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> Not only are you risking bad taste from major missing ingredients like salt, but also ruining things with the wrong temperature/ cooking times.

they are operating under the assumption you are a decent cook. any decent cook will know how to taste for salt and what is safe temperature wise. if you blindly follow instructions you are not a decent cook.

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I don’t read “have even a middling amount of kitchen experience” as being a decent cook. IMO, a decent cook doesn’t really need full recipes they can just wing it based on a basic idea, but it takes a long time to get to that level.

It... really doesn't, though? Cooking is hardly by any means trivial, and achieving recipe-quality results based on a quick skim and winging it from there is certainly more difficult, but I'd argue that anybody who can't make something decent without religiously following a recipe isn't even of "middling kitchen experience".

I may be biased though, "skim a recipe and wing it" is my default style anymore after all.

I’m not talking about skimming a recipe and wringing it.

Think easting something in a restaurant then replicating something similar at home the next day just based on the flavor. Doing that for a few things is easy, but it takes significant time to get to that level across a wide range regional cuisines.

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