51–60 of 215 posts
Cooking makes us better cooks. Edit: I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
Agreed. Practice at something makes us better at the thing.
You can practice at something incorrectly, building bad habits, which can make you worse.
See also the idea of "Deliberate Practice":
The absolute pinnacle of cooking video chefs today has to be J. Kenji Lopez-Alt[0], in large part because of his use of first person view. He straps a go-pro to this head and you see what he sees while he cooks. There's no cuts or retakes (unless he's waiting for something to cook or gets interrupted by his kids). There's no swaps. And it's all real- he's cooking dinner for his family. And it doesn't always go perfec…
I found his written work (which is how he built his following) _much_ more useful, but part of that's just about how I process information. Certainly it's valuable to be able to see how certain things are done, and it's hard for cooks to describe techniques sometimes.
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Jacques Pépin is an absolute treasure. Such a famous chef yet never a jerk to anyone. Another favourite of mine is J. Kenji Lopez-Alt [1], or Kenji as everyone calls him . Really nice and non-pretentious guy. Tons of great advice for beginners. His cookbook even goes into details like how to stock and organize your fridge! I think one of his most endearing qualities is that he doesn’t hide his mistakes. He leaves the…
Kenji is great until you have misophonia and his mouth sounds get you and you have issues with how unclean everything he does is. But his videos are a goldmine for great skills, recipes, everything. It is very good if you have a little basic hygiene and food safety skills and do not pick up bad habits from him. The knife manufacturer he uses has been very, very good as well. I have a few of their knives and it's been…
Your standards for cleanliness might be unnecessarily higher, but don't you think it's a bit disingenuous to call his cooking "unclean"?
I never ever cook from a recipe, either. Cooking is very much like programming. You have a goal (what you feel like eating that day), a framework (what you have laying around and your cooking skills) and you just execute something that approximates your goal. And just like programming you have to learn by doing.
Sometimes it is worth following recipes when you want to cook something new from a foreign cuisine, but I rarely do that. I cook almost exclusively European food, so I know instinctively how to combine the ingredients together to get the taste profile I am yearning for, and I also know how to cook each of the separate ingredients individually.
I really don't "get" people who seem to lack this cooking instinct. In my family there is nobody who doesn't know how to cook. My father rarely cooked when my mother was in good health, but once she fell ill, he picked it up at the ripe old age of 70, and is now able to cook pretty much everything. Baked savoury goods are his favourite.
If you don't know how to cook, you probably need to cancel your food delivery subscriptions and just force yourself to cook your own food. You'll pick it up amazingly quickly. I messed up quite a few times, but I don't remember ever having to throw food away. You always get something edible if you are creative enough.
A couple of weeks ago I had one of my worst disasters. I was attempting a Georgian savoury pie and my dough was a bit too highly hydrated and my filling a bit too warm due to my impatience, and I tried using a new technique for forming the pie instead of the usual one of sandwiching the filling between two pre-rolled layers of dough. The bottom of the pie tore apart and I was left with a mix of filling and raw dough. It seemed like a write-off, but I quickly added a bit more flour and mixed it all thoroughly together and baked it as a bread instead, and it turned out a bit dry but delicious.
Anyway, there is definitely value in cooking videos.
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Agreed. Practice at something makes us better at the thing.
Disagreed. Practice is just one component in a cycle that makes us better: We watch something, think of something, read something. Then we try it out in practice. Then we observe or have someone else observe the practice and result. Then we take suggestions and improvements into account from that observation. Then we start over at one of the points above. If you only just repeat the "practice" step you'll get set in…
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> Didn't read the article. From the Hacker News Guidelines: > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Next time you don't read an article, please keep it to yourself.
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Disagreed. Practice is just one component in a cycle that makes us better: We watch something, think of something, read something. Then we try it out in practice. Then we observe or have someone else observe the practice and result. Then we take suggestions and improvements into account from that observation. Then we start over at one of the points above. If you only just repeat the "practice" step you'll get set in…
When it comes to cooking, it's hard to imagine someone getting progressively worse, especially when they are the ones tasting their creations. If it doesn't taste right, they'll naturally adjust and improve. The feedback loop is immediate and personal.
And, of course, "there is no accounting for taste" meaning that some of the aforementioned dimensions are very subjective.
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If one reads my comment carefully, they will notice I did not comment on whether robomartin read any future Hacker News article. I will not comment on whether you read my comment.
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I found his written work (which is how he built his following) _much_ more useful, but part of that's just about how I process information. Certainly it's valuable to be able to see how certain things are done, and it's hard for cooks to describe techniques sometimes.
For my birthday my wife got me "The Food Lab" and I'm dying to read it, but it's like 800 pages and we have a toddler to take care of. The time has not been made yet.
Most cookbooks tend to be like the meme about drawing an owl [0]. Mostly because the people making the instructions make assumptions about Stuff One Should Just Know and skip those bits in the instructions. On video you can actually see the consistency of things as they are cooked and maybe even hear what the process sounds like (frying spices in oil has a distinct sound if the oil is at the correct temperature). You…
> Most cookbooks tend to be like the meme about drawing an owl [0]. Mostly because the people making the instructions make assumptions about Stuff One Should Just Know and skip those bits in the instructions. You may wish to look at cookbooks produced by America's Test Kitchen. They try to create instructions that are clear and easy to follow. This is done via a 'beta testing' program which you can join: > As a recip…
I wish we had a similar system in Europe, especially for reviewing kitchen equipment.