“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.

Another no recipe wanker here. Or rather, I read a few recipes for general ideas then just make it up as I go along.

Cooking is a creative exercise for me. I enjoy playing with my extensive spice collection. I'm not creative elsewhere though, so maybe this is my outlet? All this does actually make me sound like a wanker, I've just realised.

Baking, however, is a science and I don't deviate from recipes there.

Why is it a brag?
It's just a fact.

I very rarely follow a recipe. I make 'bungitin'. Fridge dive and see what happens. 🤷‍♀️ It's not a brag. There's nothing special about chucking stuff together. That's what most people do unless they are fantastic cooks making really complicated dishes.

I don't need recipes for most things I cook, I'm not really sure why that would make me smug or annoying?
I read a lot of cook books for ideas, and do use recipes for things I've never made before or if cooking a special meal and trying something new.

My food is ok but no-one is going to be raving about it - tbh I don't want them to because then they might want me to cook more often and I'd rather gnaw my own arms off.

Ditto.

I think it’s tone, and context.

In your example I can imagine that being said in a condescending ‘oh aren’t you sweet having to use a recipe, I never need to’ type way, but I can also imagine it meaning more of the ‘oh I’m never organised enough to follow a recipe properly/ would never have thought to look for something like that/ get stuck in the same old rut’ type way. Or I guess just a neutral ‘aren’t we all different’ type way.

My sister is a truly exceptional cook. Above and beyond the normal decent home cook standard. She can eat something in a restaurant for example and then recreate or even better it. She comes up with some amazing things. She still uses lots of recipes though - I can’t imagine her being pretentious about it. She likes to read about different ideas, ingredients she may not have tried before or them being used in different ways.

Plus however wonderful you think you are as a cook, there’s always going to be ideas you haven’t thought of. I got so many ideas for family meals when I started weaning DD and got some recipe books - they’re nothing particularly complicated or difficult, if you’d told me to make eg ‘creamy leek pasta’ I could have had a good go at coming up with something that tasted nice. I’d just not really thought to do it before. Now it’s one of our favourites.

Another who doesn’t use recipes. But I also don’t really make anything particularly exotic just what we like to eat as a family many things I add things we like or omit things we don’t like and add other ingredients. It’s not about being disorganised at all I usually have all the ingredients I need to make the majority of meals we eat just buy meat/veg

Why would I need to make an already wealthy person even richer by buying a book that's been attributed to their name?

At least half of the cookery books on sale aren't about making food, they're about being seen to know the fashionable cook, the looks or 'personality' of the cook or just pretty pictures and droning monologues of authenticity and near fetishism of poor locals. If they're linked to a TV series, it's even less likely to be useful because they've made an entire TV series that deliberately doesn't include enough information to cook the same thing.

I'm an experienced cook and don't need a physical recipe for familiar dishes as I keep that knowledge in my head. I do need to follow a recipe when cooking new things or where quantities need to be exact eg baking.
My brother is a great chef and he has a book of recipes to refer to!!

You're reading too much into it.

I am not organised enough to seek out a recipe and buy the ingredients so things are cobbled together on the day according to what I've got in the fridge.

I find people who tell me they followed a Jamie Oliver recipe - or whatever - a bit smug tbh. Like it's shorthand for 'I had time to look up this recipe and then shop for the ingredients. Surely you have time to do that too?'

Another one thinking the celeb chef name drop is significantly more annoying as a shit brag than "not using recipes".

Now I feel like a prick because I use recipes!

In my defence I've always told myself I'm shit at cookery but keen to learn. Someone once said to me ''if you can read [a recipe] you can cook'' so I'm teaching myself to cook via recipes. OK salads etc don't need recipes but I would have no idea how to cook a curry for example without a recipe telling me what spices need to go in and when etc.

I like reading recipes, but I don't follow recipes, mainly because most of them require a billion and one ingredients I don't stock or can't be bothered cooking with.

In my case, 'I don't use recipes' isn't a brag, but it's an admission of laziness.

@MsMarch totally! You are making home-made soup, no need to shame you and no need to justify yourself.

Tone of voice is everything. There is a difference between “😬 I never use recipes” and “😇 I never use recipes”.

@HowlingKale

It's a sign of disorganisation surely?

Lol.

It's the exact opposite of a brag when I say I don't use recipes. Total acknowledgement that my food would taste better if I got myself organised and didn't just guess how to make something!

