How to double a recipe.

Learn how to double a recipe effortlessly with this guide — whether it’s for unexpected guests or a feast for a crowd.

Most recipes create two to four portions of whatever dish you’re making. This can be a big problem for large families or when your “intimate” dinner party suddenly becomes twelve people.

Why doubling a recipe doesn’t always work.

At first glance, doubling a recipe should be as simple as adding twice the ingredients, right?

Well, as many disappointed home chefs can tell you, it’s rarely that easy. Here are some reasons why simply doubling a recipe might not always work:

• Irregular scaling of ingredients. It’s a truth well-known to experienced cooks that ingredients don’t always scale in a linear fashion. Doubling spices, for example, could overwhelm the dish. In the case of doubling baking soda, this won’t guarantee that your pastries or baked goods will rise doubly.

• Mismatched cooking equipment sizes. The cooking equipment you use doesn’t always necessarily scale with your recipe. If you double your recipe but stick to using the same baking trays, pots, or pans, this will impact your cooking time and end result.

• Waste potential. If the final result of the doubled recipe isn’t as you expected, this could easily lead to considerable waste. This is especially true if the meal you prepare is large or the ingredients are expensive.

Now you understand why doubling a recipe may not always work. But never fear — we’ve got all the tips and tricks to help you double a recipe without ruining the dish.

When attempting to double a recipe, it’s essential to understand that the process doesn’t always yield the desired results. That’s why it’s important to know how to halve a recipe as well.

So, how do you double a recipe?

The biggest pitfall that most cooks encounter is thinking that all ingredients in a recipe are equal. When doubling a recipe, you need to treat various kinds of ingredients differently to recreate the flavor of a dish across more portions.

Let’s get right into the different ways to double a recipe and how you can do that depending on what your needs are:

Separate the ingredients.

To double a recipe, you can start out by separating the ingredients. You can do this by writing each of the ingredients on a notebook or a separate piece of paper. It’s advisable to write the list and amounts down and avoid scaling the recipe in your head.

• To organize your notes, jot down the vegetables, flour, and meat products in the first column. Then, write the seasonings in the second column, and the liquid ingredients in the third column.

• After you’re done writing down all the ingredients in the columns indicated above, write “times 2” above the first and third columns. Then, write “times 1.5” above the second column.

• When you’re finished with the necessary calculations, think of double-checking the ingredients list in order to ensure you include all of them.

How to double a recipe’s main ingredients.

Here are some common ingredients and how much of each you should add when doubling a recipe:

• Meats and seafood. Use twice as much.

• Eggs. Use twice as much.

• Produce. Use twice as much.

How to double a recipe for seasoning and flavor.

Here are some common seasonings and how much you need to add when you’re doubling a recipe:

• Stock, broth, and water. Use twice as much.

• Dried herbs. Use 1.5 times as much and add more as needed.

• Spices. Start with 1.25 times as much and add more as needed.

How to increase a recipe with special ingredients.

Now that you know how to double common ingredients such as fresh produce, herbs, and spices, you can learn more about how to double special ingredients that are exceptions to common recipe rules.

• Alcohol. Use 1.5 times as much. Avoid eyeing the amount you pour.

• Baking soda. Use ¼ tablespoon of baking soda per cup of all-purpose flour.

• Baking powder. Use 1 ½ tablespoons of baking powder per cup of all-purpose flour.

With a bit of practice and a lot of tasting, you’ll find that creating the perfect double recipe is more of an art than a science. Remember, you can always add more of something, but you can’t take it out, so add ingredients slowly until you get just the right flavor.

Essentials to keep in mind when doubling a recipe.

Some other essentials to keep in mind when doubling a recipe are:

• Divide your ingredients into two equal pans, or increase the heat if using a larger pan.

• Calculate the amount of each ingredient you’ll need in the doubled recipe before you start cooking.

• Keep in mind that cooking times may not be exactly the same, so keep an eye on things as they cook.

• Only double recipes, and remember that if you need more food than that, you might have to make the recipe more than one time in order to get the results you need.

• Try not to double batches of canned goods. Doubling such products may affect the consistency and flavor of the same recipe.

Have culinary creations available right at your fingertips. Organize your PDFs online and discover everything you can do with Adobe Acrobat to create and share recipes with your friends and family today, as well as compress PDF files, merge PDFs, convert PDFs to PPT files, and more.