No. I will give my recipe, the orginal recipe, and my version of the orginal recipe. I am not hung up on it is MY food. I do not have or want a copyright.

I have no problem sharing recipes. Even when customers requested recipes I was happy to share. It did not slow their purchases from my business, it did increase their connection to the business, and I don’t believe any recipe is truly unique. Every time a fresh food combo comes into my head I can usually quickly google a version of what I was thinking of.

No.

I share food, and the recipe if asked. I've never turned down a request for a recipe.

I do have a friend who cooks often and shares, will generously drop dinner off here about once a month or so - and he absolutely does not share his recipes. I find that kind of odd. He says they are his grandmothers recipes and not available to anyone. I tease him about it but do not press, it's his right to keep them to himself if its important to him to do that. Grandma is long gone and he must have his reasons.

I felt like DH put us in an awkward position one night at a restaurant we frequented often. He asked the co-owner for her pico de gallo recipe and from the look on her face I could tell she didn't want to share it (or maybe had been told not to) but didn't want to disappoint a regular customer. If she'd just brushed him off I'd have been happy to let it go, but before we left that evening she brought me the recipe jotted down. Truthfully, it was a considerable amount of work with all hand chopping to keep the consistency correct, about 4 kinds fresh and canned pepper, freshly squeezed lemon. I think I've made it all of twice (and not in recent years) and even halving hers, it made A LOT 😂 I'm not even sure where the recipe is and their young families business didn't survive Covid - my recipes are something of a jumble just now.

My trouble with Grandma's recipes, is that he has them, okay. What happens when he moves on. does anyone else have them or are they just lost forever?

Before iPad, I typed up my jumble of family, tearsheet and favorite recipes, and printed them when I wanted to use them, inserting them into sleeves in binders after. If someone asked for the recipe, I just handed over the paper. Now I e-mail from said iPad. But people also learned not to ask me for recipes. Most of mine weren't written for non-cooks, and most of the family recipes are just the old fashioned ”receipts” that are just lists of ingredients, expecting you to know proportions and methods, and never expecting identical, because each time they themselves made it was different depending on seasonal ingredients, etc. Either that, or the making is a long, precise fiddly process which takes exact ingredients, skill and time, and the full directions take several full sized pages, by the end of which they don't want to know. :) Or it's something dead easy but not stylish, like the brisket made with soup powder, chili sauce (fancy ketchup) and coke. They LOVE eating it, but making it would bruise their amour-propre.

But there are shades. I recently was printing a cookie recipe to give which has been published continuously, including online, for decades. It's one of my very favorites. As a kid, I added a lot of extra spice to it, and included those measures, because that's the point—my version. But I left out my mother's secret ingredient. Explaining it would be too hard, and the cookies are just as good without it. There is also the frisson of keeping a secret.

Sometimes, if writing it up as a proper recipe, or printing it or whatnot, seems like too much of a bother, I'll describe whatall goes into it, then ask sweetly if they want a copy, and they usually decline. :)

I’m never reluctant to share them.

I love to find unique and tasty recipes for things that I prepare for my guests. I spend a lot of time and effort seeking them out and then preparing them. Most are well received and sometimes the dishes are requested by friends when they're coming to dinner again. While I always share when asked, it is sometimes a little disappointing when I know they now will be cooking the same thing at home, so it won't be as special to them to have it served at my house. So, I'm off to find more unique recipes to cook and serve. I sometimes just want to say no, but I never do.

Um. It depends. In general no. I don't mind. I do not really have a lot of "recipes" that is, I do not really do measurements in many things. I cook from memory and intuition. But, I will and have refused to share recipes with people before. Mainly if I am worried that they will murder my dish and then claim they got the recipe from me, while people discreetly spit it out into their napkins around their table. The very first time someone asks about a major substitution, they do not get any recipes from me. "Can I use Skim milk or water instead of heavy cream?" "Can I use those meatless crumbles instead of ground beef?" "Can I bake the fried chicken instead of actually frying it?" " What can I use instead of every single spice in this that will make it taste the exact same, because I have convinced myself I do not like those particular spices and refuse to believe otherwise, despite my own taste buds? Will just salt and pepper do to replace all 10 herbs and spices?" I mean, you CAN do what you want, you have to eat it not me, but that would be YOUR recipe, not mine. And why are you asking for a recipe that you clearly enjoy if you are going to dismantle and destroy it and then expect the same result? So, people like that, you get NOTHING from me, recipe wise anyway.

