[HN Gopher] Are Cooking Videos Making Us Better Cooks?
___________________________________________________________________
Are Cooking Videos Making Us Better Cooks?
Author : gmays
Score : 64 points
Date : 2023-09-04 03:43 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| globular-toast wrote:
| Can't seem to read the article. Some JS crap is freezing the page
| and can't scroll down (Firefox).
|
| I've learnt lots from both books and videos. Being a "good cook"
| requires a few things:
|
| * Skill in common techniques,
|
| * Knowledge of ingredients,
|
| * Good tools,
|
| * Repertoire.
|
| Videos are great for learning techniques. I've got books that do
| an admirable job of teaching how to knead or whisk etc., but
| nothing beats seeing someone do it. Some techniques are
| impossible to replicate without the right tools, though. You
| won't be able to replicate the chopping techniques you see with a
| cheap, blunt knife, for example. Videos often fail to mention
| this.
|
| Books are the best for knowledge about ingredients. Videos
| _could_ do it, but I 've never seen one and it's probably not
| good for TV or the Youtube algorithm. You just need to know a few
| key things about ingredients like how to buy them, how to prepare
| them (which bit to peel, which tools to use etc.), how
| ingredients interact with each other (for example, a video will
| show you cooking the onions before putting in acidic ingredients
| like tomatoes, but will it tell you _why_?) Harold McGee 's _On
| Food and Cooking_ is a must-have.
|
| Repertoire comes with time and I think you can get that from
| either books or videos. The best cooks don't really follow
| recipes after a while. A brief skim is often enough to assimilate
| a new recipe and it can then be carried out using existing
| knowledge and skills. For such a cook, a video can be a very
| inefficient way of learning a new recipe.
|
| I think of repertoire as like a giant Makefile in my head, I
| wrote about it in a bit of a silly article on my blog:
| https://georgek.github.io/blog/posts/cooking-with-make/
| aprentic wrote:
| 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 cooking but they're actually about
| something entirely different. I love watching old episodes of
| Iron Chef but I don't expect to learn anything practical. Some
| cooking shows are about a particular aspect of cooking; a video
| on cooking with Spam won't make me a better cook because I don't
| cook with Spam. A video on how to make cakes look attractive with
| fondant won't make me a better cook because I like food made of
| food ingredients rather than construction materials.
|
| Does the author know their subject matter? Many videos tell you
| stuff that's just plain wrong, or even dangerous (don't make
| popcorn on a soda-can stove with methanol or it could blow up in
| your face).
|
| Are they level-appropriate? When I left for college, my mom gave
| me a copy of "How to boil an egg". I got a lot of benefit out of
| that book but something similar would be useless today. By the
| same token, years later, we got a lot of great information of of
| Rose Levy Beranbaum's "The Bread Bible", but it wouldn't have
| helped me at all as a freshman with a communal kitchen and
| minimal cooking ability.
|
| There's also the question of what the viewer is going to do with
| it. You can watch videos all day long without getting any better
| at cooking. If you want to get better at cooking you primarily
| need to cook. Some videos may aid that effort but even the best
| ones will only help to the extent that you're willing to
| implement what they teach and practice it.
| airwejtilawj wrote:
| 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 most cooking
| videos, 95% of viewers will never even consider actually doing
| any cooking based on what they watched. But in spite of that,
| Youtube is an incredible learning resource for the minority of
| users who actually want to use it to learn. Maybe that's the
| best we can hope for.
| aprentic wrote:
| 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.
| aszantu wrote:
| I got unlucky one day and watched a cooking video while
| intoxicated... it's so awful how they have to put some more of
| this and some of that and it wouldn#t be good without another
| spice... it's like sorcery... and the ppl doing it behave like
| that as well... horrible vibes, doesn't help that they all look
| sick and fat.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| 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 can also see the proper cutting technique, hopefully saving
| your fingers from pain later on.
|
| [0] https://www.danielzarick.com/uploads/2018-05-draw-the-
| owl.jp...
