“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.

And I have used a recipe to make a salad.

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/epic-summer-salad

It is indeed, epic.

@Juliauns91

I have been cooking in restaurants and at home for 40 years. I never use recipes because I was taught how to cook by my two grandmothers, who worked by sight for weight, and chose what to cook on the spot depending on what food they had in the house or what they bought cheap from the market that day. That's what I do. I can make a meal from anything. I am very poor at the moment but we never go without good food.

It's not a brag, it's how to survive poverty and recession.

I was taught to cook by my gran, the difficulty I had as a kid was she'd say things like, "Take two handfuls of this" and it would be about five handfuls for me so yes you had to learn to do it by sight in that case. I'm not as good a cook as she was, if ever I'm ill I still long for a bowl of her chicken soup and she has been dead for 51 years. I guess I'm never getting over the craving.

I simply don't have the space to be storing jars of star anise that I use once

Star Anise last ages and doesn't take much space. I would agree with you with expensive and difficult to obtain fish or other fresh ingredients for very cheffy recipes but spices are worth investing in as you can use them over and over and they will be unlikely to go off. I make a cauliflower dahl with some star anise in it about once a week at the moment. It also makes very nice tea with cinnamon and clementine.

ancientgran:

"I was taught to cook by my gran, the difficulty I had as a kid was she'd say things like, "Take two handfuls of this" and it would be about five handfuls for me so yes you had to learn to do it by sight in that case. I'm not as good a cook as she was, if ever I'm ill I still long for a bowl of her chicken soup and she has been dead for 51 years. I guess I'm never getting over the craving."

THIS ^^

My grandmas taught me to cook from aged 7. By 13, I was cooking the family meals every night. But, there are some things they made that I can't remember how to do either - like savoury griddle scones made with lard - they were wonderful but I can't remember how to do it. Also, chicken soup.

I think I'm a good cook but I don't take the credit for that - I went to a grammar school but we still had to do 3 years of cookery whether we liked it or not, and that cemented what my grandmothers had taught me.

I think the obsession with recipes is quite western. When I moved to the U.K., I remember finding it a bit odd!

In most of the world, you learn about flavours, ingredients, methods, what happens when you do X to Y. You learn to understand food, and then your cooking flows from that. And, even when you’re cooking things outside your cultural wheelhouse, this framework applies. Some people are great at it, and some less good, but it’s a completely different approach to cooking.

Which is not to say that there’s anything wrong with using recipes - how you cook is how you cook. However, as an African, I’m very amused by the idea that saying ‘I don’t use recipes’ is interpreted as smugness or pretension by some people. MN really is the gift that keeps on giving! 😂

Not really a recipe follower. I cook the food my pakistani grandmother and mum made and taught me. Its called cooking with "andaza" - it's just knowing, reaching for the right things.

I've got loads of recipe books but I rarely use them because I cook a limited range of food for fussy kids fairly straightforward food that I know how to make.spaghetti bolognese, meatballs (I had a recipe once but now I remember it) , shepherd's pie, cauliflower cheese, roast, stir fry etc.
I'm sometimes put off by either long lists of iningredients I'm not interested if the ingredient list doesn't fit on one page, or an ingredient that I don't like.
I always use recipes for cakes and baking though as I feel that's more scientific. (And I usually like all the ingredients!)

I don't really use recipes mainly as I couldn't be arsed to follow instructions... my brain just struggles with them.

I have made some TERRIBLE food , and a lot of simple dishes. But most of it's been quite nice.

I DID however work as a waitress in a naice restaurant for a few years when I was a student and I learned a bit about the sorts of flavours that go together and cooking techniques from that.

I also take inspiration from food I've eaten before in restaurants or at friend's houses.

I tend to use a recipe the first time I make something, then after that can do it from my head and also whack in other bits I think would work or need using up. Last night I made lentil soup, and there were a few sad potatoes knocking around, so they got chucked in along with the actual ingredients.

@Maassi

Not really a recipe follower. I cook the food my pakistani grandmother and mum made and taught me. Its called cooking with "andaza" - it's just knowing, reaching for the right things.

Exactly this.

@HowlingKale

It's a sign of disorganisation surely?

Really? I'm definitely not 'disorganised' and I don't use recipes 🤷‍♀️ I'm 57 and have been cooking since I was 'knee high to my granny'!

It doesn't have to be smug or any kind of brag to say that you don't use recipes...it's quite literally just stating a fact, surely?

In the OPs example, in fairness, I wouldn't have replied with 'oh I don't use recipes'. I'd have just enjoyed the food 🥰 But if someone had asked me for 'the recipe' of the salad I'd made for them, I'd have to admit to 'just adding things that looked good/fresh' to the salad bowl 🤷‍♀️

People are so weird on here sometimes!

