“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.

So you can't cook a dish that you've made a hundred times before with no recipe?

A top chef once said that you shouldn't teach recipes. You should teach techniques.
Soup: Soften onions, then garlic. Add stuff you like, then stock and simmer until soft and you want to eat it. Blend if you want it smooth and/or add cream for a creamier soup. Far easier to remember that than faff about with a book of 97 soups.

I hope it's not smug, as I feel it's the reverse with me. I'm lazy and slapdash. I cook very simple things that don't require a recipe. I haven't got the patience or desire to spend hours stirring a pan.

"My experience is that people who are good at cooking use recipes, and people who aren't (like me) don't and just wing it."

I'm bad at cooking so I have to follow a recipe. I wouldn't know what to do otherwise.
Even when following recipes I sometimes have to google the instructions in the recipes because they're not clear enough.

@Sweetlikejollof @Motherofgorgons see the comment by @TheHaka above, which neatly illustrates the OP's point.

I don't think recipes are only a Western thing. The Chinese have books of recipes dating back to before the Han Dynasty. I use a recipe to make groundnut stew or chana masala, I don't need one to make gołąbki or spanakopita. I don't think that makes me a bad cook with no ideas though.

I wouldn't use a recipe for (eg) a casserole where the odd bit of carrot, more or less, is not going to make much difference. Also, my mother taught me how to make casseroles, and her mother taught her, as previous poster said. But I don't think I'd mention whether I had used a reci[pe or not.

But I would use a recipe for a cake. As another poster said, baking needs a degree of precision for best results. (Of course, one can learn a favourite recipe by heart, and not need to consult a cookbook, but that's a different thing.)

I.domt use recipes because I'm stubborn and do not like to be told what to do

I don't use recipes.

Most of the stuff I cook will vary depending on what is lurking in the fridge and about to go off.

The only time I look up a recipe is to get the right quantities for cakes.

I taught students to cook when iIwas at university because I found out most of them didn't know how to do the very basics or know what a leek was when they saw me chopping them to make a leek pudding. It was brilliant fun teaching them and watching their faces. As we progressed, they paired up and made something different, then we all had a massive dinner party. I had over 50 who came every week and I was so happy. I had made many friends for life :)

@Xiaoxiong I said ‘ I think the obsession with recipes is quite western’, I did not say ‘only western people ever use recipes’.

I also said ‘Which is not to say that there’s anything wrong with using recipes - how you cook is how you cook’.

Another poster being a bit of a dick has nothing to do with the points I made (yes, some people are dicks) and I certainly haven’t accused anyone of being a poor cook. I have no idea why you’ve directed that response at me.

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. ditto, only I'm a British background and cook the way my mum taught me. Even my teen daughter doesn't need a recipe book for a spag bol or Victoria sponge, its just passed down recipes. I remember my sil getting very upset because I couldn't give her the exact recipe for a dessert i used to make, she thought I was being precious! There is nothing smug, pretentious or disorganised about remembering family recipes or even instinctively winging it and throwing together everything close to its use by date together!

"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 think that's a complete myth.

"I make all kinds of soups without a recipe. But this was a new one for me involving ingredients I don't usually use."

I was well into adulthood before I realised loads of people made soup from scratch. I have made my own now though. Never saw parents or grandmothers doing it.

I like trying recipes and then adapting them until I get a dish I really love. So occasionally I cook via recipes and most of the time my own versions. Am I a semi-wanker?

@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.

Does that mean you know how to cook meals from scratch without the recipe due to being skilled, or taught, or that you only eat Pot Noodles? I mean it can be taken both ways.

I use recipes because I want to serve nice, enjoyable food designed by someone with some skill in the area, and no, my mother didn't teach me to cook. Some of us grew up on microwave pizza and their mother survived on a diet of cigarettes and red wine. No quaint mother-daughter cooking sessions there.

Not sure why people are getting so mad. Neither cooking with recipes or not cooking with recipes is pretentious or smug or wankery, I think.

I fall out with my sister about this all the time. We can't cook together. She measure to the mg / mmm of a recipe, I'll skim it and eyeball or just make it up. Not a brag just different ways of doing things.

Oh and I'm shit at baking for this reason. Far too perfectionist for me.

There is some definite smuggery about “passed down” recipes here, with a grandmother’s recipe being infinitely superior to one from BBC Good Food/Jamie Oliver/Delia etc etc. Why? I have found many, many good recipes in various books and learn to cook them by heart. Perhaps my grandchildren will be boasting one day about “the famous Harmer spicy pork passed down through the family” (Hairy Bikers, actually…).

I have to use recipes as I am in no way culinary enough to pull anything off from scratch from my own head. However a very good friend of mine cooks with no recipes, she doesn't brag about it but I can tell you her food is amazing!!! She is a total foodie which is no surprise. I am just super impressed and love her cooking!!

@DottyHarmer I doubt it very much that any cookery book my granny had (if there were any back in her day and whether they could afford it or not)

Whats beed passed to many today are the basics they used based on rations and what they could buy. I love nothing more than a heart bowl of lobscouse which the recipe is in my head , told my my gran. Absolutely nothing smug about that. Its a sheer reminder to me what they endured. Part of my heritage.

I don't use recipes.

Mostly because my brain can't cope and I really struggle and half the time it goes wrong anyways. I also struggle with legos,flat packs etc anything that requires a specific set of instructions in a specific order. Even more so if words are involved.
It's easier not to.

It's not a brag, it's the fact that i lack that part of being a fully functioning adult.

"Like Cottage pie, spaghetti bolognese, fish pie, roast dinners etc are all pretty basic and don't require recipes"

Of course they do. An apple and an orange in a bowl is not cottage pie, is it? People who make cottage pie are following some kind of recipe, even if just from memory.

"I'm intrigued! What do you eat?"

Until recently, I never cooked. I was still able to eat!

"Soup: Soften onions, then garlic. Add stuff you like, then stock and simmer until soft and you want to eat it. Blend if you want it smooth and/or add cream for a creamier soup. Far easier to remember that than faff about with a book of 97 soups."

That is still a recipe, just that the veg/other ingredients isn't specified.