Isn't this normal?
Only for advanced pros
It's funny that smelling the spices and the food as I cook it to see if they'll go well together is my main method of figuring out which spices to use.
I'm pretty sure most cooks use spices according to their internal feelings on what contexts the spices work well in. Basically the smell test except they have enough experience with the spice already to just do it in their head. Pretty sure this isn't that unusual.
The human sensory experience is much more varied and foreign to your own than you think. Some can combine flavours in their head, others couldn’t explain a flavour they eat daily unless it was in their mouths at the time.
I’m in the latter group but a supertaster and can tell what it’s missing with a spoonful usually. Couldn’t tell you what the result will taste like but know it’s lacking salt, cumin, herbs, etc. Wee sniff of what you’re going to add as you swallow to confirm.
That's me when my family wants me to whip up a random pasta lunch. Hmm, mulled black peppercorn and garlic? A bit of paprika? Tomato paste, oh now it definitely needs oregano.
Shit, I'm just making pasta alla vodka again.
Tbf, pasta alla vodka is really never a bad choice.
I have a very sensitive sense of smell, and I still can't do it. I'll always add too much or not enough.
Amount is the experience part. Hard, if not impossible, to estimate by smell alone.
I can't even smell anything well, my taste is very weak, but I know what my kids respond to, and after several years I have a good sense of how much of any spice will work.
Why yes, I do put a little cayenne pepper in my chicken soup. Why do you ask?
Cayenne goes on everything
That's Frank's
If it doesn't clear my sinuses completely how is it supposed to cure me? Of course it needs cayenne.
If you aren't cooking by vibe, are you really living?
Baking on the other hand...
Baking by vibe takes some work, and you should practice recipes by the letter before trying it, but it can be fun. It's more so knowing the impact of what you're adding.
Spices, for instance, can be added by vibe to some recipes. Flour, on the other hand, should be weighed out and a firm knowledge of ratio to fat rather then vibes.
I had to bake by vibes one time because I started a recipe then realized I didn't have eggs and the friend the cake was for is lactose intolerant. Used a can of coconut milk. Turned into brownies instead of chocolate cake, but they were good enough that I've been intentionally making them since.
My wife says that everything I cook smells the same. Yeah baby I know what I like.
So like cooking, if you are making a recipe of something new it's important to follow the recipe to know how it tastes then next time you know what to tweak to make it taste more like what you like
With a deep enough knowledge of how baking works, it can be done. My sister improvises baked goods very well. The sad thing is that when one turns out amazing instead of just good, she can't replicate it because she doesn't know the recipe. I'm particularly sad I'll never again have the amazing butter rum pound cake she made for her daughter's birthday last year. She tried to make it again later, but it just wasn't the same. :(
Powerful eldritch knowledge tends to come at a terrible price.
It requires more precision, sure, but there are absolutely bakers who can taste a dough and tweak the water/flour/oil etc. ratios to get the perfect bread.
It's only different from other kinds of cooking because most people haven't developed those senses. If you knew what you were doing, you could bake from scratch without a recipe easily and go by "vibes" (i.e. based on sensory input).
Well, cooking normally doesn't require rising. Baking usually does. Knowing how chemicals react and how yeast acts is important. Cooking is mostly just about flavor. You should know about the Maillard reaction and burning, but as long as the flavors are good (and you don't cook something that'll make you sick) then you're going to be fine.
"Measure carefully, friends!" - Chef Jean Pierre on YouTube as he yeets in approximately random eyeballed quantities of everything.
All cooking is vibes based.
It's baking where you've got to plan it out like d-day.
"Can you share the recipe?"
"Nope!"
"Seriously?"
"Seriously, I don't remember."
...that's pretty much my improvisational style, everything eyeballed, nothing measured: sometimes things turn out amazing but of course the cost of those happy surprises is that i'll never make it the same way again; couldn't if i tried...
...i dated a girl who dogmatically followed published recipes, considered any deviations anathema to the authors' labor developing them, and she was horrified to watch me cook...
for me it's easy because i mostly remember what i just made. but that's also because i pay special attention to what i do and what comes out afterwards, kinda to do semi-structured research.
Some people would definitely not remember all the details, but yeah, this might not be an issue for others.
I'm the rabbit. I also do a lot of tasting.
You may scream now.
Tasting is how you're supposed to do it.
I however just start throwing shit in and wait for the surprise at the end.
And now the rabbit is in the corner too, what animal are you?
I AGREE WITH YOU!
