What's your cooking style?

[Lacunae Matata]

When you cook, do you follow recipes? Do you start with a recipe and embellish? Or do you wing it all the way? How do you handle leftovers - heat and re-serve, use in another dish? Feed them to the dogs? Do you like to cook? Are you good at it?

Personally, I read cookbooks for inspiration sometimes, but all of my cooking is improvisational. (Even baking. I know that "everyone" says that baking is much more precise, but my breads, cakes, pies, etc. turn out fine.) Most leftovers are incorporated into another dish: last night's taco meat and black beans are the basis for tonight's chili and tomorrow's chili mac. I consider myself to be a decent cook, and cooking gives me a practical outlet for my creative urges.

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

I usually wing it, but I follow directions on boxed food. My winging it is particularly with regards to meat marinades. I just go with what works, add stuff, taste, add stuff, taste...

[BrassyPhrase]

I didn't start cooking until about six years or so ago. (Except, I'd had a family fave chili and had followed a few recipes for a special occasion or something.)

Since then, I read a lot a recipes and try to gain knowledge about some skills and techniques. And I have screwed up sooooooooo many recipes. Sometimes I wing it and it's great. Some very much not.

For time, I'll dress up something half prepared, but once I've tried some stuff from scratch--I have found that it's not THAT much harder to do. I'm all over the place but working hard to do more from scratch.

[Swords to Plowshares]

I look up recipes for approximate cooking times and temperatures. I flavor according to my tastes.

[Balance]

I will look at recipes to get a general idea for a new dish, then I improvise from there. My cooking is heavily influenced by scent; my "recipes" tend to involve things like "add spice [x] until it smells right". I rarely measure anything unless I'm baking, which I find hard to judge by sight and smell. Even then, I tweak amounts based on consistency. I generally reheat leftovers straight up, because I mostly make things that work well that way, like stews and pasta dishes. Other leftovers are likely to end up in some form of sandwich or wrap.

I like cooking well enough, but I don't enjoy it nearly as much when cooking by and for myself. I like to have other people around, even if they're not actively helping. It's a little odd, since I'm usually a bit of a loner, otherwise. I guess it's because there were always people around when I was learning to cook--family, and later roommates--helping, chatting, or doing their own thing. Kitchens should have people in them.

My cooking is generally well-received, and occasionally raved about. Even my dessert ramen experiment didn't meet with total rejection, despite being an elaborate video game in-joke. (Some day I will try it again, only with ice cream added.)

[garygnu]

I'll follow a specific recipe so I can get the taste the person was going for. I'll tweak it if necessary (I always add more garlic). I'll also pick bits of one recipe and bits of another.

My favorite thing is to come up with my own stuff, and I'll improvise. Fortunately I've gotten a pretty good handle on what works with what.

[Alice The Goon]

My personality is such that I'm a rule-follower. So if I'm going by a recipe, I stick to the recipe. Once in a while I will tweak it, especially if it was made by an amateur and not a professional chef. While baking I really try to stick to the recipe and not read things wrong and fuck it up. As for leftovers, I try whenever possible to make new dishes instead of just heating up the old- like I'll chop up a leftover pork roast for split pea soup or something. Once I've eaten something, I don't really want to eat it in the same form the very next day.

[Proudest Monkey]

I am a fairly proficient, amateur cook.

Almost all of my baking is from scratch with the exception of pies and biscuits, both of which I've given up trying to master. (Fortunately my daughter caught the pie-making gene, and I make do with individually frozen biscuit pucks which bake up very nicely.) Breads, rolls, muffins, cakes, cookies--I much prefer my own to any mix or even to good bakery products.

I love to browse recipes for main dishes and veggies, and will comfortably switch things up or adapt to what I have in the cupboard. Gravies, soups, and sauces are right in my wheelhouse; I wish I were better at steaks and roasts.

Leftovers usually get scarfed up for lunch. Occasionally I'll plan ahead and cook extra for a later meal. I'm frugal and hate to throw anything out, but will admit to tossing stuff during a fridge clean-out.

[Sattua]

I like to read recipes but almost never cook from one. The reading gives me a general idea of what tastes good together and in what proportion. I make it up from there.

Baking is the exception. I'm scared to improvise with that--I always print out baking recipes and follow the ingredient list though sadly, not the technique. My baking technique is "mix up the dry stuff, pour wet stuff on top, stir." It usually works okay. Usually.