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ye but then it has to be a running video without cuts.
|
| But even then they might assume too much about my competence.
|
| I am trying to figure out how to use a specific tool to correct
| hinches with.
|
| And in each video I find the carpenter is like "then you bend
| in this direction" and stuff gets alligned.
|
| But I have no idea how they know which direction to pull on my
| door and they skip those steps while trying to explain.
| pfranz wrote:
| Most cuisine-based cookbooks have a bunch of chapters on
| ingredients, technique, equipment, and storage that easily get
| overlooked. Since it's difficult to share those things in a
| recipe format (but often come up in videos of preparation) I'm
| not surprised most people are finding them on YouTube.
|
| I find cookbooks completely ignore is "kitchen management"--
| preparing a meal with entree and sides being cooked
| concurrently so they come to the table at the same time or
| reusing leftovers into new meals and meal prep. Thankfully,
| there's a bit of this on YouTube (mostly meal prep).
|
| Like you mentioned knife skills are a giant ignored thing. I'm
| a huge proponent of sharpening your knifes (because odds are
| they've _never_ done it) and taking a knife skills class. It
| pays dividends almost every time you cook, cuts prep time at
| least in half, and reduces frustration and friction to cooking.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Other than Salt Fat Acid Heat (mentioned elsewhere in this
| thread), any recommendations for building that baseline
| knowledge? Step-by-step videos are great for making that one
| dish, but are pretty inefficient for reaching a skill baseline.
| civilitty wrote:
| I'd recommend _The Professional Chef_ by the CIA.
| gingerrr wrote:
| This is a bit of a loaded recommendation - I own it and
| it's a fantastic compendium of literally all western
| cooking knowledge you might want to ever know.
|
| It's also like 20lb and over a thousand pages and usually
| sells for textbook prices, so only invest in it if you
| really want to level up and have the time to read/work
| through it.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| 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 experimentation you can learn to infer what
| is lacking by taste and make anything go from bland to amazing.
|
| Spices and ingredients are much less important. They aren't
| _un_ important, but they aren't what makes something decent
| into something great. You can make a head cabbage more
| delicious than most what you'll find in a cookbook if you get
| this right.
| [deleted]
| tayo42 wrote:
| Yeah agree with this
|
| Reading "Salt, fat acid heat" demonstrates this really well.
| Maybe almost to well, it takes away some of the mystery I
| guess between cuisines. Everything is the same, just
| different aromatics/spices added
|
| That book changed how I approach cooking, I always wondered
| how people just make recipes, and now I can mostly do it
| corinroyal wrote:
| 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.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _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 recipe tester, you will be emailed in-development
| recipes. Recipe testers will receive one recipe per month on
| average. You can choose what to test; you are not required to
| test any or every recipe (but we hope you'll want to!). When
| you test a recipe, please take the survey that accompanies it
| to tell us what you think. We will ask you questions about
| ingredient substitutions, recipe clarity, yields, and timing.
| And you get to rate the recipe._
|
| > _Occasionally, we'll ask you to help us check ingredient
| availability at your local grocery store. We do this to ensure
| that the recipes we develop use ingredients that are widely
| available to all of our readers._
|
| * https://www.americastestkitchen.com/articles/5237-join-
| our-c...
|
| * https://www.americastestkitchen.com/testing
|
| * https://www.americastestkitchen.com/articles/7096-you-are-
| th...
| theshrike79 wrote:
| America's Test Kitchen is the best there is, along with a few
| smaller independent-ish creators.
|
| I wish we had a similar system in Europe, especially for
| reviewing kitchen equipment.
| chpatrick wrote:
| Not Another Cooking Show is another good no-BS cooking channel
| (although the thumbnails have been becoming more youtubey):
| https://www.youtube.com/@NOTANOTHERCOOKINGSHOW
| wnolens wrote:
| I'm a fan of this guy too. I have quite a few Italian recipes
| under my sleeve now.
| robomartin wrote:
| Didn't read the article.
|
| That said, on the general topic hinted at by the title: Yes, they
| do.
|
| I followed Gordon Ramsay's many videos for a couple of years. I
| went from being able to a repertoire of eggs, rice and barbecue
| to cooking as close to world-class meals as I can imagine. This,
| to the point that we stopped going to expensive restaurants
| because, in most cases, the food is inferior to what I am able to
| cook at home. When you come out of a restaurant with your family,
| having dropped the equivalent of a car payment for the meal and
| your kids tell you "Dad, what you cook is massively better than
| that", well, you know you learned something.
|
| I also helped me learn and understand about such things as
| sauces, spices, proper preparation and generally giving me a
| sense of the things I can experiment with, have fun cooking and
| have more variety at my fingertips than just three dishes.
