Sure do. A lot like what you said. But if I don't know what it'll taste like, I will do a test ahead, like the kohlrabi I posted about. And I'm trying out some recipes that have been posted here. Because my only obligation is the guacamole and I'm welcome to bring whatever else I want. And it's only 15 people. When there's a crowd, I might do variations on a theme, but I have to manage time, and I try to keep it simple. I do experiment with things I don't know how they'll come out on small groups. :) Y'know the thing. If it comes out too badly, one can always order pizza. :D But I've never made that big a fail.

I'm always ready to try new recipes and am only motivated to do so when I have guests. For holidays when people expect certain foods, I might look for a new way to prepare them. One year I had a group of friends over for Thanksgiving and wanted to prepare turkey, so I tried my hand at deboning one (I think it was before the internet/youtube). I must have seen a recipe in Bon Appetit or Epicurious and decided to try it. It was much easier than I imagined. After the bones (except wings and legs) were removed, it was shaped around stuffing to make it look like a whole bone-in bird and roasted. When I took it out of the oven and after it rested, I started carving it to the amazement of my guests, as the knife went through it, bones and all it appeared! It was very fun to trick them and it was delicious.

I also have made turkey roulade with different types of dressings, as well as deep fried turkeys for holiday dinners, never practicing either beforehand.

For dinner parties, I almost always make a new recipe if I have time to fiddle with it. If I will be rushed, I will make something I've made before so that won't take me as much concentration or effort. That goes for main dishes, salads, desserts, as well as appetizers. If I am asked to bring something to contribute to the dinner, it's almost always a new recipe if it's a non-holiday dinner, but I'll take a dish on holidays that I know is a favorite of the other guests.

I'm having a tiny Thanksgiving with just one friend, and I'm making a good sized boned pork roast using a technique I've never tried before--reverse sear. Cooking pretty low over--300 until reaches temp, removing and resting 30-40 minutes then returning to hot oven for crisping/browning. It calls for an instant read thermometer which I don't have, so wish me luck. But really, how badly can you screw up roast pork?

Not usually, but I have in the past -- it would be something like a side dish or extra dessert that it didn't matter if it came out great. If I want to do a new recipe for holidays or for company (any company), I try it out ahead of time. I made 3 or 4 pumpkin cheecakes a few years ago in the weeks before Thanksgiving so I could get the cheesecake and crust just right. I thought I finally got it down just right, served it on Thanksgiving and it was a resounding "meh" from the group. LOL!

I almost always try new recipes when I'm having guests for a meal. Why not? If something doesn't turn out quite right, it's not like anyone will starve. I recently made a GF, vegan apple cake that turned out nothing like the recipe said it would, but we warmed it up and ate it like pudding and it was pretty tasty, if not very interesting texturally.

Pretty much always like to try one new thing other wise it's just same ole same ole.

Laceyvail ... " But really, how badly can you screw up roast pork? "

I can do a stellar job of drying a boneless pork cut out by overcooking it, time and time again. Pork doesn't make a move towards the stove in my kitchen these days without an instant read thermometer handy ;)

I would try out the cinnamon roll apple pie first. I made one before Covid a few years back. The cinnamon rolls were not getting cooked like they should and I followed the directions.

Amylou - I was intrigued by your cinnamon roll apple pie idea, since I have a recipe for that dessert and always wanted to try it. Please report back on how it turned out and what cinnamon rolls you used. It seems to me that the "baking powder" type of cinnamon rolls may work better than the "yeast" kind.

Since I never fix the same thing the same way twice and only use recipes as suggestions each holiday and other meal is basically trying a new recipe. Over the years I have found that if I decide to make a particular food and "horrors" use a recipe there is always one or more things in it that I have to substitute something no matter how far in advance I attempted to find what was needed.

At one time I envied those who used recipes then I realized that because I am using food it would never be the same every time I cooked something. Veggies and fruit will be slightly different from growing season to the next. Weather especially humidity and barometric pressure will play havoc with some things.

I do! Holiday gatherings and dinner parties are the perfect time to try something new or different. I wouldn’t make a wildcard single main dish, but I frequently make a new appetizer, side, or dessert. Everyone seems to have fun evaluating something new/different.

maifleur - I'm like you as I view recipes as suggestions. When we're doing a family dinner or dinner for friends I always try something new.

I learned the hard way. Try all the new stuff I want, but not on a holiday. I guess I'm not as good as everybody else here 😉

Reverse sear is a great cooking method for thick steaks and chops. Maybe a tad less so for roasts but I guess with something like a pork roast, the desire to have it cook evenly through to the middle makes the lower temperature, longer cooking time of reverse sear a good idea.

One thing I've found - the suggested times needed to reach a desired temperature are usually not useful. Such factors as the temperature of one's fridge and how long it was in can affect how long is needed.

With reverse sear, checking the internal temp regularly with an instant read thermometer is essential. The lower temperature makes overcooking less likely. Be patient and allow enough time. A hint about the searing stage - using the broiler feature rather than waiting for the oven to reach a very hot temperature will be quicker.

