When cooking, if the recipe calls for you to measure ingredients, do you measure meticulously or haphazardly?

To paraphrase the great Gennaro Contaldo:
Cooking is not baking. You do not need to be precise.

This includes baking.

No, it does not.

I’m a pastry guy. I measure the hell out of stuff. I use two scales, one for weights over 100g, another more precise scale for the lighter ingredients.

I do it for both, and have terrific success. I had always heard that in baking you have to be absolutely precise, but that just ain’t so.

Baking yes, flour, and other particular ingredients, otherwise I kinda wing it in other areas, I don’t need to measure out a tablespoon of a particular seasoning to know I’m pretty much right on. Good cooks often don;t need to do a lot of measuring IMO.

I don’t think so either, @Coloma.

I do a lot of cooking by instinct plus knowing basic techniques so a lot of my cooking is quite improvisational.

If it’s a totally unfamiliar recipe to me, I’ll stick pretty close to everything specified the first time. After that, I’ll improvise.

But I know that I have little tolerance for foods which burn my mouth. So, if it calls for cayenne, I just won’t use it.

Other types of pepper get reduced greatly.

For baking , I’ll always follow the recipe exactly.

We (unsurprisingly) have staff for that

Baking bread or cookies yes, making sauce for ribs no.

Cooking is chemistry. Fairly exact measurements are crucial.

@kritiper But…like chemistry, sometimes an accident or an off the wall mixture morphs into a new and wonderful discovery! haha
Man, I wish I could make my famous chicken pepper “steak” sandwiches for you guys, with my super secret ingredient. Truly an eat your heart out experience. :-)

Cooking is fuzzy inexact chemistry, which is why we can have such an enormous variety of yummy stuff.

I see the division between the creative culinary innovators and the by the book cooks. lol

@Coloma: Me, too. :-)

I’m not a good cook so I follow the instructions down to the pinch. If the instructions on the box of rice say “fluff with a fork” I fluff with a fork.

@chyna: Come to my house. I’ll teach you the “Canidmajor-it’s-not-a-hill-worth-dying-on-cooking-school”. I’ll convert you to the “let’s try this” method! It’s fun and a great way to use up odd stuff.

^^^ Oooh, am I invited too? Please! I’ll bring the wine and we can create and watch “Chopped.” haha

Classes starting soon! Everybody welcome! :-D

I took a cooking class where we experimented with exact measurements versus changing or guessing. We learned the consequences of the various changes. From that, I learned what I could change and what is best followed exactly.

I’m in @canidmajor! Sounds like fun.

I measure meticulously the first time I make a recipe. If there is a failure, I want to know it was the recipe, and that it can be tossed.
Once I know the intended result, I get a lot more lax about measuring.

When cooking, I’m willing to wing it and generally do.

Baking is a different story entirely. Too much can go horribly wrong if things aren’t measured carefully or added at the correct time. When baking I’m also more likely to look for metric/European measurements and directions. I want those baked goods to be exactly right.

I look on recipes as vague suggestions. I’m usually just too damned lazy to go to the store for one or two ingredients.

Ooh, I want a cooking session with @canidmajor and @BellaB!
Can we make something Greek without meat? And an Indian curry – not too spicy?

I can maybe hustle up some fresh Injera. And I have a ready source of canned green jackfruit.

Or are we just going to wing the whole thing, @canidmajor?

Maybe every attendee should bring 3 less traditional, but non-bizarre food items. Something that you’ve used before, or are just dying to try because of recipes you’ve seen.
Not ‘stump the cook’, but ‘run with this’.

Baking? Follow the recipe to the micro gram.

Everything else? Go by intuition.

Baking new things I measure exactly. After I have tried them several times, I might change things like, for example, I add more flour to my chocolate chip cookie dough now to make it stiffer. Fruit pie fillings I often wing now too because there is leeway but I always follow the pastry recipe exactly.

Most of what I cook I don’t use a recipe or measure for unless it is something very new.

I wing it. It’s why I suck at pastry.

Yes for baking. No for cooking.

I’m so with @canidmajor!

… I don’t differentiate between baking and cooking because they were never separate for me, and I prefer measuring by sight, smell, and taste of the in-progress product. I do use measuring cups to keep basic proportions as needed, but I don’t worry much about going under or over—and for certain things like spices, I purposefully go over… I’m a fan of the “one a thousand” = “1 Tbs” pouring technique, of eyeballing measurements, and of changing recipes at a whim or at not having an ingredient (I think substitutions are cool). I’ve cooked (and baked) enough by this point that I don’t worry too much about most things: I’m careful with technique, I know what I’m looking for, and I know how to adjust as needed based on texture/odor/flavor… Like others, if the process is entirely foreign to me, I follow the directions more closely—so I get a reliable baseline for what to look for next time.

I make a pumpkin gingerbread that is divine. I always use more ginger than called for and just sort of randomly toss in the other spices called for in the amounts that are appealing to me. It turns out great every time.