Wait until OP discovers that spices don't always taste like they smell...
tried beer for the first time yesterday, thought it would be better than the smell. Nope. Struggled through 3 sips then gave it to someone else 😭 I don't really get alcohol tbh. Ive only had like 3 or 4 drinks but no matter what it is they all taste bad :/
It's a bit of am acquired taste but beers are by far not all created equal. There's a stupid amount of diversity and large differences.
But if you don't enjoy it don't feel the need to force yourself.
Beers are very much an aquired taste. There's your commodity beers and your piss beers from the big national brands like Pabst, Miller, Coors, etc. which largely are trying to sate a pallete that never liked the moonshine from the prohibition era (and all are crap in my personal opinion as someone who still hasn't acquired the taste for beer but can at least tell when something is good. The commodity stuff is good for getting you buzzed and that's about it), then there's your microbrews which will vary wildly in style and flavor (if it's on tap you can just tell the bartender you've not really had beer before and ask what they recommend and if you can try it before you commit to a full glass. They might even have the option for a flight of beers, with a bunch of shot glasses of beers for your to try a bit of each) and then there's the stuff people don't talk enough about: ciders (it tastes like apple juice but with a sharper, fuller flavor!) mixed drinks (again, ask the bartender for suggestions if you're unsure), and probably some other ones I'm not thinking of before you move onto the whiskeys and bourbons.
So basically it's a wide world of alcoholic beverages and honestly people don't encourage experimenting enough
So, the first thing you need to know about alcohol is it's an intoxicating drug. It is a depressant, its short-term effects include reduced inhibitions which in the moment can feel like increased confidence, and overall reduction in physical motor skills, plus a mild euphoria. Also makes your face feel slightly numb. That's most of alcohol's selling point.
Alcohol on its own is rather unpleasant to have in your face. A lot of cocktail culture sprung up around hiding alcohol with other flavorings so they're in any way pleasant to swallow.
You might try something like whiskey and coke, I'd specifically go with American or Canadian whiskies here; scotch doesn't really bring the right flavors for this. There's a reason Jack Daniels or Crown Royal are stereotypes. Vodka can also be a way in; it doesn't bring a lot of flavor of its own so adding it to fruit juices can get you used to booze within familiar flavor profiles. Don't worry about sticking to posted recipes, drop a tablespoon of vodka into a tall glass of orange juice and see what it does, then start upping the ratio.
Get used to that, you may then start exploring cocktails, getting into wine or beer, or neat spirits.
I fucking haaaaaaate hops, i hate the smell, i hate the taste, i also hate beer because i can literally smell the fermentation and it smells rotted.
Plenty of other ways to get turnt out there my friend
You learn to associate the flavor with the drug and from there you start to appreciate the intricacies of the flavor. A good bourbon is sweet in the same way bakers chocolate is with a vanillin and other flavors picked up from the wood. Meanwhile a light wheat beer is almost like a bitter bread. Wine is like grape juice but with a lot less sweetness and more depth. And if you really want to get drunk without dealing with bitterness or wine flavors you can always go to mead, which tastes like the honey it once was
It's an acquired taste.
Unless it's an IPA, they're gross and if someone drinks them then I assume they're just suffering to be pretentious.
/s?
As for other booze, just make it like something you like to drink. Fruity vodka and sprite is banging. Rum and coke is a classic. I like creamy stuff so I put vanilla vodka, bailey's, and milk together.
Beer is definitely an acquired taste. Plus there is a big fad around IPAs lately which are stupidly bitter even by beer standards
...let me introduce you to single cask-strength malts: one drop, drawn delicately through your lips, let diffuse across your palate by capillary action, that's how i learned to appreciate alcohol for the first time after four decades of not getting it...
...the great thing about cask-strength sipping whiskies is that one bottle can last years if kept properly sealed between pours...
Im not usually a fan of alc but I do enjoy rice wine (korean flavored ones) and choya plum wine. Maybe you could try those? They're moreso a sweet alcohol and doesnt have that weird earthy bitter taste imo
Terrible how they decieve us
My chef yells at me because I do this all the time.
Though he's mainly mad because I didn't measure a single fuckin thing and can't recreate it
can't recreate it
This is the main downside IMO
also, if you do write down the recipe and try to recreate it on another day, it doesn't work because your mood has changed and now the flavor doesn't match anymore.
has happened to me many times now.
Black bunny gang
Isn't this just a sign of inexperience? If you have been cooking for a reasonable time, you will know which spices to use when going for what sort of flavour.
yeah but there's also a lot of people just seeing cooking as a chore and never really paying attention to it, therefore not learning much or anything at all.
it takes patience and a bit of dedication to actually learn cooking in a reasonable way. otherwise you're just following recipe.
Blindly following recipes I will never get. How can you be comfortable with depending on a stranger's whims for what you eat ?
