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What I often miss is "the basics". After reading a recipe or following a video, I perhaps know how to make exactly that dish. But that's like a bootcamp program

What I often miss is "the basics". After reading a recipe or following a video, I perhaps know how to make exactly that dish. But that's like a bootcamp programmer learning a single framework. I want to learn the concepts, how to apply them, how and when to break the rules, how to modify it and experiment with what I got. When I follow a recipe, and the result isn't pristine, how do I fix it? Should I add more salt? Should I get better at picking my tomatoes? I don't want to follow a cooking video to make the same recipe. What I want is to learn these things. I tried MasterClass, but felt it was just more of the same. Well produced, but in the end still recipe-follow-along. Which I enjoy watching, but in the same way watching Veritasium or Numberphile it is mostly entertainment, and doesn't make me a mathematician.

Inityx 3y ago
I'm a big fan of Helen Rennie on YouTube, since she spends a lot of time talking about those types of things https://youtube.com/@helenrennie https://youtube.com/@helenrennie
maxnoe 3y ago
Give "Salt Fat Acid Heat" a try (the book, not the netflix show)
- p1necone 3y ago
  The Netflix show suuuuuucks, They completely disregarded the whole point of the book in favor of just doing a bog standard "make a pretty dish and eat it with some people" show. They barely went into any of the actually useful stuff the book talks about (it's in the name!).
bityard 3y ago
See if there are any legit culinary classes in your area. If you don't want to take a class, you could maybe get by reading the textbooks they use. It at least go to the library and check out their culinary selection. A couple decades ago, there was a tv show called Good Eats by Alton Brown. If you can find the reruns, it has a lot of information for newbies, but it will take a long time to watch it all. I'm not an amazing chef but I do okay when I put my mind to it. Like anything else, it takes some up front effort to learn the basics and experience to learn the rest.
throwaway154 3y ago
The basics never end. There is no strict vertical. When you stir-fry vegetables, salt the oil before adding the aromatics. That's basic. How many years was it until I figured that out? How many pro chefs have never figured that out? What's pro? What about mincing your meat with one cleaver and one chef's knife? Not two cleavers. Not two chefs knives? That's basic. For a certain type of mince. How many people figure that out? It's basic once you know it. I'd bet that isn't taught in a masterclass. There's no end to basics. There's a great chance your tomatoes don't come from the same vine as mine. Make it your own. The reverse side is food engineering. When you're controlling for consistent results to ensure every loaf of bread of today's batches of 100,000 loaves are identical to yesterday, or last year. That's another ball game, and perfecting today's 100,000 loaves doesn't transfer much to making a pesto.
- esafak 3y ago
  > When you stir-fry vegetables, salt the oil before adding the aromatics Are you sure? What is it for, evenness, or are you playing with the chemistry? I never got this memo and a search suggests otherwise: https://magnesol.com/six-enemies-of-oil-salt/ https://magnesol.com/six-enemies-of-oil-salt/ https://www.americastestkitchen.com/cooksillustrated/how_tos/8465-salt-and-frying-oil https://www.americastestkitchen.com/cooksillustrated/how_tos...
  - OJFord 3y ago
    Not GP but I'll often do so to test the heat. Doesn't read like that's what they meant though. It'd surprise me to learn that it made a difference either way to flavour or anything.
    - throwaway154 3y ago
      One is seasoning aromatics, the second is making a more even veg coating than seasoning at the end does; stirfry vegetables at a high heat won't release water thus won't have a 'sauce' to carry seasoning across the surface, this method makes it more even.
  - 3y ago
dagw 3y ago
You want Good Eats by Alton Brown! Each episode is built around an ingredient or technique and he then goes deep on that one topic and explain all the how/why/when you should use it. While the episodes do generally demonstrate how to make a dish, the dish is more of the framing used to explain the underlying techniques and concepts.
wheels 3y ago
A lot of that is about developing intuition and like in most fields, there's not an easy way to develop intuition without a lot of experience. What helped me a lot was starting to work through "On Cooking", which is geared towards culinary students, and at least has a more useful progression of skills (e.g. starts with equipment, knife skills, etc.) and techniques, and then starts building up from there. e.g. you learn to make sauces before starting on full dishes, etc. But doing something like that is a pretty large commitment (and all of the recipes have to be scaled down to non-restaurant sizes). At one point in my early 30s I considered writing a cook book based on trying to teach my housemate to cook, starting with the assumptions that the person in question hadn't ever cooked and didn't own any reasonable cooking stuff, and trying to establish a baseline of recipes that could all be cooked from the same 20-ish ingredients that one could reasonably always have around. There are definitely recipe-based and intuition-based approaches to cooking, and while I think teaching intuition is difficult, learning a particular vocabulary of skills in a certain order can help.
atomicfiredoll 3y ago
America's test kitchen has some playlists on basics[0] and technique[1]. There are other videos that cover basics too. And, sometimes you'll learn a new technique in a video for a dish you've never made before. You sound methodical; maybe you're baking, which is a little more scientific. (If that's the case Adam Ragusea[2] has some solid videos on showing how he got to his brownie and chocolate chip cookies iirc.) This is a case where videos can make you better, but you have to actually get your hands dirty and get a feel for things too. At the end of the day, it's like learning a language: it's easy to get stuck in the learning/drilling/practice phase. Your actual goal is almost certainly to get to where you can immerse yourself in the skill and enjoy it as quickly as practical. If you want to make something fresh, give it a shot and be sure to taste things as you go. Sometimes it takes trial and error. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSDeoKpIsAk&list=PLnbzopdwFrnYUIzRxlLAj2Gybd1vYqZRM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSDeoKpIsAk&list=PLnbzopdwFr... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uf3OmSyG6A&list=PLnbzopdwFrnYyvwrqTB_5AhufdOMisGnF https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uf3OmSyG6A&list=PLnbzopdwFr... [2] https://www.youtube.com/@aragusea https://www.youtube.com/@aragusea
matsemann 3y ago
I got a lot of great responses with tips to this. Thanks everyone! Will definitely check them out!