[Lynn Bodoni]

Generally I'll read recipes for inspiration and guidelines. I'll leave out stuff that I know I will have a reaction to. I tend to follow baking recipes far more closely than cooking recipes, but even when I'm baking I feel free to substitute almond extract for vanilla, for instance, and I might throw in some chopped or sliced nuts as well.

Usually I'll have leftovers for another meal. If I've made a chicken pot roast, though, that means a couple of regular chicken dinners, plus I'll make chicken broth from the skin and bones after the bird is roasted and I've picked the carcass clean. I'll usually use the broth plus the leftover meat scraps to make chicken pot pie, or chicken and dumplings, or chicken soup. If I make roast beef or pot roast, I'll use the leftovers in sandwiches, and then in a pot pie or soup.

[FairyChatMom]

I stick to recipes for baking, but most other things are a combination of recipe and my personal variations. And things like soups and spaghetti sauce can only be called recipes in the loosest sense of the word. I've had a few spectacular failures (crushed corn flakes are not an appropriate substitute for breadcrumbs in meatloaf) but most of my efforts range from OK to amazing, with most in the "pretty good" range.

One thing I absolutely refuse to use is cream-of-whatever soup in any dish. I can't stand to look at that gloppy stuff, and it's always far too salty. Eons ago when Weight Watchers was much more restrictive than it is today, they had a recipe for a "white sauce" that was cauliflower cooked in chicken buillion with onion till it was really mushy, then processed in a blender with a little milk - and it's really good! I've used it in casseroles and unless I tell someone, they have no idea.

[VunderBob]

When using a new recipe, I try to make it by the letter the first time. This establishes a baseline, and I'm free to embellish after that. I'm not much of an original thinker, but it's very easy for me to experiment with someone else's recipe.

I make one big mess of something for my lunch throughout the week, and I eat leftovers often. My wife usually won't eat leftovers.

[Antigen]

Originally Posted by FairyChatMom

One thing I absolutely refuse to use is cream-of-whatever soup in any dish. I can't stand to look at that gloppy stuff, and it's always far too salty. Eons ago when Weight Watchers was much more restrictive than it is today, they had a recipe for a "white sauce" that was cauliflower cooked in chicken buillion with onion till it was really mushy, then processed in a blender with a little milk - and it's really good! I've used it in casseroles and unless I tell someone, they have no idea.

That's a great idea! Do you think it would freeze well so I could keep some on hand when I have a "cream-of" recipe I want to fake?

My cooking style varies a lot. I have a very hard time following a recipe exactly, because I'm always tempted to tweak it, either because I think the recipe is missing something, or I'm missing something I need and have to improvise. I'm also learning that, especially online, recipes can be very wrong. I've made enough disasters by following instructions to the letter, and I have a better idea now how long things need to cook, at what temperatures, and how much liquid or seasoning is reasonable.

More and more, I'm able to wing it after looking at a few recipes to get an idea of proportions. I'm starting to feel like I can cook, and not just follow instructions!

[lawoot]

1. Pull meal from box

2. poke holes in plastic film with pointy end of knife

3. Microwave per instructions

4. Eat.

[kayaker]

My gf laughs at me because I cook mise en place. I cut/dice/chop/measure everything 'll need for a dish before commencing to cook. My gf is the polar opposite.

We both love to experiment, though.

Last night I made an arugula cheese pesto pizza with tomatoes.

[salinqmind]

I don't cook as often as I did, though I really love to. I can make breads, baklava, cookies, and every kind of pie from scratch. My pot roast, roast chicken, pizza, spaghetti, lasagna, and a few soups are excellent , if I do say so myself!... If it's not too hot out, I will light the charcoal grill and cook burgers, hot dogs, sausage, steak on a skewer, potatoes, onions and peppers, mushrooms, chicken - as long as the coals are burning, I'll keep cooking, and all leftovers go in the refrigerator to be eaten during the week. One marathon grilling and I don't have to think what to cook the rest of the week!...The only thing that I've totally failed at is Chinese and Thai, just can't get it right - but that's what Chinese takeout if for...The thing is, it's just the two of us now, and one of us is a burgers n' fries type. Hamburg. Hamburg. Hamburg. I buy tons of hamburg. So one day a week I will cook hamburg (loose, to be used in other dishes) and hamburg patties. Wrap and freeze, and take out, thaw, warm up as needed through the week. (I hate hate hate having to cook in the evening!) On one hand, I have a talent for cooking that goes to waste, on the other hand, I don't have to knock myself out every night producing a 5-course meal...I wrap, freeze, and save all leftovers, they come in handy at times. The leftover potroast and gravy can go in the soup. Leftover chicken warmed up with barbeque sauce, or made into chicken salad. Leftover vegetables, with mashed potatoes and sausage links....I love to read and clip out recipes, though I seldom make them. If I could find that charming article from an Englishman, about a 'nut loaf' made at his boarding school with cashews, rice, and I dunno what else, I would make that! ... I use recipes as inspiration and my philosophy is: 'close enough'. I'm not cooking for goor-mays here, I will short cut and substitute if I have to, it all gets eaten with enthusiasm. (I remember Rachel Ray making a Caribbean-jerk type of recipe, and she said "I'm going to use some of the traditional flavors in this..." Which meant, cool, I don't HAVE to shop for, and cut up, a pineapple - a can of Dole is fine!...I have dozens of cookbooks, including a real doorstop, forgot who by, the 'perfect recipe' one, but now I go to allrecipes.com and read the reviews before trying something new.