I almost always follow a new recipe the first time around to understand what the dish is generally supposed to be. After that, I start riffing off of it to make it what I want it to be. But you gotta know which general direction the dish was originally headed before you can successfully play with it if you're a Home Gamer in the kitchen.
Ever been to a restaurant, ate a meal cooked by somebody other than yourself? Pre-made frozen meal? Fast food?
Dont want to sound mean or anything but most people are comfortable with having somebody else prepare a meal, so why is it different when you prepare it but somebody else tells you how to do it?
I usually try to stick reasonably closely to the recipe the first time I'm trying something out. That way if I don't like the result, I know it's not just that I ruined the recipe with my modifications.
I don't do it, because I usually get confused by them, but it makes sense to me. I don't know what will taste good, and by following a recipe you can leverage someone's experience to get something that tastes good. Personally I just accept that I often eat something mid in the pursuit of good cooking skills
Especially when there are so many absolute garbage recipes by people whose jobs are writing content for magazines or SEO where the only requirement is that the picture of the food look good and selling weird kitchen instruments.
Which is slightly better than our parents learning on recipes designed to use as many ingredients sold by Campbells as possible.
95% of recipes floating around these days just fundamentally misunderstand the dish they're trying to create.
I think that's why some people "can't cook". They treat a dish like a magic potion, where you'll destroy the house if you add 2g too much chilli or something.
No, they are just lazy.
Considering the majority of flavours we experience are in fact smells, if you can cook by your nose you're usually pretty safe on how the end result will come out.
I'm not a foodie nor a chef but I've been able to break apart and reproduce restaurant dishes just by smelling.
It's the only way to season food. If you're good enough, you can just imagine the flavors, but I still have to rummage the spice cabinet and sniff to get the dish to taste just right.
Critical is that HOW you learn this is trial and error.
Most people can imagine the result of combining two images, say a frog riding a turtle. We can imagine what a handful of wet spaghetti might sound like being dropped onto the hood of a car. We can imagine what a fluffy bunny that's been rolling in sand might feel like.
But that isn't just because those senses are somehow intrinsically better for synthesis and prediction. We just got a ton more practice with them. As kids we got to draw, we got to play with toys, we touched everything, we bashed all kinds of stuff together.
But most of us, we just got the food prepared for us with no awareness of the properties of the constituent ingredients.
You gotta act like a toddler in the kitchen to grow that part of your brain.
I binge watched a lot of Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares (the UK) one
The best tip ever given on those shows is Gordon Ramsay yelling “taste taste taste!” at everyone.
Tasting as you go is what improved my cooking the most. I also vigorously smell everything too.
I don't even sniff them; I just remember how they taste/smell, and then I end up adding vanilla extract to savoury dishes and it tastes amazing
Fantastic.
You better get the hell out of my house immediately and never come back.
Is this an adhd meme?
Not really it's a "able to cook" meme
I cook by vibe mostly because I don't have the items the recipe calls for. So I typically substitute whatever I have that I think fits or smells right. Works well 9/10, just when someone asks me what I used to make something, I have no fucking clue.
You guys don't cook by smell?
Either of the “as directed” users are just cowards with no taste buds.
🔥🔥 people who don't use spice 🔥🔥
i think that's called Britain
You should come over and try my vibes based Cottage Pie. It's subtlety spicy, meaty (or veggie depending on dietary preferences), full of flavour. Every time I have cooked it for people I have always gotten back compliments, clean plates and guests in a glorious food coma.
I use salt and pepper, how could you say my food is bland?
Maybe you just have good and fresh ingredients. Don't want to cover up the flavour of those, you want to just enhance them
People who use the same spice for every dish.
I probably put herbes de Provence in too many things, but I like how it tastes.
Oops... I should really stop doing that
I just follow my family’s habit , add reasonable amount
According to the label? I just checked most of it (GV, McCormick) has no info whatsoever.
The exceptions are spice mixes (rotisserie chicken, old bay) and a single expired bottle of Durkee celery seed (maybe their other spices are like this, but afaik this is the only one we have).
Best I can do is try different spices when sautéing vegetables.
me sniffing the spice of the coca plant
I just grab whatever random spices I have that sound good and add a few shakes
Mmm, cinnamon and garlic and cloves and rosemary! Perfect for that hangover cure that makes you barf 😍😜
I don't even measure my spices. Pure vibe. Mostly because recipes almost always feel like they don't use enough of anything but salt.
Can anyone explain what’s going on in the picture for me?
You just know that bunny fucks
Might even be famous for it.
Powdered spices specially, by the time you open the lid, you have already smelled it.
Don't even need to try.