It depends what you think of the food they serve. I have eaten, politely, watery stews, solid cakes, boring soups, overcooked meat from people who say proudly that they don't use recipes. 'Why not?' is what I don't say.

I do take credit for my cooking as only my Great Aunt had any cooking skills and apart from probably gaining some confidence from Home Ec at school I am self-taught. Not because I especially enjoy cooking but because I really enjoy eating- nice freshly cooked food.

I was brought up on really boring convenience food and things being heated up in the 1980s. Any fresh veg was cooked to death, most fruit was tinned or stewed, meat was leathery. Mainly as my dad liked a plain diet and wouldn't even entertain something like pasta or rice. So when I got a chance to eat out, have a take away or even eating at a friend's house where their parents could cook and it was like a riot to my senses. I decided that was the sort of food I wanted, fresh and full of flavour, spice, and not like eating on rations in the 1950s, so it made me start cooking for myself.

I don't use recipes but I don't think its anything to brag about. It's just means I'm too disorganised to have the ingredients in, too lazy to shop for them and too impatient to bother with the weighing and prep some of them require. I chuck things in, tasting as I go. Sometimes it's nice, sometimes not so, but I'm sure its never as good as if I'd used a recipe.

@SirenSays

Most people I know who say this in a kind of sneery way tend to make lots of the same British food every week. Like Cottage pie, spaghetti bolognese, fish pie, roast dinners etc are all pretty basic and don't require recipes

Yet there are so many people who could not even cook those dishes, basic as they are.

Also I did learn from working part time in a pub restaurant from the age of 17. The food wasn't that fancy but it was fresh and good stuff. I got to try things like smoked salmon, avocadoes and stilton (not all together at once!) for the first time.

@Maassi

Not really a recipe follower. I cook the food my pakistani grandmother and mum made and taught me. Its called cooking with "andaza" - it's just knowing, reaching for the right things.

Exactly that. " Andaaz se". Though after 2 years in lockdown it's now more like Macbeth's 3 witches cackling over a cauldron.

Not really a recipe follower. I cook the food my pakistani grandmother and mum made and taught me. Its called cooking with "andaza" - it's just knowing, reaching for the right things

That's great, I would need to follow a recipe for Pakistani food. How would you fare if you were making a dish based in Chinese or Italian cuisine?

I wonder if a lot of people are just sticking with what they know - which is fine, nothing wrong with that at all. I can make a lot of dishes that I know very well and I would probably pass most of the skills tests in Masterchef- better than some of the young professional chefs sometimes! But I like learning about food, I'm always learning and trying new things, so I sometimes use recipes.

I don't follow recipes because I find them complicated and I probably haven't got all the ingredients. I make stuff that I know how to make or I can easily guess how to make. I might look at recipes for ideas buy I don't follow it to the letter.

Sweetpotatodumpling I wasn't suggesting this fully seriously.
Tbh I was trying to show the op a different conclusion could be jumped to.
Not a judgement on your ways ...

What a weird thread. Everyone has had a 'recipe' at some point. Whether it's from granny or parent or the back of a packet, whether it's written down or not.

I can cook. I've always been able to cook, I can't remember a time when I didn't. I use a variety of methods. Tried and trusted meals I've been making for years and can rustle up from memory, complicated meals that I like to try out if we are having guests maybe that I might look at a book or website for, daily stuff that my friends and family have passed down over the years.

There's only one outcome for food and that is wether it's edible or not. Everything else is just personal taste.

I've been making tagine for years, it's one of our favourites. But one day I was scrolling through something and noticed a Tagine by Gordon Ramsey which used different spices to mine and decided to try it. It was amazing and had much more flavour than mine so now we use that recipe even though I don't have to look it up anymore.

Who actually cares whether a really nice plate of food came from a recipe in a book or not? Raymond Blanc says that most of his recipes come from his grandmother.

I often don't use recipes myself.

@MunchyMonsters

I've never used a recipe because I don't make food that needs one. I don't own a recipe book. Is it that unusual? I massively admire people who love cooking new things.

I'm intrigued! What do you eat?

I said YABU but I find using recipes really hard to follow, I think most people who write them just don’t have minds that work in the same way as mine. There will always be a step missing that throws me off or they’ll add/ leave out something on the ingredients list - the whole thing just stresses me out.

What I can do is follow instructions for one simple thing like a cake or sauce but not for a whole dish made up of elements that need to be put together.

I get a recipe for stuff, but then I change everything to my taste.