[Snickers]

Yep, mise is so important. Don't skip the mise!

I cook mostly from recipes - I'll generally make it exactly as directed the first time to get a baseline. After that, I'll change it up for my own tastes. I'm getting better at writing down my changes so that I know what did and didn't work. I wing a few things, especially the standards that I've made a number of times, but I'm still afraid to stray too far afield. For this reason, I don't have many disasters. Lots of recipes that just weren't to my taste and didn't blow me away, but these I just discard and move on - they don't make it into any sort of rotation. Sometime I'll try to improve them, most times I just find another one. I'm definitely getting better at determining whether I'll like the result just by reading through the recipe, so my palate for combining flavors is getting better. I also watch a ton of cooking shows, because I love them. It's not hands-on experience, but it expands my knowledge. And seeing how professional chefs do things helps my own technique. Chef Anne Burrell rocks my house.

I'd consider myself an accomplished cook. I cook mostly from scratch now, and only rarely rely on convenience foods. I don't bake much. When I do, I follow the recipe to the letter (or it's from a box mix that's tough to screw up).

[Moonlitherial]

I try really really hard to follow the recipe at least the first time so I can see what the actual result is before I start playing with it. In reality though I only manage that about half the time. I can't get through reading a recipe without thinking "Hmmm, I wonder how that would taste if I changed/added/left out X"

[kayaker]

Originally Posted by Moonlitherial

I try really really hard to follow the recipe at least the first time

I HATE people who down-rate recipes they have not really followed.

Originally Posted by epicurious

We hated this recipe! Can't believe people are saying good things about it. I followed the recipe carefully. Of course, we are lactose intolerant, so I replaced the milk with tonic water. I didn't have any cumin, so I substituted cauliflower in its place. One Fork.

[even sven]

90% of the time, I wing it completely. If I'm cooking something specific that I don't know how to cook, I'll look at three or four recipes and take the parts I like.

I suck at baking sweet things (probably because I don't take directions well) but I do make lots of delicious breads by winging it. Bread is very forgiving.

[pulykamell]

All of the above.

On average, I cook about 5-6 days a week. Most of time, I'm working from memory or am improvising something based on my knowledge of dishes and cooking techniques. There are certain dishes I do (roughly) the same way every time (like chicken paprikash or goulash), and there are other dishes I make slightly different depending on what meat I happen to have around, what vegetables looked good at the market, etc. (stews, stir fries, jambalaya, dishes of that nature.)

Generally, if I spot a recipe that looks good, I will follow that recipe and make any adjustments from there in future iterations of the dish. However, I also will often dig and research ten or twenty recipes for a certain dish and try to synthesize that information into a single recipe for myself. I'm fairly confident in my abilities to figure out how to do this without ruining the recipe.

When I research ethnic recipes, I always always always try to find something that is as close to "authentic" -- or true to the style and manner in which it is prepared in its home country -- as possible. It is important for me to establish that baseline (and it's really interesting for me, too. Part of what makes cooking fun is exploring other cultures and how they approach the kitchen.)

Then there are dishes that are precise to excruciating detail. My sausage recipes, which I've developed over many attempts, have ingredients listed in something like baker's percentages by weight. So, it'll look like: For every 100g meat: 2.5g salt, 2g paprika, etc.

But, the majority of the time for everyday cooking, what I cook depends on what's already in the fridge and freezer and needs to be used up, or what ingredients are on sale at the store. Then it's just improvised or I follow a skeleton of a recipe to which I make adjustments depending on what I have around.

