What kind of cook are you?

I tend to follow recipes. Although If the recipe calls for baking in an oven, I try to use a different method instead.
And I always add MSG.
And if there is chicken or pork, I let it sit in a baking soda solution for at least 30 minutes.

I use the force when cooking meat.

I use my ovens thermostat, instead of a probe.

I order out from time to time.

When I was working in a burger joint; My burgers were as good as SpongeBob SquarePants. How? I found the instruction manual hiden in the bowels of the restaurant, and followed them.

I use the dishwasher to cook sous vide steaks.

Mom taught me to cook many moons ago. She was old school…a pinch of this, a handful of that. She taught me how to understand how the flavors go together. I taste seasonings to see how I think they will blend into flavors. I use recipes usually as guidelines. If I don’t have all the ingredients, I know how to substitute without losing the overall recipe. Some things like chili I just wing. I see what I have and go for it. The only real things I need are cumin powder and chili powder. What goes into the chili after that is really up to my own imagination.

I am far more adventurous than my wife (who is an excellent cook). I’m willing to try new things. Sometimes I see what I have in the freezer in the way of meats and look up recipes based on that to see what looks interesting. This is an example of a recipe I tried out as a recipe (as it was written) and then again using whatever I could find in the house. Both ways turned out great.

Good, can “wing it” for most meals (meats and sides) but follow the recipe for breads and pastries. Been told I’m an excellent BBQ low and slow cook.

I have been cooking chili and spaghetti sauce since I was 11 from scratch, my mom had me in the kitchen helping her cook meals when I was 9 years old. She worked as a cook at a resort, when she was 16 in Maine, during the Depression. Customers were high dollar people from New York City.

I’m a pretty good cook I hear but I generally use tried and true recipes. There have been a few disasters early in my marriage due to winging it, we still laugh about my salsa chicken occasionally. Good concept, terrible execution ha!

I used to be an outstanding cook. I was adventurous, interesting, intuitive. I could alter a recipe and enhance it.
Now I am duller than dirt. I cook healthy things, but boring. The system just kinda went down. I miss it.

At least my bread is still good.

I don’t generally use recipes, it’s more of an intuitive thing for me. My wife is the casserole/baker in the house and I’m more of the griller and veggie prep person. For BBQ I use a “formula” but not exactly a recipe. Grilling on the blackstone I have found a few things that work for me. Asian stir fry the meat must marinate in pineapple juice & teriyaki. Fajitas are made fresh with lime juice and tajin seasoning. I cook fish and eggs frequently in a cast iron skillet with little more than a sliver of butter. It’s more about understanding heat control and technique than ingredients that make these things good to be honest.

My wife is a better cook than I am, though I do most of the cooking. I used to work as a cook at KFC, but I didn’t learn much there, other than being comfortable doing it.
When I use a recipe, I follow it exactly the first time I make something. After dinner, I add notes, and I make changes going forward.
My favorite thing to cook is my spaghetti. When I make it, I freeze enough for 7 more meals for us. That lasts about 4 months.
An important part of my spaghetti recipe is playing music as I make it.

With frozen chicken wings, or quarters I cook in the oven, after preheating for 30 minutes @350f. Then add sweet baby rays original bbq sauce, with a painters brush, and cook for 15 minutes. I use my microwave timer to keep everything on schedule.

I use my microwave timer for other things too. Like washing and drying cycles, for laundry. I try not to have functional fixedness for things.

I usually adjust recipes. Once I’ve made something I often do it from memory from then on. Not that I remember the measurements perfectly, but I can kind of wing it. There are times when I refer back to recipes, when it matters the proportion is correct. Like dishes with rice, you need water to cook out when the rice is ready.

I also do a lot of semi-homemade, but just yesterday I promised myself to do more from scratch and more vegan meals.

Tonight I made sirloin steak. Not vegan lol. I rub it with Good Seasons Italian dressing powder from the packet. I came up with it myself, and it’s delicious, you can use it on any cut of steak. I thought of it myself. One day I was thinking people use dressing for marinade, but instead I just rubbed it on dry all over the steak, wait 3 minutes, and cook. We either grill or sauté in a pan with some oil. The steak is perfect with salad. You can make the dressing also from one of the packets and then the whole dish has the same flavoring. I can eat it without any dressing on the salad. Crunchy salad with it.

