/ck/ - Food & Cooking

if a recipe says feeds four then make half

>>12437990
Yeah no shit but what about when the ingredients don't scale well? For instance if I'm making a thai dish and end up scaling down the ginger and garlic there won't be enough, since the ingredients are just listed out as "four cloves of garlic" or something that doesn't actually establish size or weight.

There has to be a guide out there on how to scale different ingredients.

>>12437998
The size of your garlic does not establish your ability to make a dish

>>12437998
Yeah, it's called halving it. Are you stupid? If you want more garlic, add more garlic.

>>12437998
You're stupid if you can't scale 4 cloves of garlic down to 2 cloves of garlic.
If you make a recipe and think "hmm, this could use more garlic," then next time, add more garlic.

Even an egg, which only comes in one quantity, has an established half measure. One large egg, beaten, is about 3 1/2 Tbsp, so half an egg is just under 2 Tbsp of beaten egg.

Stop bitching about other people not doing the work for you and just learn how to divide by two and four, you absolute imbecile. No wonder you're only ever cooking for one.

Get a few of pictured pyrex containers for the freezer for your leftovers, and in a few different sizes, but mostly in the portions of 1-2.
Pack leftovers up immediately after making dinner, and freeze for another day when you're in the mood again. There are now some reasons to make that dinner for 4, having easy to heat items on hand for lunches for work, or that odd night you need to do some shopping because you've eaten out so many nights in a row. Or for when you're sick and want something easy. Cook once, eat twice. That's my motto. Short order cooking get tedious. When I pull that main with side out at work, with the sprinkle of cilantro or basil already in there, and top it with crunchy noodles from a ziploc, jealous eyes all around. Plan your leftovers, and also plan to morph them. I'll cook double the white rice for dinner, intentionally because it's a lazy morning the next day, and that rice will morph into a gourmet fried rice brunch with my other leftovers. I'll portion that meatloaf into 8 patties, little baby meafloaves, and intentionally neutral flavors, and then enjoy it as a sandwich, a hoisin glazed one with kim chee on top, or a BBQ one with fried onions and a slice of cheddar. Boil the whole box of noodles, and make your dinner, but set aside half to get cold, and hit it with makoto ginger dressing, sesame seeds, stir in some peanut butter, chili sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil and pull apart the rest of your rotisserie chicken the next day, and serve with sliced cucumber for the best pasta salad ever. Leftover mashed potatoes or wild rice with an egg and some cracker crumbs, and leftovers become some fritters or croquettes...leftovers rock. Just think about it the morph factor or the fact you won't have to touch them again until you're in the mood because it's safe in your freezer.

>>12438023
>>12438026
>>12438031
Why do you even follow a recipe if you're not going to follow it? The person that created the recipe had a specific vision in mind. If you're just guessing and going "oh but I like garlic so I'll put in more" you're changing the flavor profile without even understanding what the original taste is supposed to be. You're basically just cooking whatever you want with slight inspiration from something you saw, not following a recipe. Taste and texture can be ruined from doing moronic guess-work like that. Certain ingredients provide different things to the finished dish that help build its body as well as its taste, and halving ingredients without understanding their role can ruin the balance. How is this so hard to understand? Go back to your meme threads if you know nothing about cooking.

>>12438089
maybe you should cook simpler dishes so you can learn how to cook before you try complex ones

Make sure to get a digital food scale if you don't have one already. They make it much easier to divvy up portions or prepared ingredients just right.

>>12438089
>following recipes exactly
>can't figure out how to half a recipe
>telling others they dont know how to cook
You are the biggest faggot I've seen today

>>12438089
>can't figure out how to half a recipe
>tells others they don't know about cooking

>>12437974
ayy that looks dope, like a delicious mexican menudo de res

>>12437974
>I'm pretty sure just halving everything will fuck it up.
Why would it mess up the recipe if you halve all of the ingredients? Depending on the dish you might need to adjust cook time but not necessarily.

>>12437998

>>12438089
Except as you already realized, it doesn't work like that. Garlic cloves for example, will be of varying sizes. They will also be of different strengths and have different flavor.

It's not even possible to identically re-create a dish someone else has made with different ingredients, you have to use your intuition, taste while you're cooking, adjust to taste and adapt to use the freshest/cheapest/seasonal ingredients available to you.
That's what being a good cook is. Any donkey can blindly follow a recipe. If it was that simple, everyone would make great food.

>>12437974
lol cant fraction
idiot magapede

Don't mind the newfags. I still make the same amount, I just freeze quite a bit of it. Works well on a busy schedule, but not everything freezes well.

I just eat whatevers left over in the morning for breakfast

>>12437998
>four cloves of garlic
>wants to scale by half

4/10 weak bait but some idiots took it.

>>12438089
You can't cook worth a shit with that broom up your ass, anon

>>12438089
kek autism

>>12437998
div...div....diveyde....4.... by 2?????
cooking hard

You could always, you know, have a family like a functional adult human. Then this whole problem of yours would go away for a couple decades or so...
Real simple stuff.

Have you tried cutting your family in half?

>>12437998
Lmao, you should be embarrassed

>>12437998
Wew

>>12437974
Why don't you just eat the leftovers, retard? Have some for breakfast the next day and it's almost finished already.

>>12437974
I got you my dude, this is the only book you need

>>12441409
Nah, it's not 1:1 ratios with all ingredients.

>>12438089
>>12437998
The answer is quite obvious
You have to weigh one thousand cloves of garlic from each variety so you can establish an accurate average clove weight
Then use that unit to measure ground garlic on a scale

The biggest problem are fucking eggs. If you want to reduce the size of a recipe but it already only calls for one egg then FUCKING WELP

>>12441405
This is the actual answer. Meal prep is good, what's bizarre is that the recipes for families only make enough for one meal.

>>12440679
So taste what you're making as you make as it. Or use recipes that use metric weight as units instead.

>>12438089
>You're basically just cooking whatever you want with slight inspiration from something you saw, not following a recip
I know you're baiting, but this is what you SHOULD do if you don't have legitimate autism

>>12441425
>The biggest problem are fucking eggs. If you want to reduce the size of a recipe but it already only calls for one egg then FUCKING WELP

If this is the ONLY halving problem you're having in your recipes and you want to really really be able to cook for one person, then you can buy eggbeaters for your egg. It's real eggs or eggwhites, depending which you buy, and you just pour it into a measuring cup.
1/4 cup = 1 egg iirc, so there's how you halve it, use 1/8th of a cup.

>>12441696
ingredients aren't universally the same though
'100 grams of garlic' can significantly vary

Now THIS is autism!

>>12441733
> 100g of feathers weighs more than 100g of bricks

Unless you live in a third world country, just toss everything into a container and freeze it for future meals.

>>12437998
Is this what "trolling" looks like?

>>12438089
Perfection is not a concept that applies to food

>>12442155
he means garlic can vary in strength

>>12437998

>4 cloves of garlic for a 4 person meal
>use one
>if it tastes like it needs more garlic, use more next time

why are you being a massive autist about this?

>>12442155
It is impressive that you managed to type that out without realizing how stupid it is

>>12442347
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3bEh-PEk1g

>>12441733
You can't help that whether or not you halve the recipe. You have to take a chance on some things.

>>12437974
>>Constantly have leftovers that I never eat.
literalyl just eat them stop being a bitch