How many recipes do you know by heart?

[Semigourmet]

I know all of my basic recipes by heart.
Pot roast and gravy
Macaroni and Cheese
Hamburger gravy
Sausage gravy
Roasted chicken
Swiss steak
there are many more but you get the picture. But as I like to try new things and recipes. There are many more that I have to have a recipe for.

[mrsjimmyp]

There are a few I do from memory but very few....Macaroni and Cheese from scratch I could do with my eyes closed....lol...that was a favorite of my kids over the years.

[Jafo232]

I do quite a few from memory, but I write down a lot of my own recipes that I do not cook all the time, especially holiday foods.

The most fun I have with cooking is not using a book. I generally look at a recipe to get an idea of how it is done, not to follow it line by line. However, if it is something completely new to me, for example Crepes (which I have never made), I would probably follow a basic recipe the first time or two to get the technique down, then go on my own from there.

To me, cooking by the book is like doing a painting where all the shapes are made for you, and the colors are numbered within the shape (remember those things?).

If you don't take the training wheels off, you will never enjoy the complete experience of cooking, at least that is my opinion.

[jglass]

I remember the recipes by heart that I make most often.
Mama's Marinara, ricotta grocchi, salisbury steak, eggrolls, meatballs, roasted chicken, buttermilk fried chicken, garlic pasta and asian fried noodles are a few I can think of right off hand Oh yeah...cornbread and french bread.

[KYHeirloomer]

If we're talking actual recipes, I would have to say none.

If we're talking dishes, then there's a long list of them. The point being that "recipe" connotes a precise list of ingredients, amounts, and directions.

I rarely cook that way at all. And when I'm just cooking I don't make any dish the same way twice becuase I'm following a known procedure, but not a recipe per se.

[chubbyalaskagriz]

Yeah, as Brook implies, that's a hard one. I seldom cook from recipes... because I rarely cook things that have to adhere to strict formulas, so I just have the routine of the procedure "down" and I just do it the same way every time. (On a super-easy-to-understand scale... a PB&J, or cheese n' crackers... Some might NEED a recipe to make a PB&J, but most of us do not, 'cause once you've made one a time or two, you're basically set for life, and don't have to open the cookbook anymore...)

Baking is different, because one really can't just start throwing hand-fulls of flour and sugar together and expect to have a good, consistent product result. My last few kitchen positions I worked a lot of night-baker positions. I proll'y have about 100 fairly detailed specific recipes in my head for bread, rolls, cookies/biscotti/brownies & bars, donuts/fritters/muffins/danish, biscuits, pie crust/cobbler-crust, fruit-crisp crumb-top, etc. Not because I'm GOD but because I had the MUNDANE chore of baking these items monotonously every single night for years!

Those items I only did once a week or less- I had them written down in a notebook that I kept in my work-station in the bakery at camp. Also kept them all in a file on the computer.

At home, when I try new recipes from a book or mag- sometimes I'll rip the page from the mag and carry at my hip in the kitchen... cookbooks, to avoid getting the pages messy in the kitchen, I usually hen-scratch them down an a yellow sticky-note and stick to the cupboard-door that I'm working in front of at the counter.

In other commercial kitchens I've cooked in, most restaurants, hotels, etc have masters of all recipes in a 3-ring binder and sometimes posted under protective plastic in all work-stations so all cooks have easy at-a-glance-access to them when in a hurry on busy nights... For instance, all restaurant menu item recipes were posted on the main cook's line, all salad dressings were posted on the wall behind the 50-gallon Hobart mixer, etc.

[Mama Mangia]

I very seldom use a recipe - it's all by look, feel, smell, etc. Even for baking. Hey - it's worked all these years why stop now?

[Cook Chatty Cathy]

So many I am afraid to try to count, but one in particular that even if I were to get totally senile and forgetful I'd still know by heart is my homemade biscuits!!!

[Jafo232]

So many I am afraid to try to count, but one in particular that even if I were to get totally senile and forgetful I'd still know by heart is my homemade biscuits!!!

Do share..