We were discussing this over the Labor Day weekend. My daughter and her beau visited from Virginia, and we had a little soiree. I hate doing housework, so instead, my job was to prepare all the food.
Several people asked for my baked beans recipe. Seriously? Baked beans recipe?? It’s one of the things I cook with whatever we have on hand, adjusting it along the way as it cooks all day. Nothing really measured, and the dish isn’t really “done” until it is served.
After everyone was gone/asleep we were discussing “following a recipe” vs “cooking”. My gf is a talented cook. Let her loose in the kitchen and she will survey what is available and create a meal, bit by bit, that will make your head spin. Unfortunately, she will never be able to recreate most meals because she works on the fly.
Me, I prefer a recipe (other than beans). My kitchen skills are pretty good. I can mince, dice, chop, flambe, proof, glaze, emulsify, etc. I can follow a recipe and wind up with a finished product indistinguishable from the picture in the cookbook.
As a teenager I learned to cook by baking, so that’s how my brain is shaped. I turn to recipes for a lot of stuff, especially when I haven’t made it a bajillion times. Stir fry, vegetable soup, chicken soup, marinara sauce, etc., I’ll wing it, but if I want to try jambalaya or stuffed tofu or enchiladas or anything that’s not in my normal repertoire, I’ll generally look at 5-6 recipes online and choose one or mix 'em together.
Both the wife and I tend to be the type to go where the muse takes us. But we can do that because we learned by following recipes. If it’s something new/interesting, we tend to try it straight first, then modify to fit our tastes. Most cooks do this, I think.
I use recipes as a general outline for a dish, not step-by-step instructions like putting furniture together. I’ll try to follow a recipe closely if I’m making something for the first time, but even then, I usually lack at least one key ingredient and have to improvise (butter is my universal substitute :D).
The biggest cause of shitty food is people with the notion that following a recipe “isn’t really cooking.” Dafuk!? If course it’s cooking!
Most people who are comfortable improvising in the kitchen figured out what works from trying new recipes. The alternative, throwing ingredients together in “creative” combinations, leads to some pretty horrifying results.
So I’m very much in favor of recipes for most people, and regard people who refuse to follow recipes on some weird principle that it’s not cooking as… Unlikely to be good cooks.
If someone asked me to make baked beans, there would be no winging it. I’d have to look up a recipe. What goes into baked beans? Well, beans, clearly, but what kind? Pinto? White? Boston? Lima? And sugar, right? Or is it brown sugar? Or molasses? And there have to be some seasonings, but I have no idea what kinds. I also don’t know the details of the baking. Cook it on the stove top first and then bake? For a few hours or all day? Bury it in the ground like kimshee and let fermentation bake it? So a recipe is very helpful.
Ask me to make my baked salmon, and I’ll be dishing it up to you in less than an hour with a couple of sides, and it could contain any of the following in some combination - lots of garlic, Trader Joe’s aeoli mustard sauce, fresh rosemary, white wine, olive oil, lemon juice, chopped onions, fresh ground pepper, and salmon.
Make a salad? I’ll have to hit the grocery store first - the store with the good produce selection - for all the things I like to throw in a salad. There’ll be enough for you to take leftovers home, and it’s never the same thing twice.
Bake gluten-free cherry chocolate chip scones? I need a weekend afternoon, my dance and sing-a-long playlist, my big gluten-free cookbook, all my measuring spoons and cups, and half my mixing bowls.
Whenever I’m cooking anything more complicated than an omelette, I usually have a recipe printout on the counter somewhere. I usually tweak things a little every time I cook them, and if it works, I edit my saved recipe to reflect what worked. My chili recipe, for example, started as something I found on a website in 2005, which gradually underwent so many changes along the way that I think the only things it has left in common with the original are the presence of beef and chili powder.
I do both. For some dishes, I have basic ratios in my head, usually by weight. Like, for example, my Hungarian goulash is 3:1 beef to onions, or 2:1 if I want it a little sweeter and richer. If I add other vegetables, they will all total another 1. Nice and simple, and easy to keep consistent. The other stuff I add to taste (paprika, salt, pepper.)
When I make sausages, those I have down to a science, with exact ratios by weight of all the ingredients, so I could keep them consistent, and then also adjust for next time if I find that maybe a spice is too dominant (those recipes are often works in progress to get just right).
When I’m doing a new dish, I tend to read up on a bunch of various sources, and draw ideas from them and pull them into a dish taking what I feel is the best points from each recipe.
Sometimes, I’ll just cook straight from the cookbook, especially if I know it is highly regarded and thoroughly researched.
So, it’s all over the map. Generally, I don’t need actual printed-out recipes for most of the stuff I make, but I’ve cooked for awhile and know the general ratios that are important and I know cooking techniques and how to taste and adjust as you go along. But it did take awhile to get to that point. I find cooking technique, in general, is more important than a good recipe. A lot of perfectly good recipes fail because the person cooking doesn’t have good technique. For example, it only takes salt and pepper and beef to make a good hamburger. You don’t need to add onions, eggs, bread crumbs, Worcestershire, or any of that. You just need good technique and good ingredients.
I do both - and I change even baking recipes on the fly - just try and keep the proportions correct.
What I don’t get is people who can’t cook - at all - without a recipe - either written or memorized. Like soup or chili or something - I’d have to look up baked beans the first time too (they come out of a can around here) but something.
I don’t know many people who would know what water to dried bean ratio to use for baked beans. I make them a few times a year, and I’d still need to look it up.
If you’re talking about doctoring up canned baked beans with extra ingredients, then that would be far easier for someone to wing.
The first time I cook something, I follow the recipe. The second time I’ll follow the recipe but add a little more of this and a little less of that, based on how it was received the first time, and so on. But what I can’t do- and I envy those who can- is taste something and know what it needs to fix it. People go “oh- this needs more coriander” or whatever. I can tell if something doesn’t taste quite right, but I don’t have a refined enough palette to know what to add to make it taste better.
I very seldom follow a recipe to the letter because I don’t bake and I loathe kale which seems to be in everything these days. I’ve been re-reading Dorothy Sayers and I’ve decided I want to make the chicken casserole Bunter and Mrs. Pettican are discussing with “vegetables packed well down and bacon underneath” in Strong Poison. Just can’t figure out the temp or exactly which vegetables
This is right for me. A recipe is a guideline for making something the first time. Things will turn out OK and then the next time you make the dish you can develop it to your own tastes.
If I am offering a recipe to someone else and they aren’t very good at cooking I will try to be more exact than if I am explaining a new dish to someone who cooks a lot but hasn’t made that particular item.
The exception is in baking. Cakes, pies, bread and especially pastry, you had better follow the directions carefully.
You don’t really need to know what it is exactly–you can always adjust along the way. If it’s too wet, cook it off. If it’s too dry, add more liquid. That’s what I tend to do with this kind of stuff, just take a ballpark guess to get it going.
That said, it’s easier just to look it up and have it right without mucking about too much.
My own pet peeve is people reviewing a recipe they didn’t follow. Commonly on Epicurious, for instance: “I only gave one fork. My kids do not like onions, so I substituted beets. Veal was too pricey for me, so I used oatmeal. And I did not have time to cook all day at 350, so I microwave instead for 45 minutes. Will not make again.”
Yeah, that drives me insane. I don’t mind it so much when it’s paired with a good rating, because it might give me ideas, but substituting and then down-rating it? The hell? Or people who just don’t get the point of a recipe, like a simple basic tomato sauce, and then complaining because it wasn’t spicy enough or something? Well, it’s supposed to be a basic tomato sauce, not a curry! Grrr…