I have a great recipe for baked risotto that is delicious. I’ll pull it out if a jelly is interested. I sometimes make a small portion with a little of this and a little of that on top of the stove, and just do it by feel.

I never change a recipe. If it says a “pinch” I agonize over how much a pinch is.
But basically, if I stir it, I consider it homemade. :-)

I cook according to what I know we like. We like the actual taste of food, so I use very little spices or flavoring, no salt or pepper.

I start off staying pretty true to the recipe. These days that means watching a YouTube video of the person making it. Once I’ve wrapped my head around the dish, then I start to relax with the measurements.

I tend to go for dishes that don’t require fancy techniques where I have to worry about a sauce breaking, or folding one thing into another gently enough not to collapse the other thing.

As someone who ends up with a large quantity of cooking wine, one of my favorite dishes is coq au vin.You’ve got small bacon pieces, a whole chicken broken down, carrots, onions, lots of wine, tomato paste, chicken broth, a bit of thyme and a ton of sliced mushrooms. When you slow braise meats in wine, magical things happen.

When making something the first time, I tend to follow the recipe step-by-step. Then, if I enjoy it, I tweak to my preferred taste thereafter!!! Sometimes, the OG recipe is better than my tweaked up version, so I memorize the recipe & stick to it as close as possible. Then when my tastebuds need a change, I tweak occasionally depending on my mood.

I can follow a recipe, have some decent skills, and can improvise when it comes to breakfast, brunch, and grilling. I cook about three times a week. I don’t really enjoy it though.

My wife, on the other hand, cooks like Theloneous Monk played Jazz. She’s amazing.

^I do love Theloneous Monk. Oh yeah.

I can make naked pancakes, but once I’ve dressed them with butter and syrup, I guess they’re fully clothed. ;-(

^That makes me realize how many very long years it’s been since we had a real party. Sigh

@Hawaii_Jake

Are you referring to an XXK lurve threshold party, or some kind of flapjack frivolity? ;-)

Brian, it’s been a very long time indeed since we had a party here where nakkid pancakes were featured.

Baking. I strictly adhere to the recipe. Baking is mostly a science project, and alterations can produce bad outcomes. (I’m always amazed by those bakers in TV competition shows, who can change ingredients, or add this-and-that, and still get delicious results. Of course, though, even some of their efforts can fail.)

Cooking. I modify everything! When I use a cookbook recipe, I note the date and annotate the page with my revisions.

I don’t cook a whole lot because it’s just the two of us, and my daughter doesn’t always like what I like. If I bake something, after two or three days I get sick of it, and will end up throwing it out. I know I could freeze it, but I just get bored with it and I don’t care to keep it.

I will take something, like flavored rice (Knorr Spanish Rice, for example) and add to it, because I like veggies and texture, so I may add peppers cut up or carrots cut up or a handful of frozen corn, or any combination of the above, so it’s not just rice, it’s like a vegetable Spanish rice. She requests the rice, and adding to it is my way of jazzing it up a bit.

If I do bake something, it’s either a quick bread (Irish soda bread, banana bread) or it will be a cake mix that I add fruit to, like some canned pineapple or peaches.

When my job used to have pot lucks, I used to make a cake where I would cut up canned peaches, put them in a pan with some brown sugar, butter and some juice from the peaches, heat it up, put that mixture in the bottom of a cookie sheet and pour cake batter (from a box mix) on top, bake and when I turned it right side up, to serve, it looked kind of cool with the little pieces of orange peaches on top. Everyone loved it.

Sometimes I make chili, in the winter, not from a recipe but just throwing stuff into a crock pot and adding to it to make it spicy the way we like it.

Sometimes in the winter I will make a lasagna, in a small pan (9×9 inch) and after about two or three days, I may freeze it. I use jarred sauce, so it’s a quick thing, nothing comprehensive, and not that big of a pan.

Follow the recipe the first time. For baking I might swap out flavoring like almond for vanilla or cardamom for cinnamon. With cooking I’m pretty improvisational. I think I am particularly skilled with soups. I have a great soup recipe with tomato base, shrimp, onions and poblanos.