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I think scientific cooking completely misses the point about cooking and about eating food. You should cook your food the way your senses tell you is right. You

I think scientific cooking completely misses the point about cooking and about eating food. You should cook your food the way your senses tell you is right. You should cook your food so that your senses tell you it's right. You're going to taste the food with your mouth and smell it with your nose. You're not going to taste it with a thermometer or whatever else silly probe of irrelevance anyone might think of sticking into it. The same goes about following arbitrary rules about how food "should" be cooked. It's your tongue and nose that will experience your cooking. Not Julia Child's. Cook food using your senses and cook food so that you like it. Cook as thou likest. That shall be the whole of the law.

readthenotes1 5y ago
The comment above this is from CS Lewis. The contrast in morality is pungent.
cthalupa 5y ago
Well, sure, if you like your food some certain way, then cook it for yourself that way. But a lot of the "scientific cooking" is about repeatability. I know I like my steaks rare, edge to edge, with a hard sear. I know that the easiest way for me to accomplish that is using an immersion circulator, combi oven, or reverse sear, drying it (and if I have time, cooling it down briefly), and then either searing/basting it in cast iron or finishing it off on my kamado grill with the temperature ramped up to inferno. I've cooked hundreds of steaks just on a grill, or just in a pan. I can nail a rare or medium rare steak on the grill, and adjust for temp, etc. But there are inherent limitations to those methods - it might be rare in the center, but simply because of the physics at play, more of the meat than just the surface is going to be well done. And as for the myths in the article... a lot of these are just things that are patently untrue. It's not about "scientific cooking" vs. cooking to personal taste, people just believe a lot of things that are just flat out wrong.
- cheese_goddess 5y ago
  Aren't you just saying that you cook your steaks the way you like them?
scrame 5y ago
I have a good friend who works in that space, and is pretty open that it's not practical at the very high end. It's interesting to find that putting a bottle of wine in a blender has the same result as airing things out in an expensive decanter, but you don't need a high end blender to enjoy wine. The high end of "scientific cooking" is figuring out what and why things taste good, or how to do it. Unfortunately it also becomes a catalog for people buying useless expensive crap because it's "healthy" or something. See: juicero.
YokoZar 5y ago
I'm not sure you even clicked the link your point is so orthogonal. > Cook some identical roasts or steaks. Cook one bone-in, cook one with the bone removed but tied back on, and cook a third with the bone removed and tied back on with a layer of impermeable aluminum foil in between. Then cut them all up and taste them (preferably with a large group of people in a blind setting). You'll find that they all taste pretty much identical. This "scientific cooking" is all about the taste that results. People aren't applying these myths because they've tried it both ways and their senses tell them one is better than the other, that's the whole point of making an article like this.
- cheese_goddess 5y ago
  > I'm not sure you even clicked the link your point is so orthogonal. If you're starting off with that attitude, why should I try to engage with your comment?

readthenotes1 5y ago

The comment above this is from CS Lewis. The contrast in morality is pungent.

cthalupa 5y ago

Well, sure, if you like your food some certain way, then cook it for yourself that way. But a lot of the "scientific cooking" is about repeatability. I know I like my steaks rare, edge to edge, with a hard sear. I know that the easiest way for me to accomplish that is using an immersion circulator, combi oven, or reverse sear, drying it (and if I have time, cooling it down briefly), and then either searing/basting it in cast iron or finishing it off on my kamado grill with the temperature ramped up to inferno. I've cooked hundreds of steaks just on a grill, or just in a pan. I can nail a rare or medium rare steak on the grill, and adjust for temp, etc. But there are inherent limitations to those methods - it might be rare in the center, but simply because of the physics at play, more of the meat than just the surface is going to be well done. And as for the myths in the article... a lot of these are just things that are patently untrue. It's not about "scientific cooking" vs. cooking to personal taste, people just believe a lot of things that are just flat out wrong.

cheese_goddess 5y ago
Aren't you just saying that you cook your steaks the way you like them?

scrame 5y ago

I have a good friend who works in that space, and is pretty open that it's not practical at the very high end. It's interesting to find that putting a bottle of wine in a blender has the same result as airing things out in an expensive decanter, but you don't need a high end blender to enjoy wine. The high end of "scientific cooking" is figuring out what and why things taste good, or how to do it. Unfortunately it also becomes a catalog for people buying useless expensive crap because it's "healthy" or something. See: juicero.

YokoZar 5y ago

I'm not sure you even clicked the link your point is so orthogonal. > Cook some identical roasts or steaks. Cook one bone-in, cook one with the bone removed but tied back on, and cook a third with the bone removed and tied back on with a layer of impermeable aluminum foil in between. Then cut them all up and taste them (preferably with a large group of people in a blind setting). You'll find that they all taste pretty much identical. This "scientific cooking" is all about the taste that results. People aren't applying these myths because they've tried it both ways and their senses tell them one is better than the other, that's the whole point of making an article like this.

cheese_goddess 5y ago
> I'm not sure you even clicked the link your point is so orthogonal. If you're starting off with that attitude, why should I try to engage with your comment?