this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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Science of Cooking
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We're focused on cooking and the science behind how it changes our food. Some chemistry, a little biology, whatever it takes to explore a critical aspect of everyday life.
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I see more young people with more skill than ever thanks to Kenji, ATK, and babbish.
Yeah, I think overall, skill is going up, but I literally don't know any millennial (or younger) couples where both people do not work. I can make a hell of a good meal out of anything, as can almost all of my peers, but the mental load and time required to effectively plan and execute a range of meals throughout the week is just too high for most people who work. Most traditional poor food is just stuff that takes time and/or labor to cook. Braises and barbecues, porridges like grits or oats, soups and stews.
I might grab some of whatever I see on sale at the grocery store, but I'm not planning anything ahead of time unless there's a special occasion meal.
To take advantage of a ham going on sale, you need to plan one meal of ham + sides, and the ham likely takes a few hours to warm up. Another meal after could be baked beans with ham (which require overnight soaking) to be planned ahead, and several hours of baking. Another meal might be pea soup with the ham bone, another meal that takes a while to prepare. Most people just don't have the time for that. When I want to make baked beans, I end up just buying a small chunk of country ham at a greater markup.
If your problem for meal planning is the lack of imagination, ChatGPT is surprisingly good at coming with easy to cook diverse meals. I’m not even kidding. LLMs are great at regurgitating info they read somewhere meshed together, and that’s what planning is.
Nah, that's insane. Both my wife and I work 40 hours a week and raise a toddler.
If you are doing 60 hours weeks sure that's valid but at the risk of being called boomer that's some bullshit. It takes 2 hours tops to shop every week and a half hour to make a decent meal. You have plenty of time to do that on a 40 hour week.
I do most of the week's cooking ahead of time on the weekend, giving me even more time to relax if I've had a long day.
Meal prep saves so much time!
My ex-wife and I used to put on an NFL game and cook all Sunday afternoon. Damn we made good food for the week!
We don't allow sports in the house.
I wouldn't even say 2 hours of shopping time, but yeah. I hate shopping, so I run in and out, 30 minutes tops. I commented here, but I think the problem is people don't know how to cook. They find a recipe online, hunt all over the store for the ingredients, go home, cook it up, look at the time spent. Now they have leftover ingredients and think those are a waste.
If you already know a few dozen things you like, you already know where to find those ingredients in the store. And whatever your tastes, there's bound to be crossover. I love me some Mexican. With the same few ingredients, I can make loads of different dishes.
Learning takes time up front, just like any skill. And yeah, you'll spend money ramping up the pantry and fridge, and you'll waste money starting out. Figuring out how to feed yourself is part of growing up.
I'm being generous for the sake of argument. I can fill an entire us grocery cart and be out the door inside of 45 minutes.
Yeah, definitely still possible, but my point is that wages no longer support having one person that can devote their whole day to cooking/cleaning/etc. No matter how good you are at cooking dinner in 30 minutes, you would be able to make better and cheaper meals given 8 hours.
I honestly don't think that really true though. Frozen and fresh produce + protein, beans, rice is about as cheap as you get. Maaaaybe you save a few bucks buying in bulk at Costco but that's an extreme for limited gains. And adding time to food prep doesn't necessarily make it better. You can eat very very well in the US on 5 hours and $100 a week.
Buying in bulk can actually realize significant savings. It's definitely true that more active time does not directly translate to more savings, especially with just a little planning. Lots of food is happy to cook itself while you wait.
Fine cooking skills don't necessarily translate into managing a pantry with a limited budget. I blame smaller households.
Yeah they do. All of these shows are almost unilaterally using fresh produce and easy to access pantry items. If you can't watch a Kenji for a few weeks and figure out how to do a simple trip to the grocery store then PEBKAC.
Kenji did turn me from a kid whose parents can’t cook to a woman who cooks really well and rarely goes out to eat
What’s Kenji? Is it the cookbook mentioned here:
https://www.kenjilopezalt.com/
?
I'm a big fan of the food lab.
A lot of cookbooks give you the steps, but not enough tell you what steps are most important, and what, specifically, you need to be paying attention to to get the best results. The food lab does stuff like telling you how the salt changes the chemistry of scrambled eggs, then doing samples of "cook immediately after scrambling", "wait 3 minutes", "wait 5 minutes", "wait 15 minutes" and showing pictures of how it changes the outcome, before telling you his conclusions.
When you understand the core bits, it allows you a lot more flexibility and variety in how you do the surrounding bits. (I like Flour Water Salt Yeast for bread for the same reason.) Too many cook books are more recipe books that don't teach the fundamentals.
Yeah, he’s been a regular on serious eats since I was a teenager