5 ms·

Because they lack the skill? You seem to take the ability of people to cook for granted. I don't think it is automatic anymore. Generational transmission of so

Because they lack the skill? You seem to take the ability of people to cook for granted. I don't think it is automatic anymore. Generational transmission of some skills has ceased. Jamie Oliver famously asked British school kids to name objects such as an apple, a potato or a cucumber, and plenty of them did not know. They just stared at the raw vegetables/fruits, baffled. And as of now, you cannot simply vibe-cook using AI. You actually need to know some stuff, like what is what, how to use utensils, how to treat hot objects, what is too much gas and what not enough etc.

johnisgood 1y ago
It is very easy to learn. If I could learn it, so can anyone else. :P I have not cooked my entire life, for the most part, but when my situation requires me to cook, then I can. I find a relatively easy recipe and I just follow the instructions. It has worked out fine for me. > Jamie Oliver famously asked British school kids to name objects such as an apple, a potato or a cucumber, and plenty of them did not know Okay, the situation really is horrible then, wow.
- throw-the-towel 1y ago
  > If I could learn it, so can anyone else. More than a billion people have successfully learned to speak Chinese, some of them very stupid. Yet here I am, struggling to remember the hanzi and the tones.
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    Different skills take different amounts of time and parameters to master. Comparing learning a language to watching a video or reading a recipe and spending a few weeks adding some oil and spices in a pot or pan is ridiculous.
    - throw-the-towel 1y ago
      Sorry, I wanted to sound edgier and made my point less clear! What I wanted to convey is, it's waaaaay easier to learn a skill when you've been exposed to it since you were a baby.
      - johnisgood 1y ago
        My mother and grandmother cooked, but I have never participated, I just ate the food. Does it count as exposure?
- inglor_cz 1y ago
  "It is very easy to learn. If I could learn it, so can anyone else. :P " Well, the Neanderthals cooked, so it is not exactly a rocket engineering skill ... but it is probably acquired better from other people than alone, and equipment matters as well. If you learn to cook from your mother in a well-equipped kitchen, you will probably enjoy the process a lot more than alone with Youtube in a cheaply rented flat with one pot, one dull knife and two dented plastic plates. And if people don't enjoy some learning process, they are much more likely to drop out and resign. Especially if fast food alternatives lurk at them from their smartphones.
  - johnisgood 1y ago
    I come from a very poor family, and I am Eastern European... so we had very "shitty" equipments. We peeled our potatoes using a knife, too. I wonder how foreign it is to others. I have never learned to cook from anyone. I just read the recipes and/or watch some videos and that is literally it. My kitchen is not as equipped as it is in rich households. Ordering food is ideal, but super expensive, so I personally cannot afford to do that.
    - inglor_cz 1y ago
      Aren't you Martin Janiczek? Bro, if true, you're not helping our collective effort to resurrect "Central Europe" in colloquial use :) We had a weird assortment of equipment as well, some dating back to Masaryk, but it was usually durable and reliable. That is why we also kept it; late stage Communism was terrible at producing durable consumer goods, while old stuff lasted for decades.
      - johnisgood 1y ago
        I usually refer to it as Central Europe but people have difficulties with it, just like with cooking easy food. :P
  - wahern 1y ago
    The best way to start cooking is probably with a knife, cutting board, an 8" or 10" skillet, and a small saucepan (i.e. little soup pot). There are pans that can work as the last two, but it helps to be able to have two pans at hand, e.g. for making rice while cooking the protein and/or vegetables, even if all you have is a single burner. And none have to be fancy. A cheap soft wood cutting board helps your cheap knife stay sharper for longer. Outside baking, that's basically all you need, at least if you're alone. Cooking for two or especially a family is when you need more equipment as time savers and for variability, e.g. mandolin, pressure cooker, etc. I'd venture to say this is how many people have learned to cook, and even how many avid cookers continue to cook. If you're starting out, canned food and pasta is definitely your friend, not to mention cheap. You can start to learn to cook by boiling a pot of water for your instant Ramen, and frying an egg to toss into the bowl. Or just soft boil an egg in the boiling water and set side before doing the Ramen in the same water. Building meals around something packaged and precooked is useful and can help save money (outside beans and rice, fresh ingredients are sadly often more expensive than what you can cobble together from pantry staples).
abracadaniel 1y ago
My grandmother cooked daily and taught her kids to cook. My mother cooked weekly and taught us to use the microwave. Sure anyone can learn to cook, just like anyone can learn to play the piano, but it requires time, money, dedication, and the push to get started. It’s much easier if you were taught some of the basics as a kid, or had an example in your life.
- johnisgood 1y ago
  It still baffles me that people compare cooking to playing an instrument. It really is not that difficult to cook, depending on what it is. Do people know how to make schnitzel (breadcrumbed meat)? Make fries? Make rice? Make boiled potatoes? Or are those things difficult as well? Making a stew out of legumes is not that difficult either. Boil your legumes, then mix eggs, flour, and paprika together, put it in oil, heat it up for a few seconds, then pour everything into the water you are boiling your legumes in. Put some herbs to your liking. That is literally it. Healthy, delicious stew of any legumes.
  - vunderba 1y ago
    Agreed. The analogies to playing a musical instrument or speaking a foreign language are pretty silly. Cooking (provided you have access to some simple cookware) is literally printing out the recipe and FOLLOWING THE DAMN INSTRUCTIONS. If that’s beyond someone’s abilities then I weep for the general state of mankind.
    - ragequittah 1y ago
      You can get good enough cookware for the price of a couple of McDonald's meals too. We don't all need $100 pots and pans. I feel like the people arguing that cooking is a giant obstacle can't be doing it in good faith. Watch a YouTube video and throw a couple of eggs in a $10 pan already.
      - johnisgood 1y ago
        This. If someone can afford fast food, they can afford enough utensils or equipments, too. As I said, I come from a poor family and we only went to the McDonalds to get fast food when I was sick (because I craved it), so very rarely. Fast food was for special occasions due to its high price as opposed to cooking at home, as a poor family.
hilbert42 11mo ago
I'm male, and I was never taught to cook nor prepare a meal. And I do not like cooking one little bit yet I can prepare a meal that all but the most fussy would eat. And I'm talking about a meal with multiple parts—meat, three vegetables with condiments, and bread etc. then say finishing with a desert. Basic cooking is profoundly easy, and for most it's instinctive, after all one has to eat, so there's incentive. In fact I have never knowing met anyone who couldn't prepare a basic meal that would not at least sustain them and other members of a family. It's true I've met people whose food preparation leaves much to be desired and I'd prefer to avoid their cooking but the food they prepared was definitely edible. "You seem to take the ability of people to cook for granted." Right, I've lived my whole life in a world where everyone I know well takes one's ability to prepare a basic meal for granted, it's something that's not even contemplated it's so elementary. In fact, when reading your comment my initial reaction was as this isn't April 1st he must be winding us up for the sake of argument. If what what you say is true and there are significant numbers of people who can't cook then to me this is a startling revelation. Similarly, I'd not previously heard of Jamie Oliver's questioning of school kids and revealing their ignorance of food types but that's not surprising given that cooking programs bore me to tears. That said, the first thing I'd no doubt agree with Oliver about is that this ignorance is truly shocking, and second we'd be questioning how did we arrive at this disgraceful situation when it would have been inconceivable several generations ago. How can someone not pick up the basics of food preparation after seeing it done several times? Even if like me one doesn't like cooking, at three meals a day it's hard to completely avoid watching those who are preparing one's food—so the normal human gets lots of experience even if they only see food preparation infrequently. Even with my disinterest in cooking I picked the skill up by simply being around the kitchen at meal times. By age 10 I could easily prepare a decent meal, that's just how it was for the average person.
nullfield 11mo ago
This failure to be able to name basics is actually kinda terrifying…

