To wonder what the buggery bollocks Jamie Oliver means half the time

[scaryfrogfish]

I'm currently flicking through his 5 ingredients cookbook, and several times it says to cook something until it's "gnarly". He even has whole recipes called "gnarly" this that and the other.

Gnarly means dangerous... I cannot find a single definition that could be descriptive of exactly how this "gnarly" food is supposed to look.

He uses the wrong word all the time for things, like a "good gulag of oil" and it just irritates me.

AIBU to think "gnarly" is a shit description when you're trying to explain to a cook how something needs to look?

BeeGees, Crinolines?
I thought retro-style meant decorate your kitchen red and white with gingham accessories, nice 1950's style pinny and Doris Day singing in the background.
And overcook the veg,

@SillyUnMurphy, proofreading seems to rely on spelling and grammar checkers these days; gulag would not be marked, and neither would calving knife or palette/pallet/palate type errors.

JO probably didn't write the book. I can't see that he would have the time to do everything.

I find most recipes undecipherable, Delia and her sodding 'curd cheese'. I also have no idea what pick over the mintleaves means, I'd probably turn them.
However the BBC good food recipes do something that until I realised confused me greatly.
"Brown the onions. [I'd brown the onions]. Add some oil and a gentle heat, [what, more??] stirring until the onions have darkened [oh you mean the bit I've just done? Was that just a title then?]

StealthPolarBear: pick over the mintleaves - check for any thing that you wouldn't want to eat.

"Brown the onions - add some oil and a gentle heat, stirring until the onions have darkened "

@NiceGerbil

'Bush, bash, bosh' sounds like an entirely different sort of publication

Yeah, I hear he likes a bit of 'Bush, bash, bosh'on another thread

It's part of his trademark isn't it. He likes to conjure up an image with his words, even if they're not officially the correct ones. It could all be corrected during editing but it wouldn't be him, would it. I quite like it, it shows he's passionate about it.

A handful is not a measurement. I have small hands, DP has huge hands, my 4 year old who likes to help cook has tiny hands. Who’s handful are we using?

[quote KetoPenguin]You might like this Asian comedian reviewing Jamie's egg fried rice recipe m.youtube.com/watch?v=t_KdbASIkB8[/quote]
His video on reviewing the woman cooking rice is very funny

Pick over is pretty obvious - take out the bits you don't want (tarragon has oil in it so maybe some of it gets too caramelised). Take out all of it if you want - it's giving the cook the choice.

You are spot on about the "season to perfection" - I have literally just seen that in 12 recipes IN A ROW.

Because if he gave precise measurements, people would be complaining it is too salty, not salty enough etc. Seasoning is really personal.

@thatonehasalittlecar, ""he seems like a genuinely decent guy"
You never know what people are like IRL.

Aww JO taught me to cook - I was a teen and watched The Naked Chef religiously, and Jamie’s school dinners at uni. Yes, he’s annoying, and a little bit of a pillock, and the sugary drinks thing is unforgivable, but he was young and enthusiastic and had an informal style which made cooking look easy (if you had access to the million strange ingredients).

We have quite a few of his books, but I still occasionally dip into the Naked Chef, Save with Jamie and 15 minute meals for inspiration.

I totally get what gnarly means but that’s because I come from a surfer place and I assume he’s using the surfing slang which I take to mean brilliant/incredible/excellent. Totally hyperbolic for food but not that hard to understand.

His recent recipes do read as though they are written by a bot though. So either he doesn’t have the time to do it right or they’re written by a JO impersonator, or he’s illiterate.

I think he means well mostly, but I hate the artificial sweetener chaos he’s caused.

Gnarled and gnarly are synonyms, they mean the same thing. But in this instance he means it the way surfers have meant it for about 50 years, it means good/awesome. Which is very much JOs style.
I’ve never seen ‘gulag’ in a JO book, though I have seen ‘lug’ instead of glug. It’s clear what he means though.
If his style isn’t for you I’m baffled why you’d buy his books, it’s not like it’s surprising given his persona.

Pick over is very North American. I can get on board with gnarly...but gulag for glug is a step too far Jamie as it makes no fucking sense AT ALL.

I could tolerate him until he did those meals on a budget, proving that poor people can afford to eat well if only they put the effort in to go foraging for wild garlic and sorrel

I think some people like recipes full of order and precision, like a science experiment. For other people though that can be intimidating and off putting. Jamie’s schtick was to make cooking feel a lot more relaxed and fun, suggesting that you don’t need to be carefully measuring things to the millilitre, you can be a bit more “rustic” in your approach, grab handfuls or pinches, use your eyes as much as you might use a timer to judge if food is looking good (or gnarly!).

I remember when his books came out I started to try cooking for the first time, and it seemed fun and a bit exciting rather than a chore. If I felt at the end that my “handful” was too much or too little I could always tweak it next time.

It’s a style of cookbook that serves a purpose and an audience that a lot of other cookbooks either don’t reach or alienate. It certainly isn’t for everyone but that’s fine, the world has more than enough chefs to go around!

@Bluegrass yes exactly that. I’m a scientist and actually the kind of science I do isn’t necessarily precise (it is, but there is an experiment to experiment variation and an intuitive nature to the way I work). I like to cook in an informal style - what happens if you substitute this or add a bit more of that. For me a recipe book is just a starting point, an inspiration. I’ll look at something and sometimes maybe make it to the letter the first time, but more often I’ll look in the cupboard and see how close we can get with what I have.

Baking, however, is entirely less forgiving...

But what about his ?

What annoys me about him isn't gnarly, it's the fact his kids eat everything he puts down to them.
How the hell did he manage that?!?

@LucilleBluth

Pick over is very North American. I can get on board with gnarly...but gulag for glug is a step too far Jamie as it makes no fucking sense AT ALL.

No, it doesn't make any sense.
And he's never said it.
He mentions a "glug" of oil or, more often, a "lug" of oil.

I imagine "gulag" was a typo or the OP misheard him and some people have just run with it.

This is what a "gulag" is, if anybody isn't familiar with the term:

www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/gulag

Hence @MrsTerryPratchett making a joking reference to Solzhenitsyn above.
She was right when she added " ".

I'll forgive him a lot for his Bloody Mary beef recipe.

@MikeUniformMike

StealthPolarBear: pick over the mintleaves - check for any thing that you wouldn't want to eat.

"Brown the onions - add some oil and a gentle heat, stirring until the onions have darkened "

The point is the first instruction is to brown the onions, so I do. The next few instructions take me through browning the onions, which I usually realise half way through. "brown th onions" is essentially a title and should be shown as such. (browning onions is a bad example as it's fairly simple. It's when the instruction is for something more complex that this tends to cause problems)

I agree, Stealth, I reworded it.

I haven't followed a JO recipe because I find him a bit irritating, but IMO recipes should tell you what to do.
That's why Delia Smith's recipes are popular.

Oh I see what you mean :) I usually end up with twice-browned onions, maybe it will be the new craze!