But, if it is a person I know that is normal and respectful of the dish, then I have no qualms abut sharing.

I’m not that much of a cook, so anything I make is a derivation of some other recipe. If someone asks, I’ll give them the original marked up for the way I make the dish. After that, they can do with it as they will.

With regard to substitutions, one of my in-laws wanted a recipe. I provided it. The recipe calls for whipping cream whipped to stiff peaks and folded into the mixture. They substituted Cool Whip and couldn’t understand why their version wasn’t very good. :eyeroll:

I always share. If it's one of mine I'll look over the recipe and try to remember all the stuff that isn't written down.

One time I had someone tell me they made my shrimp creole recipe and it was good. We had gone to New Orleans on vacation and I was on a Southern food kick . I said something like "you can't go wrong starting with the trinity!" The person tells me how they subbed something for bell peppers and left out the celery. ?!?! I told them I didn't know what they actually made but I'm glad it was good!

No. I'll share every recipe I can.

However, coming from the world of competition barbecue, I can remember lots and lots of cooks who had secret recipes that they would never share. Anything that might give them an edge. Some special spice or way that they positioned the meat in the smoker or the wood that they used or the temperature they cooked at. Everything was a secret.

The best kept one, and the funniest, was my friend Joby and his barbecue sauce. The man never lost a sauce contest. First or second place, without fail. I tried to get his recipe for years, even though we cooked together as a team once in a while. But he refused to give it up. It was the last of those team efforts where he finally relented and told me how to make his secret, award-winning barbecue sauce.

We went into his trailer and he locked the door behind us. From under the counter, he grabbed two Costco size bottles of barbecue sauce: Kraft Original and Sweet Baby Ray's Honey Barbecue Sauce. "Mix equal parts together in a pot on the stove and get 'em warm, but not boiling." While I followed those instructions, he squeezed the juice out of three or four oranges, strained it, and mixed it into the pot. That was it. No longer a secret. The man was using store-bought sauce and wowing the judges with it.

Well, Joby's gone to that big barbecue in the sky and none of his kin are still competing, so my conscience is clear as I share his secret recipe with the world...or at least you folks. Enjoy!

That’s funny, @fawnridge (Ricky)! We used to have an annual Halloween chili cookoff where I worked. Every year, every single year, the winner was a particular canned brand of chili with no changes or additions. All the wonderful made-from-scratch versions always lost to the canned brand. Granted, the people voting weren’t chefs, just office employees, so maybe that version won because it was familiar and not particularly flavorful, but none of the organizers would allow it to be excluded from the contest.

I’m happy to share most of my recipes, but I have some Christmas cookie recipes passed down by my mother, who was a good but jelaous cook. She made me promise not to give them out and until a couple of years ago I didn’t. But my DD has no interest in baking so I have no one to pass them on to.

One in particular is unique- most of them I’ve seen similar versions in newspapers, magazines and the internet, but this one I’ve only ever seen on one website on the internet about 30 years ago and it no longer exists, so it dies with me if I don’t pass it on. That would be a shame as it’s a nice cookie. So I decided I’d share them with people I knew would respect them, and a couple of folks here have the special cookie recipe now.