|
| So, yeah, for me, absolutely. Of course, what you get out of it
| is a function of the time and effort you put into it.
| 9991 wrote:
| > 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.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| [flagged]
| 9991 wrote:
| 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.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| For sure. The guideline isn't about reading any future
| Hacker News article.
| teh_klev wrote:
| I think you got the wrong end of the stick with that
| guideline. It's intended for folks who _accuse others_ of not
| having read the article, not for self admission that one didn
| 't read the article. Also the article is behind a paywall and
| even with all my own usual tricks I can't get at it to read
| in any sensible way (even archive.is).
|
| In this case the article's topic is fairly obvious that you
| could legitimately comment here.
| morelisp wrote:
| It seems unfair if you can accuse yourself of not having
| read the article but not someone else.
| TheDong wrote:
| > all my own usual tricks I can't get at it to read in any
| sensible way
|
| archive.org works fine for it for me. Does the following
| work for you?
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230904034416/https://www.nyti
| m...
| teh_klev wrote:
| How odd, my first attempt with archive.org didn't work (I
| got a blank page).
|
| Seems to work now, thank you.
| r0b1n wrote:
| I'm a fan of the various Jacques Pepin videos on youtube
| because they give a lot of advice on technique. There is an
| hour long one I cannot find right now that basically has almost
| everything you'll ever need in a video. And I like (also on
| youtube) Italia Squisita, because they nicely show what
| variations you can do, showing italian classics and their
| michelin-star version of it side by side.
|
| Edit: found the video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CshkecuFfMc
| chongli wrote:
| Jacques Pepin 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 them in the video and
| talks about them and how to recover. Far too often we see TV
| shows about people making mistakes in the kitchen and getting
| reamed out by the celebrity chef or having a meltdown of
| their own.
|
| Mistakes are inevitable in the kitchen, especially when
| you're just starting out. Feeling really bad about it is a
| pretty surefire way to lose interest in learning to cook.
|
| [1] https://youtube.com/@JKenjiLopezAlt?si=Ubk8CUrtb8jkL8h1
| deprecative wrote:
| 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 wonderful.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| I can't think of anything unhygienic I've ever seen Kenji
| do - do you have an example?
| amrocha wrote:
| The guy is a professional chef that has run multiple
| restaurants and teaches people how to cook.
|
| Your standards for cleanliness might be unnecessarily
| higher, but don't you think it's a bit disingenuous to
| call his cooking "unclean"?
| matwood wrote:
| I've watched a lot of Gordon Ramsay videos and agree with you.
| His style is so efficient and not overly complicated, but he
| does everything perfect. Something else that he's led me to
| think about is to move more quickly. Making a great meal does
| not take very long once you have some base skills.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| You can beat a lot of restaurants as a shit cook simply because
| of economics. You are not under obligation to make a profit, so
| you don't need to cut the same corners. And the as you get to
| the high end stuff - that expensive stuff is really awful. Not
| hearty at all. It's like modern art, I am supposed to "get it"
| but I don't.
| pcardoso wrote:
| Chef Jean Pierre is another gem of a cook.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@ChefJeanPierre
| foorio wrote:
| Cook videos are for inspiration, they are made to keep people
| engaged instead of teaching people how to cook.
|
| It is not about the craft anymore.
|
| It is why I love what the team from https://creme.com is doing,
| step by step video makes sense, not just for cooking but for
| anything that requires the user to follow instructions.
| wnolens wrote:
| [flagged]
| sigzero wrote:
| It's making me a better cook.
| lynx23 wrote:
| You know, there is this old joke:
|
| Partner 1: "You'Re watching cooking videos all day, but still
| can't cook!" Partner 2: "Well, you're watching pron..."
| [deleted]
| glogla wrote:
| I think especially the videos that show the process, like J.
| Kenji's, are pretty good (don't expect to be as fast as him when
| making things, though). But you still have to try it and
| practice, not just watch.
|
| The part of cooking I'm struggling with right now, and would love
| some guides and content on, is how to prepare a menu and plan
| groceries. It's a lot of work, but I'm sure there are ways to
| make it easier.
| leipert wrote:
| Do you mean menu as in a weekly schedule or for a single
| function where you invite guests?
