Cooking (at least cooking savory things that don't involve baking/leavening ingredients or food science techniques) as a whole is mostly a skill that doesn't rely on formulaic recipes but instead a feel for how something should taste, what it's lacking, and how to fix it.
The overall goal is to have a balance of flavors, but having something that ends up being too balanced is also not particularly delicious or memorable.. Therefore you need to have a single thing, or a combination of multiple things that form a coherent focal point, stick out.
You can accentuate the desired flavors by manipulating the basal taste sensations, which are sweetness/acid/salt/fat. "umami" is intentionally left out because i'll get to that later.
anyway, here are the flavor cheat codes:
>sweetness
pure maple syrup is easily the most versatile way to apply sweetness to anything.. everything from grits to pan sauces to marinades, salad dressings, glazes, whatever.
honey is a distant second but not really comparable.
>acid
sherry vinegar can be added to literally (L I T E R A L L Y) anything that tastes ok but not spectacular and it will make it taste spectacular; it's the thing you've always needed but never knew you weren't using.
>salt
salt, obviously. kosher salt.. kosher salt and also cured meats can work really well to achieve the same goal.
soy sauce/tamari is a close second, followed by miso as a slightly less versatile soy variation.
>fat
butter. butter is definitely the most superior form of fat. i mean, there are tons of great plant oils out there that have specific uses as well as tons of animal fats/tallow, but butter is hands down the most useful of them all.
discuss, and add to the list if you have any suggestions.