10 ms·

Cooking is hard, requires a lot of hardware to do, and is an acquired skill that takes a lot of blunt learning of a lot of minute details about how certain ingr

by zanny 8y ago

Cooking is hard, requires a lot of hardware to do, and is an acquired skill that takes a lot of blunt learning of a lot of minute details about how certain ingredients interact. In the same way you don't ask everyone to learn to repair car engines or diagnose medical issues modern society puts a lot of pressure on specialization of hard work like cooking. That being said the true optimization would be that most people be content to eat in cafeteria style settings where there are limited options and the chefs are using whatever is freshest and most affordable and availability is fixed (even if you just grab and go with the food). There is a trade off between menu diversity, the prices you pay for it, and how good it can actually be where 16+ hour open restaurants with several page menus (including fast food) are making concessions on freshness / shortcuts in preparation to provide their diversity and availability. I think a lot of this relates to how we are in a transnational period for density. In the coming decades I am almost certain we will trend globally towards packing people into apartment / condo style living in city cores because the trends of sprawl and mcmansion single families that are going to be inherited by unmarried or childless descendants without the incomes to support them falls apart. Right now trying to build up a "local" kitchen you can go to three times a day for regular, good, healthy and diverse meals isn't feasible because the density isn't there to get them to walkable convenience, but I hope rising density makes them a possibility. At those kinds of scales it becomes a technical probability we might just get short range delivery drones where the kitchens advertise via app or notification whats on the menu and you just select what you want and a lil bot brings it to you a la room service but optimized in the aforementioned ways to make it more sustainable.