So there are pitfalls to trying new things for company. I found a recipe for Passover crêpes and decided to make gateau de mille crêpes for dessert for Seder. It's just a stack of pancakes. That is, a bunch of crêpes stacked with filling between. I've made a bazillion crêpes and similar pancakes, and know how to make a lot, cool and store them. I figured getting the layers flat and even would be the tricky part. Nope. the recipe was a stinker. The crêpes didn't hold together and tasted bad. Adjusting didn't help. I didn't have more ingrdients to start over on that or any other cake, fridge space being at premium for this holiday, and no time to wait for minions or Instacart to bring more. So I changed it completely until it felt more like a thin blintz pancake batter than crêpe batter. My family aren't picky enough to notice that the ”crêpes” were too thick, or that the lots more matzah flour I used made it taste too toasty. They just like being fed. But it was way too much angst and trouble, and I should have tested the recipe before there were several dozen people arriving... I did learn a lesson. And that's with knowing full well what I was doing!

For a regular dinner party I will change things up and often try new recipes. It's fun to share new things with friends. Christmas, any new recipes or cooking methods would depend on the main course. Sides and desserts could be new. But for Thanksgiving I go with tradition other than adding a different extra dessert or something to the appetizer course. Turkey stuffed with my stuffing, mashed (never whipped) potatoes, home made gravy, cranberry sauce, a couple of vegetable choices, and those (horrid to me) yams with marshmallows. Basic turkey meal, prepared with care. No mac and cheese, or weird casseroles. That's why I commented my distaste for people bringing food on holidays on the other thread. I'd rather have a piping hot, well prepared simple meal than a tepid buffet of mediocre, mystery food that travels and sits out.

One time we had two friends over and everything I made was new-to-me. Everyone liked the dishes and I said that it was the first time making them.

It's not something that I do regularly though.

Yes, and I usually make the dish once as a trial run before I parade it out for everyone. Not last Thanksgiving though. I made a brown butter bourbon pecan pie for my family get together. Oh boy, was it ever a hit. The pie part wasnt really hard at all, nor was it significantly different from previous plain pecan pie recipes I have made. Mainly in the butter prep and addition of a little bourbon and adjustment of the liquid (butter and syrup) as a result. The crust was a different recipe and I didnt care for it as much as my usual pie crust. Nobody cared.

For the holidays no, we test first. Dinner parties I have made new recipes, but do not do it often. Hosted a cocktail party a couple of weeks ago where I made a new meatball receipe, the dish was boring. I was annoyed at myself. I have several wonderful meatball recipes that I have made in the past, but I was short on time and wanted a mexican flavor, so I went with an unknown. Probably won’t do that again anytime soon.

I usually try new recipes at normal family dinners. Then I ask if I throw the recipe away or keep it.

I did make new dessert recipe for Thanksgiving today. Maple walnut pie. It is supposed to use pecans, but being from the north I always substitute walnut for pecans. If it is a fail I also made pumpkin pie and pumpkin rolls.

The first time I tried the dry salt method for turkey was for a holiday, and it turned out even better than I expected. I had the same experience the first time I made roast duck, but that was just for my brother and me, as ducks are not all that big.

The first time I cooked a pheasant was for a holiday, and I had wrapped it all up in salt pork and it was still a bit dry, and so that was a bit of a disappointment. Therefore I have only cooked pheasant once.

I try not to do something new more than once during a meal even with day to day meals! If DH is grilling, I might do a salad, then do something new.

Now, not hosting is a different thing! Going to 2 Tgings, I'm bringing my cranberry/orange stuff which I've been making for years, but I'm also making delicata squash soup (which I made years ago, but that doesn't count!) We'll see what they think!

No, never. I always try a recipe with just me and DH before serving it to others. This isn't because I am not confident or don't have the skills. But I want to be sure the dish will taste good enough. Many times I’ve tested a recipe that looks good on paper or screen but comes up short in reality. If a thing is good enough for us it goes into the repertoire but many, many recipes I never make again. There are lots of duds out there. I also don’t want to be reading instructions while cooking for a gang. I want to be able to simultaneously cook, chat and drink wine with zero stress.

Well, you threw down the gauntlet!

I made a pecan pie and kiddo and I made yeast rolls. I figured, since everything I promised was done and turned out ok, I'd try. If I failed, they'd never know. The pie is definitely going out with the desserts, and I'm pretty sure the rolls will be served too. In another four hours I'll know about the rolls. Gotta take them out for second rise, and bake them before we'll know. 🤞🏻

I used to because I had not hosted much so almost everything I was serving was going to be a "new" recipe. I had some notable fails. But thankfully now I have a repertoire of tried and true dishes that I feel comfortable with. I am also better at judging recipes so have a better idea of whether a new one will be good or not. I like to mix it up, so I might try one new dish among a tried and true set of delicious ones, so that if the one thing doesn't work out, no one will much notice.

