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Are cooking videos making us better cooks?

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Re: Are cooking videos making us better cooks?

#121

Post by 11235813213455 »

apienx wrote: post #80
11235813213455 wrote: post #42

There are very few things I cook, only rice and lentils, all the rest of my food I eat it crude (mostly vegetable, or even eggs, for fish I leave it in lemon juice, typically sardines, lemon also work for leek or onions to make them less strong. So cooking mostly happens in my guts now, and for vegetable digestion is incredibly better when outside, under the sun. Cooking destroy vitamins and many things

Glad you found what suits your microbiome. Note that our species probably wouldn’t have developed big brains without “cooking”.

Sure, but as our intelligence now decreases https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37307064, we can try to find other ways to subsist

Re: Are cooking videos making us better cooks?

#122

Post by an_aparallel »

the right kind...of cooking videos make us better cooks...100% just like the right kind of recipe books. There are tonnes of both kinds.

I learnt to cook legitimate indian cuisine watching www.vahchef.com videos. I learnt to cook legitimate korean food by reading www.maangchi.com recipes. And i learnt bonafide Persian cooking from "Food of Life".

I think books, websites and videos all make for better cooks...so long as the recipe writer is aware of their assumed knowledge and can consisely deliver the tricks of the trade within a recipe that holds the cooks attention, be it on the page or in the video.

The written recipes from Vahchef were actual legit trash - with missing ingredients and steps. But his videos...un believable!

Re: Are cooking videos making us better cooks?

#123

Post by Spivak »

episteme wrote: post #117
Spivak wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not entirely sure what else you expect? Cooking takes a long-ass time, it is a day-long full-time affair. You can hide the real time by doing prep, outright fully preparing parts of dishes agreed of time, having multiple people or buying premade but someone is putting in those hours somewhere.

Me and my wife cook meals with fresh ingredients every night and it takes between 20 and 40 minutes. Do you order takeout for every single meal? Did your family spend every day cooking all day growing up? I'm curious how someone can have this take.

I'm now realizing that I'm an elitist of a kind because when I say cooking I mean something totally different from "making something to eat" and more akin to dinner service. And that's what most of Alton's recipes are aimed at, not desperation dinners.

And when you're doing this kind of thing for family dinner you and up using shortcuts like bagged premixed salad, bottled dressing, rolls from the bakery, premade desserts, jarred sauces and gravies which all hide the real time it takes to put something like that together by outsourcing it. I think the miracle of modern logistics being so normal makes people forget how much of home cooking is shortcuts that weren't always available and were marketed toward homemakers who labored over a hot stove and needed a break.

Re: Are cooking videos making us better cooks?

#124

Post by xormapmap »

Spivak wrote: post #123
episteme wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me and my wife cook meals with fresh ingredients every night and it takes between 20 and 40 minutes. Do you order takeout for every single meal? Did your family spend every day cooking all day growing up? I'm curious how someone can have this take.

I'm now realizing that I'm an elitist of a kind because when I say cooking I mean something totally different from "making something to eat" and more akin to dinner service. And that's what most of Alton's recipes are aimed at, not desperation dinners. And when you're doing this kind of thing for family dinner you and up using shortcuts like bagged premixed salad, bottled dressing, rolls from the bakery, premade dess…

> shortcuts like bagged premixed salad, bottled dressing ...

At what point is something no longer a shortcut? Do you also consider the time it takes you to track, shoot, carry, & butcher an animal? Or do you take the shortcut of buying your meat? Do you grow your own wheat? Grind your own flour? Or are those shortcuts too?

Re: Are cooking videos making us better cooks?

#125

Post by corinroyal »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #118
episteme wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me and my wife cook meals with fresh ingredients every night and it takes between 20 and 40 minutes. Do you order takeout for every single meal? Did your family spend every day cooking all day growing up? I'm curious how someone can have this take.

I think it largely depends on what’s being cooked. My mother used to make bone broth at home, which is definitely an all day affair, but it became the basis for noodles and stew dishes for the rest of the week which took much less time…

I've recently figured out that I've been looking at long cooking tasks wrong. Instead of blocking the whole time for that task I block out that time for another task and take breaks where I prep the next cooking step while the pot boils unattended. I had a big mental block on making sourdough starter, as it requires attention every day for three days, which I didn't figure I could manage. But now it's just something to do while I'm making coffee. Throw some more flour and water in there and mix it up. I don't actually have to sit by the counter for three days waiting for fermentation to happen. I can't believe it took me so long to realize this.

Re: Are cooking videos making us better cooks?