michaelmior 8y ago
> Cooking is hard, requires a lot of hardware to do I think this is completely false and it's unfortunate that people have this perception of cooking. Yes, it's true that if you want to be able to cook all the sorts of food you're used to having delivered, a lot of skill and hardware is probably required. However, you can cook a lot of great, tasty meals with a single pot and pan and a few inexpensive utensils and limited skill required. I think some of the biggest challenges to more people cooking at home is that it will always take more time than ordering.
- mszkoda 8y ago
  Agreed on the hardware requirements. I love to cook and have an extensive range of very expensive pots/pans/utensils with very specific uses, but in the beginning I had very few. I also still only use a few of them most of the time. You can do almost everything with a 12" skillet/frying pan, a large sauce pan (4 qt maybe since you probably want to cook pasta in it), and one of those sets of 3-6 utensils (you don't even need that many) if you are cooking for 1-4.
  - namdnay 8y ago
    And a kitchen/kitchen corner. I think what the parent is suggesting is that apartments wouldn't have kitchens at all, and you would eat at communal cafeteria. I believe this is what the vast majority of city dwellers in imperial rome would do?
    - bunderbunder 8y ago
      Or in places like the USA, not that long ago. Y'know how, in old movies, single people would live in single-room apartments, often with a Murphy bed that played a part in some amount of slapstick humor? They weren't cooking in there - dinner was served downstairs.
      - jhbadger 8y ago
        Yes -- boarding houses. It was expected that your rent would include at least an evening meal shared with the other residents. And like with many university dorms today, it was against the rules to cook in your rooms.
        namdnay 8y ago
        I still see them advertised everywhere in India: PGs (public guesthouses?)
- 0xcafecafe 8y ago
  Completely agree. When I had to move to a different country to study, I did not know even how to brew tea (cooking never interested me), let alone cooking a decent meal. However, the craving for the food from my home country (which wasn't readily available near my campus) coupled with the financial constraint of not being able to eat outside for every meal (if you want good quality food that is) forced me to learn cooking. It started with simple things at first but now (more than a decade later) it is one of my hobbies and I find it meditative almost. If you are forced to do it, you will do it. Besides, regarding the learning curve, it feels similar to going to the gym for the first time in your life. Initially you will see a lot of newbie gains (never knew I could make eatable food) which later plateau unless you want to reach the next level.
simias 8y ago
Having to learn cooking skills is definitely a factor (some say it should be taught at school) but speaking only for myself I actually know how to cook half-decently, I have the hardware and I'm in the same boat as the parent: I order and/or take away most meals during the week. It's not a lot more expensive that cooking yourself and it's a lot quicker and more convenient. When I get home from a day's work I often can't be bothered to spend even 30 minutes cooking and cleaning. Now I mainly cook on weekends when I have the time to do things right and I can actually enjoy it. I too wonder if overall it's a bad habit (socially and environmentally) that I should try to change or if it's just a reasonable and efficient way to get food in the 21st century.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >It's not a lot more expensive than cooking yourself What?!?! I get the feeling your definition of "not a lot more expensive" is a lot more inclusive than mine. Obviously cost of home cooking vs prepared depends a lot on where you'd eat out and what you'd make for yourself but in my experience fast food off the value menu is about the only thing that's close to cost competitive with cooking for yourself. I would have to eat almost exclusively organic and add a lot of wild non-frozen seafood to my diet if I wanted to make the cost of preparing my own meals close to the cost of buying Chipotle/Five Guys quality prepared food. Maybe the numbers are different for people who shop at Whole Foods or otherwise go out of their way to increase the cost of groceries but your statement that eating out is close to cost competitive with cooking for yourself seems like it's from another universe.
  - Woofles 8y ago
    >Obviously cost of home cooking vs prepared depends a lot on where you'd eat out Given that most delivery services have a minimum, it's pretty difficult to spend less than $15-20 to get your food delivered. In my experience, it's about $2-4/meal to cook, $12-15/meal to eat out, and $20+/meal to get delivery. Imagine that over a year. If you're cooking at $4/meal vs eating out at $12/meal, that's ~$3000 over a year! On the other hand, you are paying for convenience and some people are willing (and able) to shoulder that cost.
  - 8y ago
ghaff 8y ago
You should write dystopian fiction. Also cooking doesn’t need to be hard or complicated. It can be but doesn’t need to be.
notyourday 8y ago
> There is a trade off between menu diversity, the prices you pay for it, and how good it can actually be where 16+ hour open restaurants with several page menus (including fast food) are making concessions on freshness / shortcuts in preparation to provide their diversity and availability. While it might seem not intuitive it is actually 100% incorrect. Larger menus command smaller prices and shittier food, which is why all excellent restaurants converge on very small menus ( not more than 1 page ). Places with large menus typically are diners, casual sit down restaurants and ethnic pre-gentrification places. Large menu non-chain restaurants are likely to have low grades from the health departments and use produce and proteins on the verge of spoiling. To compensate for that such places tend to have low prices.
- zanny 8y ago
  Thats what I said? Its a three way tradeoff between diversity, availability, and quality. If you want one you sacrifice the others. The best way for most people to eat sustainable good food on the regular is to eat on a schedule (when chefs can make it fresh) with a limited selection (whats seasonally available).
wlll 8y ago
> Cooking is hard I strongly disagree here. Or rather, I disagree that one sort of cooking is hard, and that's "normal" everyday cooking. Cooking restaurant dishes is probably hard, but that's fine because you probably don't want restaurant food every day. I certainly don't. Sure, if you've never done it before it may seem difficult, especially if your expectations are that you're going to be eating something equivalent to takeout or restaurant meals, but it's easy to get started as long as you keep it simple. For instance the following 5 dishes are all pretty simple to make, the pasta dishes can all be made within 20 minutes with practice too. I've made all of these (except the carbonara) within the last week. - Tomato and Basil or Parsely pasta (I leave out the mozzarella): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eabecxMhJlE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eabecxMhJlE - Proper Carbonara: https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/gennaro-s-classic-spaghetti-carbonara/ https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/gennaro-s-... - Coq au vin (easy, but takes a while): https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/books/the-delia-collection-chicken/coq-au-vin https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/books/the-delia-collecti... - Pasta with prawns: https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/spaghetti-with-prawns-and-rocket-spaghetti-con-gamberetti-e-rucola/ https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/spaghetti-... - Three summer antipasti: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/06/antipasti-recipes-grilled-aubergine-marinated-courgette-borlotti-bean-rocket-salad https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/06/antipas... > requires a lot of hardware to do Again, disagree. I could make all of those dishes with two pans, one knife and a wooden spoon, all cheap. There is a lot of kitchen equipment out there, and better quality stuff will make your life better, but for most stuff YAGNI. Spiraliser? YAGNI. More than 5 knives* ? YAGNI. Stand mixer? YAGNI. etc. etc. * I could survive with one knife, though I regularly use about 3. You don't need to spend a lot, my favourite knife was about $25. I think a good rule of buying kitchen equipment would mirror the rules of optimisation: 1. Don't buy it 2. Don't buy it 3. Maybe buy it if you repeatedly find it would make your life easier/food better. > is an acquired skill that takes a lot of blunt learning I'm not sure what you mean by blunt learning, but sure, you learn over time just like anything else, but if you start out simple (avocado on toast: good bread, good avocado, salt, pepper, olive oil) and work from there you can start winning in the kitchen straight away. This isn't a process where you produce crap for a few years before you suddenly start making something edible at year three. Work up to the complex stuff. > a lot of minute details about how certain ingredients interact Again, start out simple. Follow simple recipes (Jamie Oliver's Italian cook book is a pretty decent starter). You learn how ingredients interact over time as you're doing it, especially if you're thinking while you're cooking. It's pretty rare (unless you're massively over stretching your abilities) to create something inedible, so as your experience and confidence grows you can experiment with flavours more with little consequence. For instance the other day I threw in some rosemary I had sitting around into my bread dough. It didn't work, but the loaf was still totally edible, and it got eaten. It was OK, just not great. > In the same way you don't ask everyone to learn to repair car engines or diagnose medical issues modern society puts a lot of pressure on specialization of hard work like cooking. No, but you can certainly change the wipers on your car or self-prescribe over the counter painkillers. Start simple. Tips: - Start simple - Buy quality ingredients where you can. Buy flavourless tomatoes, your food will be bad. Cheap beef in a burger? Bad burger. - Buy and make what you need. Don't try to make restaurant portions, especially with good ingredients, you'll go bankrupt. 85g of pasta might not seem like an actual adult portion, but it really is enough. - Yagni. Don't buy equipment unless you really worked out you need it. - Learn when celebrity chefs are mucking about with simple food to make it seem more complex, they all do it. Learning to recognise the unecessary flourishes will make stuff simpler. - Practice. You will fail, you learn from it, but at least you can eat the failures. Most of the time. - If it tastes good it is good
namdnay 8y ago
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, I think you're completely right. From an ecological and time efficiency perspective, these "communal cantines" make far more sense than every apartment needing a fitted kitchen, and every family needing to cook.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Not everything in life is about efficiency. While we’re at it everyone could sleep in barracks like spaces. Very efficient.
  - namdnay 8y ago
    I agree, but at some point compromises are going to have to be made. Our current way of living is just not sustainable
    - wlll 8y ago
      There are far greater issues at stake before we need to remove kitchens from people's houses and implement public canteens. Plastic, palm oil, excessive meat consumption, proliferation of cars, climate change etc. etc.
      - namdnay 8y ago
        The problem isn't home cooking, the problem is take away, inefficiently packaged groceries, and avoidable car journeys for food delivery or shopping. I think these are exactly the types of issues that can be solved! Shops that allow you to use your own containers, the return of grocery vans, communal kitchens and/or canteens for when you dont have time to cook...
        wlll 8y ago
        > communal kitchens and/or canteens for when you dont have time to cook That's kind of what restaurants are now, along with takeout.
phlakaton 8y ago
Your concerns about cooking are actually part of what makes Blue Apron attractive: - their recipes are not too hard and instructions are generally carefully sequenced and clear - their hardware requirements are generally quite limited
andyidsinga 8y ago
> true optimization would be that most people be content to eat in cafeteria style settings interesting you say this -- I've been thinking along similar lines. I've been calling it "banquet style" restaurants : scheduled menu (crowd votes/RSVPs); pay by subscription (?), very reasonable prices (due to menu optimization), make the environment an interesting social/network/meetup experience; beer/wine/cocktails are extra and high margin...

