Written Recipes Aren’t ADHD Friendly
And they should be — for everyone’s sake, neurodivergent or not
I joke with my family sometimes that I love to cook… Once or twice a month. And I find it vastly unfair that they’d like to eat more often than that.
But honestly, a lot of my overwhelm with cooking comes with how unfriendly most recipes are to neurodiverse brains. And I’m not even talking about having to scroll through a 2,000-word story about the author’s great-grandfather before getting to the food part. Or the websites where a video will automatically start playing, and it isn’t even for the recipe you’re looking up (although this is The Worst for sensory overload as well).
I’m talking about tried-and-true recipe formulas passed down for generations on index cards. They are my nemesis. They are the reason I have a desire to completely rewrite every recipe I regularly use into a format that actually makes sense.
Why don’t they make sense?
Ingredient Lists Aren’t Lists of Ingredients
This is a list of ingredients.
- One large, yellow onion
- Three cloves garlic
- 1 lb. chicken breast
- 2 tbsp. lime juice
- 1/4 c. flour
- 4 tbsp. butter
- salt and pepper to taste
On this list of ingredients we have: a list of foods and a note of their quantities. That’s what makes it a list.
Compare it with the following. Note that I’m writing a bad recipe intentionally, because I don’t want to throw any particular recipe under the bus. Still: this style of ingredient list is more likely to be on a real recipe, whether on a yellowing index card in cursive or online after a long, ad-filled narrative about the author’s grandmother’s brother’s stint as a farmer.
- One large onion, thinly sliced and caramelized
- Three cloves garlic, minced, divided
- 1 lb. seasoned boiled chicken breast, shredded
- 2 tbsp. lime juice
- 1/4 c. flour, sifted
- 4 tbsp. melted butter
- Salt and pepper to taste
This is not a list. I mean, I guess it is. There are bullet points. But in addition to the food and the quantity, we have cooking directions thrown in… as a treat? Suddenly, before I even get to step one, I have to:
- Thinly slice and then caramelize an onion, which means also needing some oil, salt, and a pinch of sugar
- Mince garlic
- Boil water with seasoning (what seasoning, though?), add the chicken, cook it for a reasonable amount of time, drain the water, let the chicken cool, and shred it
- Sift flour
- Melt butter
And that’s if I even remember to mine the ingredient list for instructions before starting. Moreover, none of those are included in the “time it takes to make a recipe” calculation, because they’re apparently ingredients, somehow, instead of instructions.
Why it doesn’t work for neurodiverse brains
When I look at an ingredient list, I’m asking two questions and only two questions: 1. Do I have (enough of) all of these ingredients? 2. What order am I going to need them in?
I’m not looking at my ingredient list wondering what I need to do in order to prepare the food. By the time I get to step four of the directions and see “quickly add the caramelized onions to the butter and garlic,” the butter and garlic will be hot and cooking and the onion will be sitting unpeeled on the counter. If I even remembered to get it out after checking I had it.
If I was working with the ingredient list above, I might see that it takes 20 minutes to cook, according to the recipe itself, double it because I know they lie, and start making dinner 40 minutes before I want to eat.
But if I then realize I need to caramelize onions (30 minutes when it goes well) and boil, cool, and shred chicken (20 minutes to get water to boiling and then cook, 20 minutes to cool in the fridge, and 5 minutes to shred), even overlapping the best I can will add nearly an hour to my working time. Not to mention maybe I didn’t realize I’d need a saucepan, and my saucepan hasn’t been washed from lunch yet and —
Suddenly I’m eating cereal for dinner instead.
Why updating it would be beneficial for everyone
Even among general (presumably neurotypical) corners of the internet, there are jokes about how recipes never take exactly how long they say they will. It’s always at least double, and sometimes triple, whatever the authors pluck in the “time” portion at the top.
I bet a huge part of this discrepancy is how some of the work is in the ingredient list instead of the directions, and actually quantifying that time would make a difference for everyone. I also think it’s useful to spell out what can be done and when. However, that brings us to the second reason that recipes don’t work for my ADHD brain.
Behold, the “meanwhile.”
The Drawbacks of “Meanwhile”
Sometimes I’ll be working through a new recipe and be on my merry way to a really good dinner, when boom a “meanwhile” pops through the work I was already doing.
It’s not that I don’t believe in multitasking when I’m cooking. Some of my favorite dishes require it. But I need warning. Setup. Something.
Let’s look at that imaginary recipe again.
3. Cook the chicken over medium heat for 10 minutes, turning halfway through.
4. Meanwhile, combine the minced garlic, the chicken broth, and the caramelized onions in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer.
