To think most people cook from their heads?

[untiedstates]

I can just walk into the kitchen and start cooking. For example, pasta sauce I will chop and onion and get it softening then scan the fridge for veg and protein and chop and bung in. Similar for curry. Similar for soup, stew, pie filling, savoury mince and all sorts. I use recipes when baking. If I’m trying something new then I will usually read 8-10 recipes then make up my own borrowing bits from each.

DH thinks this is some sort of witchcraft. He can accurately follow a recipe but gets extremely panicky if the recipe calls for onion but we only have leek or if mince comes in 400g packets and the recipe calls for 450g.

I think most people cook like me, he thinks most are like him. Who’s BU?

I don't think either of you ABU! You're just more experienced and relaxed about it than him.

Seems a really weird way to do it. We meal plan so we know what we’re having and have all the ingredients for the week.

Recipe - to the letter all the way.

@MeredithJim

Seems a really weird way to do it. We meal plan so we know what we’re having and have all the ingredients for the week.

I find that really weird and control-freaky to be honest. I do as the OP does but I fully accept that there are many to whom it doesn't come naturally.

I wouldn't call myself a particularly good cook, and it just depends what I'm making. If it's something I've made often, I can just cook it; otherwise I'll use a recipe. Having said that I'm relaxed about improvising where we don't have an ingredient, because that's normally common sense.

I hate meal planning. I make things from what I have.

I do it exactly the way you do it. Fiancé does it exactly the way yours DH does! I find it frustrating - he will go to the shop to get the exact ingredient in a recipe rather than just improvise. Takes him forever.

I don’t think YABU but I do think this takes more skill and knowledge than you might give it credit for. I do the same - so the Mumsnet idea of meal planning and shopping to a list was a complete eye opener when I joined. Whereas I just buy staples and then other fresh stuff we like without any particular plan. But that’s years of experience and learning quite advanced skills growing up from my mum & nan. But it becomes like riding a bike or driving a car - it’s so obvious and intuitive you forget that it’s not like that for a beginner. I often think that when people say about healthy home cooked food being cheaper - well yes but only if you really know what you’re doing and lots of people don’t.

I’ve just put a very squidgy brown banana in my curry. To add sweetness. Am I going to regret it?!

My husband follows recipes to the letter which results in lots of 'bits' in the fridge and ingredients which get used once then go out of date. I'm more instinctive, like you

I’m like you OP. I occasionally try to meal plan, but inevitably we end up fancying something different by Wednesday and then have to wing it the rest of the week. I don’t waste good, I just like to cook what I fancy that day.

I do menu plan but then cos I'm rubbish at shopping/ remembering what's already in the cupboard ( or not!) / remembering one of is out or it's not in fact Tuesday but Wednesday ( as I did this week!) then I have to improvise. A lot . And that's fine. One of the few things I'm relaxed and confident about. Can make a meal out of nothing. Hate being told what to do by a recipe

I think it depends how confident and experienced you are at cooking. I cook most things from memory but occasionally I’ll try out a new recipe and follow it religiously with the book/webpage, but then once I’ve done it a few times I’ll start to do it from memory - maybe with a few adaptions.

I don’t have a clue how to cook without a recipe.

I would love to do it your way but I just don't have the skills/experience.

Cooking doesn't come naturally to me. I've improved massively since having children and having to cook most days, particularly in lockdown but up until I was about 30 I rarely cooked much from scratch. I just found it a waste of time when I could be out enjoying myself/have someone else make it I regret that a bit now - just today I made a relatively simple Asian noodle dish that I've made about 5 times in the last six months and yet I STILL had to look up the original recipe and follow it to the letter

I think cooking is just not an area in ever likely to excel in.

I do kind of your way, in that I rarely look at a recipe unless I want to try a specific dish (e.g. something new I came across while browsing the recipe books I barely actually use...). But I will plan out roughly what I will need/ be able to cook for the week for main meals, although this is flexible so it is more likely to say "eggs, potatoes, veg" which then turns into egg and wedges, or Spanish omelette, or mash and a poached egg plus whatever fresh veg is left by that point in the week. I actually find following recipes much more stressful, bc my short term memory is pants and I have to check back every 30 seconds. My long term "doing" memory is excellent though, so once I know a dish it's easy to improvise around the general idea.

I do meal plan, in that I have a rough idea what we are having during the week, but it can change, and if it is too hot, cold, or we fancy something else, I just change what we have. I don't follow recipes. I will look on-line for recipe's, or occasionally look at a book for ideas, but then I don't follow it to the letter, I tend to adapt to what I have in the fridge/cupboard.

I also don't measure anything, including baking ingredients, drives my DD's mad, they ask how much, I just say "until it looks right" !!

I do what you do OP. I meal plan to an extent but it will be something like -
Monday - spag Bol
Tuesday - fish
Wednesday - eggs
Thursday - use up the rest of the mince

MiL has made the same meals on the same days of the week for 50years and still uses a recipe to be sure. Same with baking. It would never cross her mind to replace raisins for cherries, or brown sugar for white, if the recipe didn’t say.

DH just throws stuff in a wok

I do the same as you unless it's something with a lot of spices or unusual ingredients in, eg I will follow a recipe for a curry so that I don't go and get the balance of spices wrong.

I do a mixture. Spag bol, no recipe needed. Curry, I’ll have a look at a couple of recipes and either pick one or just use that vague mix of spices. We eat a lot of things that really don’t need a recipe, like chicken breast flattened and coated in herby flour.

I do a mix, I can wing most things but I'll often look up recipes for inspiration. I have a few cook books that I like to use but will adapt pretty much every recipe. I do use specific recipes for baking but again there's a fair amount of winging goes on....Sometimes unsuccessfully!

Same, but I grew up relatively "poor" so every ingredient was used in some kind of dish. My mum was very inventive with food because of this and it just became habit for me too. Bit of this, bit of that, that flavour goes with that, etc, as well as knowing rough measurements etc from experience over the years.

I do both..mostly just by looking in the fridge and seeing what I have but also follow I a recipe if I am getting bored of the same things.

Standard weekly meals I always cook from
my head: veggie lasagne, veggie mousaka, veggie cottage pie, veggie sausage casserole, coq au vin, thai green curry, korma, veggie chilli, pasta dishes, two particular Jamie Oliver fish dishes I just do without reading a recipe. We don’t each much meat.

I tend to batch cook every week, and freeze extra portions so we always have quick and health evening meals when back home late.

“Special occasion meals” I tend to try something new and follow a recipe. Sometimes these enter the weekly repertoire for batch cooks.

I do think it's down to being taught fairly young though. I'm in my early 20s, but I've been watching my mum cook/ "helping" forever and I first started cooking independently at about 12. I was never taught to follow recipes as such, more like "this is how we make curry" rough guidelines and then I learnt what sort of things could be added, what you can do without, how to make different types and flavours etc by watching my mum cook and experimenting. I was encouraged to think about how I cooked and what ingredients went together, and only had one major disaster (tried to make a dip with dairy and lemons and it curdled badly, afterwards my mum made me think of what else I could have made successfully with the same ingredients!)