by zanny 8y ago

michaelmior 8y ago

> Cooking is hard, requires a lot of hardware to do I think this is completely false and it's unfortunate that people have this perception of cooking. Yes, it's true that if you want to be able to cook all the sorts of food you're used to having delivered, a lot of skill and hardware is probably required. However, you can cook a lot of great, tasty meals with a single pot and pan and a few inexpensive utensils and limited skill required. I think some of the biggest challenges to more people cooking at home is that it will always take more time than ordering.

mszkoda 8y ago
Agreed on the hardware requirements. I love to cook and have an extensive range of very expensive pots/pans/utensils with very specific uses, but in the beginning I had very few. I also still only use a few of them most of the time. You can do almost everything with a 12" skillet/frying pan, a large sauce pan (4 qt maybe since you probably want to cook pasta in it), and one of those sets of 3-6 utensils (you don't even need that many) if you are cooking for 1-4.
- namdnay 8y ago
  And a kitchen/kitchen corner. I think what the parent is suggesting is that apartments wouldn't have kitchens at all, and you would eat at communal cafeteria. I believe this is what the vast majority of city dwellers in imperial rome would do?
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    Or in places like the USA, not that long ago. Y'know how, in old movies, single people would live in single-room apartments, often with a Murphy bed that played a part in some amount of slapstick humor? They weren't cooking in there - dinner was served downstairs.
    - jhbadger 8y ago
      Yes -- boarding houses. It was expected that your rent would include at least an evening meal shared with the other residents. And like with many university dorms today, it was against the rules to cook in your rooms.
      - namdnay 8y ago
        I still see them advertised everywhere in India: PGs (public guesthouses?)
0xcafecafe 8y ago
Completely agree. When I had to move to a different country to study, I did not know even how to brew tea (cooking never interested me), let alone cooking a decent meal. However, the craving for the food from my home country (which wasn't readily available near my campus) coupled with the financial constraint of not being able to eat outside for every meal (if you want good quality food that is) forced me to learn cooking. It started with simple things at first but now (more than a decade later) it is one of my hobbies and I find it meditative almost. If you are forced to do it, you will do it. Besides, regarding the learning curve, it feels similar to going to the gym for the first time in your life. Initially you will see a lot of newbie gains (never knew I could make eatable food) which later plateau unless you want to reach the next level.