|
| Weekly menus have been easy for the family, if you plan in a
| few stews or rice/quinoa/bulgur/cuscus based dishes which are
| more forgiving with certain ratios of vegetables and stuff. So
| plan a few nice meals which need exact ratios, and with stuff
| you overbought/leftovers you can do these other dishes.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| When people ask me to teach them how to cook I definitely set
| expectations that we will be talking and shopping first. By the
| time you're in the kitchen with your knife out 2/3 of the work
| is already done.
| prpl wrote:
| I think some Jacques Pepin videos, especially old ones, helped me
| to the next level, more than anything else. I have a 70s print of
| La Methods and, while I was fairly advanced before getting it, it
| is pretty thorough on methods for cooking.
|
| The thing I love about his later stuff especially is that it is
| practically freestyle. Ming Tsai has a bit of that too.
| el_benhameen wrote:
| I love his philosophy and style, particularly in his various
| PBS series. He teaches you not just to cook different dishes,
| but how to gracefully cook several at once in a reasonable
| weeknight dinner timeframe. The way he's relaxed about
| quantities and substitutions and focuses on making things the
| way he likes them versus how they're "supposed to be made"
| completely changed my approach to the kitchen and gave me a
| fundamental ease with cooking. And I love the "waste not, want
| not" philosophy!
| misterflibble wrote:
| He is masterful, and I regularly use some of his simple dinners
| for my weekly rotation recipes. Like Anthony Bourdain said "if
| Jacques Pepin shows you how to roast a chicken, that's how you
| roast a chicken!"
| wenc wrote:
| I have a copy of the combined La Methode and La Technique.
| Although I don't have any special affinity for French cooking,
| Jacques Pepin got me into cooking because he showed me that
| method and technique was universal. His knife skills were fun
| to watch.
|
| The person who got me into knife skills was Martin Yan who had
| a show called "Yan Can Cook" (not to be confused with Wok with
| Yan by Stephen Yan from Canada).
| matsemann wrote:
| What I often miss is "the basics". After reading a recipe or
| following a video, I perhaps know how to make exactly that dish.
| But that's like a bootcamp programmer learning a single
| framework. I want to learn the concepts, how to apply them, how
| and when to break the rules, how to modify it and experiment with
| what I got. When I follow a recipe, and the result isn't
| pristine, how do I fix it? Should I add more salt? Should I get
| better at picking my tomatoes?
|
| I don't want to follow a cooking video to make the same recipe.
| What I want is to learn these things. I tried MasterClass, but
| felt it was just more of the same. Well produced, but in the end
| still recipe-follow-along. Which I enjoy watching, but in the
| same way watching Veritasium or Numberphile it is mostly
| entertainment, and doesn't make me a mathematician.
| bityard wrote:
| See if there are any legit culinary classes in your area. If
| you don't want to take a class, you could maybe get by reading
| the textbooks they use. It at least go to the library and check
| out their culinary selection.
|
| A couple decades ago, there was a tv show called Good Eats by
| Alton Brown. If you can find the reruns, it has a lot of
| information for newbies, but it will take a long time to watch
| it all.
|
| I'm not an amazing chef but I do okay when I put my mind to it.
| Like anything else, it takes some up front effort to learn the
| basics and experience to learn the rest.
| atomicfiredoll wrote:
| America's test kitchen has some playlists on basics[0] and
| technique[1]. There are other videos that cover basics too.
| And, sometimes you'll learn a new technique in a video for a
| dish you've never made before. You sound methodical; maybe
| you're baking, which is a little more scientific. (If that's
| the case Adam Ragusea[2] has some solid videos on showing how
| he got to his brownie and chocolate chip cookies iirc.) This is
| a case where videos can make you better, but you have to
| actually get your hands dirty and get a feel for things too.
|
| At the end of the day, it's like learning a language: it's easy
| to get stuck in the learning/drilling/practice phase. Your
| actual goal is almost certainly to get to where you can immerse
| yourself in the skill and enjoy it as quickly as practical. If
| you want to make something fresh, give it a shot and be sure to
| taste things as you go. Sometimes it takes trial and error.
|
| [0]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSDeoKpIsAk&list=PLnbzopdwFr...
|
| [1]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uf3OmSyG6A&list=PLnbzopdwFr...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/@aragusea
| Inityx wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Helen Rennie on YouTube, since she spends a
| lot of time talking about those types of things
|
| https://youtube.com/@helenrennie
| maxnoe wrote:
| Give "Salt Fat Acid Heat" a try (the book, not the netflix
| show)
| matsemann wrote:
| I got a lot of great responses with tips to this. Thanks
| everyone! Will definitely check them out!
