BeerBorg

I have a few recipes I follow to the letter, such as my BBQ rub and BBQ sauce.

The other extreme is that I just grab whatever ingredients I think will work with the base meat and throw it all together. It usually works out pretty well, whether I'm smoking a chicken or grilling some burgers.

Then there are the times that I want more of a "road map" for what I'm making. I do this with my beef stew. I found a "recipe" that isn't a recipe; it just suggests a variety of things that can be used, and I'm free to make my choices within certain parameters, such as 4 cups of root vegetables. Well, that includes a variety of things to mix and match. Or how it says to use a liquid flavoring agent. Will I use ketchup? Worcestershire sauce? Teriyaki sauce?

I find this approach the most fun for certain dishes. I can get creative and maybe try new things, and be pretty sure that it'll work out to my satisfaction. I made this stew earlier this week. Last time I made it, I added mushrooms, which I liked. This time, I left out the mushrooms and decided to use put in some yellow squash.

I also braise the beef in a different beer each time, depending on what's in the pipeline. That'll change the flavor profile a bit from batch to batch, too.

What's a recipe?

I just mix things together that I think should come together well.

I do use Beersmith to come up with recipes for beer, but I still basically just start with a general idea and play with the ingredients until it looks good.

I don't often bake, so I'm more likely to follow a recipe if/ when I do.

I follow a recipe the first time I make something, whenever I bake, or when it is an standard favorite.
Other than that, I often wing it, make any changes I wish, and adjust seasoning as I go.
For brewing, I substitute often, maybe always using what I have on hand.

I find that making baked goods like brownies, breads, cookies, cakes, pie crusts, etc require a recipe that needs exact ingredients. If you use a quarter cup more flour than required, or a tablespoon less butter, or too much baking powdered, or an extra egg, you'll see it in the final product. It won't bake right, or won't set right, or a number of other problems.

For an example, my wife's grandmother won a number of ribbons at the fair with her baked goods. She published many of her recipes in a local 4H cookbook. But nobody could copy her recipes, they just wouldn't come out right. Even my wife's mother can't do it right. When she published the recipes, she would often leave out a simple step, like exactly how long to beat the batter for, or she would adjust the amounts of one of the ingredients, so whoever was following her recipe couldn't recreate it exactly. It was still edible, but it wasn't the same. Luckily my wife spent a lot of time with her grandmother and learned how she did things. So she knows how to do them right. She will still follow the published recipe, but knows when and where to make the adjustments.

But when it comes to meats and veggies, either grilled, braised, roasted etc, this is where you can get creative and just throw stuff in. It usually won't ruin the final product.

I agree that savory cooking differs greatly from baking. My wife is the baker in the family. Her chocolate chip cookies have been declared "chocolate chip and crack" cookies, because they're instantly addictive. And baking is more like chemistry, where things just won't work unless exact measurements are made.

Savory cooking is a lot more forgiving when it comes to seat-of-the-pants additions. My wife acknowledges that, besides baking, I'm the better cook. The problem is, we never have the same meal twice, no matter how good it is. I can't tell you how many times she's told me, "This is the best chicken you've ever made. And we'll never have it again." I don't measure anything, and rarely use the same combination of herbs and spices twice.

With brewing, well, I've got some standard recipes stored in BrewToad, so if I want to make Fogbank Amber Ale, or FedoraDave's American Ale, I can be sure that I can replicate the recipe that made me like it in the first place. I think brewing is closer to baking than it is to savory cooking. But I'm confident enough that I could make a decent beer by just saying, "Give me 8 pounds of 2-row, 6 ounces of chocolate, 4 ounces of 40L, and 2 ounces of Melanoidin" and then getting some Cascade, some Chinook, and some White Labs West Coast Ale yeast.

Just like brewing, the first time I do something I follow the recipe to a tee.
After having it once, I will either decide that I like the recipe and continue to follow it (using precise measurements) or make changes depending on my tastes -again measuring so I can replicate if I choose to.

I will sometimes wing it, but that's generally when I am trying to use things up - that's when I go to "about this much of that", etc.

I do enjoy the creative aspect of both brewing and cooking/BBQing, but I also want to be able to replicate things when I really like the results.