@ItsCanardBruv

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?

So you're claiming that you have the ability to create an infinite combination of salads, with the right balance of ingredients and flavours, without ever consulting any kind of recipe?

You're right, that does make you sound a bit cunty.

@AliasGrape

I think it’s tone, and context.

In your example I can imagine that being said in a condescending ‘oh aren’t you sweet having to use a recipe, I never need to’ type way, but I can also imagine it meaning more of the ‘oh I’m never organised enough to follow a recipe properly/ would never have thought to look for something like that/ get stuck in the same old rut’ type way. Or I guess just a neutral ‘aren’t we all different’ type way.

My sister is a truly exceptional cook. Above and beyond the normal decent home cook standard. She can eat something in a restaurant for example and then recreate or even better it. She comes up with some amazing things. She still uses lots of recipes though - I can’t imagine her being pretentious about it. She likes to read about different ideas, ingredients she may not have tried before or them being used in different ways.

Plus however wonderful you think you are as a cook, there’s always going to be ideas you haven’t thought of. I got so many ideas for family meals when I started weaning DD and got some recipe books - they’re nothing particularly complicated or difficult, if you’d told me to make eg ‘creamy leek pasta’ I could have had a good go at coming up with something that tasted nice. I’d just not really thought to do it before. Now it’s one of our favourites.

Agreed! Thank you, this is so much more eloquent than I could have put it.

@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.

This. It really is quite normal not to use recipes or measurements.

@Zonder

I agree with you! It's like they have some kind of innate superior understanding of cooking and can just throw things together and they will make something lovely. In reality I think it takes ages of either making rubbish or following recipes until you know them well enough to adapt them to be able to say you don't use recipes any more

Yes I assume people who don't use recipes fit into one of those two groups. I don't often use recipes as I've been cooking for 50 years and just adapt what I know from experience.

I don't usually measure/weigh stuff either, my big exception is for Yorkshire puddings, I never mess with that.

This thread has a few different angles doesn't it?

The people who don't use recipes because they are cooking the same food over and over again that they've known forever.

The people who cook with ingredients that they know go together so not much will go wrong although it won't be a big thrill.

The people who are totally inventive at random and might get all sorts of results but enjoy it.

The people who are just getting stuff done and don't want to faff with recipes (who are probably a combination of the above).

A very small number of people who are able to spontaneously create genuinely interesting and yummy food and don't want to be fettered by recipes.

Probably like most people, I am a mixture of some of those! I have my old staples, some of which I grew up eating, I have meals that I put together from things we like and won't clash, and times when I feel like experimenting. BUT I also use recipes to find new and exciting things to eat, or try better ways of making things we already eat. I would very much miss that element of cooking, and the best meals we eat are usually recipe-driven.

I don’t use recipes, I forget to go to the shop and therefore have to use stuff I can rummage out of the cupboards. I wonder if it’s maybe our own perceptions? I always feel bad that I’m unable to be organised enough to follow these fancy chef recipes so possibly I project these insecurities onto the people who can do this and think they’re smug?

I throw things together quite a lot based on what is in the cupboard, it's because I buy recipe books for the life I want to believe I live not my actual life so take one look at the ingredients list and move on 😅 I'm looking at you yottam ottolenghi.

@UniBallEye

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.

This...my mum was an excellent home cook... Very interested in food and would learn a wide range of recipes..

My nan was definitely from the school of you cooked what was in your head... Nice food but v limited meal range... This was from war time til 1970s.

I loathed learning cookery and avoided the school classes...

It was only when i left home and got titanically bored with beans on toast /jacket spuds that i started learning...

I get that the op is somewhat tongue in cheek, however, a lot of the time I don’t follow recipes. I know how to do stuff because (brace yourself, op, you are going to hate the next bit...) I am largely self-taught. That’s not a brag but a statement of fact because I wasn’t fortunate enough to have a parent engaged enough in my development to teach me those life skills.

@Zonder

I agree with you! It's like they have some kind of innate superior understanding of cooking and can just throw things together and they will make something lovely. In reality I think it takes ages of either making rubbish or following recipes until you know them well enough to adapt them to be able to say you don't use recipes any more

I disagree with this. What is so hard to believe that some people can make a lovely meal by" throwing things together". It is also about having the knowledge to be able to put ingredients together.