| dagw wrote:
| You want Good Eats by Alton Brown! Each episode is built around
| an ingredient or technique and he then goes deep on that one
| topic and explain all the how/why/when you should use it. While
| the episodes do generally demonstrate how to make a dish, the
| dish is more of the framing used to explain the underlying
| techniques and concepts.
| wheels wrote:
| A lot of that is about developing intuition and like in most
| fields, there's not an easy way to develop intuition without a
| lot of experience.
|
| What helped me a lot was starting to work through "On Cooking",
| which is geared towards culinary students, and at least has a
| more useful progression of skills (e.g. starts with equipment,
| knife skills, etc.) and techniques, and then starts building up
| from there. e.g. you learn to make sauces before starting on
| full dishes, etc. But doing something like that is a pretty
| large commitment (and all of the recipes have to be scaled down
| to non-restaurant sizes).
|
| At one point in my early 30s I considered writing a cook book
| based on trying to teach my housemate to cook, starting with
| the assumptions that the person in question hadn't ever cooked
| and didn't own any reasonable cooking stuff, and trying to
| establish a baseline of recipes that could all be cooked from
| the same 20-ish ingredients that one could reasonably always
| have around.
|
| There are definitely recipe-based and intuition-based
| approaches to cooking, and while I think teaching intuition is
| difficult, learning a particular vocabulary of skills in a
| certain order can help.
| throwaway154 wrote:
| The basics never end. There is no strict vertical.
|
| When you stir-fry vegetables, salt the oil before adding the
| aromatics. That's basic. How many years was it until I figured
| that out? How many pro chefs have never figured that out?
| What's pro?
|
| What about mincing your meat with one cleaver and one chef's
| knife? Not two cleavers. Not two chefs knives? That's basic.
| For a certain type of mince. How many people figure that out?
| It's basic once you know it. I'd bet that isn't taught in a
| masterclass.
|
| There's no end to basics. There's a great chance your tomatoes
| don't come from the same vine as mine. Make it your own.
|
| The reverse side is food engineering. When you're controlling
| for consistent results to ensure every loaf of bread of today's
| batches of 100,000 loaves are identical to yesterday, or last
| year. That's another ball game, and perfecting today's 100,000
| loaves doesn't transfer much to making a pesto.
| an_aparallel wrote:
| 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!
| fuzztester wrote:
| It's equally or more the case that cooking more makes (for)
| better cooking videos ...
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| 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
| apienx wrote:
| Glad you found what suits your microbiome. Note that our
| species probably wouldn't have developed big brains without
| "cooking".
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| Sure, but as our intelligence now decreases
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37307064, we can try to
| find other ways to subsist
| mabbo wrote:
| 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 perfectly. (See the excellent video
| titled "Doesn't matter, still pizza").
|
| I'm a better cook for what I've learned watching him cook.
|
| [0] - https://m.youtube.com/@JKenjiLopezAlt
| wnolens wrote:
| Can't stand the mic picking up his chewing.
| veryfancy wrote:
| Really dig Kenji's low-stakes YouTube vids. He makes it look
| easy in a way that ends up actually being easy.
| annexrichmond wrote:
| It may have been Chef John who really popularized this first
| person angle
| veryfancy wrote:
| Chef John is a delight. Charming man, straightforward
| recipes.
| [deleted]
| x0x0 wrote:
| Kenji Lopez Alt really helped me learn how to cook. Much like
| software, when you read a cook book, there's normally all sorts
| of background knowledge required to understand how to make that
| recipe. Watching him do it conveys way more info than the
| written recipe. eg here's what that chop should look like,
| here's what the veggies should look like, here's how tolerant /
| not tolerant various pieces of the recipe are to changes, etc.
|
| If you think you'd like to cook, you should watch 20 or 30
| videos from his channel.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| 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.
| manishsharan wrote:
| His articles on SousVide cooking on SeriousEats have been
| very helpful to me. His writing style is accessible to
| beginners such as myself. And the results always beat
| restaurant foods in taste for similar meals.
| mabbo wrote:
| 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.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Read the intro section - it'll be maybe 30 minutes, and
| then just flip through and find recipes or topics that look
| interesting. It's a reference book. Check out the chili
| section, the weeknight chili might be a good fit. I've had
| the book since it came out and there's still whole sections
| I haven't read
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| 95% of what I know about cooking came from Kenji. I love the
| scientific approach he takes when explaining why things work.
