulling back the curtain all the way. Not just on how I come up with ideas, but on the whole thing—the inspiration, the decision-making, the testing, the tasting, the scrapping, the refining, and everything that happens before a recipe ever lands on your feed or your dinner table.

I think a lot of people assume I wake up, have a cute idea, film it, post it, and boom, I’m done. And while I wish that were the case, that is not what happens. What you see on Instagram and the blog is the very end of a process that involves a lot of thinking, a lot of pen-and-paper scribbling, a lot of cooking and eating and adjusting, and occasionally starting over completely.

The short answer is they come from a lot of places. But the number one source is always my own cravings. I ask myself, What do I actually want to eat right now? What sounds delicious? What have I been thinking about all week?

I don’t sit down and strategize about SEO or think about what’s going to perform well on the algorithm. That is a very efficient way to make food that tastes mediocre. I make food I actually want to eat, and because I hold high standards for what goes on my own plate, I think that’s a big part of why the recipes land the way they do.

I also think a lot about flavor building— how ingredients work together and what a dish needs to feel complete. Samin Nosrat’s book Salt Fat Acid Heat literally changed the way I approach recipe development. I’m always thinking about balance: Is there enough acid? Is there a fat that ties it together? Does it need more salt or a little sweetness to round it out?

That framework is the backbone of basically every savory recipe I make, even when I’m not consciously thinking about it.

One of my quirks is that some of my best ideas come to me in the middle of the night. I keep a notepad on my nightstand and I will wake up at 2am with a flavor combination in my head and scribble it down before I lose it by morning. It may be slightly unhinged but it works!

Beyond my own cravings, a few other big sources of inspiration include:

Restaurants. Whenever I eat out, half my brain is stockpiling notes for later. From Sweetgreen and Erewhon to nicer spots here in San Francisco and abroad — my Dishoom-inspired Chili Broccoli Salad came directly from eating at that restaurant and spending the entire meal thinking, I have to figure out how to make this at home. The people who eat with me regularly will tell you that this habit is extremely charming, I’m sure!

Trends. I’m on Instagram and TikTok like the rest of you, and when I see a trend, my first thought is almost always: How do I make this better? Not in an arrogant way, but because a lot of viral recipes are more about the concept than the execution. They’re a great starting point, but there’s usually room to make the flavors more layered, the technique more foolproof, or the whole dish more worth your time to actually make.

The KJ community. Every week, I do Q&As on Instagram and people drop recipe requests all the time. You guys have such great ideas. So, the requests that feel like they’ll resonate with a wide range of people, those go on my list to try!

Those are my biggest sources of inspiration, but having an idea is honestly the easy part. The harder question is figuring out which ones are actually worth pursuing. Here’s exactly how I decide…