Estimate & taste. But I find timing can be very accurate for a lot of dishes I make. & that makes for a better meal.
Some, e.g. spaghetti sauce, don’t require precision timing. It’ll be done enough after 90 minutes, and after about 3 hours it’ll need a little more water. Anywhere in that range is fine. Fire up the water, add the pasta, & whenever the pasta is ready, so’s the sauce. Timing, we don’ need no steekin’ timing!
For other things, e.g. sauteed zukes, summer squash, & leeks, it’s more like 11 +/- 1 minutes.
If I’m going to have 4 items all plate at once, e.g. the poached fish, the sauteed veggies, the roast potatoes, & the reduction sauce, they all need to finish within a minute or two of each other. So knowing how long they take to 1 minute precision is critical.
And about the 4th time you do it, it’s dirt simple to get that right. Despite my dear MIL’s eternal amazement, it’s not a miracle. Start the longest dish & the countdown timer together. As it counts down, start each quicker item when the timer has the right time left on it. Beep, beep, beep; they’re all done. Plate & serve.
Even back when she was middle aged she’d start boiling the carrots before she began defrosting the beef.
I follow recipes for stuff that is new to me, but once I’m comfortable/made it enough times I’ll go by memory and start substituting, adding and eyeballing measurements to taste/smell.
Drives me nutty that my baked meatballs taste better at times than others. Mom always loves them, but sometimes they just taste bland to me. Those I’ve always eyeballed, I’ve never had measurements for them.
I measure most things. Back when I was a kid, I tried making some sugar cookies. The dough tasted great…the cookies were inedible. Come to find out that if you use too much baking soda or powder, you’re screwed when they bake.
That said, on non-critical items, I eyeball it. E.g. if I’m making carrot cake, the recipe says “1 Tb cinnamon,” I interpret that as “at least 1 Tb but c’mon, don’t be a wuss!” I prolly use 4-5 Tb.
Heh. I learned very quickly once I moved away from home that I couldn’t rely on my mum or my grandma - both excellent cooks - for recipes.
Mum: Add some of that.
Me: How much?
Mum: I don’t know - enough. Now put it in the oven.
Me: For how long?
Mum: Till it’s ready.
Me: !
Now, of course, I cook in exactly the same way, and my only cooking disasters have happened when I’ve stuck rigidly to recipes instead of trusting of my instincts.
Eyeballer/taster. I can usually tell by reading a recipe whether or not the quantities are correct for my taste. People tend to skimp on spices/herbs because they’re either inexperienced or too cautious. My sister, for instance, uses one TBSP of chili powder for an entire pot of chili. Horrible stuff.
If I’m making something I’ve never made before I will measure exactly and time precisely. I will follow a recipe down to the last measure (unless there’s a reasonable substitution I can make).
If I’m making something for which I have no recipe, or something I’ve made before, I’m not so precise. I’ll do it with the grace o’ God and a long-handled spoon, dash a bit of this and that until it’s the same as it was before.
I’m Jewish. There is no measuring in Jewish cooking.
I’m also a substituter and experimenter, and killer with a pantry and fridge full of “we have nothing to eat in the house”. Not to brag too much, but my husband says I can turn a wooden spoon into a magic wand, and whip up a gourmet meal out of thin air, which I have to admit I’m kind of proud of.
Very much a taster. If I want to cook something I’ve never cooked before I look up about 5 different recipes (thank heavens for the internet), work out what’s essential to the dish, the rough quantities needed and general sorts of ingredients that work well, then make up my own based on that.
Baking is a bit different, because you do at least need to stick to fairly definite ratios, but I still look up several recipes and pick my favourite and might for example include something like spices from another recipe if I think they might work.
Hubby is a taster, but I’m mostly a measurer. When it comes to new recipes I like to follow the directions as closely as possible, but I do tweak a bit as I go (extra garlic yum!). When I make thai curry for example, I follow the recipe exactly because otherwise it doesn’t taste right. Also since being pregnant I try to drill into hubby’s head scale back the spiciness (a lil goes a long way now)
For baking, I generally don’t level the flour or anything like that - bake by feel and it generally turns out very yummy!
This is exactly what I do! Last night I wanted some made from scratch Texas-style chili (meat, chilis, onions, & spices, but most importantly - NO BEANS) so I hit the Internet, averaged out several recipes, then made my own, fine-tuning as it cooked. Turned out pretty well, even if I do say so myself.
I can’t play it by tongue; I have to follow the recipe. I’m a fair cook if I have a recipe, but I have no winging it skill.
My ex was one who threw in some of this and some of that. When I got her by-guess-and-by-golly spaghetti sauce recipe following our divorce, I wrote down exactly what I put in the first time, and then wrote down the changes as I went along.
If I’m following a recipe. I measure, since it’s usuaslly something new and I don’t know how it’s supposed to go.
If it’s something I’m making up, I taste. What else do you have to go by?
Sometimes, even with a recipe, you have to taste. I don’t trust fruit pie recipes, for instance, because the sweetness and other properties of the fruit are so variable. When I make a grape pie, I always taste.
