Ask HN: Hackers who cook

Cooking your own food is healthy, cheap, and you actually know what is going into your food. Few days ago I went to my friends house and we ordered chinese food, got food poisoning and now I'm sick... Doesn't happen often, but you really have no idea what they put in your food when you take out. Same is true with buying processed foods.

The biggest life hack for healthy cooking/eating is something I discovered just a few weeks ago after I bought a $500 top of the line blender (Vitamix). What you can do is fill the blender up with raw vegetables/fruits and it will blend it into a liquid. This might seem obvious, but I really mean RAW fruits (i.e. throw an entire apple, banana, celery sticks, kale, etc. and it will liquify everything including the stems and skins). Every morning I have one of these, some taste horrible, some taste really good, but since it's liquified I can just chug a glass of it and you really start to feel amazing after doing this for even just a few days. To be honest I rarely ate vegetables before, so I don't think I've ever eaten this healthy in my life.

1. I cook primarily for control over a lot of factors (taste/health/cost/ingredients). I find the process enjoyable but it's not my primary motivation.

2. I make rough meal plans for about half the week and then have a large stock of things like broth, rice, beans, pasta, frozen vegtables and fish that don't spoil and are very versatile.

3. With a toddler I like to make dishes I can cut out a portion and then spice up the remainder. Favorites are soups, rice/cous-cous salads, and pasta.

4. No diet.

5. Stock a few items like in bulk and learn to master them (I keep a lot of broth, canned tomatoes, canned beans, pasta, and grains).

Great thread, lots of good responses. Here are my own answers:

1. Recreation and saving money. I really like good food, but don't always want to pay restaurant prices for it. There's a certain satisfaction in creating something delicious. It's sometimes a struggle between making time to cook at home and wanting to be lazy and just go out, though.

2. Not as much as we should. My wife prefers to plan ahead, but I'm not so good at always sticking to it.

3. We're pretty eclectic in what we cook. I enjoy Asian inspired flavors and have been intending to make more curries.

4. Not really. I have a certain affinity toward paleo, but I don't follow it too consistently. Mostly when I'm cooking I just try to eat "clean" without a lot of processed junk in it. I'd like to start baking my own bread again so I know what goes into it.

5. Several. Learn to use a knife, and keep it sharp. Get the biggest cutting board you can find. Season everything. Taste frequently, when practical (good with soups and sauces, not good with raw chicken ;)). Use a rice cooker, it's set and forget and keeps a burner (and pan) open for other things. If you have stainless steel pans, learn to use them correctly. To make it easier to slice meat thinly, put it in the freezer for 10-15 minutes first. Clean as you go. Don't be afraid to fail.

If you need something relatively fast and hands off, oven-roasted veggies and protein (particularly chicken, pork, and fish) work really well, and are much healthier than eating out.

Seriously, I can't overemphasize "keep it sharp" when it comes to knives. It's not just easier, it's also much safer. Dull knives are prone to turning and cutting things you didn't want cut, such as your fingers.

What kind of diet do you follow?

Cooking is a form of engineering. I like that there's a science behind it, and I like that if you become any good, your standard-of-living (of eating?) will be vastly improved.

Tip #1: get a good knife. If you can, go to a store that'll let you actually hold a knife prior to purchase, to test its heft and balance. Find one that fits you comfortably. (I like Shun knives, but this is a pretty personal topic; don't let that be my personal endorsement so much as my personal choice.) The knife should be sharp, and you should keep it honed with a honing steel. Eventually it may get dull to the point where you might want a whetstone to sharpen it again, but you'd probably need to use your knife a decent amount before it gets to that point.

Tip #2: mis-en-place, which is French for, basically, putting things into place. Your mis is your work station. Clean your counters. Get out your cutting board. Have a bowl for food waste (e.g. the ends you cut off a carrot, the skin off a potato that you peel) and somewhere to put food once you have finished whatever you are doing.

Tip #3: prep work will make your life much, much easier. If the dish calls for diced onions, then you should dice your onions before you turn the heat on the stove. Having all of the vegetables chopped, things marinated, meat salted and spiced, whatever -- ahead of time -- will make the act of cooking about ten times less stressful than otherwise.

Tip #4: taste your food. Needs some salt? Add salt. Maybe some pepper will make it pop. This is a hard thing to quantify; how things taste and what you think you will need is partly your palate, which you can develop beyond what it is now, but some stuff (salt makes things taste better -- to a point, beyond which it just makes things taste like salt) is universal. Just don't be afraid to try some things, in small measures at least, and taste it to see where it's at.