One relatively fool-proof way to get your seasoning just right – whether it's the one in your recipe or something you're subbing in: keep tasting your dish as you go.

How much you use depends on what your substitute ingredient is. Say you want to swap in dried herbs for fresh ones, like rosemary, basil, ginger or garlic. They're great alternatives to their fresh counterparts, but they're also stronger in flavor, so you'll want to use less than what the recipe calls for.

When in doubt, start with less seasoning and add more once your dish is almost done cooking.

Flavor isn't just about the ingredients in a dish, but also about the technique used to prepare it. Cooking is not just a series of recipes, but it's a series of techniques that you can adapt to your own taste.

Understanding the techniques can give you a lot of flexibility to figure out what you can substitute – including what type of pan you should use, especially if you don't have the same equipment a recipe suggests.

A recipe is there as a guide, but it's not the law.  So if you find yourself reading a recipe that asks for an ingredient that's hard to find or too expensive, ask yourself, "Is this ingredient essential? Is it a deal-breaker if I don't have it? What's lost if I don't use it?"

Ultimately, you should make food the way you want it. If an experiment doesn't go quite as planned, that's OK. And if you mess something up, it's not really that big a deal."