How closely do you follow recipes?

I love to cook but I take a look first at the recipoe or the ingredients before getting started then afterwards read the procedure on how to cook once then I start to cook all by myself and my own way...

i follow cook books inch per inch. i dont wanna loose tract and ending up wiht a wrong food.

I make yeast bread this way especially. There are a few basic ingredients and I usually "eyeball" the amounts, then add whatever strikes my fancy, from bean flour to garlic and from bacon grease to dehydrated vegetables. It's fun to experiment and the bread is always good. Well, almost always. :) Even baking temperatures don't have to be exact if you keep an eye on it.

When I first started learning to cook, I absolutely had to follow the recipe. That's why it took me so long to learn to cook because my mom didn't follow recipes. She's say add a bit of that and I had to know EXACTLY how much. I think it has to do with me being a perfectionist when it comes to certain things. When I met my husband, I found he was the same type of cook as my mom, lol! However, he taught me with recipes as that's how I knew I could learn. I still use recipes today, but am not so strict with them. I throw in my own ideas and do things to my own (and my husband's) tastes. Also, if I come up with an idea, but don't know amounts to make it work, I'll look up a bunch of recipes like it to get an idea on what to do and go from there.

I always follow a recipe the first time I make something. As I cook it, I tend to come up with ideas to "wing it" next time, but I will usually still stick the recipe for the most part. I like mixing together any available fruit, yogurt or ice cream, with any available juice and blending it all together for a magical drink :)

Oh I rarely follow recipes exactly. I mean if its like sugar or flour I will follow it but usually with cooking I will just wing it lol a little bit of this a pinch of that, you know! There is a lot of stuff I make a lot that I can just guesstimate and it will still taste good, I just hate following directions somtimes!

I love to make cookies and often add a little bit of this or a little bit of that. The same goes with muffins. I experiment with them too. My favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe came about when my husband put a bag of chocolate chips on top of my dryer. It was there for about 2 weeks before I thought to make cookies and found them by chance. Well, the bag was more than 2/3 melted together. I grated the chocolate using the coarse side of my grater. I managed to grate more than half of the block. Then I chopped the rest with a knife. I added this this to the cookie batter. Much of the chocolate was more like a powder. I also added some chopped pecans and dried cranberries. They came out sooo good. My family, friends, and coworkers thought they were my best effort.

I do not follow recipes that closely in that if the recipe calls for 1/2 cup sugar, I'll measure out less than that, similarly for salt/soy sauce. I guess I try to be more health conscious. I also substitute butter with margarine or vegetable oil wherever possible.

I made a mish mash tonight for dinner ..I had a box of rice-a-roni brocolli au graten and some left over KFC's chicken strips and a cup of leftover frozen corn ,so I just chopped up the chicken and browned it in with the rice mix added some chicken base and then the corn let it cook the called for time and then added shredded cheese and put in the broiler to melt that ...it was very good I must say plus I got rid of some left overs too.. thats the best part. I hate throwing food away