Live data from Hacker News

Based Cooking

based.cooking

251–260 of 485 posts

Re: Based Cooking

#251
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really you just cook to your taste. Cooking isn't a science experiment. Like step 5 says, taste it and adjust. The foods already cooked by the time your adding the spices

Bad advice not only for beginners, but also for any dough recipe, because amounts often need to be exact for a dough to work properly. In this case, cooking really is a science experiment. Also, I do not like 'salt to taste', particularly for raw egg or raw meat mixtures. Just tell me the amount of salt, whynot?

Flour varies in quality, so there is a limit on how exact a dough recipe can be. Not saying it's not useful though.

Re: Based Cooking

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh sure, but I could see a newbie making this recipe, putting too little oil, having it start smoking, then burning the cutlets and undercooking the chicken. That's not interpretation, that's just poor instruction. Take the Serious Eats version. Yes, it's 10x more complicated, but it has photos and careful descriptions and measurements: https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014/09/the-best-chicken...

> Take the Serious Eats version. Ad ad ad... some irrelevant random video trying to play when I clearly don't want it to. The site is really not about the quality of recipe, though they could be made better via your contribution.

Serious Eats is one of the best recipe websites. Yes there is ads (have to pay the bills some how), but they dive into the how and why food is made the way it is. Not the fluffy "this is the way grandma used to make it". E.g. https://www.seriouseats.com/2017/04/how-to-make-tonkatsu-jap...

Re: Based Cooking

#253

You know why all these sites have pages of effluvia accompanying their recipes? Because lists of ingredients and steps are not copyrightable. A book of recipes, however, is copyrightable. On the web, to make the content copyrightable, they have to add stuff. "A mere listing of ingredients is not protected under copyright law. However, where a recipe or formula is accompanied by substantial literary expression in the…

I was under the impression this was mainly to track user engagement for ad networks and search engines. Navigating to a page and leaving it open doesn't rank as highly for engagement; navigating to a page, scrolling through an article (which contains possible ads), and skipping back and forth between the ingredients list, steps, and explanatory text, is interpreted as higher engagement

This discussion is following every discussion of online recipes. Let me add my own argument: When I am looking for a specific recipe I am not interested in the extra content. However, when I am following a person's recipe blog I want to have that extra content. Having just a feed of recipes is just not that interesting as a collection of stories and accompanying recipes. The stories make it personal and it's nice to get glimpses into the life of the person doing the cooking. As a blogger it's also more fun to share more than recipes - you are writing a blog after all, not just a cookbook. If the ad revenue rises as a result of that - it's a nice bonus.

Re: Based Cooking

#255

Does anyone else absolutely loath recipes? Using measuring spoons and shit make me feel like I’m doing a homework assignment. No recipes, no measuring for me. Just pour in the shit, do what you think it needs, eat it when you’re done. Today, that was brown rice, some fried onions and bell peppers, a can of tomatoes, salt and pepper, cayenne, birds-eye, fish sauce, tamari, red wine vinegar, and garlic in the instant p…

You clearly didn't think your comment through. Let's say it's your first time cooking. If you have no idea how much of each ingredient you should add, how in the world are you supposed to make a decent meal? I personally fudged a few myself putting too little spice or too many pickles.

Re: Based Cooking

#257

Some of these recipes seem decent if you're already somewhat experienced and have developed cook's intuition. Otherwise they're way too vague. For instance, the chicken parm recipe: - There should be a photo of how to slice the chicken breast. Saying "through their width" isn't good enough. I had to explain what "lengthwise" was once because my friend cut all the vegetables the exact opposite of it. - Pound with what…

Likewise, the stroganoff recipe simply says to cook 'strips of beef' in a skillet. There are some cuts which you are not going to be very happy with the result if you do this with. I don't see how REMOVING information benefits either a beginner or an experienced cook.

To many people, myself included, the point of cooking isn't about producing a particular end result as consistently as possible.

It's a unique form of expression, like painting or writing.

Of course, it's useful to see what other people are doing so you can expand your own skillset and create your own twist on what they were doing, and this is where recipes come in handy. But I don't _want_ to be told exactly how to create my next meal. I just want some pointers in the right direction. Too much information destroys my creative input and just makes the recipe not fun to follow.

I'm not sure if it made sense - it's difficult to explain why you enjoy something. But please understand that there are people who neither need nor want a perfectly reproducible "food production algorithm".

Re: Based Cooking

#258

I guess the Proud Boys deserve cookbooks too? The use of the word “based” is almost always a white nationalist whistle or flag. Like flashing the “OK” sign so others know you’re a racist. The first time I saw the word based was the first significant violent attack on a BLM protestor by white supremacist Kyle Chapman in 2017. The Proud Boys klan gave him the honorary title of “Based Stickman”. The author of this cooki…

It's something teenagers say, or used to say, so i wouldn't judge the author just yet.

It _may_ become something only far right nuts say, same as with frogs and other 4chan stuff -- young people invent something, culture drifts, dumber or isolated people are least likely to drift with it and most likely to have violent views, eventually mostly violent people say something and the rest stops saying it because they don't want to be taken for one of the violent group -- but i don't think it has happened already.

In related news you just found out why many adults treat anything and everything teenagers do is something rude and offensive that needs to be suppressed. Teenagers are loud and annoying so their stuff is something loud and annoying people do. It's something you need to control.

Or i might be wrong, this can change quickly, but then the author can be wrong too.

Re: Based Cooking

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Adam Ragusea's video [1] on the subject of iodized salt. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B00K66HivcI

Yup. The average person doesn't really need iodized salt in the modern developed world.

Fun fact: Australia, quite by accident, had iodized milk up to the 80s, because of the sanitisers used in dairy processing which contained iodophors. And now that we have started phasing them out, it turns out that iodine deficiency has started occurring again.

Re: Based Cooking

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experimentation is part of learning though. Heck, failing is part of learning! We really need to teach kids that just because you fail a few times at something you're not bad at it - it's part of learning.

There's time for learning and time for "I want to make this right-ish". Basically if it's a lazy weekend and I'd like to experiment, being vague would be fine. If I'm a beginner and there are people coming over tomorrow evening, I want you to guide my every step.

If you’re a beginner cooking for multiple people - stick to something that you already perfected. Even with a superdetailed recipe something can go wrong or be unexpected for a first-timer.
Post reply on HN