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> 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 di

by 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

ghaff 8y ago
All great advice. And some of the meal kits are as guilty of complicating as anyone. My one order with Blue Apron included the most complicated and time consuming burger recipe I’ve ever made in my life and it wasn’t even all that great. I suspect they feel incented to have recipes that intimidate people from tackling on their own.
- xaqfox 8y ago
  I feel that they also do this to satisfy their "no repeated menu items in one year" obligation, while still recognizing the fact that their customers like simple traditional foods like burgers.
zanny 8y ago
I'm speaking as someone who is neither a professional chef but one who has cooked homemade meals a majority of my adult life for myself and family when I say its hard. Its hard because its not a sustainable place to put someone in to tell them they should be cooking more and then telling them to only cook the relatively limited palette presented as "entry level cooking". Probably the greatest turn off Ive ever seen to anyone aspiring to make their own meals is when they go for a month making everything themselves without ever having tasted a luxirious pan fond from the things they made because they both always played it safe and second were limited in their tooling to what they can make. Its more endemic of a more general problem of people wanting results now, that if something doesn't result in instant success that its not for them. It took me a hundred hours of chopping and flipping pans to become good at it. If I hand a novice my knife it will take them three times longer to make larger cut diced vegetables because they have never done it before. Probably the best example is how long it takes to manage to flip omelettes out of pans without breaking them. It takes a while to do that! Its not easy! And I recognize I'm a total amateur. I'm not some professional chef. Those guys are truly amazing. They make art out of the same tools I have. What they do is an incredible job. A hard job. It took them years to master their craft, and its disingenuous to them to say its so easy. I just think the popular messaging of "just start cooking, its so easy if you just do only the basics"! Ends up causing way more harm than admitting that getting good at it to where you can confidently get up in the morning and not even think about eating out because you can make something you want at home if you want to is a time consuming and hard process. Sending signals about it being easy just makes someone wake up a few months down the road wondering why they still suck so much at it because everyone told them it would be so easy, but what they make to their palette still cannot compare to the diversity they want and get from eating out all the time so they stop trying. I just personally see that happen all the time in my peer group.

by wlll 8y ago

ghaff 8y ago

All great advice. And some of the meal kits are as guilty of complicating as anyone. My one order with Blue Apron included the most complicated and time consuming burger recipe I’ve ever made in my life and it wasn’t even all that great. I suspect they feel incented to have recipes that intimidate people from tackling on their own.

xaqfox 8y ago
I feel that they also do this to satisfy their "no repeated menu items in one year" obligation, while still recognizing the fact that their customers like simple traditional foods like burgers.

zanny 8y ago

I'm speaking as someone who is neither a professional chef but one who has cooked homemade meals a majority of my adult life for myself and family when I say its hard. Its hard because its not a sustainable place to put someone in to tell them they should be cooking more and then telling them to only cook the relatively limited palette presented as "entry level cooking". Probably the greatest turn off Ive ever seen to anyone aspiring to make their own meals is when they go for a month making everything themselves without ever having tasted a luxirious pan fond from the things they made because they both always played it safe and second were limited in their tooling to what they can make. Its more endemic of a more general problem of people wanting results now, that if something doesn't result in instant success that its not for them. It took me a hundred hours of chopping and flipping pans to become good at it. If I hand a novice my knife it will take them three times longer to make larger cut diced vegetables because they have never done it before. Probably the best example is how long it takes to manage to flip omelettes out of pans without breaking them. It takes a while to do that! Its not easy! And I recognize I'm a total amateur. I'm not some professional chef. Those guys are truly amazing. They make art out of the same tools I have. What they do is an incredible job. A hard job. It took them years to master their craft, and its disingenuous to them to say its so easy. I just think the popular messaging of "just start cooking, its so easy if you just do only the basics"! Ends up causing way more harm than admitting that getting good at it to where you can confidently get up in the morning and not even think about eating out because you can make something you want at home if you want to is a time consuming and hard process. Sending signals about it being easy just makes someone wake up a few months down the road wondering why they still suck so much at it because everyone told them it would be so easy, but what they make to their palette still cannot compare to the diversity they want and get from eating out all the time so they stop trying. I just personally see that happen all the time in my peer group.