People's tastes have a lot to do with a success or fail. No matter how delicious a dish I make with tofu, hubs will snark about it. My dad loves potatoes, but if I make a nice potato dish, his remark will be, "I just ate potatoes yesterday." Fill in the blank, pork, chicken, applesauce, green beans, you name it. He likes so few things he is almost sure to have eaten whatever I make at some other time during the week. So that's his new "go to" complaint. It used to be "are there onions in this??!!" or "that's a lot of work." or to wax poetic about another version of something, so if I make a great rich noodle kugel, he will wax poetic about my grandmother's more simple one, but if I make her simple one, he will complain it was dry . . . it is his way of being in this world.

I often will make a dish with a rare or expensive ingredient though, or something calorie dense, when I entertain. I get to eat a small portion of something I wouldn't normally make for myself. Pie is an example, since I can't hardly eat a whole pie without it molding if I make one just for me. I can't pig out on desserts or rich food on a regular basis, I have to keep my weight down. I have a freezer full of things I can only eat in small portions . . . so a dinner party is my time to enjoy the richer stuff.

my guinea pigs got a twist on our 'holiday crack' munchies. Instead of chocolate chips, I used butterscotch morsels.

Always. I will even invent something new. Why not. It will give everyone something to talk about if it is a big fail. It is just food. I am a competent cook though and I dont recall any real disasters.

Pinkmountain, your dad, my mom. If it were to bother you you can cure it. Simply appologize profusely and take the food away and offer something like a plate of cold cuts and say you will do better next time. Once or twice eating something cold and dull vs your good hot dish will doubtless do the trick. Still if it makes him happy to be critical think of it as your gift to him.

One of my SILs headed someone off that was doing what Pinkmountain mentioned. She asked the person which of the various foods they had recently while naming each of them. Each one that was a yes it was quietly removed to a serving area for "the other people" After stuttering with the "but I wanted some of that" as it disappeared into the kitchen they realized how foolish they had been. Food was brought back to the table area. Only thing needed in the future was for her to cock her head to the side and raise an eyebrow. It rapidly shut the person up.

While I've been baking bread and challah (brioche type dough) all my life, the only yeast pastries I've made often are hamentashen in a sweet version of my mother's challah recipe. Last week, I had this sudden thought, "Pumpkin babka!" This has been a great year for pumpkins. So instead of figuring it out myself, I searched for recipes on the 'net, and found a chocolate with pumpkin dough, and one more like what I'd had in mind, which was pumpkin-pecan filling in a rich, soft dough. I usually have great results with blog recipes, and I was sleep deprived, so even though I reviewed the ingredients before saving the recipe, I didn't actually read them through for quality. BIG mistake!

I don't know if it's meant to be a sabotage (the comments were useless, only discussing the pretty pictures in the post). It sort of reads, to my bread self like it was partially scalled with oopsies. I've done that scaling a recipe for myself in my head, without writing it down when I was tired. I don't know, for sure, but looking back, it also doesn't match the instructions in the demonstration. It's, um, whack! There were plenty of places where I had warning signs and should have stopped and read it over and quit, but I didn't. I was tired beyond thought.

When I started the first step, and it said 2 1/2 TBSP yeast to 3 -4 cups flour, I should have stopped. I just figured she meant teaspoons, and adjusted accordingly. Then I read the gigantic amound of sugar and salt. I always adjust those to taste anyway, so I kept going. When it said 8 eggs and half a pound of butter, I just figured she knew something I needed to learn. Um. No. The result, as you who bake know, was a glutinous cake batter. I added about a cup of flour and ran it with the dough hook and let it "rise" (not that any rising was happening). Good thing I've learned so much about high hydration baking. I poured it out onto the baking mat. There was enough gluten development at this point that it didn't spill away, just made a stable lake. Much as I would have liked to use my big steel bench scraper, one can't on silicone, but a big bunch of cast flour on it, scrape up some goop with the small plastic bench scraper and push it over, led to a more stable mound. Still too soft for even a stretch and fold, but holding its shape as a mound. I covered and let it rise. And it did! And when I heavily dusted with more flour, it was manageable and rolled. It was too soft to twist nicely, but enough so that the middle has a nice distribution. You can't see the layers, though. The dough was still too soft and smushed together. And it was so soft that the outside was almost burning before the inside was done, and the corners were dry because of that.

The filing was good. That's a keeper. So is the butteriness of the dough. The end result was fine eating, though not exquisite. I think if I added a little extra butter to the hamentashen dough it would be more like what one needs, and I think more filling proportionate to the dough. I had been surprised that it didn't call for toasting the pecans, but they came out great from raw. Because of the restriction I put on the excess sugar, it's really good with cranberry sauce! While chatting, i mentioned it to the Thanksgiving cousin, and that I'd put the second loaf in the freezer. She asked me to bring it, but I don't know if anyone ate any. At least I don't have to find someone to feed it to!

Which is why one tests recipes ahead. I also tried to make the handkerchielf rolls. I don't think there's any saving that one. I mean, they're rolls but they have a kind of gummy mouth feel, and that's after I overbaked them a little! Nasty. The recipe was designed to sell the baking dish. I'm thinking I could rescue them with custard. Pumpkin bread pudding is in the offing. Maybe with a cranberry hard sauce. The worst breads make the best bread puddings!