“I don’t use recipes!” is an annoying brag!

[Lordoftheflyingpan]

AIBU in finding it really annoying and unbearably smug when someone says “I don’t use recipes, I just make up my own”?

It can occur any time the filthy word “recipe” is mentioned, but as an example:
A: This salad is really nice!
B: Thanks, it’s a Jamie Oliver recipe.
A: Oh, I don’t use recipes. I just make it up according to what I like.

I’m aware this is super petty, but if Mumsnet isn’t the place to put petty gripes then I don’t know where is.

YABU - it’s fine! Get over it/yourself.
YANBU - ugh, yes, so smug and annoying.

I never use recipes, it's not a brag. No know how to cook and alter the ingredients if needed, that's normal

@Motherofgorgons

YABU. Many of us from non British backgrounds don't use recipes because we were taught by our mothers who did not use recipes or even measurements.

But they still are recipes, just not written down. Don't have to be written down to be a recipe.

I get what you;re saying OP. I am a good cook and interested in food and have been since I left home and realised there was a WORLD of food out here beyond my mother's 'no recipe' cooking!

I now know a lot of the dishes I make frequently really well so I can make them without referring to the recipe or I can tweak / improvise with substitute ingredients etc
But the point is i once DID have a recipe to learn how to make that particular thing.

Following a recipe is no more complicated than reading instructions on a box or packet so I don't get the recipes are pretentious thing at all. You don't even have to own a cookbook / magazine as you can access it all on line now anyway.

My personal experience of the people who say 'oh I never follow a recipe, i just make it up' is that their food tastes exactly as you would expect from that

My mother favours totally plain, unembellished food such as boiled potatoes, boiled veg, roast or fried meat. No recipe needed but utterly bland and uninteresting. My MIL is the opposite camp of no recipe and is of the 'throw it all in a pot and hope for the best' school of cooking. Resulting in some very questionable concoctions over the years.

I am 100% of the belief that if you can read you can cook and I taught myself to cook because I wanted to eat nice things.

I used to not, but my kids moan about my food when it's too ad hoc. E.g. the tomato and spinach sauce I made which resembled baby poo.

So, I now do use recipes if cooking from scratch, mainly to check approximate measurements and basic proportions. Unless it's something I cook all the time, in which case at some point I'd have used a recipe. Or a general veg soup.

I said YABU because I think people saying I'm not using a recipe is generally not a brag. But will add a slight rider that in the exact dialogue you mentioned it would be a bit obnoxious with a clear suggestion that they are better than you.

I never use recipes but I did see a tiktok the other day where a woman put potato in her spag bol so I might start

It looks like this is a classic case of miscommunication. As a recipe user the whole 'I don't use recipes' line sounds like 'I'm such an amazing cook I don't even need a recipe'
It would never have occurred to me that 'It's a Jamie Oliver recipe' could sound like a brag either.
Interestingly my nan did didn’t cook. My mum taught herself from cook books, and taught me from recipes in turn. That's my normal.

I’m also a “no recipe wanker”, but please mark me as a total cunt for sniggering at the thought of making a salad by following a recipe.

Can’t you unclench?

Laughing at the person who thinks British people don’t have mothers that cook! It’s usually completely the opposite, according to nearly every British person, their mother makes the best roast potatoes/yorkshire pudding/fish pie/victoria sponge 😂

I mainly dont use recipes. Not because im an amazing chef and my taste buds are the tits, more because im NEVER organised enough to plan things. All my meals are thrown together with adhoc ingrediants from the back of the fridge

I don't use them because the sort of food I tend to make doesn't really need it and I don't have the patience to follow them - which means if I ever attempt more technical food it's usually a complete disaster and the less said about my baking the better . I'll be honest that I am quite proud of being able to make some really tasty food without a recipe, and having a good understanding of flavours and spices, but I wouldn't look down on people who used one, good food is good food!

I just see recipes as a gudeline. I red them and then alter them to suit my teste and ingredients available.

