B. And stay the hell out of the kitchen when I’m doing the dishes (by hand) too.
I’m definitely a B. I don’t really like to cook (though I don’t find it difficult or stressful) and I prefer to do it alone, without help or chitchat.
My husband (who also doesn’t like to cook, and would probably find defusing a bomb less stressful than preparing a dish he’s made successfully hundreds of times) is an A. He gets seriously miffed if I don’t hang out in the kitchen while he cooks.
A all the way.
I have mastered the ability to carry on conversations, make food, and drink drinks all at the same time.
I have had up to 5 people and 1 large dog in my (little tiny) kitchen while fixing a major meal.
It’s all part of that food of love thing that Emeril talks about.
(I would kill for a kitchen like his)
Type B.
“What can I do to help?”
“Stay outta the way!”
Made worse by my tiny kitchen with no counters.
B. Do NOT hover. You can go over there and chop something, or go over there and wash some spinach, but if I feel you watching me, especially when I’m about to do something tricky, I will definitely yell at you.
Type A
I learned to cook mostly from my Gramma and Great-gramma, and there were always a ton of people around.
I come from a very large Italian family, and my grandparents house was also The Gathering Place™. You know, the one house that everyone (family, friends, neighbors, stray animals, kids with dirt on their faces, local government officials) comes to for coffee and pasta and fresh bread and more coffee and donuts and cannolis and lasagna and to just hang out and bullshit and gripe and talk about whoever just left and play pinochle and euchre and stuff.
My Gramma was always baking, always talking, always had time for everyone and still made the best food I’ve yet eaten in more than 40 years on the planet. How could I possibly strive for less, with that as my teacher?
For me cooking comes within a nanometer of utterly pointless if it’s not a social thing. This would be why most of my at-home meals consist of way more convenience food than they should. I’m not that great a cook either and I get more creative and good meals from someone else’s ideas than from my own. I hate cooking alone and would probably just not cook/prepare food at all were it not for the whole lightheaded-hunger-starvation thing. (I get progressively more bored with food the longer I go cooking/eating alone. This is even more significant in light of the fact that I’m a huge foodie and I love tasting/trying/eating new things, exotic things, comfort food things, nearly anything.) There should at least be someone to talk to, even if they’re sitting at the table watching me instead of helping. Communal cooking is even better, though.
So, Type A.
Type B - my kitchen’s tiny, though, there’s only really room for 1 person at a time, so the conversation usually goes:
“Can I do anything to help?”
“You can get out of my way”
I hope to be a Type A when we have a bigger place - although just for the company, not the assistance. I’m happy to chat while cooking, but I don’t really trust any one to help me. How do I know they’ll do it right?!
A. I tried to imagine what I might be making that would require such a high degree of concentration that having other people around would be a distraction and I can’t come up with anything. Dogs, kids, cats, llamas, whatever. More the merrier. I work very hard to make my house the place people come when they don’t want to be alone at their house. There is nothing I like better than somebody showing up unexpectedly.
Definitely type A: I belong to a Cook’s Guild that gets together to make medieval food, and besides that, I love talking while I cook.
Type B.
Get the fuck out of my kitchen.
DingDingDing!! WINNER OF THE THREAD!!
And a big part of the “My kitchen, my rules” approach I take is that the cleaning up can wait until the morning, if that’s what I want. Let’s sit down with full bellies and have a coffee and some small talk. I don’t want your well-meaning self in that kitchen making passive aggressive crockery noises when it’s time for civilised people to have a coffee and a smoke.
Oh, I’m Type B btw too.
Sit down, drink a glass of plonk and keep me updated on the news/whatever, but just stay the hell out of my workspace! If you behave, I’ll feed you bonza munger.
Kitchen Nazi here. For one thing, our kitchen is too small to have extraneous people in there. Secondly, bumping into somebody unexpectedly and spilling something or burning yourself is most annoying. But I go one step further, I’m afraid. When my wife is cooking, it’s almost impossible for me to stay out of there. She always turns the heat up too high on things, and her methodology is just…wrong. Also, she makes the largest messes I’ve ever seen, so I try to keep after cleaning up things while she’s working. Lastly, she never tightens lids, seals bags, puts things back in the fridge, etc. I’ve learned to never pick up a jar without first giving the lid a twist, or risk cleaning up the entire contents of a jar of pickles off the floor.
Type A. It’s how I grew up, in the kitchen, talking, chopping, stirring, chatting, cleaning, cutting, discussing. A kitchen should be full of motion and noise, with silence only coming with mouths being full. 
I like to cook, and I like to talk, and heck my wife’s learned to cook from hanging out in the kitchen with me, and doing bits of work here and there as we talk. I expect people and pets to be moving, and wanting attention and participation; the kitchen always seems like the best place for that.
Even in the smallest apartment I’ve lived in, two people could work in the kitchen at once, and a couple more could be sitting at the counter do some prep work on something. My current kitchen is pretty large, and very strangely laid out (the stove and fridge are in a pantry). You need to pay attention to where people are, and what they’re doing, but I’m fine with that.
Type A, all the way. When we give a dinner party, everybody always winds up in the kitchen. And I don’t need help, I need company.
And the weekend starts on Friday night, when we pop open a bottle of wine, my wife sits at the island, and we start the conversation while I start dinner. But we got a nice big kitchen.
definitely b. If my husband comes into the kitchen and makes a sandwich or anything while I’m cooking I’ll walk out. Our kitchen is way too small for 2 people to be working in there. I just go watch tv til he comes out (dirty looks - I know passive-agressive is soo unattractive, but I’m over it as soon as I get back to what I was doing)
Mostly A, with our friends. We have a greatroom setup, with a smallish stove/fridge/sink work area, an island, and a dinette set on one end and the living room area on the other. Our friends are good at standing on the back side of the island or at the table when they help and can stay out of the actual workspace.
With the in-laws, it’s mostly B. His mom, grandma, and aunt all want to help, but they mainly want to help by being right under our feet in the workspace. Washing dishes, mainly. Which is great, except when you get out a bowl to mix something up, grab a couple of ingredients, and turn back to see that your clean bowl is in the dishwater being scrubbed in minute detail before being handed over to be slowly and laboriously dried with a seriously damp tea towel. It’s about 5 minutes before you get your bowl back.
Hardcore type B. Even the cats stay out of my kitchen. Being in my house means eating very well, unless you get in my way.
I’ve cooked in closets masquerading as a kitchen, enormous beautifully-designed almost pro-level kitchens, and everything in between. I am consistently a “get the hell out” cook. I don’t even mind clearing the table after meals, just so no one loads MY dishwasher “wrong.”. Teaching the kids to cook (as a responsible parent-type adult must, if that adult wants to bring up competent children) was hell on my nerves.
My favorite was a small but efficient (beautifully arranged) kitchen with a “gathering room” on the other side of a big island counter. That was marvelous for entertaining and for family. No one dared cross that invisible line into The Kitchen Area, but we could carry on a conversation without shouting. It was the only saving grace in an awful house during an unpleasant period of my life.