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Based Cooking

based.cooking

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Re: Based Cooking

#391

Post by lorenzhs »

OJFord wrote: post #205
davidcelis wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact when most recipes specify a volumetric measurement of salt they mean table salt That’s really not true. Most food writers would tell you that the standard is kosher salt, and many would specify diamond kosher

In America perhaps. In the UK the term isn't used, iodine is not (or it's so rare I've never seen/heard of it, and can't find an example now) added ever, and anti-caking agent is only added if it's marketed as a table salt.

In the UK, iodine is added to cattle feed instead of salt, so it's contained in dairy products. No idea whether this can be a problem for vegans.

"Kosher salt" isn't a thing this side of the pond (at least in Germany). Even regular coarse salt is not something you can expect to find in an average kitchen.

Re: Based Cooking

#392

Post by m3kw9 »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #111

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…

Even with the exact amounts, often the taste is very subjective to each. Often I need to adjust many of the main ingredients like salt sugar by more than halves.

Baking would be one that need to be more exact.

Re: Based Cooking

#393

Post by cratermoon »

chris_wot wrote: post #259
cratermoon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I was a home brewer I learned about iodophors for no-rinse sanitizing. Do any commercial brewers use it? If so, bottoms up, mate!

Re: Based Cooking

#394

Post by throwmamatrain »

cgriswald wrote: post #342
OwlsParlay wrote: post #244

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.

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…

I guess it's a good thing that cooking is nothing like this painful thought experiment! :D

Failure is ok.

Re: Based Cooking

#395

Post by tedmielczarek »

bigfudge wrote: post #275
beeforpork wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My experience is the opposite. Most bread recipes for example are both incredibly tolerant of mistakes. Also — flour varies so much in capacity to absorb water and gluten content between brands that I'd say precision is very much illusory unless you are after industrial-style consistency. Small changes in how you handle doughs of different hydration, and changes in timing/temperature thereafter have a much bigger dif…

I agree with you but I don't think that entirely refutes the original point. Baking does require more precision on average than cooking, but bread recipes don't give you the information you would need to be precise. Adjusting for things like local temperature and humidity or the way your oven bakes are important to the outcome but they're never mentioned in recipes. What you're describing as "intuition" sounds to me like knowledge of those factors, some sense of measuring their impact (even if just by feel) and how to adjust a recipe as needed to account for them. I think we'd do a service to the world by pushing for recipes that are less "follow these directions exactly" and more "here are the techniques this dish uses and how to work with them".

Re: Based Cooking

#396

Post by cratermoon »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #188
cratermoon wrote: post #80

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

I'm certain that's part of it. Having a comment section and a way for users to "like" recipes certainly contributes to the ad serving model.

Re: Based Cooking

#397

Post by throwmamatrain »

Not everything is for everyone, and I feel like I have learned a lot about what HN thinks about cooking from this.

Most here seem to approach cooking as programming, maybe someone wants to make a meal compiler. I can't imagine cooking so strictly, if anything it's time away from the terminal to work with my hands and maybe create something I can enjoy or share with others. I did not expect so much rigor and seriousness! :D

Re: Based Cooking

#398

Post by wtf_is_up »

anentropic wrote: post #304

What is "Based cooking" ? Is it a pre-existing phrase with its own meaning, or it's just the name of the site? Is this a meme meaning of the word "based" that I am too old to be aware of?

Based ultimately comes from hip-hop jargon (ex: Lil B the Based God). It is an older form of the newer 'Chad' meme and an antonym of 'cringe'. It is often used on 4chan with many layers of irony. In fact, using based unironically (like based.cooking) is kind of cringe since MAGA boomers co-opted it.

Re: Based Cooking

#399

Post by cratermoon »

seanwilson wrote: post #146
cratermoon wrote: post #80

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…

> 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 form of an explanation or directions Very few recipes are just a minimal list of ingredients and steps though? I don't think this means you have to add your life story above it, just add enough explanation about the steps and it will be copyrightable. The re…

> Very few recipes are just a minimal list of ingredients and steps though?

If you look in a traditional cookbook, yes. The online world is different, for all the reasons discussed here.

> unattributed stolen recipes probably isn't worth much as it won't have a reputation or branding.

That's the point, though, you can't "steal" a recipe. It can be a trade secret, like the original formula for Coca-Cola, but if that recipe were to get out anyone could make the same stuff, not call it Coca-Cola, and the Coca-Cola company couldn't do anything about it. At best they could try to find out how it leaked and pursue action under theft of trade secrets law.

Re: Based Cooking

#400

Post by hc-taway »

moron4hire wrote: post #320
deanclatworthy wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On this subject, can an American please tell me what a spoonful is? There is a great video series on youtube, with his recipes online, but all measurements are spoonful: https://www.ethanchlebowski.com/cooking-techniques-recipes/p... Spoons can vary in size, so is it a tablespoon or a teaspoon? When dealing with spices you'll be adding 3 times the amount if you go with tablespoon interpretation so it'd be a pretty bi…

If it's spices, I don't even bother with a spoon. Just dump a bunch in until it looks good. Most recipes call for so small amounts of spices that you're not really going to taste it, so why bother putting it in at all?

I've started searching for "ethnic" recipes in their home languages, because the English-language ones are often so badly under-spiced that the called-for amounts aren't even useful as a rough estimate (for e.g. shopping or judging whether you have enough on-hand to make the dish), and sometimes are practically a completely different dish than the real thing. (if the dish has an English-language Wikipedia entry, clicking the link on that page for the dish's page in its native language is a great way to find the right thing to search for, and then Google Translate usually does an OK job on the recipe itself)
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