I agree with those who say that the default position for cooking is NOT using a recipe. Surely?
I collect cookbooks and have loads and loads, but only really use them as recipe books if it's baking where quantities matter.
I'll look through for ideas, but chop and change ingredients depending on what I've got.
I find the "oh this is so and so's recipe from his such and such book" comes across as far more smug tbh.

Haha, some of these are gold.

But to clarify, it’s not the lack of recipe use I have an issue with, it’s the bragging about it.

Use a recipe or do a fridge raid or wing it or cook something that’s been handed down through generations, or make something you saw on TV. TBH, the fact that you’re making home-made food is great. Good on ya. And even if you aren’t, fine. We all have our thing going on, there’s no shame.

But when someone says “I don’t use recipes!” all I hear is “I have superior cooking skills and don’t need to condescend to using someone else’s instructions”.

Which I accept, maybe is more to do with me… 😂

@MrsSkylerWhite

Been cooking for decades and don’t generally use “recipes” because knowledge sinks in. Sorry for annoying you

I don't even follow recipes for baking and they turn out well 95% of the time.

It's pure laziness on my part.

I don’t use recipes because I’m so disorganised.
I don’t have the exact food, and even if I did I struggle to follow the recipe.
Having said that, I’m a terrible cook.

I'll look at a recipe, feel inspired then do my own thing on that theme. Partly that there's a lot of recipes that use ingredients not avaliable in dull provinical supermarkets, partly that I CBA with the planning and measuring. Not exactly being pretentious!

I started making spaghetti bolognese from a recipe in a book I got as an engagement present. Over the years I have made changes and no longer follow it religiously no idea where the book is now
Also I make a salad using the same ingredients as the shop bought one I sometimes get and maybe add some of my own. The only one I have thought up myself is a Curry pasta salad and even that could possibly be attributed to ideas I have absorbed from various sources.

I think we all make things using recipes and then putting our own spin on it or things we learned from our mothers aunts grandparents etc and making it to suit our and our families tastes.

We all learn differently. Some people can happily look at a recipe and have it make sense to them and go off and buy ingredients. I find the whole recipe thing a bit stressful. (Possible adhd.)
I forget things in recipes even though it's written down right in front of me!
I tend to use my experience and intuition which makes a wanker I suppose

Oh, also I'm a chef which makes it worse doesn't it😂

I don't use recipes but it doesn't mean I've never used recipes, it's how I learnt to cook. I knew someone once who cooked the same menu every week and used a recipe book every single time even though they had made the meals a hundred times before, I thought that was a bit odd.

I like to just make stuff up as I go along. Usually works. Sometimes use a recipe if I’m trying something new, or loosely base a meal on a recipe, but much more fun to just add a bit of this and a bit of that I think! I wouldn’t mean that as bragging though, more that I get bored strictly following a recipe.

Well it could be either U or not depending on the person and how it is said. I rarely use recipes because I can't be bothered with them. However, it obviously could be used as a brag along the lines of 'I'm just too clever to need recipes'.

@Lordoftheflyingpan

Haha, some of these are gold.

But to clarify, it’s not the lack of recipe use I have an issue with, it’s the bragging about it.

Use a recipe or do a fridge raid or wing it or cook something that’s been handed down through generations, or make something you saw on TV. TBH, the fact that you’re making home-made food is great. Good on ya. And even if you aren’t, fine. We all have our thing going on, there’s no shame.

But when someone says “I don’t use recipes!” all I hear is “I have superior cooking skills and don’t need to condescend to using someone else’s instructions”.

Which I accept, maybe is more to do with me… 😂

Mostly I don't think it's wanker behaviour. But I was a bit irritated with a mum who came by to fetch her DC after a playdate and I was in the process of making a fairly complicated soup, with a recipe, and she said, in a tone of total surprise, "You use a recipe for soup?!" I make all kinds of soups without a recipe. But this was a new one for me involving ingredients I don't usually use. Sigh.

I also make things up. This isn't a brag. It is because I mostly cook Asian food which doesn't need exact measurements or steps ( acc to me anyway). I find recipes stressful for everyday meals.
If I am baking I use recipes though