simias 8y ago

Having to learn cooking skills is definitely a factor (some say it should be taught at school) but speaking only for myself I actually know how to cook half-decently, I have the hardware and I'm in the same boat as the parent: I order and/or take away most meals during the week. It's not a lot more expensive that cooking yourself and it's a lot quicker and more convenient. When I get home from a day's work I often can't be bothered to spend even 30 minutes cooking and cleaning. Now I mainly cook on weekends when I have the time to do things right and I can actually enjoy it. I too wonder if overall it's a bad habit (socially and environmentally) that I should try to change or if it's just a reasonable and efficient way to get food in the 21st century.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>It's not a lot more expensive than cooking yourself What?!?! I get the feeling your definition of "not a lot more expensive" is a lot more inclusive than mine. Obviously cost of home cooking vs prepared depends a lot on where you'd eat out and what you'd make for yourself but in my experience fast food off the value menu is about the only thing that's close to cost competitive with cooking for yourself. I would have to eat almost exclusively organic and add a lot of wild non-frozen seafood to my diet if I wanted to make the cost of preparing my own meals close to the cost of buying Chipotle/Five Guys quality prepared food. Maybe the numbers are different for people who shop at Whole Foods or otherwise go out of their way to increase the cost of groceries but your statement that eating out is close to cost competitive with cooking for yourself seems like it's from another universe.
- Woofles 8y ago
  >Obviously cost of home cooking vs prepared depends a lot on where you'd eat out Given that most delivery services have a minimum, it's pretty difficult to spend less than $15-20 to get your food delivered. In my experience, it's about $2-4/meal to cook, $12-15/meal to eat out, and $20+/meal to get delivery. Imagine that over a year. If you're cooking at $4/meal vs eating out at $12/meal, that's ~$3000 over a year! On the other hand, you are paying for convenience and some people are willing (and able) to shoulder that cost.
- 8y ago

ghaff 8y ago

You should write dystopian fiction. Also cooking doesn’t need to be hard or complicated. It can be but doesn’t need to be.

notyourday 8y ago

> There is a trade off between menu diversity, the prices you pay for it, and how good it can actually be where 16+ hour open restaurants with several page menus (including fast food) are making concessions on freshness / shortcuts in preparation to provide their diversity and availability. While it might seem not intuitive it is actually 100% incorrect. Larger menus command smaller prices and shittier food, which is why all excellent restaurants converge on very small menus ( not more than 1 page ). Places with large menus typically are diners, casual sit down restaurants and ethnic pre-gentrification places. Large menu non-chain restaurants are likely to have low grades from the health departments and use produce and proteins on the verge of spoiling. To compensate for that such places tend to have low prices.

zanny 8y ago
Thats what I said? Its a three way tradeoff between diversity, availability, and quality. If you want one you sacrifice the others. The best way for most people to eat sustainable good food on the regular is to eat on a schedule (when chefs can make it fresh) with a limited selection (whats seasonally available).