johnisgood 1y ago

It is very easy to learn. If I could learn it, so can anyone else. :P I have not cooked my entire life, for the most part, but when my situation requires me to cook, then I can. I find a relatively easy recipe and I just follow the instructions. It has worked out fine for me. > Jamie Oliver famously asked British school kids to name objects such as an apple, a potato or a cucumber, and plenty of them did not know Okay, the situation really is horrible then, wow.

throw-the-towel 1y ago
> If I could learn it, so can anyone else. More than a billion people have successfully learned to speak Chinese, some of them very stupid. Yet here I am, struggling to remember the hanzi and the tones.
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  Different skills take different amounts of time and parameters to master. Comparing learning a language to watching a video or reading a recipe and spending a few weeks adding some oil and spices in a pot or pan is ridiculous.
  - throw-the-towel 1y ago
    Sorry, I wanted to sound edgier and made my point less clear! What I wanted to convey is, it's waaaaay easier to learn a skill when you've been exposed to it since you were a baby.
    - johnisgood 1y ago
      My mother and grandmother cooked, but I have never participated, I just ate the food. Does it count as exposure?
inglor_cz 1y ago
"It is very easy to learn. If I could learn it, so can anyone else. :P " Well, the Neanderthals cooked, so it is not exactly a rocket engineering skill ... but it is probably acquired better from other people than alone, and equipment matters as well. If you learn to cook from your mother in a well-equipped kitchen, you will probably enjoy the process a lot more than alone with Youtube in a cheaply rented flat with one pot, one dull knife and two dented plastic plates. And if people don't enjoy some learning process, they are much more likely to drop out and resign. Especially if fast food alternatives lurk at them from their smartphones.
- johnisgood 1y ago
  I come from a very poor family, and I am Eastern European... so we had very "shitty" equipments. We peeled our potatoes using a knife, too. I wonder how foreign it is to others. I have never learned to cook from anyone. I just read the recipes and/or watch some videos and that is literally it. My kitchen is not as equipped as it is in rich households. Ordering food is ideal, but super expensive, so I personally cannot afford to do that.
  - inglor_cz 1y ago
    Aren't you Martin Janiczek? Bro, if true, you're not helping our collective effort to resurrect "Central Europe" in colloquial use :) We had a weird assortment of equipment as well, some dating back to Masaryk, but it was usually durable and reliable. That is why we also kept it; late stage Communism was terrible at producing durable consumer goods, while old stuff lasted for decades.
    - johnisgood 1y ago
      I usually refer to it as Central Europe but people have difficulties with it, just like with cooking easy food. :P
- wahern 1y ago
  The best way to start cooking is probably with a knife, cutting board, an 8" or 10" skillet, and a small saucepan (i.e. little soup pot). There are pans that can work as the last two, but it helps to be able to have two pans at hand, e.g. for making rice while cooking the protein and/or vegetables, even if all you have is a single burner. And none have to be fancy. A cheap soft wood cutting board helps your cheap knife stay sharper for longer. Outside baking, that's basically all you need, at least if you're alone. Cooking for two or especially a family is when you need more equipment as time savers and for variability, e.g. mandolin, pressure cooker, etc. I'd venture to say this is how many people have learned to cook, and even how many avid cookers continue to cook. If you're starting out, canned food and pasta is definitely your friend, not to mention cheap. You can start to learn to cook by boiling a pot of water for your instant Ramen, and frying an egg to toss into the bowl. Or just soft boil an egg in the boiling water and set side before doing the Ramen in the same water. Building meals around something packaged and precooked is useful and can help save money (outside beans and rice, fresh ingredients are sadly often more expensive than what you can cobble together from pantry staples).