| Camry wrote:
| To me, Food Wishes is definitely the peak of practical home
| cooking videos in the tradition of Jacque Pepin. I feel like
| Kenji et al. make recipes tailored to hobbyist and for
| entertainment/spectacle, while Chef John makes recipes for the
| regular joe.
| terribleperson wrote:
| Much of Kenji's Serious Eats era output was the results-at-
| any-cost hobbyist stuff, but he's gotten much less obsessed
| with perfection since then. Even among the Serious Eats/Food
| Lab recipes there are some very practical recipes, like the
| Foolproof Pan Pizza and any of the 'weeknight' dishes in the
| Food Lab.
|
| I've cooked several Chef John recipes to great results (real
| aioli, peanut butter fudge, beef stroganoff), but Kenji's
| decision to always provide weight measurements makes cooking
| easier for me.
| dagw wrote:
| While I'm a huge fan of J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and Serious Eats is
| my go to web site before cooking just about anything, nothing
| I've seen before or since beats Alton Brown and Good Eats when
| it comes to video based cooking education.
| tengbretson wrote:
| Good Eats sets the standard for educational cooking content,
| but actually implementing the recipes Alton demonstrates
| usually results in a nearly day-long cooking project.
| Spivak wrote:
| 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.
| episteme wrote:
| 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.
| Spivak wrote:
| 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.
| xormapmap wrote:
| > 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?
| Spivak wrote:
| 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?
|
| * 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.
|
| * Rice is atomic, Uncle Ben's isn't. Same rule as ranch
| when it's used in a larger dish.
|
| * 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.
|
| 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.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| 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...
| corinroyal wrote:
| 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.
| nsvd wrote:
| Cooking one meal should not take all day in most cases. I
| cook myself dinner every night and it usually takes an
| hour or two, plus clean-up time.
| dagw wrote:
| Cooking takes exactly as long as you want it to. While I
| do sometimes love spending all day in the kitchen when
| the mood takes me, I can equally turn out a decent in
| dish in less than 30 minutes on my own, including all
| prep time.
| tkahnoski wrote:
| I was "A man, a can and a plan" cook prior to being
| introduced to Good Eats videos.
|
| Particularly since Alton delves straight into the scientific
| 'why' things are happening. I don't remember exact recipes
| well, but processes and how things work I can hold well so
| his explanation of what's happening with the mallard reaction
| or gluten in bread or any number of topics have made it
| possible for me to execute very simple meals very well.
|
| In hindsight, most other cooking shows at the time were
| basically just food porn. Watch me make this simple recipe,
| trust me it's easy in 30 minutes! (Ignore prep instructions,
| ignore how to pick produce, ignore any explanation of why
| you're doing what you're doing).
| bonniemuffin wrote:
| His kids book "Every night is pizza night" is also great. I've
| read several "get your kid to try new foods" books to my child,
| but that one actually got her excited to try red beans and
| tagine and dumplings and green pozole soup, and now those are
| all foods she will happily ask for!
| veryfancy wrote:
| Same for my two sons. Wonderful book.
| amykhar wrote:
| He also taught me something pretty critical - you don't need a
| huge fancy kitchen to execute great food. Most of the work he
| does happens on a large cutting board, the sink, or the stove.
| When I moved into my current place with a tiny kitchen, I
| wasn't nearly as freaked out about it. I knew I would be able
| to work in it just fine.
| cuttysnark wrote:
| I was humbled and inspired by the creativity and
| resourcefulness of some prison inmates. There's a Youtube
| channel[0] where they recreate "dishes" that can only be
| sourced from the commissary or leftovers from a provided
| meal. Ones I saw included: Laffy Taffy, ice cream and a
| breakfast burrito. I now look at my small kitchen in a
| different light.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1nWOkoNQWM
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| I love watching cooking videos. It's my number one go to, when I
| want to turn off my brain completely. But I never try to
| replicate recipes. I just pick up ideas.
|
| 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.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Usually, I will take a couple different recipes for the same
| dish and mix-and-match things I like from them to arrive at an
| approximation of the same result.
| singingwolfboy wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230904111038/https://www.nytim...