wlll 8y ago

> Cooking is hard I strongly disagree here. Or rather, I disagree that one sort of cooking is hard, and that's "normal" everyday cooking. Cooking restaurant dishes is probably hard, but that's fine because you probably don't want restaurant food every day. I certainly don't. Sure, if you've never done it before it may seem difficult, especially if your expectations are that you're going to be eating something equivalent to takeout or restaurant meals, but it's easy to get started as long as you keep it simple. For instance the following 5 dishes are all pretty simple to make, the pasta dishes can all be made within 20 minutes with practice too. I've made all of these (except the carbonara) within the last week. - Tomato and Basil or Parsely pasta (I leave out the mozzarella): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eabecxMhJlE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eabecxMhJlE - Proper Carbonara: https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/gennaro-s-classic-spaghetti-carbonara/ https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/gennaro-s-... - Coq au vin (easy, but takes a while): https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/books/the-delia-collection-chicken/coq-au-vin https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/books/the-delia-collecti... - Pasta with prawns: https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/spaghetti-with-prawns-and-rocket-spaghetti-con-gamberetti-e-rucola/ https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/spaghetti-... - Three summer antipasti: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/06/antipasti-recipes-grilled-aubergine-marinated-courgette-borlotti-bean-rocket-salad https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/06/antipas... > requires a lot of hardware to do Again, disagree. I could make all of those dishes with two pans, one knife and a wooden spoon, all cheap. There is a lot of kitchen equipment out there, and better quality stuff will make your life better, but for most stuff YAGNI. Spiraliser? YAGNI. More than 5 knives* ? YAGNI. Stand mixer? YAGNI. etc. etc. * I could survive with one knife, though I regularly use about 3. You don't need to spend a lot, my favourite knife was about $25. I think a good rule of buying kitchen equipment would mirror the rules of optimisation: 1. Don't buy it 2. Don't buy it 3. Maybe buy it if you repeatedly find it would make your life easier/food better. > is an acquired skill that takes a lot of blunt learning I'm not sure what you mean by blunt learning, but sure, you learn over time just like anything else, but if you start out simple (avocado on toast: good bread, good avocado, salt, pepper, olive oil) and work from there you can start winning in the kitchen straight away. This isn't a process where you produce crap for a few years before you suddenly start making something edible at year three. Work up to the complex stuff. > a lot of minute details about how certain ingredients interact Again, start out simple. Follow simple recipes (Jamie Oliver's Italian cook book is a pretty decent starter). You learn how ingredients interact over time as you're doing it, especially if you're thinking while you're cooking. It's pretty rare (unless you're massively over stretching your abilities) to create something inedible, so as your experience and confidence grows you can experiment with flavours more with little consequence. For instance the other day I threw in some rosemary I had sitting around into my bread dough. It didn't work, but the loaf was still totally edible, and it got eaten. It was OK, just not great. > In the same way you don't ask everyone to learn to repair car engines or diagnose medical issues modern society puts a lot of pressure on specialization of hard work like cooking. No, but you can certainly change the wipers on your car or self-prescribe over the counter painkillers. Start simple. Tips: - Start simple - Buy quality ingredients where you can. Buy flavourless tomatoes, your food will be bad. Cheap beef in a burger? Bad burger. - Buy and make what you need. Don't try to make restaurant portions, especially with good ingredients, you'll go bankrupt. 85g of pasta might not seem like an actual adult portion, but it really is enough. - Yagni. Don't buy equipment unless you really worked out you need it. - Learn when celebrity chefs are mucking about with simple food to make it seem more complex, they all do it. Learning to recognise the unecessary flourishes will make stuff simpler. - Practice. You will fail, you learn from it, but at least you can eat the failures. Most of the time. - If it tastes good it is good

namdnay 8y ago

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, I think you're completely right. From an ecological and time efficiency perspective, these "communal cantines" make far more sense than every apartment needing a fitted kitchen, and every family needing to cook.

ghaff 8y ago
Not everything in life is about efficiency. While we’re at it everyone could sleep in barracks like spaces. Very efficient.
- namdnay 8y ago
  I agree, but at some point compromises are going to have to be made. Our current way of living is just not sustainable
  - wlll 8y ago
    There are far greater issues at stake before we need to remove kitchens from people's houses and implement public canteens. Plastic, palm oil, excessive meat consumption, proliferation of cars, climate change etc. etc.
    - namdnay 8y ago
      The problem isn't home cooking, the problem is take away, inefficiently packaged groceries, and avoidable car journeys for food delivery or shopping. I think these are exactly the types of issues that can be solved! Shops that allow you to use your own containers, the return of grocery vans, communal kitchens and/or canteens for when you dont have time to cook...
      - wlll 8y ago
        > communal kitchens and/or canteens for when you dont have time to cook That's kind of what restaurants are now, along with takeout.

phlakaton 8y ago

Your concerns about cooking are actually part of what makes Blue Apron attractive: - their recipes are not too hard and instructions are generally carefully sequenced and clear - their hardware requirements are generally quite limited

andyidsinga 8y ago

> true optimization would be that most people be content to eat in cafeteria style settings interesting you say this -- I've been thinking along similar lines. I've been calling it "banquet style" restaurants : scheduled menu (crowd votes/RSVPs); pay by subscription (?), very reasonable prices (due to menu optimization), make the environment an interesting social/network/meetup experience; beer/wine/cocktails are extra and high margin...