Have you tried out an internet recipe - and improved upon it?

Yes. I find most internet recipes to need improvement. I use them—and all recipes—as mainly a guide, more than something I follow in lockstep.

All the time! I love allrecipes.com, but tend to not like 1 or 2 ingredients or the way it’s cooked, so I look at several versions of similar recipes and then pick and choose. I tend to do that at least once a week. So far, no failures!

I did that last night for a fried noodle recipe—substituted fresh sugar snap peas, cut up, for canned peas, didn’t include eggs, and added finely chopped broccoli and yum!

Thats where I get all my recipes. Like @wundayatta and @linguaphile when I want to make something I’ll look up a couple recipes for whatever that thing is and then use it as a guide to get an idea of how to do it and then improve on it. Generally my first 2 times making something its ok but by the third I’ve usually figured it out and perfected it, at least to my tastes.

Of course. It’s not hard. You can tell by the ingredients they use. If it uses Miracle Whip, you know it can be improved, easily.

I will use more natural ingredients, such as whole wheat products or organic low sodium broth. If it asks for hamburger I’d use ground turkey.

But for the most part the first time I try it I try to follow the recipe pretty closely.

Lots of times. Sometimes I look up 3 or 4 recipes for something and just take things from each of them.

My daughter found a recipe for cornbread on the internet. The baking temperature was mistakenly listed as 200°F (instead of 200°C). It did not turn out right…

I’m always altering recipes to make them vegetarian, or maybe slightly lower in fat, or maybe to use real food rather than using a product such as already-made cream of mushroom soup (like for the traditional green bean casserole served at Thanksgiving).

Also, I don’t much care for raisins, but I love dried cranberries. Also don’t much like dark chocolate because it’s too sweet and slightly bitter, so I’ll switch up to milk chocolate.

I also do what @marinelife does, and think of something I want to make, then look at 3 or 4 recipes and mix and match them to my liking. I do that with soup all the time.

I often substitute vegetable broth in recipes (like stuffing) that call for chicken broth. I often omit salt, unless it is absolutely necessary.

In some dishes, like salads or stir fries, I’ll switch out the veggies to ones that I like better. Not a huge fan of asparagus, although I don’t hate it, but I prefer broccoli and it’s ususally a good sub.

In some vegetarian dishes that call for regular tofu, I often change that to a baked marinated tofu, which tastes and looks a bit more like chicken, and is less likely to frighten the meat eaters.

Yes, I get most of my new recipes from the internet. I mix and match recipes until I get close to what I will like, then I almost always tailor them to my tastes.

Yep. My specialty hot wings originated from an online recipe, which I added to and made ten times better :-D

@Kardamom is a topic, lol.

I usually add chillies to everything.