To get rid of every recipe/ cook book in the house?

[YouBelongWithMe]

We're getting our kitchen re-done - it's being fitted next month.

We're in the process of clearing out drawers, cupboards etc so that we're only putting back items that are useful, pleasing etc.

We don't have a large cookery book collection by any means - maybe 35/40. Lile most, we've accumulated them over the years. There are books we've used to bake with the kids, and some books which contain recipes that have become integral to our meal planning (step up, Jamie Oliver's 30 minute meals).

But all these recipes are either ingrained in our brains or available online. All our most recent additions to meal rotation have come via instagram or YouTube channels.

I'm tempted to get rid of them all. My mum is horrified ('what kitchen has NO COOK BOOKS' 🤣) but I can't help thinking they're just virtue-signalling clutter now.

Does anyone else have no recipe/ cookbooks?

I love my cookbooks ...sentimental value but Ove only ever used the christmas one from the 1970s. I just cook from memory. Simple food.

We’ve got around 50 I think, around a dozen are day to day ones, the rest ‘nice’ ones. We find them all useful if we feel meals are getting a bit same-y and like flicking through the nicer ones for inspiration/having people over for dinner. We did have a cull recently and got rid of ones we haven’t used for years, but I wouldn’t like to get rid of them all. Also, DH has a habit of mid-remembering recipes, so he has to go back and refer to the original instructions.

I did just that. No need these days for cumbersome, expensive glossy books.

A fast-boil kettle and a selection of Pot Noodles and the world's your oyster (Actually that flavour is not currently available, but there is a Seafood one.)

It's being fitted next month so I'd give yourself the next couple of weeks to intentionally make an effort to look through them and see if they inspire anything. Make two piles, nope and maybe. The following two weeks see if you look through them without it being an intentional effort, the ones you do and actually use a recipe from keep, the ones that you don't get added to the nope pile and dropped off at a charity shop, catering college, other place that would appreciate and actually use them. Do you know anyone setting up home for the first time? Anyone just set off for uni? They might appreciate a couple, not all that would likely be overwhelming, spread the joy lol

What a legend he was! 😁

It's so much easier following a recipe from a book than a phone

I keep an electronic copy of anything I find that is good - who remembers the fuss when BBC stopped paying for Good Food and people's recipes disappeared? I cull recipe books every now and then. A book needs three recipes I use to stay.

God Ive tried to hard to get rid of mine but they just wont leave my cold dead oven gloved hands

I just cant do it.

I love reading cookery books like they're novels or something. Just lie in bed flicking through drooling over the pictures. Getting ideas, I never actually follow a recipe and thinking up plans for food glorious food.

I probably have about 20 but only really use one (Delia's complete cookery course).

If you genuinely don't need them. no reason to keep them but maybe flick through them and see if there are one or two you want to keep for future inspiration. They don't have to live in your kitchen.

I love cookbooks. Nigella's How to Eat is a favourite comfort read.

I have quite a few. I used to love perusing them but I can't remember the last time I opened any of them. I get my recipes online. YANBU.

Same here! Even a bloody great hardback ‘coffee table’ one from The French Laundry in California, whose ways with food entrance you , sitting up in bed with it spread across your knees! It’s like fairy tales for grownups.

I love a cookbook for inspiration and general reading. We do tend to tweak recipes and I have a handwritten book where we write anything really successful, carrying on from loads of lovely family recipes that have been handed down. Its my culinary journey over the last 40 years, now on book 2.

The thing about recipe books is they don't have a bunch of reviews or comments from people who have tried it before you, so I don't really trust them by comparison to online.

I collect local to the area cookbooks, especially old ones, so wherever I travel I try and find ones at rummage sales/thrift stores and the like.
My favourite types are the local published ones, and fundraiser ones, like the Ladies Aid Christmas Collection, or the Agricultural Society, or the local school kids ones.
It's a way to see the real history of a place, the traditions and customs.
I have a Billy bookcase for mine , and I likely need another soon.

Just make sure you have a shelf for cookbooks in the refitted kitchen!

I only have one book I use, and it’s a spiral notebook where I jot down my best recipes from over the years.

i have about 50 recipe books on a Book case in the living room which I never look at anymore. Booted them out the kitchen to make space.

all other recipes are saved online. Mainly on tiktok to be honest.

I won’t get rid of all my cookbooks! Because online is great but god! The life story and the pop up adverts and time it takes to load is annoying! Even tapping jump to recipe!

We had a cull. I did it in batches of half a dozen or so. I went through them all with post it notes. Recipes we used routinely got one colour; ones we used occasionally and I liked got another colour; and then a third colour was used for recipes I thought we might enjoy. DD went through them and, if there was a occasional recipe or a “to try” recipe that she also liked, the post it note stated &, if she didn’t, she took off the post it note. DH & DS were offered the chance find this too but couldn’t be bothered. Some recipe books were mainly flagged so we kept them; others had very few so I cut out the recipes which were flagged (sacrilege I know!) and threw out the book. Over the course of a few months,
we were down to half a dozen recipe books.
I do still buy recipe books but only from a charity shop. I’ll read them and then do the whole post it note thing and that decides what we do with it.

I love my cookbooks. I hate it when you've made a great recipe and then the online link disappears- I always write mine down.

But if you don't use them then they are just clutter.

And I'm jealous of everyone else's charity shop finds. My local charity shops never have anything except 1970s era microwave cookbooks and ludicrously complicated cake decorating books.

In case you forget, the website you're using starts charging, the Internet goes down.....

I kept a few faves, but got rid of most of mine too. I needed the space and I find a lot of recipes online.

I have a book/binder thing that I first used to write recipes in from my mum, and then over the years I’ve added recipes we find online that work well, or recipes from friends, and I’ve also ripped out pages of cook books and put them in, I have some of those gousto meal cards that we enjoyed when we did it for a while, a few supermarket ones etc- only things we really love. It doesn’t take up much room and I now have no other physical cook books. So go for it I say- just take the time to check there’s no family favourite in there and then get rid! I do genuinely still come back to some old recipes as there are things I don’t do for years and then want to make- and also I quite like the nostalgia of the binder, but if you really do just have it all in your head and like trying new things- just bin/charity shop the lot!

keep/laminate the pages you want and put them in a nice folder maybe @YouBelongWithMe ?

Virtue signalling hoarder here, they’re part of the aesthetic of my kitchen and I’m just generally a sucker for a beautiful book and hard back recipe books are getting increasingly beautiful I find! I do use them for inspiration when I’m not having a lazy planning week.