3. Karaage chicken

Today I cooked Karaage chicken for lunch.

I'd never made it before and I decided to take a look at a couple of recipes online, all which coincidentally came from past Masterchef judges or contestants.

What I noticed was that even for a fairly simple recipe, they each had their own slight twist to the formula - a spark of individuality that flew in the face of their shared cooking show heritage. One added white pepper, the other garlic and an egg white. One triple fried the chicken, while another had the chicken frying for as short a time as possible.

To a unseasoned palate like mine, the outputs of all of these recipes looked very similar and (I assume) all tasted absolutely delicious.

The processes might have been different, but the outputs were just as good.

It made me think about times at work or in other parts of my life, where I've looked at someone's process and wrinkled my nose when I thought something was lacking - in truth their process may have just been different to mine. The resulting output may have been just as good, but we're often too proud to admit it.

Rather than lauding our own tried and true methods over others, if we spend more time opening our minds to new ways of doing those same things we might actually learn a thing or two.

I added white pepper, garlic and an egg white to my Karaage. It tasted amazing.