Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I almost never follow a recipe. I also almost never bake. I look at a couple that seem good and take what I want. I made some chili with a few of The Gurgling Cod's ideas- pulverized oatmeal and homemade beef stock (I usually use an all-tomato base). I got a lot of compliments, and will make this my go-to chili from now on.

When I cook, I rarely follow a recipe exactly. I tend to be creative, adding or subtracting what I feel will make the item better. When I bake, which is often, I hardly ever stray from the precise ingredients. Since baking is more of a science, unless I am doing something I am very familiar with, I stick to the written page.

When I'm preparing a recipe I've never tried before, I usually follow it very closely, unless there's an obvious reason not to. Mostly, I'm curious what the writer has in mind. The next time I make it, I tweak it to my own taste.

when I cook something the first time I follow the recipe, after that I almost never follow it. baking is something different though, I follow the recipe with small changes in flavorings etc as the mood strikes.

i'd say 99% of the time i do not follow a recipe exactly. but a lot of my baking adventures have been misadventures! haha.

Never. Everyone has different palates and I prefer more seasoning (also a bit of a cultural preference acquired from the food you grew up tasting), so that's one of the first things that always gets a tweak in any recipe. Generally, I like things less sweet, so I'll look at a recipe and if I think gosh, that's a lot, I'll add whatever it is (sugar, chocolate) until I'm happy with the taste..

Almost never in general cooking. I mostly use recipes as a guideline, and often combine elements of two or more. Sometimes the adjustments are very minor, but recipes invariably get tweaked. If only because I often don't have an ingredient on hand. Or because I tend to measure by guesstimate. I've only just begun writing down my own recipes -- the things I just throw together because I made them up or learned them by watching others. But even then, it's just a ballpark explanation, not a precise recipe (my new daughter-in-law is really struggling with this approach)!

With baking, I'm pretty exacting, at least until I know the recipes well. Then those often get tweaked, too.

This appears to be a hot topic on the discussion boards...

I usually prepare a recipe at least once as the author intended. After that, I'll interpret it somewhat.

I rarely mess with baking recipes as they depend heavily on chemical reactions to make them work.

yes i will follow recipes when i don't know what i'm doing at all with a first-time dish if it's complex or super new to me. or if i'm baking.

other than that...

i stick to recipes about as often as i screw up a meal, which is rarely. i pretty much spend hours each week looking at recipes online and looking at cookbooks and mags at home. from there, i get inspiration. and then stray slightly, or completely from the recipe.

Never. I can't ever be precise because I tend to nibble on my ingredients when I'm cooking, and I'm always throwing in extra "secret ingredients" that may or may not help the dish.

Rarely, if ever... I prefer to think of them as "guidelines"

Other than with a baking recipe, if it is a recipe I've never tried before I will follow it fairly closely, but taste as I go so that I can adjust to my liking. Or sometimes I will do what just seems logical from experience, such as seasoning ingredients little by little in layers instead of adding the precise amount at the end, using fresh herbs instead of dried, adding thickeners, etc. I try to keep notes of any additions, deletions or adjustments and add my comments and/or changes at the end if I intend to try the recipe again.

Sometimes, even with baking, I will find several recipes for the same item and combine elements of two or more. My current experiment is to perfect a recipe for ginger snaps, which is my favorite cookie! I'm looking for just the right combination of spiciness, dark color, as well as added candied ginger, and no single recipe I found had everything I wanted, so I keep tinkering!

There's Daring Bakers, and generally whenever I am making a cake, especially if i haven't done so before. Some types of baking will take more improv (pancakes and muffins definitely being examples), but cakes can be fussy.

Also, I think it's important to follow recipes pretty closely if I have any intention to review the recipes or books from which they came. Nothing annoys me more when looking for dishes to try or checking cookbook reviews on Amazon than people who totally change a dish--except for those who never even try it (ah, B. Marold, Amazon's pompous armchair cookbook reviewer, don't get me started...).

But those of us who have cooked a lot are probably only looking for ideas most of the time anyway, so it's only natural to put your own spin on fairly standard dishes and methods. I'm much more inclined to follow the letter when it uses unfamiliar ingredients (in my case, most Asian dishes) or, most often, new techniques. So for recipes from Thomas Keller or Michel Richard or any slightly ambitious pastry, I'll trust the expert over myself.

I look at recipes as suggestions unless it comes to baking. When I bake, I follow the directions to a T. I can't be trusted to "wing it" with pastry and breads and such.

When I met my now wife I scared her half to death with my willingness to improvise in the kitchen. She would find a recipe she would want to do and I'd take a look at it and then proceed to do whatever I decided upon that starting point. She's a baker at heart so she wanted to follow the instructions to insure that it would work. We all know that most recipes are poorly written so I take all of them as design guidelines rather than specifications. 6 years later she's used to me doing this but it still weirds her when we go to the store to get supplies for dinner without a list or idea as to what I'm making. 2 nights ago I decided at the store to make braised short ribs in cherry agrodolce. It was superb, came essentially out of my head and she almost licked the plate clean.

Once you know your tastes and techniques recipes aren't that important unless you want to have repeatability. All my dishes are "custom one-off". But when I bake bread I'm as scientific and recipe bound as she is when she makes her pastry.

I tend to only make relatively small adjustments when I cook, but occasionally I go the whole hog and toss in whatever I think might work. When baking a complicated recipe, I usually try to follow it exactly, but if it's a recipe I've made more than one, I'll make changes to suit my mood-- a dash of different flavored extracts, different types of flours, toppings, more/less sugar, et cetera.

If I am baking I follow to a tee, or if I am trying out a new recipe of something I have never had or tasted. But otherwise I play around with what I am adding and go by taste for most things.

I always follow the baking powder and/or baking soda instructions to the letter, especially with buttermilk. Pancakes are fickle things after all.

When anyone in my boyfriend's family cooks they stick to the recipe exactly, without changing. I stay close, but usually I don't measure as well as I could. The only time I really ran into a problem was when I accidentally used the half cup only for this whole recipe that called for cups...the cookies I made were a little thick and there was hardly any dough--but I didn't actually notice my mistake until doing the dishes later. Otherwise, it's never been a problem.