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Based Cooking

based.cooking

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Re: Based Cooking

#341
post #200
post #126

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Punching bag for a reason. Terrible sites especially on mobile, have to scroll through what feels like an infinite amount of pictures and “fluff” text about how this recipe reminds the author about a warm childhood memory, which you can’t even read cause ads are popping up all over the place. The recent “jump to recipe” buttons don’t help. You jump to the recipe, but some late loading ad just pushes the recipe out of…

You're generalizing too far I think. Yes, a lot of recipes have fluff that doesn't add anything. But some don't, some have crucial information that helps you understand techniques, ingredients or thought processes. If you use recipes like the link, or like the top Google links, you're guaranteed to get zero info. You shouldn't bother with _most_ long format recipe sites, but you should with some. You should also real…

>or like the top Google links, you're guaranteed to get zero info.

I don't necessarily find that to be true. Allrecipes is often a highly ranked link and it's pretty basic. And I have a few sites I tend to like that have a fair bit of writing in addition to the recipe such as SpruceEats that pop up fairly often.

Re: Based Cooking

#342

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That's a really bad advice to give beginners. If you're lucky, you'll guess right the first time, and end up with a good dish. And then you'll use that. If you're unlucky — and the more inexperienced you are the more unlucky you are — then you'll guess wrong, and your dish will be at best okay, and at worst inedible. A few failed experiments like this, and you'll hate cooking, or approach cooking with fear. Recipes h…

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.

Guessing at obtuse instructions with no prior knowledge when there are many variables in play is not experimenting and learning from it is nearly impossible. You have to have some baseline knowledge to draw on, whether you’re a total beginner or just new to the dish.

Imaging cooking was putting raw food in a box and a meal comes out of the other end. Imagine that box has a series of dials each ranging from 0-100. You don’t know what any of the dials actually do. Depending on your input, any number of settings can make a meal ranging from edible to amazing. But far more settings result in “Dubious Food.” Any individual setting can ruin the entire thing. Sure, you can power through 100 to the X combinations and ultimately, after much frustration and time and ruined food, sort of figure things out. But it’s much easier if someone says “set dial A to 53, dial B to 36,”. This lets you just tweak one dial and figure out what that dial does. Once you’ve done that you can go from dial to dial and then see how multiple dials interact. But if you just start fiddling with knobs you either get lucky or learn nothing; or you’re relying on knowledge you think everyone has even though they don’t.

Re: Based Cooking

#343
post #197

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I’m always fascinated by people complaining about ‘woke identity politics’ usually when coming in defense of people who define their whole identity... as anti-woke. Maybe let’s admit that everyone is playing identity politics, it’s just that one side is too embarrassed to admit it after decades of virtue signaling ‘independent thought’.

Having a YouTube channel with 95% of videos being Linux tutorials is defining your whole identity as anti-woke?

The term 'based' is only used by a very tiny group of people. I'll let you figure out why one of their heroes was a guy they called 'based stickman' that ended in prison for assaulting people with a weapon.

Re: Based Cooking

#344

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…

If you can read German, I recommend the Dr Oetker Schulkochbuch (1952 edition), the reprint is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.de/Schulkochbuch-Reprint-von-1952-Oetker/...

It explains all these things, even what a pinch is, how to use a stove, everything you could ever need in the kitchen.

Re: Based Cooking

#345
post #58

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Nope, people got recipes from books and magazines, which were considered reliable gatekeepers. Looking back at some of the gelatin casseroles of the 60s, of course, casts doubt on some of that reliability.

>> "Looking back at some of the gelatin casseroles of the 60s, of course, casts doubt on some of that reliability." The most convincing theory I heard was that the gelatin obsession was about status since it required refrigeration. Hosting a party where you served the latest, most elaborate gelatin dish said something about you.

If it's status I'd probably pick a different reason. Before commercial gelatin, making aspic was a fairly long and complicated process and it was part of high cuisine, especially in Europe. So that may have carried over to using it in middle class home-cooked dished when commercial gelatin became available.

