- Ingredients:
1 clove garlic*
:dubious:
Who uses one clove of garlic? One clove usually translates to four or five whenever I follow a recipe.
A lot of Chinese recipes will call for a tablespoon of chicken broth. I’m not defrosting a large container of home made broth just so I can use one tablespoon of it. I’m also not going to waste powdered or cubes of bouillon just for one tablespoon of broth. I suppose if everything I cooked called for chicken broth I could make some up and leave it in the fridge, but I just don’t use it that often. When I do use it, it’s for soups and things that require several cups of it. That I’ll do.
I never add salt, except in bread recipes and potato latkes. It only makes things taste salty.
I do measure for rice or quinoa, anything that is supposed to soak all of the water up when it’s done. I just fill the pot for pasta, though, and I don’t wait for it to boil, either.
WhyNot, that’s a great idea for tomato paste! The baking mats that Athena mentioned are great, they’ve saved my new cookie sheets from stains and french fry grease.
I always like to assume they made a typo here, and meant to say HEAD. 
I don’t add milk to my boxed macaroni and cheese anymore. I found out that it’s not needed, and cuts down on the perishables one needs to keep around in order to have dinner made.
WHAT? Everyone stop glaring at me! You cook what you cook, and I’ll cook what I cook! 
The only directions I ever follow are for baking cakes. I wing everything else I ever cook and have zero recipes for anything in my house.
“Cook pork to 160 degrees F.” Trichino-worms die at 140. Flavor and moisture die at 153.
“Red wine with meat, white for fish and fowl.” Generally, yes, but pork gets pink, and anything with marinara sauce gets Chianti.
“White wine is chilled, but red is at room temp.” Nope. It’s all chilled.
“Fresh ginger, grated” Minced is much easier, and you don’t get that stringy stuff.
I keep my homemade broth in quart-size plastic freezer bags. You can take 'em out and run a little hot water over them while you’re doing other stuff, then pour out a tablespoon or a half-cup or whatever, put the rest back in the freezer.
I seldom measure stuff; I just eyeball it (unless I’m baking).
When I make stock, I freeze some of it in ice cube trays (that I only use for stock). Once they’ve frozen, I put the cubes all together in a freezer bag. IIRC, each cube a couple tablespoons.
I don’t sift flour, but I do generally whisk together my dry ingredients before adding to others.
Most recipes call for unsalted butter. I don’t want to bother with keeping salted and unsalted butter in the house, so I just use salted butter, and either omit or reduce the amount of salt called for in the recipe.
I tend to be over-generous when adding vanilla and when adding fruit to fruit-based recipes such as muffins and bread.
Yeah the idea of a little vanilla is wrong, usually a recipe will call for a drop of extract, but theres got to be more!
Yeah, that’s a good idea. I keep meaning to freeze things in ice cube trays. It’s handy for lots of stuff, if I’d just do it.
I don’t drink milk much these days and got tired of it going bad so I have gotten into the habit of portioning out the milk into little one-cup freezer containers as soon as I buy it so I always have some for when I do need it.
I do the same with Lasagne.
Same here. Onions hate me; I tear up insanely while cutting them, and those “onion goggles” that came out recently don’t fit on my face - or over glasses.
I ignore the edict that when you’re trying a new recipe for the first time, you need to cook it as written. Screw that.
I also don’t taste food that I’m cooking if it has meat in it, since I’m a vegetarian. I have a good sense memory as well as sense of smell, and if I’m really not sure, I’ll get my husband to taste it. It’s been on the extremely rare occasion that scents and my cooking “instincts” have misled me.
Garlic gets twice the amount from me, and if the recipe calls for onion or garlic powder, I just put the real thing in.
Things that are going to be cooked into mush anyway (aromatics for soup), I cook really high to get them done faster and get some browning.
Pasta takes me hardly any time at all to cook. The macaroni and cheese I just cooked was done in 4 and a half minutes.
I see I’m not the only one who doubles or triples the garlic. You can never have enough garlic. I like to use fresh garlic – powder just isn’t the same. I also use a garlic press – mincing is a pain.
I don’t pre-cook my lasagna noodles or manicotti noodles either before stuffing them, it’s easier to prep otherwise and I don’t burn my fingers. I also double the garlic (mm, fresh garlic) in some recipies and in others I use herbs instead of salt.
I don’t follow any recipes for anything I cook; I just pretty much throw a bunch of ingredients together. Things don’t always turn out the best, but sometimes it works really well.
As for pre-heating the oven, is there any advantage to this? I’ve never pre-heated the oven for anything and I just don’t understand the purpose for it.
It’s most important for baked goods, especially items that don’t have to be in very long (like cookies) or anything that might be screwed up by fluctuating heat. If you only need to bake cookies for, say, 8 minutes, many ovens can take longer than that to reach the proper temperature. You’d end up with an undercooked cookie that’s also not properly browned. If you have an oven that preheats quickly, and especially if you’re baking something that might be in for a half hour or more, or a casserole with mostly precooked ingredients, then it’s not so important.