>>For example if you have a recipe calling for 150 g of butter, but you want to use all of your 250 g,
What a strange way of cooking. I'm not saying it's bad, just that typically people cook for a result (I want to make X servings) not a reason (I want to eliminate all of the butter in my house).
I definitely cook this way sometimes, although not with butter. But say I have a recipe that calls for 1 kg of chicken and I have 1.25 kg. I'm going to use all that chicken and scale everything else up by a factor of 1.25, rather than being stuck with that extra 250 g of chicken.
Of course, this only works if you don't mind having too much food. I like leftovers (I get to eat without having to cook!) so it works for me.
Not really? If I have a dinner party involving 6 guests, and my recipe calls for (<ingredients per portion>*6) then scaling down that ratio may give me 4.5 portions.
I don't cook things without purpose/specific goals. I'm cooking to make enough for the people I'm expecting.
That's not to say it doesn't make sense, just not how I've tended to see things cooked.
Around our house, we definitely cook with the expectation of having leftovers. While we do plan ahead some, a lot of our meals involve looking in the fridge and trying to figure out something to make with whatever raw ingredients happen to be in there, and hopefully scaling whatever spices/sauces/etc to match. It's only two of us, and we'll often cook 8-10 servings of something to have lunches for the next couple of days.
What I'd do in this case (and this is true for most everyone I know) depends on what "portion" means:
- If it's something that can be reasonably divided among guests (such as a soup or something similar), then I eyeball the portions so they're all approximately even. Optionally, if there's an ample amount, you can simply let people decide how much they want through self-service.
- If it's something that's demarcated by physical objects (e.g. dinner rolls, cupcakes, etc), then you have a few other options: Leftovers to save for later, split them among people who want extra, or give them away to whomever wants them.
I don't know about the OP you're replying to, but I rarely divide a recipe up based on expected portions since portion size is highly variable. Should I have extra left over, then I deal with that accordingly. If I'm cooking to get rid of an ingredient, I don't particularly care if I miss the mark by a few portions provided I have enough in the first place for the objective.
(The other problem is that portioning in this question seems to me to assume that all guests are equally hungry.)
That's solving a different problem. Again: I understand how to scale a recipe (which is what you're describing).
Let's do this as a math problem.
How I tend to cook: Xbutter + Ysugar + ZFlour = 20 Cookies.
How OP is cooking: 2 butter + Ysugar +ZFlour = X
We're setting different known quantities (him butter, me portions) and then solving for the rest. They're fundamentally different approaches in cooking philosophy. And again, neither is "wrong" I just found OP's style to be novel enough to comment on
Basically, the reason is, I want to make as much as possible of something from the ingredients I have. Just find the constraining ingredient, calculate the ratio, and you're set.
But there's so often other restraining conditions. This works better for some things (cookies) than others (a loaf of bread) because of portioning or cooking dishes or other factors.
Again, clearly this is some kind of a thing some people do, I just don't tend to cook this way apparently.
This is how baker's percentages work-- you typically start with some quantity of flour like 50 lbs and all the other stuff is available in whatever quantity you need. The problem is getting the ratios right.
No I understand recipe conversion (worked in restaurants for 10+ years) so I understand everything working on ratios. I just rarely in my professional or personal life cooked by saying I have X amount of an ingredient and want to use all of it. I've always started saying "I need X portions of a completed product, and therefor need to have <insert amount of ingredient>).
In India (and probably some other countries), cooks often don't measure out ingredients for dishes [1]. They just wing it / use their experience [2] (called andaaz in Hindi/Urdu). And the results are often or mostly good (except with bad cooks, of course).
[1] I guess that approach works for all countries, except individual cases where people blindly follow formulas to the letter.
[2] Of course, they are not flying blind, they use rough (or precise enough) estimates, that are based, again, on their experience, and on just seeing what amounts of what stuff (whether it is pinches, grams, ounces, kilos, pounds, or whatever), makes for a good dish.
Oh sure, but that's a WHOLE other thing. Last night I made potato soup for dinner. I peeled about 2.5 pounds of potatoes, and that was the only thing I specifically had in mind for "will this be enough portions of soup for the people I'm trying to feed" when I started, no measurements or ratios. Everything else was just me leaning on all my experience to make it taste the way I wanted.
That's a whole different style of cooking, and most people don't get there until well AFTER they learned how to cook something with a recipe (or someone telling them how many handfuls of beans to add to the pot).
Think of it this way; the last time you cooked this dish there was way too much and youd prefer not to do that again. This would help.with that problem.
I guess it also makes more sense for baking than cooking.
But that's not what this scenario presents. OP was specifically talking about not wanting to leave ingredients around. He's solving a different problem.
All ingredients move together in ratios (got that, totally understand) so I understand HOW this work. What I was commenting on was WHY someone would cook this way. Again, I'm not saying it's wrong, it's just a problem I've never encountered. If I only used 150G of butter and had 100G left, then I have 100G of butter for whatever else I'm cooking.
I'm sure scenarios can be presented for why this is a problem that needs solving (storage space, product expiring, etc) it's never been a way I personally did things.
What a strange way of cooking. I'm not saying it's bad, just that typically people cook for a result (I want to make X servings) not a reason (I want to eliminate all of the butter in my house).