[shiftless]

Baking and entirely new items I follow a recipe, everything else I am winging it. I want KNOW how to cook something so I don't always have to do exactly what a recipe says. If I have a fish, a stick of butter and some orange soda in the fridge, I want to be able to make something out of it without having to google. Most of the recipes I have gotten via google have been less than satisfactory anyway.

Joy of Cooking is my bible. For a new item (Chyotes for a recent example) I will look it up, learn about the basic cooking required then go off on my own. None of my family has died of food posioning, so far.

[Chefguy]

Pretty much like most people. Things I make often are from memory. Things like chili are different every time, so while I have a basic ingredient list in my head, quantities may change or I may use different peppers. For baking, ingredient quantities are important for consistency in results, so I use recipes. For new dishes, I'll follow the recipe unless I feel it could be improved by increasing, decreasing, or deleting an ingredient or two. I have my own cookbook on Word, which I couldn't possibly memorize, so use that quite often. Something like a turkey dinner is completely by muscle memory, it seems.

[pulykamell]

Originally Posted by kayaker

I HATE people who down-rate recipes they have not really followed.

This is one of my peeves, too. Also, it peeves me a bit when a recipe is well-written, and to-style, but the reviewers are expecting or wanting something more "complex." Like, say, a simple, classic recipe for a lightly cooked tomato & basil sauce. This is a sauce that is supposed to be fresh tasting, with a minimal amount of ingredients to let the tomato and basil flavors come through. I'll see comments like "bland. I had to add 4 cloves of garlic, 2 teaspoons oregano, 1/2 tsp thyme, and cooked the sauce for two hours." Well, that's all fine and dandy, but completely missing the point of the recipe. If you wanted a long-cooked tomato sauce with an abundance of herbs, look up recipes for that style of sauce.

[purplehorseshoe]

I wing it. It's really difficult for me to follow a recipe to the exact letter, although I'll try harder with Cook's Illustrated recipes on the 1st try, then I feel free to go "Oh, to hell with pointless XYZ additions." That said, Mr. Horseshoe told me recently that I've become a damn good cook, and I've gotten really good at seeing ahead of time where a recipe is sub-standard and tweaking for better results: toasting orzo first instead of just boiling it, using broth or stock instead of water, etc.

[Mooch]

I follow recipes for more complex or ethnic cooking the first time and if I like it, continue to follow the recipe until committed to memory. If I don't like it I either tweak the recipe or dismiss it entirely.

My cooking style is pour a beer from the keg, set up my mise and get cooking. I love it and cook at home entirely from scratch about 5-6 times a week.

[Lukeinva]

Open beer
Make fire
Spear meat with long sharp pointy spear
Connect spear to motor
Turn on motor
Drink beer while tending to meat spinning slowly over fire

[gwendee]

The majority of the cooking I do is in a rush so that my kid gets some dinner in him before it's his bedtime. I try and figure it out in the morning so I'm not just in the pantry trying to figure out what I can make with a sprouted onion and some Cocoa Puffs. Best laid plan, though...

When I have the luxury of time I love to find and follow recipes. I've been cooking long enough now that I feel as if I can read a recipe and understand whether leaving out one ingredient I don't care for will change the nature of the dish so I'll stray from a recipe in that way. (I won't however, bash it in the online comments)

[silenus]

Wing that sucker! About the only thing I'm reasonably precise on is baking, and even then I'll play with it as I go, adapting to current conditions.

To the intense annoyance of my friends who brew, I am a "Jedi Brewer." I brew by feel, not by recipe. Pisses them off no end that my brews always beat theirs in competitions.

[MeanOldLady]

I think people who don't cook a lot would probably be more prone to sticking to recipes, whereas people who cook frequently already have a feel for how much of what ingredient will taste like and what they want. This is a theory I invented based on my personal experience alone.

When I first took a shot at becoming a better cook, I was very much by the book because I had no idea what I was doing. I will now occasionally, when growing bored of the same five things I eat most often, glance at a new recipe for inspiration, but will tweak it according to my tastes on the fly. Otherwise, when going with what I know, I throw things together and they come out fine.

[RealityChuck]

Depends. If I'm cooking for myself, I improvise. If I'm cooking for my wife and me, then I stick to a recipe.

[Greg Charles]

Blackened, and not in the Cajun way. I never really can tell something is done until it actually bursts into flames, so pretty much everything comes out tasting the same.