Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 136 posts

Re: ‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks

#71

Post by int_19h »

ohiovr wrote: post #55
z3t4 wrote: post #34

When it comes to cooking, we are still in the stone age. When will we see a startup that stir up the food market !? It's a really huge market, and something that would truly make the world a better place. Just an crazy idea: Teleporting dishes. You scan in the food, then send it over the Internet to a molecular printer that re-creates it. Or if you are a pirate you download recipes from the web.

I recently had a nightmare about eating circuit boards while going down one of those dreadful 90s style 3d tunnel graphics demos. Has tech gone too far??

Have you played Supaplex as a kid, by chance?

https://youtu.be/8dMF3jU-nwc?t=34

Re: ‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks

#72

Post by diegs »

methodover wrote: post #25

Does anyone know of a cookbook that provides complete meals? The ones I’ve had recommended all assume you kinda know what you want to make. But I want someone else to tell me what to make, and I’ll just put it all together.

https://www.cooksmarts.com/ is amazing. 4 complete meals per week, can tweak serving sizes and dietary constraints, takes seasonality of vegetables into account, strives to have overlapping ingredients, tells you what you can prep ahead of time, great video guides to fill gaps in your techniques, and the food is generally fast to prepare and quite tasty.

You can also easily search the back catalog of recipes if you don't fancy the current week's meal plan.

Re: ‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks

#73

Post by markdown »

xxpor wrote: post #70
markdown wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that's beside the point. The vendor can no longer sell it as a new book. You've deprived them of some value, and you refuse to pay for what they've lost. I feel there's in inherent risk in any trade. You rarely know for certain that you'll love what you're paying for, and you should accept that risk. One shouldn't feel entitled to 100% satisfaction when one makes a purchase, and certainly shouldn't deprive the…

>I feel there's in inherent risk in any trade. And why should the consumer accept that risk and not the vendor?

Because the buyer is making the decision to purchase. It's their choice, and particularly in this case they have very good data to support the decision (actually leafing through the book in a bookstore, reading the countless reviews available online, etc).

Caveat emptor.

If OP had bought the book from Samin Nosrat selling her own book out of a stall, I highly doubt he'd return the book a week later demanding his money back just because he didn't like what he read... that'd be a shitty thing to do. The reason he felt no shame in this was because there was a faceless corporation between him and the author.

Re: ‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks

#74

Post by icelancer »

mlevental wrote: post #56
markdown wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I returned the book. Wait, what? You read the book, returned it, and feel no shame in admitting it?

wut. if the book isn't good why would one feel ashamed of returning it? is there a moral obligation to keep a bad product?

I don't understand the mass downvoting here. If the book isn't good and the owner got nothing out of it, what's so wrong with returning it?

EDIT: People read books that I write and return them all the time saying they suck / it wasn't for them / etc. That's kinda the point of a return policy. I don't take it poorly.

Re: ‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks

#75

Post by leetcrew »

markdown wrote: post #67
cthalupa wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a fiction book you read for entertainment. Books of this nature are meant to be a reference and resource you continue using.

I feel that's beside the point. The vendor can no longer sell it as a new book. You've deprived them of some value, and you refuse to pay for what they've lost. I feel there's in inherent risk in any trade. You rarely know for certain that you'll love what you're paying for, and you should accept that risk. One shouldn't feel entitled to 100% satisfaction when one makes a purchase, and certainly shouldn't deprive the…

> I suppose this is to be expected from people raised in an environment where multi-billion dollar corporations compete for customers and can afford to offer "just because I didn't like it" returns free of charge.

you hit the nail on the head. amazon has a policy where they will let you get a full refund within n days as long as you haven't significantly damaged the item yourself. they're not stupid; they do realize some people will just use the thing a couple times and return it. so they do the math on their end and figure out what kind of return policy they can afford to offer. why wouldn't you take advantage of this? companies only offer this kind of policy because they expect to make even more money because of it.

Re: ‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks

#76

Post by smilebot »

papa_bear wrote: post #27
methodover wrote: post #25

Does anyone know of a cookbook that provides complete meals? The ones I’ve had recommended all assume you kinda know what you want to make. But I want someone else to tell me what to make, and I’ll just put it all together.

It's not really a cookbook, but check out my website https://www.EatThisMuch.com/ You can set it to just one meal if you want (and something like 600 calories) and keep regenerating it until it looks like something you'll like. I started it because I'm terrible at thinking about what I want to eat :)

This is amazing.

Re: ‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks

#77

Post by eoinof »

methodover wrote: post #25

Does anyone know of a cookbook that provides complete meals? The ones I’ve had recommended all assume you kinda know what you want to make. But I want someone else to tell me what to make, and I’ll just put it all together.

The Family Meal is a good place to start. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11955187-the-family-meal Good mix of base sauces & 3 course meals..

Re: ‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks

#78

Post by nemo44x »

idunno246 wrote: post #48
cantrevealname wrote: post #46

Has anyone else noticed that there has been a massive surge in cooking books, videos, and shows in the last 10-15 years? Especially on TV, it's wall to wall cooking shows. I remember that cooking was a big interest 20-25 years ago, but it seems so much bigger now. Anyone have any theories about why this may be, or if my impression is wrong? My own theory is that many more men are into cooking nowadays, so the market…

My grandparents made a cookbook for all their children, and it was full of microwaved recipes and dumping jars of processed foods together. I looked into remaking it with better bindings as it was falling apart, but the recipes are all so gross. So I feel like part of it is generational, that we can get good ingredients, and value high quality food more than before. As much as people hate on blue apron, they kinda pr…

It’s interesting - I assume you’re American as am I. The approach to food was completely changed after WW2 in the USA. There was so much new food tech that looking back isn’t so nice but that people of that time embraced (and many still do). And for good reason it would seem looking back through their lens.

Food and cooking lost a lot of value in our culture for many years. We started optimizing around the wrong things (fast and easy - cooking is a struggle!) and then again after more wrong things (lets replace fat with extra salt and processed foods!). And only lately has the idea of “fresh and seasonal” started to become more mainstream - again. Where as before the War it was what people did because it was how it was.

There’s a lot of good cooking in the USA that just vanished from before the War. Very localized dishes, lots of stews. Some old cookbooks reveal how much we’ve changed and have also reclaimed old values.

Re: ‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks

#79

Post by sincerely »

cantrevealname wrote: post #46

Has anyone else noticed that there has been a massive surge in cooking books, videos, and shows in the last 10-15 years? Especially on TV, it's wall to wall cooking shows. I remember that cooking was a big interest 20-25 years ago, but it seems so much bigger now. Anyone have any theories about why this may be, or if my impression is wrong? My own theory is that many more men are into cooking nowadays, so the market…

Alton Brown talked about this in his Hot Ones interview but basically Food Network became insanely popular directly after 9/11, as a sort of apolitical escape from the real world.

Re: ‘Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Is a Love Letter to Amateur Cooks

#80

Post by here2day »

It's so hard to read articles for the lowest common denominator. This guy begins by saying he doesnt know what a bay leaf is. He continues that he's inspired by the message of SFAH that 'anyone can cook anything and make it yummms', which is a complete rubbish of a premise. In the bin this article goes like most of the atlantics writing.
Post reply on HN