Re: Based Cooking

#346

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Yes, let’s throw out all art, scientific advancements, technologies, inventions, books, anything with an author that we find problematic.

Well I'm glad I didn't say anything of the sort then? I just said he's a cunt. Also he hasn't contributed to "art, scientific advancements, technologies, inventions, books", as far as I can tell.

[deleted]

Re: Based Cooking

#347

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Maybe, just maybe, in the last 10-20 years when this trend for flakey salt has taken off. Any recipe you see older than 10 years I would safely bet that they meant table salt, and I would still recommend using table salt unless otherwise specified on anything more recent, that goes triple for any baking recipes. Again, unless for finishing. Of course if the recipe specifies weight rather than volume, the point is moo…

I think the main reason people go for kosher salt in recipes, cooking, and even baking is that it doesn’t taste of iodine. Table salt with iodine tastes slightly metallic, which will basically make your food taste worse. I’m an amateur cool, but you can simply taste the difference, so why make food taste worse/weirdly metallic?

I defy you to taste the difference between iodized and not in a blind test. All else being equal of course, size and shape differences would be a giveaway. So equal mass dissolved in water.

Re: Based Cooking

#348
post #330
post #84

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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4901819-la-cuisine-raiso... , it's in French and I don't know of a translation but if you can read it, it is one of the best book on cooking. It covers techniques and timeless traditional French and French Canadian recipes. It's a reference as much as it is a cookbook and it's a lot cheaper, and accessible than Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking from Nathan Myhrvold…

> it's a lot cheaper, and accessible than Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking from Nathan Myhrvold Have you read Modernist Cuisine at Home and can you compare?

I got mildly obsessed with modernist cooking a few years back and got a copy of Myhrvold's At Home book.

It's a beautiful book and is an interesting read. That said, I don't really use it much although I have a few go tos. A lot of the recipes are way more work than I'm going to put in for, say, an omelette.

Re: Based Cooking

#349
post #166

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>What's wrong with a "wikipedia for recipes"? Can you imagine the state of the site after 2 power users have a holy war over whether the recipe is meant to have salt in it or not. Cooking is not objective so it would be impossible to properly collaborate or decide if an edit made the recipe better or worse.

Cooking is definitely one place that I think the saying "strong opinions, weakly held" is a great motto. Like I have my way of doing things... and it's the best because I have my own taste profile... but I'll try your way to see if I'm wrong.

Maybe if such comments were heavily moderated (or edited in-place a la the exile) -- cooking is one of the things where even otherwise very reasonable people I've known have gone off the deep end over what seems absurdly trivial to me.

Things like a bagel "toasted" vs "just warmed," dishes that have a variety of regional variations (e.g. a lot of slavic dishes like borsch or stuffed cabbage rolls where I've gotten yelled at by people for pronouncing it the Russian way or making it the Slovak way instead of their own nationality's style) seem to bring up far more intensity than I'd have thought possible, but, you know, I learn more about my friends that way and we've remained friends...

in an internet comments section? Tough to maintain that kind of civility, I think. possible, but tough.

Re: Based Cooking

#350
post #180

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I think of myself as a pretty decent cook but without some rough measurements I don’t find the recipes very useful. When I look at the gnocchi recipe I have no idea how much flour to take for an amount of potatoes for example . It is a little like watching my mom who just seems to throw things together until it’s right. Every time it’s perfect but she can’t explain what she does. You need a lot of experience for this…

The thing is that cooking, as it's (usually) based on products that have some intrinsic variability in them ( plants, dead animals... ) hence the recipe cannot be made fully deterministic. I know for gnocchis for example, the amouny of flour needed depends on the moisture content of the potatoes which depend on the variety uses, and how long they've been stored... Also depends on the flour you use. Until you get the…

Sure but amounts give you something to work from and help you when shopping so you don't buy way too much or far too little of any ingredient.
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