Funny story- a friend used to pay me to make her my chocolate cake eery week for her DH’s work lunches. One day I gave her the recipe and said it was silly for her to pay me to make it when she could do it herself. I didn’t make any chages or anything like you hear of some people doing, but after a couple of weeks she called and asked if I would bake for her again as her DH preferred my cake. I have no idea what the difference might have been 🤷‍♀️

Cake is like that. How people measure their flour—given the same flour. Temperature of ingredients. Creaming. Whipping eggs. Kind and age of baking powder Kind of pan, and pan preparation. How long it sits before the oven. Evenness of distribution. Quality of pans and conductivity. And most of all, the oven and how it's heated. There are a great many variables. I've been baking cakes on my own since I was 9. I could not get a good cake out of the crazy oven that came with this house, though I was able to manage a lot of other baking.

Yes I share recipes. I have been known to write out a recipe and put in notes where I make substitutions.

Years go I asked Aunt Sophie for one of her recipes. Turns out she gave different versions to me and my Mom. Neither were close to what came out of Aunts oven and no one can ever eat her specialty cake again.

That wasn’t a smart move on Aunt Sophie’s part- everyone would have thought of her every time they made or ate her cake.

This is a fun thread to read, loved the story about the winning BBQ sauce! :)

I don't have a problem giving out a recipe. I also love getting good recipes from friends and family.

This(mostly Amy's comment) makes me think about recipe reviews and someone giving the recipe a low star rating while stating that they'd changed 1/2 the ingredients! HA!

Here are some recipes that I share with the world.

If someone doesn’t want to share a recipe, I’d prefer they just decline rather than giving me what purports to be the recipe but they’ve omitted an ingredient or changed up something else which renders it inedible.

I would always share as no two people cooking the same recipe are likely to get identical results. Sharing food is normal as is sharing the recipe.

My MIL was famous for her Christmas puddings. She wouldn't give me the recipe but said she would leave it to me after her death. Needless to say she did not. So I made my pudding from a very well known cook, Delia Smith. It was identical to hers. All those years her 'secret recipe' was just taken from a standard cookbook.

As for sharing recipes. I rarely use them so there's nothing much to pass on. My kids have asked me for gravy lessons rather than recipes since it's a method rather than a list of ingredients.

I dont care to covet something like that, but most of my "recipies" are in my head and that means that I may actually have to measure and record it. I cant be bothered. But I have begun to write down some because I just seem to forget things like how many eggs to how much flour when making spatzel, or how many packs of cream cheese for one filled King Cake. But they are only for me.

I used to not understand how some older women would say that they dont remember when you asked them about this or that that they had cooked all of their life and they would say that they did not remember. Now I understand how that happens.

I have no issues sharing recipes. Especially friends and family that can cook, enjoy cooking, or learning to cook like my niece. She has asked for many recipes after visiting over the years. But she worked in a bakery through college that also has a lunch service with soups, salads, sandwiches, etc. DH gave her knife skills during one week long family reunion when she was a pre-teen. 15 years ago.

I have a recipe file with just a few dozen i started writing 10-ish years ago with another dozen spice blends. 'no recipe recipes'. The basics in most home cook pantries and fridge/crisper drawers. With options and add-ins if on hand. Complicated recipes that are so specific in amounts with long shopping lists i'm not interested in sharing. Meaning, i have fresh herbs all summer...sharing a recipe in December with three fresh herbs from WholeFoods costing more than the chicken cost in the dish. Fresh herbs in the winter months at 15$ in those tiny plastic clam shells. (a summer recipe)...a winter dried herb blend like summer savory, rosemary, thyme is a decent substitution. I have a winter indoor garden but most do not.

I think some 'secret' family recipes use convenient shortcuts. Boxed mixes and canned goods. My x-BIL hosted Thanksgiving a couple times. Crickets when i asked. My sister, who does not cook, said later in private that all three dishes came from cans....sleeve of saltines, two sticks of butter, a quart of heavy cream, etc. The two caseroles, one potato and one noodles, we did not care for. The oyster dressing was devine even though i knew it was baked in cream and butter. (once a year)

A recent house guest just asked for my Aji Verde Peruvian Green Sauce recipe. I just wrote it down last week in the same style of 'using what you have on hand'. She was with me in the kitchen that morning when i made it but needed a basic recipe re-fresh. She cooks and will make it.