
The Why of Cooking (2017) - Tomte
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/04/the-why-of-cooking-samin-nosrat/523923/?single_page=true
======
spodek
I spent too much of my life learning to do things by following rules, up to
and including a PhD and an MBA. I've since learned to love learning by doing
and diving in.

Food is probably the best success in that area, combined with the observation
that constraints breed creativity. My cooking gets high reviews (from friends,
not critics [http://joshuaspodek.com/food-world-
reviews](http://joshuaspodek.com/food-world-reviews)) and has inspired my
passion and podcast on leadership and the environment
[http://joshuaspodek.com/podcast](http://joshuaspodek.com/podcast).

Two constraints revolutionized my cooking:

\- to avoid food packaging

\- to avoid food where fiber has been removed

Joining a CSA/farm share helped a lot too, by forcing a deluge of new produce
on me that I had to figure out what to do with. I guess a third constraint was
not to allow any food to go to waste.

The three constraints force me to cook almost entirely from fresh vegetables,
fresh fruit, and bulk legumes, nuts, grains, and seeds (filling bags I bring
with me to the bulk food store).

My diet became bland when I stopped packaged food since I didn't know what to
do and mostly steamed vegetables or fried them with garlic and onions -- not
bad once in a while but not exclusively. I don't like bland and do like
delicious (I'm funny that way), so I experimented and learned how to combine
flavors and textures to my tastes.

Now my food is more delicious than ever. It's also cheaper, more convenient,
and more social (I've met the farmers and visit their farm annually, and I
invite people to dinner more than ever, plus I get invited to cook for
friends' dinner parties). I _love_ finding new local produce and the change of
seasons bringing foods I haven't had for a year. I also pollute less -- I last
threw out my landfill garbage in June.

If you've read this far and care for advice, I advise just forcing yourself to
cook from scratch for six months, no exceptions. Your diet will be boring and
bland for a few months, but by a year, you'll find your diet more delicious
than ever. At least that worked for me. My blog posts a lot about avoiding
food packaging [http://joshuaspodek.com/js_blogseries/avoiding-food-
packagin...](http://joshuaspodek.com/js_blogseries/avoiding-food-packaging)
and such if you click around.

Oh, and buy a pressure cooker.

~~~
jbob2000
You make a lot of grand statements there without backing anything up. If it
was so convenient and cheap to cook this way, then everyone would be doing it.

I have tried and tried and tried to cook like you suggest. I end up wasting
food as it goes bad before I can use it. I have a small apartment and ended up
going to the grocery store every 2 days to restock. Some ingredients aren't
sold in quantities appropriate for 1-2 people, so things go stale or expire
before they get fully used. I wasted way more food attempting to change my
food practices than I did maintaining the way I was raised.

I'm skeptical about farm shares, I don't think it scales. If it became more
popular, you'd had everyone hopping in their cars every weekend and driving
out to a farm. Much more efficient to load everything on 1 transport truck
than to have a thousand cars on the road just for picking up produce. And in
winter climates, you aren't growing anything in the ground, so this produce is
being shipped in to the farm anyways, just ship it to the grocery stores. Or
it's being grown indoors, which requires increased energy usage (might be less
energy intensive to ship veggies in on a truck than to grow them indoors?).

Our modern food system, for all of its faults, is the only thing that _works
for everybody_. Poor people? Disabled people? Car-less people? Dietary
restrictions? All covered. Your diet and way of living works for wealthy,
healthy people with time on their hands. It's not realistic at all.

~~~
zaphod4prez
I have to say that your first statement seems totally ridiculous...do you
really think that homo sapiens _is_ homo economicus?? People are not rational
optimizers, they're mammals. I'm sure I'm being a bit uncharitable to your
claim here but your comment makes you sound like you actually are the 'older,
wiser' economist in that old joke: "Two economists, one young and one old, are
walking to lunch. The young economist looks down and sees a $20 bill on the
street and says, 'Hey, look a twenty-dollar bill!' Without even looking, his
older and wiser colleague replies, 'Nonsense. If there had been a twenty-
dollar lying on the street, someone would have already picked it up by now.'"

As to your second paragraph...have you considered the possibility that you,
specifically, didn't do a good job of cooking for yourself and that the fact
that you failed to cook this way could be, well, _your_ failure (to plan or
execute or whatever), rather than a global failure of the idea "cook for
yourself and use fresh produce"?

