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Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

parsnip.ai

331–340 of 377 posts

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#331
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about a course on cooking here, how is it gatekeeping to talk about cooking 101 subjects?

Mother sauces are "French cuisine 101", but not "cooking 101." A very large number of "regular" American home cooks have never made a Béchamel sauce.

I'd say it definitely is cooking 101. They're the basis for a tremendous number of recipes over the last hundred years. Americans being ignorant isn't really an argument.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, what's the big thing that people feature? Beef. Wagyu, wellington, organic grass fed, etc. Aside from knowing how to stew it and sear it, there's not really much to it, yet people will create video after video of $150 tomahawks and $200 wagyu ribeyes. And when they aren't cooking it out of the package, they're coating it with all sorts of weird shit that require special fermentation chambers to properly dry age…

Even Nat's what I reckon, (may not be SFW language): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEFW1E8QzP-hKxjO2Rj68wg was a bit of fun and seemed to be "common man". Except he clearly has some cooking skills, especially with a knife. Not sure he could julienne a walrus (NFI what Julienne is..) but he isn't a pleb in the kitchen.

Love that channel and the message that with a small amount of effort and skill you can make excellent dishes 1000% better (and probably healthier) than the pre-packaged version. You don't need the most expensive cuts, or a home made demi-glace, just solid fundamentals with common ingredients.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#335

I've done a few quizzes on the app now, and I don't get it. The questions feel very contrived, like someone had a quota to fill so just put whatever looked plausible together. They are also _very_ culturally specific. Questions about eggs barely made sense to me being from the UK, with incorrect pack sizes, animal welfare terms, and completely missed our great standards body that makes it easy to know which eggs have…

lol, I read your comment and was like "pfft look at this smug UK-er thinking his best-eggs-in-the-world mean the app sucks" and then the first question I got was ridiculous and suggested I should always buy the cheapest eggs haha. You were absolutely right.

It's not that our eggs are better. It's that there are a lot of food standards here, and eggs have markings and logos printed on them to tell you which standards they follow. And the egg boxes have even more markings and logos printed on them.

Things like a red lion or a red tractor being printed on an egg. They mean a lot in the UK, but don't mean anything to anybody in any other country.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#336

Sorry, it seems like a whole lessons section is missing from the app. The only way someone can learn currently is by guessing all of the quiz sections. First question received: "The best indicator of freshness for ground beef is: a) smell, b) whether it was frozen, c) the manufacture date, d) color. The answer "a" smell was marked incorrect, "c" manufacture date was the "correct one". Uh... maybe... unless it wasn't…

That's insane. How often do you have the manufacture date of your meat?

If you buy it from a supermarket in plastic packaging then sure. But I usually get my mince in a bag from the butcher, it's cheaper and fresher. Smell and colour is all I can go off.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#337
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The matter of opinion thing got me too. I felt like I had to guess what the writer's intention was with many of the questions instead of just answering them factually. I was clicking through the pasta quiz on "Spaghetti and Meatballs" and one of the questions is something like "True or false: Any pasta dish can be made with any kind of pasta." ...What? What does that mean? I mean, I guess it's called "Spaghetti and m…

Is lasagna not a pasta dish? Or cannelloni? Surely it ceases to be those dishes when you use, say, orzo...

It really depends what that question is trying to ask. You can make a casserole by following a lasagna recipe and using orzo or whatever pasta you want instead and it will probably taste good. Most wouldn't call it lasagna but does that matter? It's a really odd question without a lot more context on what the goal is.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#338
post #105

Please, please, please, avoid status cuisines . It's going to be hard to do, because they make good PR. But you will be helping your users a lot more of you hold them off with a ten foot pole. What do I mean by a status cuisine ? They are meals that are intended to show that the cook is a worthy person, rather than that the meal is practical, healthy, and good to eat. Here are some examples: The endurance cuisine: de…

> chop your own veg Is there a way to avoid this? I can get some chopped vegetables at the grocery store, but the vast majority of vegetables are only available whole.

If you're not picky, blending it is quicker in bulk.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#339
post #147

This looks incredible! I would love a macOS app as I spend more time on the Mac than on my iPhone. Well done for not enforcing account registration and letting me actually try the app.

EDIT: so apparently we are actually on MacOS, just in an iPhone sized frame. Have you tried searching the app store? http://apps.apple.com/us/app/parsnip-level-up-your-cooking/i...

Yep but I am on an Intel Mac so it is not possible for me to run it.

Re: Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking

#340
post #158

> Recipes are surprisingly deceptive. They seem like instructions you can follow, but a more apt analogy is that the recipe is an iceberg and beginner cooks are steaming along on the Titanic. Devil's advocate (and very serious home cook): Food Youtube solves all of these problems in various and (IMO) much more entertaining and informative ways. There's a plethora of content ranging from highly-technical restaurant in…

I appreciate the perspective, it's a common objection. Similar arguments I've heard are that in order to learn to cook, you need to do one of: - read a lot of cookbooks and understand them - go watch a ton of YouTube videos and triangulate the best way to do it - go get a job in a kitchen (essentially, apprentice) I learn the way you do and I totally get where you're coming from. But this only works for serious autod…

Are you sure that is a pain for 'everyone else'. Who are these people? If they aren't self-learners for all the other free resources available to them, why would they be self-learners (autodidacts) for your app?

I really don't believe that these are all your options for learning to cook. You can be taught by a friend or a parent. You can just read a recipe online and try to follow along. You can take classes - you don't have to apprentice in a professional kitchen.

Beyond that everyone has to eat. So they know what they like to eat. So for me, the argument that 'you can't type what you don't know' doesn't really hold for me. You're googling for something you do know and then from there if you don't know one of the steps (dicing an onion) you can pretty trivially look that up.

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