It seems straightforward enough. It doesn’t work. Not for me.
Why it doesn’t work for neurodiverse brains
When I read step three above, I see step three. Only step three. So I heat my pan and the oil, add my chicken over medium heat, and play solitaire for 10 minutes, flipping my chicken once in the middle.
Then I read step four.
Then I realize I’ve wasted ten minutes.
You can tell me to read all the instructions and make notes and prepare for these sorts of eventualities until the cows come home, but it’s not going to stick. At least, it hasn’t yet and I’ve been working on my culinary skills for the better part of fifteen years (nearly thirty if you count baking, which is equally egregious in “meanwhile”s).
I need a little more hand-holding, personally, right there on the page. If I were to rewrite this recipe for myself, it would actually be in order.
3. Heat oil over medium heat in a large skillet.
4. Mince garlic.
5. Put a small saucepan over medium-low heat on a separate burner. Add garlic.
6. Add onions and chicken broth to the saucepan and bring heat to medium-high.
7. Your oil should be hot in the skillet now. Add your chicken. Set a timer for 5 minutes. This is not a good time to play solitaire. Don’t do it. Watch the saucepan instead.
8. When your saucepan reaches a simmer, reduce heat again to medium.
9. Using tongs, lift your chicken to check the color. If it has reached a golden brown, flip your chicken over and set a timer for 5 minutes again. This timer does not guarantee the chicken will be done. It’s a guideline, like pirates have.
Why updating it would be beneficial for everyone
Recipes, especially in cooking rather than baking, are best used by beginners who don’t know what they’re doing. If you hand me garlic, onion, chicken, butter, salt, pepper, lime juice, and flour now, I can make a few different meals of varying levels of complexity without once looking at a recipe. That wasn’t true a decade ago. I needed recipes to hold my hand.
But despite their target audience being beginners, recipes don’t act like it. They don’t explain what simmer means, or why you need to heat oil to a specific temperature (or a specific look) before adding the chicken, or that times are estimates and you should be looking for x, y, and z to prove your food is done and not overdone.
In the same way, the general cooking advice to get out and measure all your ingredients before starting, and read the recipe through several times first, 1) isn’t super well-known or at least well-followed, and 2) is extremely difficult for a lot of brains to do for various reasons.
People are going to tweak recipes — quantities, order, whole ingredients — as they become proficient at them and learn their own likes and dislikes anyway. May as well write them in such a way that a true beginner who’s never done anything but make top ramen could follow it.
Bonus: Dinners Require Multiple Recipes
The final problem that I have with recipes is the final step of a lot of them. Let’s make one up for our imaginary recipe:
8. Serve with mashed potatoes and green beans.
Suddenly, right there at the very end, we have introduced not only two brand-new ingredients that aren’t in the ingredient list, but several more hours of work. Potatoes need washed, peeled, boiled, blended, and mixed with salt, milk, and butter. Green beans need, at a minimum, time in an oven or a skillet.
If I get to the end of a recipe and realize this, I’m just as likely to forgo a side dish and have a less delicious meal because of it.
Ideally, I think, recipes that suggest sides should also note when to make them. Let’s go back to the rewritten “Meanwhile,” but add in when we’re going to start the potatoes. (This timing won’t work in real life; don’t do it. But I wanted to show an example of the writing, more than how to cook.)
3. Heat oil over medium heat in a large skillet.
4. Fill a large pot with heavily salted water and put over medium-high heat on a separate burner.
5. Mince garlic.
6. Put a small saucepan over medium-low heat on yet another burner. Yes, a third one. You can do this. You’ll feel like an alchemist. Add garlic.
7. Add onions and chicken broth to the saucepan and bring heat to medium-high.
8. Your oil should be hot in the skillet now. Add your chicken. Set a timer for 5 minutes.
9. Peel your potatoes while the sauce simmers and the chicken cooks. Add to the boiling water.
10. When your saucepan reaches a simmer, reduce heat again to medium.
11. Using tongs, lift your chicken to check the color. If it has reached a golden brown, flip your chicken over and set a timer for 5 minutes again. This timer does not guarantee the chicken will be done. It’s a guideline, like pirates have.
Is it messier? Yes. Longer? Definitely. And perhaps the whiplash between working on the chicken, the sauce, and the potatoes is a bit much for the first-time cook. But isn’t it better to have the tiniest bit of warning, rather than a surprise “serve with potatoes” at the end?
Do you like how recipes are written? What changes do or would you make for them to be more friendly for how you cook?
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