abracadaniel 1y ago

My grandmother cooked daily and taught her kids to cook. My mother cooked weekly and taught us to use the microwave. Sure anyone can learn to cook, just like anyone can learn to play the piano, but it requires time, money, dedication, and the push to get started. It’s much easier if you were taught some of the basics as a kid, or had an example in your life.

johnisgood 1y ago
It still baffles me that people compare cooking to playing an instrument. It really is not that difficult to cook, depending on what it is. Do people know how to make schnitzel (breadcrumbed meat)? Make fries? Make rice? Make boiled potatoes? Or are those things difficult as well? Making a stew out of legumes is not that difficult either. Boil your legumes, then mix eggs, flour, and paprika together, put it in oil, heat it up for a few seconds, then pour everything into the water you are boiling your legumes in. Put some herbs to your liking. That is literally it. Healthy, delicious stew of any legumes.
- vunderba 1y ago
  Agreed. The analogies to playing a musical instrument or speaking a foreign language are pretty silly. Cooking (provided you have access to some simple cookware) is literally printing out the recipe and FOLLOWING THE DAMN INSTRUCTIONS. If that’s beyond someone’s abilities then I weep for the general state of mankind.
  - ragequittah 1y ago
    You can get good enough cookware for the price of a couple of McDonald's meals too. We don't all need $100 pots and pans. I feel like the people arguing that cooking is a giant obstacle can't be doing it in good faith. Watch a YouTube video and throw a couple of eggs in a $10 pan already.
    - johnisgood 1y ago
      This. If someone can afford fast food, they can afford enough utensils or equipments, too. As I said, I come from a poor family and we only went to the McDonalds to get fast food when I was sick (because I craved it), so very rarely. Fast food was for special occasions due to its high price as opposed to cooking at home, as a poor family.

hilbert42 11mo ago

I'm male, and I was never taught to cook nor prepare a meal. And I do not like cooking one little bit yet I can prepare a meal that all but the most fussy would eat. And I'm talking about a meal with multiple parts—meat, three vegetables with condiments, and bread etc. then say finishing with a desert. Basic cooking is profoundly easy, and for most it's instinctive, after all one has to eat, so there's incentive. In fact I have never knowing met anyone who couldn't prepare a basic meal that would not at least sustain them and other members of a family. It's true I've met people whose food preparation leaves much to be desired and I'd prefer to avoid their cooking but the food they prepared was definitely edible. "You seem to take the ability of people to cook for granted." Right, I've lived my whole life in a world where everyone I know well takes one's ability to prepare a basic meal for granted, it's something that's not even contemplated it's so elementary. In fact, when reading your comment my initial reaction was as this isn't April 1st he must be winding us up for the sake of argument. If what what you say is true and there are significant numbers of people who can't cook then to me this is a startling revelation. Similarly, I'd not previously heard of Jamie Oliver's questioning of school kids and revealing their ignorance of food types but that's not surprising given that cooking programs bore me to tears. That said, the first thing I'd no doubt agree with Oliver about is that this ignorance is truly shocking, and second we'd be questioning how did we arrive at this disgraceful situation when it would have been inconceivable several generations ago. How can someone not pick up the basics of food preparation after seeing it done several times? Even if like me one doesn't like cooking, at three meals a day it's hard to completely avoid watching those who are preparing one's food—so the normal human gets lots of experience even if they only see food preparation infrequently. Even with my disinterest in cooking I picked the skill up by simply being around the kitchen at meal times. By age 10 I could easily prepare a decent meal, that's just how it was for the average person.

nullfield 11mo ago

This failure to be able to name basics is actually kinda terrifying…