Way to Differentiate between Necessary vs Additional Ingredients in Recipes I'm mostly cooking for myself and I'm inexperienced with cooking, so when I go onto any recipe website, I can't tell the difference between the ingredients &amp; steps that are necessary to make a dish, and the ingredients and steps which are additional. For example, in an ideal world, I'd like a recipe to read something like this:

Base Ingredients:
    X g of A
    X g of B
    X ml of C

Ingredients for Improved Taste:
    X g of Some Exotic Herb
    X g of Some Additional Spice
    X ml of Red Wine

Steps:
    Base Dish: (Takes 15 minutes to prepare, 20 to cook)
        Step 1:
            ...
        Step 2:
            ...
        ...
        Step n:
            ...


    Additional: (Takes 35 minutes to prepare, 25 to cook.)
        Before beginning, Prepare the X, Prepare the Y and Prepare the Z.
        On step 2, add X to the dish and add 3 minutes to the cooking time.
        On step 4, add a splash of red wine to the pan and cook for 2 minutes longer.


Or something to that effect. Just something separating the two.

This however is not what I find on recipe websites. So I need some way to differentiate the basic thing from the "chef's touch" you could say. I just need to be able to make things that taste reasonably good, quickly, and not be spending hours.

What ends up happening is since I can't differentiate, I find that my shopping list becomes very long, and cooking takes far too long for someone inexperienced like myself. I want to build up from the basics ideally.
Get a stack of 10 or 20 trustworthy recipes for a dish - and compare.

Also take advantage of ingredient slots that seem optional in one dish - sometimes they are a way to use up something that you bought for another recipe where it is not optional.

Classify ingredients by the role they play in the dish:


What do they do to the balance of the basic six tastes? Can the balance be kept by using another, more generic ingredient (eg add vinegar or lime if you leave out a sour ingredient)? 
Is there a functional reason for a sour/alkaline, salty, sweet, fatty ingredient? pH can matter to how something cooks; salt and sugar can interfere with liquid balance; sugar can be textural; fat can do heat transfer; fat or alcohol can put aromas into solution.
Is there an aromatic role - and is there something with a similar aroma?
Is there a textural role? If yes, is it ONLY textural because seasoning overwhelms the taste/aroma anyway?


Also - there are a lot of "exotic" ingredients that exist across ethnic cuisines in a similar form but under different names - though sometimes salt/fat/sugar balances can be different. One example would be korean doenjang and japanese dark miso. Experimentation might be needed at first.