Linda K Sienkiewicz

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Unraveling the Mystery of a Glug in Cooking

December 2, 2024 By Linda K Sienkiewicz

A clip of an actual recipe with the instructions "Heat a few glugs of canola.." circled in red, with the caption that reads WHY I DON'T LIKE COOKING

How much really is a glug?

Here I am, in the middle of prepping, reading the above recipe. I’m not particularly fond of cooking to start with. I don’t have time nor the desire to research what a glug is, other than I know the sound oil makes when you pour it from a great big bottle. Are all bottles the same size though? Do all oils glug at the same rate? And please define “a few.” I’m sure this recipe annoyed me far more than it should have, but here we are.

I understand a dollop, dash and a squeeze of lemon, and a pinch and a splash. They are imprecise, general cooking terms. I can “salt to taste.” But I’m not down with heating a few “glugs” of oil in a pan. It’s a sound, for God’s sake. A sound.

Maybe the chef wants to be homey or chummy, the kind of guy you’d feel comfortable inviting for toasted cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. Who cares how much cheese or tomato you use. Or maybe they cook by the seat of their pants. Maybe how much they use of any one ingredient doesn’t matter.

Who needs a recipe anyway?

Hey, I could make up my own measurements. Add a palmful of pepper! Give it a sneeze of salt! Throw in a fistful of cilantro! Heat a dog’s bowl of oil! This is a slippery slope.

Or I could embrace the fact that not everything in cooking or life can be, or should be, minutely measured.

Nah. As a writer, I’m okay turning verbs or sounds into nouns, but I just can’t abide glug. I need specificity. Plus, a glug is too cutesy. A keen editor would ding glug as a little darling that you should kill.

glug of oil

The blame for glug goes to:

California Olive Ranch says chef Jamie Oliver coined this term. In his cookbooks he refers to “a good glug of olive oil,” and “a couple of glugs of extra virgin olive oil.” To me, that sounds like a lot of oil. When asked, Oliver’s spokesman Peter Berry said, “There’s no real ‘definition,’ as such but everyone knows what a glug is.”

The hell we do.

1or 2 Tablespoons. Who cares?

Merriam-Webster says a glug is “a small amount of liquid especially when poured from a bottle.” What’s this “especially?” Also, your idea of a small amount and mine are likely different.

I learned this from working in a frame shop–a customer would bring in their kid’s artwork, announce that they didn’t want to spend “a lot” of money, and end up ordering a $425 custom frame job. “Small” and “a lot” are subjective.

Chef Jan Bennett from London has a website titled A Glug of Oil. She says “I don’t believe in measuring exact amounts when making a recipe; unless of course, it’s baking and that’s only because by law you have to, or the recipe just won’t work. But for general cooking, I make up as I go along and only make a note for the purpose of writing recipes for this blog.” She says a glug of oil is “probably just over a tablespoon.” 

But wait!

The Local Palate, which says measurements are often more guideline than rule, defines a glug as “About 2 tablespoons. That is, the amount required to coat a pan, or until the bottle audibly glugs.”

A chef on Food52 writes, rather glibly, “A glug is a measure of an amount you feel in your heart. The people who write up recipes make approximations all the time. They don’t know the people that you want to make happy with your bread, or roast chicken or schnitzel. A glug means you have to put something of yourself into it.”

So, yes, we must feed our souls. Not everything can be measured. I get it. But it’s not that hard to write “coat the pan with oil,” or “use about 2 T of oil.”

I really don’t like cooking.


Thank you for visiting.
Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a fiction writer, poet, and artist
Books: In the Context of Love | Gordy and the Ghost Crab | Sleepwalker
New novel for fall 2026 Love and Other Incurable Ailments, from Regal House Publishing
Connect with Linda on social media: LinkTree

Filed Under: It's Personal Tagged With: cooking, Language, recipes

Had enough of These Unprecedented Times?

January 4, 2021 By Linda K Sienkiewicz

Please stop saying that: Every year since the mid seventies, Lake Superior State University in Michigan's UP takes nominations for overused, misused and useless words to dump. The goal is to … Continue reading >>

Filed Under: It's Personal Tagged With: banished words, grammar, Language

Did you know these emotions actually have names?

January 18, 2017 By Linda K Sienkiewicz

emotions

  Have you ever felt monachopsis? I have! I bet you have, too. This list of unique, strange and unsettling, but common emotions was compiled by Tickld, via the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. … Continue reading >>

Filed Under: It's Personal Tagged With: emotions, Language

What, Why, How: Jeanne Hewell-Chambers

May 6, 2015 By Linda K Sienkiewicz

What: Writing :: I write books, stage plays, one-and-two women performances, journals, and heaps of old-fashioned notes and letters. Stitching :: I stitch the marks made by my … Continue reading >>

Filed Under: What, Why, How Tagged With: Language, sewing

About Linda

Award- winning writer, poet & artist. Cynical optimist. Super klutz. Corgi fan. Author of two novels, a picture book which she wrote and illustrated, and five poetry chapbooks. More here.

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