Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do both. Sous vide to your tastes, then in a hot pan on each side for 3-4 minutes. Best of both worlds, without having to worry about overcooking the outside to get the desired internal doneness.
> Sous vide to your tastes, then in a hot pan on each side for 3-4 minutes Cook a steak, and then put each side in a hot pan for 3-4 minutes?!
Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
371–380 of 876 posts
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
If sous vide is tasting really bad to you, you’re doing it wrong. Almost certainly you’re not doing the final step, finish in a pan. You shouldn’t take something right from the sous vide to the plate, hit it in the pan at the highest heat you possible can to get the Maillard reaction and develop the crust.
So you're getting the pan out, oiled, and hot anyway. You're gonna have to clean it. And while on the pan a rare is slowly turning to well. Why not just do it all on the pan??
Sous vide takes out the guesswork for getting the insides to the right temp. Then just get the pan as hot as possible for quick sear in a pan for the outside.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#373Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
Learn to enjoy poetry. There is so much of great poetry in English, but I think it is not being read and appreciated enough. It is a kind of mental challenge like doing a puzzle, to unlock the full vivid meaning. Also reading fiction, though how exactly it helps one is beyond me, but it offers glimpses into other worlds. For example I read recently 'The French Lieutenant's Woman', I doubt its richness of detail, and…
Is there any evidence that poems have meaning? I could easily imagine a world where poets fool themselves into thinking the words they wrote contained their intentions, while readers fooled themselves into thinking they had uncovered those intentions.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#375Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, don't waste your time on "intelligent design". It's pseudoscientific garbage pushed by the Christians.
Thomas Nagel, David Berlinski, and David Stove are all atheist/agnostic philosophers who find the arguments of intelligent design worth considering. They don't agree with inferring a deity from the findings, but they do think there is something special about mental causation, and it seems to show up in biological history, which is the core of ID theory. Theological inferences are a tertiary matter that is not fundame…
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
What blows my mind is how much I took my ability to cook for granted. So many people my age (millennial) can barely cook anything. I have friends who eat out every single meal of every single day. People give me weird looks when every single workday I have the same answer to “you wanna go out and get some lunch?” “Nope. I have leftovers!”
I've been trying to learn to cook off and on for years now and I get so discouraged all the time because I'm still either overcooking or undercooking something, still not getting the flavors right, not using the right amount of oil despite the recipe's prescription. I can't be alone in feeling that way.
https://shop.americastestkitchen.com/special-issues/cook-s-i...
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - Build something. A new workbench for your office. Fix up an old car. Build a pull-up bar in your garage. Use your hands, cut some wood and metal, and treat yourself to a new tool or two. Be careful... my wife gave me a drill one year and I’ve since renovated two houses and now have a small fortune in tools. If you don’t have a garage, basement or backyard for it, your local community college might have a “maker l…
I always found the "idea" of that kind of work enticing. However, once I owned a house and had to do renovating/updating, I ultimately found it frustrating. Some jobs are incredibly frustrating if you don't have the exact tool to make it easier. The likelihood the angles and geometry of your home are square is, IME, near 0. Even measuring and re-measuring multiple times, I end up with a lot of wasted, mis-cut materia…
I dunno. For some tasks the time it takes to find somebody else to do it, be available to let the person in/out, and settle payment is much larger than doing it yourself; the lead time is orders of magnitude larger, and doing it yourself gets the bonus that you can do it whenever is best for you, instead of negotiating your agenda with a busy person.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
What blows my mind is how much I took my ability to cook for granted. So many people my age (millennial) can barely cook anything. I have friends who eat out every single meal of every single day. People give me weird looks when every single workday I have the same answer to “you wanna go out and get some lunch?” “Nope. I have leftovers!”
I've been trying to learn to cook off and on for years now and I get so discouraged all the time because I'm still either overcooking or undercooking something, still not getting the flavors right, not using the right amount of oil despite the recipe's prescription. I can't be alone in feeling that way.
You're learning after-all, and learning while hungry is not a good combination. If you burn the food and then have to eat it, you're going to have a bad time, negative reinforcement, etc. Order something else, like pizza, munch on that as you learn this new skill of cooking.
Re: Ask HN: What Skills to Acquire in 2020?
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been trying to learn to cook off and on for years now and I get so discouraged all the time because I'm still either overcooking or undercooking something, still not getting the flavors right, not using the right amount of oil despite the recipe's prescription. I can't be alone in feeling that way.
It took me years of cooking every day to get to a level where I'm confident in my cooking skills. It's a lot of trial and error. Look up a recipe that looks good, and try to follow it exactly . There's no eyeballing when you are learning. There's a reason those ingredients are added in that particular order and quantity. I've come to a point where I can whip up a recipe and improvise some, but that's after years of f…