Inityx 3y ago

I'm a big fan of Helen Rennie on YouTube, since she spends a lot of time talking about those types of things https://youtube.com/@helenrennie https://youtube.com/@helenrennie

maxnoe 3y ago

Give "Salt Fat Acid Heat" a try (the book, not the netflix show)

p1necone 3y ago
The Netflix show suuuuuucks, They completely disregarded the whole point of the book in favor of just doing a bog standard "make a pretty dish and eat it with some people" show. They barely went into any of the actually useful stuff the book talks about (it's in the name!).

bityard 3y ago

See if there are any legit culinary classes in your area. If you don't want to take a class, you could maybe get by reading the textbooks they use. It at least go to the library and check out their culinary selection. A couple decades ago, there was a tv show called Good Eats by Alton Brown. If you can find the reruns, it has a lot of information for newbies, but it will take a long time to watch it all. I'm not an amazing chef but I do okay when I put my mind to it. Like anything else, it takes some up front effort to learn the basics and experience to learn the rest.

throwaway154 3y ago

The basics never end. There is no strict vertical. When you stir-fry vegetables, salt the oil before adding the aromatics. That's basic. How many years was it until I figured that out? How many pro chefs have never figured that out? What's pro? What about mincing your meat with one cleaver and one chef's knife? Not two cleavers. Not two chefs knives? That's basic. For a certain type of mince. How many people figure that out? It's basic once you know it. I'd bet that isn't taught in a masterclass. There's no end to basics. There's a great chance your tomatoes don't come from the same vine as mine. Make it your own. The reverse side is food engineering. When you're controlling for consistent results to ensure every loaf of bread of today's batches of 100,000 loaves are identical to yesterday, or last year. That's another ball game, and perfecting today's 100,000 loaves doesn't transfer much to making a pesto.

esafak 3y ago
> When you stir-fry vegetables, salt the oil before adding the aromatics Are you sure? What is it for, evenness, or are you playing with the chemistry? I never got this memo and a search suggests otherwise: https://magnesol.com/six-enemies-of-oil-salt/ https://magnesol.com/six-enemies-of-oil-salt/ https://www.americastestkitchen.com/cooksillustrated/how_tos/8465-salt-and-frying-oil https://www.americastestkitchen.com/cooksillustrated/how_tos...
- OJFord 3y ago
  Not GP but I'll often do so to test the heat. Doesn't read like that's what they meant though. It'd surprise me to learn that it made a difference either way to flavour or anything.
  - throwaway154 3y ago
    One is seasoning aromatics, the second is making a more even veg coating than seasoning at the end does; stirfry vegetables at a high heat won't release water thus won't have a 'sauce' to carry seasoning across the surface, this method makes it more even.
- 3y ago

dagw 3y ago

You want Good Eats by Alton Brown! Each episode is built around an ingredient or technique and he then goes deep on that one topic and explain all the how/why/when you should use it. While the episodes do generally demonstrate how to make a dish, the dish is more of the framing used to explain the underlying techniques and concepts.

wheels 3y ago

A lot of that is about developing intuition and like in most fields, there's not an easy way to develop intuition without a lot of experience. What helped me a lot was starting to work through "On Cooking", which is geared towards culinary students, and at least has a more useful progression of skills (e.g. starts with equipment, knife skills, etc.) and techniques, and then starts building up from there. e.g. you learn to make sauces before starting on full dishes, etc. But doing something like that is a pretty large commitment (and all of the recipes have to be scaled down to non-restaurant sizes). At one point in my early 30s I considered writing a cook book based on trying to teach my housemate to cook, starting with the assumptions that the person in question hadn't ever cooked and didn't own any reasonable cooking stuff, and trying to establish a baseline of recipes that could all be cooked from the same 20-ish ingredients that one could reasonably always have around. There are definitely recipe-based and intuition-based approaches to cooking, and while I think teaching intuition is difficult, learning a particular vocabulary of skills in a certain order can help.

atomicfiredoll 3y ago

America's test kitchen has some playlists on basics[0] and technique[1]. There are other videos that cover basics too. And, sometimes you'll learn a new technique in a video for a dish you've never made before. You sound methodical; maybe you're baking, which is a little more scientific. (If that's the case Adam Ragusea[2] has some solid videos on showing how he got to his brownie and chocolate chip cookies iirc.) This is a case where videos can make you better, but you have to actually get your hands dirty and get a feel for things too. At the end of the day, it's like learning a language: it's easy to get stuck in the learning/drilling/practice phase. Your actual goal is almost certainly to get to where you can immerse yourself in the skill and enjoy it as quickly as practical. If you want to make something fresh, give it a shot and be sure to taste things as you go. Sometimes it takes trial and error. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSDeoKpIsAk&list=PLnbzopdwFrnYUIzRxlLAj2Gybd1vYqZRM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSDeoKpIsAk&list=PLnbzopdwFr... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uf3OmSyG6A&list=PLnbzopdwFrnYyvwrqTB_5AhufdOMisGnF https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uf3OmSyG6A&list=PLnbzopdwFr... [2] https://www.youtube.com/@aragusea https://www.youtube.com/@aragusea

matsemann 3y ago

I got a lot of great responses with tips to this. Thanks everyone! Will definitely check them out!