@Coloma Several years ago my mother made a measuring boo-boo while making a pumpkin pie. Once I discovered what she had done, it became my secret to delicious pumpkin pie! So I must agree that sometimes magic happens in the kitchen!

I follow the recipe precisely the first time, but the second time and thereafter I will usually tweak it for a different or enhanced effect. I do this in all forms of cooking, including baking. Cooking, to me, is more art than science. I am guided by the consistencies and textures of ingredients as I blend them and continually taste as I go along. I compensate here and there for effect.

Formal training in basic cooking technique and experience helps. For example, how make stock, the five mother sauces including their thickeners and emulsifiers; marinating, searing, roasting, baking, sauteeing and other prep techniques, and experience helps. I know what won’t mix and what not to do from that training and experience, so I rarely ruin the food with my experiments. I recommend a formal course to everyone who wished to pursue this art.

For example, one of the first things I did was to take my family’s recipe for coffee cake, which always got raves, to a whole new level simply by using more butter and cinnamon. Sacrilege, but it came out as a very tasty coffee cake, moister and more buttery.

I usually never use measuring instruments with the dishes I’m familiar with and I don’t think cooking would be very interesting to me if I stuck rigidly to every recipe. That would be boring.

GQ. How is it we all stopped GQing heritage members, even when we answer the questions very passionately. Only newbies can ask GQs??

@ibstubro Why? What would that do?

^^It shows that we appreciate their input, it’s recognition that their contribution is valued, but not just legacies. I think it is even more important to point newbies. I’ve always felt that this false snobbery that points don’t matter is hypocritical. It is important. People want to be appreciated. I think GA’s and GQ’s have evolved into a sign of recognition. My feeling is that, if I find a question important enough to answer, I’ll usually point it unless I get so involved in the answer that I forget, or the question is so repugnant that I don’t think it rates a point. Just my opinion. I also think it goes a long way to retain our more intelligent newbies.

Baking is pretty much pure chemistry. Don’t get the measurements accurate and there’s no telling what you’ll end up with. Cooking on the other hand I just tend to make it up as I go along (within reason obviously).

I used to make bread for my chickens in my bread machine.
I used whole wheat flour and about a cup of scratch grains, sunflower seeds and dried meal worms. haha
How’s THAT for creative? Once, I had a loaf cooling on the counter when friends dropped over and I had to warn them that they’d break their beaks if they bit into that loaf full of cracked corn. lol

@Espiritus_Corvus I have no issue with GQing and GAing newbies; I understand the value of lurve. But @ibstubro seemed to be suggesting that we not award them to oldtimers, which makes no sense to me. They’re not rationed out.

Be free with your lurve, regardless of “status.”

@janbb Hey, Penguin!

Well, if that is @ibstubro‘s stance, I disagree. I think we need to recognize the more intelligent contributions here, including and up through the Fifty Grand floor of the mansion. A day without you or Jeruba and others like you is a day without sunshine, in my book. I see no sense in withholding GA’s or GQ’s just because a person has a lot of them already. We aren’t raising your scores by pointing you, you guys got our fifty long ago. But it does reflect appreciation. I don’t understand @ibstubro‘s opinion in this case.

Retention of our more intelligent people, including newbies, is paramount. Newbies get the added effect of actually rising scores, which can be a boost whether people want to admit it or not. Everybody can use a little lurve when they give a good, thoughtful answer.

In the sillier questions like TJBM, I’ll go so far as pointing people just because they showed up. In these strings there are no right or wrong answers, just honest ones. We get to know each other on these strings. Little things leak out. I appreciate that.

It’s a lot harder to get ten grand nowadays with the smaller population. It is much more of an achievement than it used to be.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a little sentimental in these days of Trump.

What the world needs now ♫♪

I got the impression that @ibstubro was asking why we had stopped, not suggesting that we stop.

When I made my GQ post, this question had a lot of passionate and interesting traffic, but either 0 or 1 GQ. I personally believe it’s as important to reward sustaining members that ask questions that generate a lot of traffic as it is to reward newbies simply because they are new.
Seems to be a gentle reminder that worked, as the count is at 5 GQs as of this post.
Edit: You are correct, @canidmajor, as was @Espiritus_Corvus in the first response.

@canidmajor Oh, reading it again, you’re probably right. In that case, I humbly withdraw my objections.

@ibstubro Sorry, I misunderstood. But thank you for giving me the chance to clarify my stance on GA’s.

I once accidentally made some oyster soup that was to die for….and I don’t know what I did! I can’t repeat it. It had something do do with using my potato soup recipe as my base, but that’s all I remember.

I can’t believe this Q got 5 GQ! You just never know with this place. :D

Your welcome, @Dutchess_III.
I appreciate you noting the Lurve that does not earn points.

I never really noticed that in the first place.