To follow recipes or not?

[TastyReuben]

You cook without a recipe from time-to-time. I'm pretty sure your breakfast of scrambled eggs with sausage, potatoes, peppers and onions didn't use a recipe. Scrambled eggs are good for "creating," or cleaning out the fridge creatively.

CD

Here's the hilarious (to me) thing about that.

When I sat down last week to plan my menu, I grabbed this "Irish" cookbook I have, since I haven't used it hardly at all.

Second recipe in was this "Irish Breakfast Hash" - specifying Bob Evans Sage breakfast sausage. How Irish!

Turns out, this cookbook is one I got at a discount store for about $2 and is something put together by some food trade group, because all the recipes specify actual brand names of ingredients.

So, yeah, technically I had a recipe for that, but when I read through it this morning, I saw it was literally sausage, potatoes, peppers, onions, eggs. No salt. No pepper. At that point, I just did my usual "whatever I have in the fridge" scramble.

I have three cookbooks like that. I don't know why I haven't donated them yet.

ETA: yes, I do cook on my own occasionally, but it's rare. Eggs feature quite a bit, some soups, crepes topped with whatever (sweet or savory), and I did "invent" my own pizza sauce.

A few years ago, I looked at several sandwich bread recipes, took a bit from this and that, and made my own loaf.

Posted it on a baking site, asked for some pointers, mentioned it was a recipe of my own design, and was embarrassed to find out it was very, very close to the Betty Crocker basic white loaf!

 

[Burt Blank]

otherwise cooking schools could just close their doors.

I went to a school in Chiang Mai Thailand to learn how to cook Thai food. The other pupils were from everywhere apart from Thailand. Back in the day one of my many ex Sil went to Leiths. She emerged with the ability to follow and recreate a recipe but lacked the ability to adapt the dish because of her different environment or peoples taste buds IE my brother liked my Baba Gnoosh for one reason, after it has chilled and set up in the fridge for 24 hours I recheck the seasoning before serving, it always needs enhancing. She was nearly destroyed when three attempts at baking a Christmas cake ended in disaster. The first thing I tell people including my wife is not to trust the temp gauge of a home oven. re calibrate using a thermometer.

 

[Morning Glory]

The first thing I tell people including my wife is not to trust the temp gauge of a home oven. re calibrate using a thermometer.

Very true.

 

[Burt Blank]

But every form of art, and cooking is an art,

I agree, some like Rossetti I prefer innovators like Dali

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[Windigo]

first thing I tell people including my wife is not to trust the temp gauge of a home oven. re calibrate using a thermometer.

That's good advice, but it's common knowledge that every oven has it's own character.

 

[Windigo]

BTW, I don't look down on people who use recipes verbatim. We are just different.

CD

Me neither and I never said I was against creativity with cooking, not sure how that became the interpretation of my post.

But like you said in this post, you need basic skills in order to be creative otherwise it's just going to be chaos unless you're one of the exeptional geniuses who can do it all without training.

 

[Burt Blank]

Cooking is art, I robbed the method off the internet. I was bored one afternoon when I was recuperating from being blasted buy a ray gun ( not Ronald) for 21 days.

 

[MypinchofItaly]

Me neither and I never said I was against creativity with cooking, not sure how that became the interpretation of my post.

But like you said in this post, you need basic skills in order to be creative otherwise it's just going to be chaos unless you're one of the exeptional geniuses who can do it all without training.

Welcome to the club of misunderstanding about posts 😃

Basic skills are necessary, yeah, even because you should miss some clever and good tips about how to make better something, not only about taste or why an ingredient works better than another, but also about how to manage time. Then if one wants to follow or not basic skills it’s a choice

 

[Burt Blank]

I never said I was against creativity with cooking, not sure how that became the interpretation of my post.

I do understand that, It's your opinion of cookery schools I was interested in. Unless the pupil has flair its just like painting by numbers. I also understand your preference for tinned S/M toms as the Nederlands is one of the Capitols of Hydroponically greenhouse grown insipid tomatoes.

 

[MypinchofItaly]

Sometimes I laugh to some people who say “I don’t need rules, I am a creative” whatever is the field where they work/do things.
Isn’t the most arrogant silly thing to say?

 

[Windigo]

Welcome to the club of misunderstanding about posts 😃

Basic skills are necessary, yeah, even because you should miss some clever and good tips about how to make better something, not only about taste or why an ingredient works better than another, but also about how to manage time. Then if one wants to follow or not basic skills it’s a choice

Yeah I mean I can be creative and make chicken sashimi but I don't think that would be very wise or tasty. Some rules are there for a reason. Like rules about how something should be cooked. Raw chicken is an absolute no no , doesn't matter how creative you are.

 

[Burt Blank]

The thing that amused me about this article and others like it are the lemmings who complained after making the dish.
" Of course, any article on the subject of culinary disaster isn't complete without mention of the River Café chocolate nemesis, a dish which, despite rave reviews from diners in the west London restaurant, steadfastly refused to work for home cooks, who famously produced something more like "a kind of cowpat" than the decadent dessert they were hoping for. The late Rose Gray's slightly unsatisfactory response was that "It's a recipe you need to make a couple of times before you get it right". I doubt many people attempted it more than once: humiliation doesn't tend to whet the appetite for seconds."
"a kind of cowpat" beautiful descriptive pros. Cookbook errors: recipes for disaster

 

[TastyReuben]

That's good advice, but it's common knowledge that every oven has it's own character.

I've followed that advice for years, and I have a little oven temperature gauge for doing just that.

However, I noticed with interest something in the owner's manual of my latest oven, which advised against using a temperature gauge on this particular oven, as the oven constantly adjusts the temperature during a baking cycle, so any single reading with a will not be accurate.

In short...trust us.

Cooking is art, I robbed the method of the internet. I was bored one afternoon when I was recuperating from being blasted buy a ray gun ( not Ronald) for 21 days.View attachment 44319

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You had way too much time on your hands!

 

[Burt Blank]

In short...trust us.

I have a Bosch series 6 with auto pilot and Paralytic ( malapropism ) self cleaning. It's too Fing hot to put it on. I fink it must clean itself when I go to bed.

 

[mjd]

The more I cook, the less I follow recipes. I tend to use them for inspiration but seldom bother weighing or measuring anything. Probably why I'm rubbish at baking. It makes my smile when I hear someone complain "I followed the recipe to the letter and it still turned out rubbish". That's because you followed the recipe to the letter instead of using your taste, you muppet.

I have 2 pet peeves about that.

1. I don't like not being able to have a recipe because the cook just eyeballs the ingredients. There are so many things I've tasted that can't be replicated because of this.

2. I don't like when people rate recipes online based on the changes they made. It's NOT the recipe as written so why is it rated higher or lower if you change ingredients and steps? This is why I don't trust ratings any longer.

Oh the humanity!