7 ms·

Did anyone get any actionable concepts from that article? Seems like an interesting read but not sure how to any of it to my own cooking.

• analog31 10y ago
  More glutamic acid. Oddly enough, my family already makes two of the magic dishes mentioned in the article: The pork buns and Ma Po's tofu. In my view, there's not much that a home cook can learn from a chef. Julia Child commented on the difference, and thought that being a good home cook is an art unto itself. A lot of what we do in home cooking is the art of the possible. We deal what's available at the supermarket, in season, whatever we can grow in our backyard gardens, etc. We may have limited equipment and limited budgets. Some of us live with vegetarians. For instance, in our case the pork buns are made using our pizza dough recipe, and baked. We don't have those amazing giant steamers that you see in the kitchen when you go to dim sum. Our Ma Po's tofu is vegetarian, much as I love the combination of tofu and pork.
  • kerkeslager 10y ago
    > In my view, there's not much that a home cook can learn from a chef. Julia Child commented on the difference, and thought that being a good home cook is an art unto itself. A lot of what we do in home cooking is the art of the possible. We deal what's available at the supermarket, in season, whatever we can grow in our backyard gardens, etc. We may have limited equipment and limited budgets. Some of us live with vegetarians. I think there's a ton we can learn from chefs. Personally, I've learned a few things from Alton Brown, particularly about reproduce-ability; being able to reproduce a recipe that you cooked once that turned out well. In an interview with him (I think it was on Radiolab but not sure) he mentioned increasing the accuracy of your measurements: use a thermometer to measure heat and measure your dry ingredients by weight, not by volume.
• zhte415 10y ago
  Perhaps... just try something and see if it makes sense, then figure out why. That's cooking, surely.