#126

Post by aprentic »

airwejtilawj wrote: post #104
aprentic wrote: post #88

That's kind of like asking any variety of, "Can X videos make us better at X?" Absolutely, but the more relevant question is if a particular cooking video or series, out of the vast set of "cooking videos" will make a particular viewer a better cook. Probably not. I'd suggest a few questions to determine if that's true. What is the specificity of the video? Some "cooking" videos only pretend to be about teaching cook…

Of course. The vast majority of "cooking" videos are intended for entertainment, not instruction. I can honestly say that the majority of what I know today about cooking I learned from Youtube, but the most popular videos on Youtube are the most shallow ones, the ones that do three second cuts between unrelated images and spend most of their time showing people's faces instead of the purported subject matter. For mos…

I'd say the area where cooking videos particularly shine is technique and visual assessment.

It's much harder to describe the proper motion in text than to just show a video. A still image of dough doesn't show you the elasticity as well as a video does.

Areas they're particularly bad for is anything involving data; recipes, ratios, times. Those are all much easier to see in text.

They're both pretty bad at teaching "feel". There's no way around tasting and poking at any recipe you're not familiar with. Neither videos nor text will teach you how to do that. They'll tell you it's important but you really just need to do it a bunch.

Re: Are cooking videos making us better cooks?

#127

Post by corinroyal »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #44
theshrike79 wrote: post #5

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…

A lot what separates good and bad cooking is tacit understanding that can't be explained in words. You need to practice to detect the nuances in flavor. It's really basic and doesn't make good edutaninment content. I'd say 90% of being a competent chef is just down to knowing how to balance the basic flavor components; and to figure out how these things change during the cooking process. With practice and experimenta…

I found the flavor combinations and techniques easier to grasp than timing. That's what always gets me. Juggling two or three dishes with their own timing and requirements such that they all come out around the same time and one is not burning while stirring the other trips me up. After I practice a recipe a few times I get better at anticipating what it'll need when, but I'll never make the mistake again of cooking all new recipes for a dinner party and have each one fail spectacularly.

Re: Are cooking videos making us better cooks?

#128

Post by Spivak »

xormapmap wrote: post #124
Spivak wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm now realizing that I'm an elitist of a kind because when I say cooking I mean something totally different from "making something to eat" and more akin to dinner service. And that's what most of Alton's recipes are aimed at, not desperation dinners. And when you're doing this kind of thing for family dinner you and up using shortcuts like bagged premixed salad, bottled dressing, rolls from the bakery, premade dess…

> shortcuts like bagged premixed salad, bottled dressing ... At what point is something no longer a shortcut? Do you also consider the time it takes you to track, shoot, carry, & butcher an animal? Or do you take the shortcut of buying your meat? Do you grow your own wheat? Grind your own flour? Or are those shortcuts too?

No, obviously. Are you being deliberately obtuse or do you really not know what ingredients are considered culturally to be atomic and what is considered composite and therefore a shortcut? Like there is a floor and it's not very far down.

* A cut of meat is atomic, that cut pre-marinated isn't.

* Flour is atomic, a Jiffy box is composite.

* Oil is atomic, bottled dressing is composite.

* Potatoes are atomic, frozen french fries aren't.

* 5 spice powder is atomic, but cinnamon sugar is composite.

* Cream is atomic, bottled Alfredo isn't.

* Hidden Valley packets are atomic, but bottled ranch isn't. But when bottled ranch is used as an ingredient in a larger dish it becomes atomic again.

* Rice is atomic, Uncle Ben's isn't. Same rule as ranch when it's used in a larger dish.

* Bread is composite until you make a sandwich with it.

* But this rule doesn't apply to jarred pasta sauce when made into spaghetti. But it does apply to jarred pizza sauce when made into pizza.

Like sure the rules are organic and messy as all cultural norms all, but if you cook with any regularity you just "know" them because it defines when you're allowed to say "I made this" when presenting the dish to others.

Re: Are cooking videos making us better cooks?

#130

Post by upon_drumhead »

psukhedelos wrote: post #46

Is there any cooking content that takes into account cleaning up after? In my limited viewing experience the focus often seems to be prep and the cooking, ignoring the reality of the inevitable clean up. Is there anyone focusing on recipes and how to cook that minimises / reuses cookware and through to a reset clean kitchen? When I cook I enjoy getting into a flow where I’m ordering the prep or modifying the recipe s…

Epicurious has a week menu plan that has you cooking a bunch on Sunday and re-using it during the week for quick and easy meals with light cleanups.

https://www.epicurious.com/search/%22Weekly%20Meal%20Plan%22...

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