| airwejtilawj wrote:
| [flagged]
| mongol wrote:
| I like the Chain Baker. He has a quite scientific approach, for
| example he bakes the same bread with salt before yeast, yeast
| before salt, and two other variations, to explore the difference
| it makes. In the next video he tries something else in four
| variations. Over time you learn what matters and not.
| jankoprowski wrote:
| I recommend wonderful book "Cooking for geeks" [0] One of many
| things I learn from this book is physical and chemical processes
| ruling the cooking :)
|
| [0] - https://www.amazon.com/Cooking-Geeks-Science-Great-
| Cooks/dp/...
| psukhedelos wrote:
| 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 so I'm able to reduce dirtying extra
| dishes and aim to have minimal clean up afterwards. Ideally the
| clean up of the cooking is essentially done by the time food is
| being served.
|
| I'm half serious and half amused at the idea of a cooking
| competition style show where participants must plate up, serve
| and then scrub.
| sublinear wrote:
| > Ideally the clean up of the cooking is essentially done by
| the time food is being served.
|
| Yes. Watch chef Jean-Pierre. I wouldn't say he minimizes the
| clean up, but he cleans as he goes and gives tips and general
| remarks on the overall process beyond just the recipe.
| Groxx wrote:
| There are a fair number of "one pan" (pot/bowl/etc) recipes out
| there for this specific purpose, definitely try that search
| term :) though I haven't seen much of anything that includes
| cleanup explicitly. Only rare exceptions.
|
| And yeah, number of dishes matters to me too, much of the time.
| Most of the stuff I make can be done with one, rarely two, and
| that's about where I draw the line.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| Sorted Food do a tonne of "mid-week" recipes and they actually
| sell an app that lets you plan your weeks meals with recipes
| that reuse ingredients, so they very much cover the "minimise
| total effort" side of cooking.
| clan wrote:
| We all have our own journey. But one of the biggest
| improvements in enjoying to cook was to learn not to clean up
| after. It was a revelation to me and the big enabler which
| moved cooking from a chore to something I appreciate.
|
| Do not clean up after - clean during!
|
| Maybe annoying at first but it quickly turn into a habit
|
| There is plenty of time (as a home cook!) during prep to clean
| the knives, bowls boards etc. What will seem like a huge
| mountain if left to linger will be a breeze when you learn to
| keep your station clean. And you never see this very simple
| fact of life in most videos.
|
| I really used to optimize how few bowls etc. I would use as I
| hated the dishes afterwards. But quickly cleaning a bowl after
| use only take seconds and I no longer dread reaching for
| another if it ease my process.
|
| This usually only leaves a pan and maybe a pot to clean when
| done eating. Not too bad even though I do them by hand as I am
| particular with what goes into the dishwasher
|
| That. And doing mis en place rather than running head first
| into it. Absolute key lessons for me.
|
| Sparks joy ;-)
|
| EDIT: And if you stack things in the sink we cannot be friends.
| Sorry. Stack them elsewhere and keep them low.
| qingcharles wrote:
| This x100. I actually like cleaning up _while_ cooking
| because it uses up the dead-time while waiting for something
| to cook, where I would normally let my ADHD brain take me out
| of the kitchen to do something else and then burn everything.
| atomicfiredoll wrote:
| There are one pot or instapot/crock pot/rice cooker recipes
| that can help, but a lot of those still require some prep
| work. I 100% agree here, though. The key, especially in a
| small space, is to keep things clean as you work.
|
| But, this also means managing sub-tasks through the day, like
| making sure clean items get pulled out of the dishwasher when
| it's done so that, to your point, things don't stack up in
| the sink through the day. There's nothing worse than trying
| to quickly throw a meal together and realizing the tool you
| need is at the bottom of the sink under a stack or pile.
| Things quickly turn to yak shaving.
|
| Cooking and cleaning go hand and hand in my mind. I don't
| always have everything clean when I'm done cooking, but I'm
| proud when I'm able leave things at a good stopping point.
| That said, go eat the food you just cooked while it's hot. I
| think it can be difficult for people new to cooking to
| balance all these things, it takes practice. As you get a
| better sense of timing when things will be ready, you find
| time to clean something. [The more clean and _organized_ your
| workspace is, the easier meals come together.]
| soared wrote:
| Another commenter mention one pan and sheet pan dinner - those
| are great. Similarly crock pot, Dutch oven, etc.
