to think there is something weird about regular cooks that measure oil for frying

[witchwithallthetrimmings]

I can see if you have never fried an onion before you might need some guidance but if a recipie calls for you to sweat some onions and carrots in xx tbsp of oil would you really count them out precisely?

I only measure when I'm baking, although I have a special spoon which when heaped is an ounce of flour so I don't always measure then.

Oh MIL does this and it is so infuriating watching her. She marinated some chicken in oil and lemon once, she had to carefully measure the X tbsp of oil into a ramekin, then squeeze a lemon into another dish, then measure the lemon juice into the ramekin. Then she spent ages stirring the things together in the ramekin, then carefully poured it over the chicken. The whole time I was thinking "FFS just put a glug of oil over and then squeeze the bloody lemon over".

I think she thought I was being awkward when she asked for my soup recipe once and I said "I don't have a recipe, I just chuck in whatever veg we happen to have."

People weigh pasta? . I never measure anything, apart from when I'm making a cake. It wastes time. I never use the chopping board to cut my onions and veg either, I cut them over the pot/pan.

Nope, different pans need different amounts of oil.

Yesterday's tatty frying pan sticks, the more expensive huge on doesn't.

I weigh rice and pasta, my guesses are useless.

DH follows instructions too much too. He once cooked some frozen crap (ok it was findus crispy pancakes) with oven chips for me and served them up all pale and limp. He said they must be cooked because the packet said X minutes.

I sent them back for longer in the oven. And that is just part of why he never cooks a thing We had a brand new baby at the time hence him 'helping'.

Yes at DH cooking things for the exact time, even when we switched from an old, crap oven to a new super-efficient one - "but I don't get how the pizza's burnt - it says 14 minutes on the box and that's how long it's been in for!"

I bake. I weigh nothing.

And MoaningMinge (love that!), I get "come and see if this is cooked enough for you" as if I am some kind of exceptionally picky gourmet because I don't like HALF RAW FOOD.

Ooh Namechange I really want to do the cutting over the pan thing but I usually cut myself. I think it looks so cool. I may not be focusing on the right things in my cooking, however.

thetrills I wouldn't call it silly any more then a pinch of something would be called silly, after all we all have different size fingers and thumbs

You can always add more salt after you're finished - if you make the wrong amount of pasta it'll take a while to cook more.

Wilson, it takes a lot of practise. I started doing it after Dd was born to save on washing. I still cut myself sometimes, but very rarely.

Depends on what it is

I weigh stuff the first time, after that i just remember. i just glug oil though. Pasta is always guesswork for me as I don't get how much it expands when cooked so raw it always looks like not enough and I end up doing too much.

I use a glug or so of oil. After all, a recipe calls for "1 onion" or "2 cloves of garlic" and these aren't standard sizes. Cooking isn't precise.

I measure for baking. Also for rice and pasta because otherwise I do get it wrong and end up usually with far too much.

I can understand the unconfident measuring things out, I have done it when I started cooking. But once you've done it a while, you get an idea of how much is a tablespoon, and how much you need. I can understand if you were watching your calories and making sure you didn't go overboard on the oil, you would measure too. Oil is very high calorie.

I never measure anything - don't have scales or measuring stuff. 80% of the time everything turns out just fine. The other 20% of the time we eat it anyway because my DP at least isn't very refined in his tastes.