|
| But much closer to what you're looking for - I cannot for the
| life of me find the website, I thought it was owned by NYT, but
| all of the recipes are ~5 ingredients max. It negates tons of
| pans/etc when you only cook/cut a couple things.
| bkovacev wrote:
| Here's a few more channels that I personally enjoy and recommend:
|
| - Ethan Chlebowski https://www.youtube.com/@EthanChlebowski
|
| - Adam Ragusea https://www.youtube.com/@aragusea
|
| I tried numerous recipes from both and learned quite a bit about
| the technique as well.
| senkora wrote:
| I also like Brian Lagerstrom, who has a similar style to them:
| https://youtube.com/@BrianLagerstrom?feature=shared
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/@CharlieAndersonCooking is also a good
| one, and https://www.youtube.com/@FrenchGuyCooking is highly
| entertaining and sometimes is educational.
| throw0101a wrote:
| Jack Ovens is pretty decent (has a playlist of meal prep
| stuff):
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/@ChefJackOvens
| jpmoral wrote:
| I don't know about "better" but I do know that without the
| Internet I wouldn't have tried at all.
|
| Edit: after posting this I realised that video doesn't
| necessarily mean online but those don't have the same reach.
| twelve40 wrote:
| I agree... people like to complain how Google is overrun with
| recipe spam, but I actually tried a bunch of stuff from
| whatever Google pointed me to,liked it, and now do a bunch of
| cooking I wouldn't have done otherwise.
| myshpa wrote:
| Cooking makes us better cooks.
|
| Edit: I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I
| understand.
| BookhouseGames wrote:
| Agreed. Practice at something makes us better at the thing.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _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":
|
| * https://jamesclear.com/deliberate-practice-theory
| r0b1n wrote:
| 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
| your ways, get used to doing the same mistakes all over, etc.
| myshpa wrote:
| 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.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| It's easy to imagine people getting worse over time. I
| see it regularly.
|
| People don't do blind taste tests when they cook. They
| cook something and compare it to their previous memory.
| Then they slowly diverge and enter some crazy part of the
| space where no one should be cooking an ingredient that
| way. There's no notion of something tasting right on its
| own. You need to compare it against a better version of
| that dish.
|
| It's easy for two people to cook exactly the same dish,
| following the same recipe, both of them to think it came
| out great, and then when they taste each other's to
| discover that one is dramatically better.
| r0b1n wrote:
| "Better" is very one-dimensional, but cooking isn't. You
| can get worse at taste but better at health. Better at
| health and taste but worse at time consumption. Better at
| price but worse at hygiene. Many things are possible, but
| without an audience or at least your own critical
| acclaim, you cannot prioritize.
|
| And, of course, "there is no accounting for taste"
| meaning that some of the aforementioned dimensions are
| very subjective.
| have_faith wrote:
| Sure, but there's a world of difference between doing something
| and practicing it.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Disagree. I'm crap no matter how much I cook and I even cook
| some things worse than I used to.
| myshpa wrote:
| What helped me when learning to cook vegan was focusing on
| the basics.
|
| I studied a few recipes (such as Indian curry) and identified
| the fundamental ingredients (onions, garlic, ginger,
| tomatoes, spices, and protein), creating a list of non-basic
| spices and other potential ingredients.
|
| I mastered the process of this basic recipe: browning the
| onions with cumin and bay leaf, no salt, adding garlic and
| the remaining spices, introducing tomatoes with salt, then
| adding vegetable stock and protein, and cooking until
| finished.
|
| From there, I began experimenting with additional spices,
| ingredients, vegetables (almost anything works), and proteins
| (beans, lentils, peas, etc.)
|
| Always stick to the basics. Many recipes out there are
| needlessly complex. After all, you can make almost anything
| taste delicious with just onions, fat, salt, and pepper.
|
| I'd recommend the book 'Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat' - I've only
| skimmed it, but it seems to ring true.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The internet is amazing! I never thought I'd meet another
| person who cooks vegans!
| myshpa wrote:
| :))
| selimthegrim wrote:
| One of the fundamental parts of curry making is cooking the
| spices until the oil separates - that is until all the
| water boils off, and the tomato skins blacken. This is
| usually not explained terribly well in written recipes.
| myshpa wrote:
| Yeah, I've seen the step, but decided to skip that to
| save time. Seems like I'll have to try that anyway. Thank
| you.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Yes, please do - roasting the spices in oil in a water-
| poor environment in the pan is important to the final
| flavor.
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