As for farm shares, many/most CSAs deliver, either to the home or to a central
location in town (often a local co-op). So it is, in fact just one delivery
truck driving down the highway.

And to your final paragraph, I simply say that that is an utter failure of
imagination. At the moment, it's absolutely true that participating in this
kind of eating & cooking demands some flexibility of schedule. Mostly,
wealthier people are the ones who eat this way. Now, why is that the case?
Well, our entire food production and distribution system is built around a
different model. Deviating from that model, given the current state of the
system, is expensive. That doesn't mean that people with the power and
resources to do so shouldn't actively work towards changing the system into
somethign more sustainable and accessible for all. In fact, in NYC there is an
incredible farmer's market (called "greenmarket"), which runs in several poor
neighborhoods and accepts food stamps, and it's life-changing for many people.
I think that if you spoke to a few of the people who shop there, you'd never
be as offhandedly dismissive of "eat fresh produce & cook for yourself" as you
are here.

~~~
jbob2000
> People are not rational optimizers, they're mammals

True, but people DO spend a lot of time optimizing their food; dieting is a
huge trend.

> have you considered the possibility that you, specifically, didn't do a good
> job of cooking for yourself

Yes, I admitted as much. My point was that it's really hard to "cook for
yourself and use fresh produce". There's nothing wrong with the idea, it's
simple and noble, but the practical application of it is very challenging.

> As for farm shares, many/most CSAs deliver, either to the home or to a
> central location in town (often a local co-op). So it is, in fact just one
> delivery truck driving down the highway.

So how is that any different than what grocery stores do?

------
jiehong
The fact is that not all "why"s are known in cooking yet, and the combination
of ingredients is so varied that it's not always easy to go from a myth to a
reasonable explanation.

Although, lots of research has greatly improved, and I warmly recommend you to
read “Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking” (2011).

Then, for techniques, I strongly recommend following a book designed for chefs
when they learn. For example, in French, I recommend “La Cuisine de Référence”
(2015) by Michel Maincent that teaches you how to select ingredients, cut
them, to various traditional techniques and how to correct them if you fail,
and why you failed.

~~~
mikekchar
One of my favourite aha moments: Back when I was much younger virtually every
cookbook said you should add olive oil to pasta cooking water. I could never
figure out why. Later people pretty much poo-pooed the practice saying that it
was some old wives tale about stopping the pot from boiling over or some such
thing.

Fast forward many years and I was trying to work on a bolognese sauce. My wife
likes meat/tomato sauces on spaghetti. I think it's weird because long pasta
like that should be with an oil/cream based sauce. Anyway, I figured it would
make the dish much better if I somehow coated the spaghetti with olive oil and
then spooned the meat sauce on top. But how to easily coat the spaghetti with
olive oil? I figured it would be easiest to float a tablespoon of olive oil on
the pasta water and then draw the spaghetti through it as I took it out of the
water. And then I realised what I was doing :-) Still not sure if that's why
people suggested it oh so many years ago, but it works a treat!

~~~
jiehong
> I could never figure out why.

Pasta cooking in boiling water has a tendency to over boil as the flour is
very good at making stable foam that will rise in your pot.

The oil acts as a anti-foaming agent[1] here[2].

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defoamer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defoamer)
[2]:
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/jctb.2804301...](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/jctb.280430105)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Once it's at a boil, remove the lid. Problems (mostly) solved?

~~~
sizzzzlerz
That, and turn down the heat.

------
silveroriole
“While cooking is for many a hobby, it is also a thing that nearly everyone
has to do, usually when time is short.“ If only this wasn’t the case. This is
always unpopular whenever I say it, but we no longer expect everyone to sew
their own clothes or bake their own bread - why do we still demand that
everyone cook for themselves (and, often, that they enjoy it too)? As this
article demonstrates, the barrier for even understanding what you’re doing,
rather than rote instruction following, is pretty high. I wish we could move
away from every individual cooking for themselves and towards socially
acceptable communal kitchens or something.

I mean, sure, this is mainly motivated by the fact that I hate cooking. But it
also just makes logical sense to me as a way to organise the universal human
need for food, like we’ve done for other universal human needs.

~~~
sureaboutthis
You can cook a meal of almost any kind in 30 minutes or less. Your comparison
to sewing clothes is wrong cause it usually takes days, or many hours, to do
such a thing. Baking bread? I do it almost every day...from scratch...no bread
maker.

>this is mainly motivated by the fact that I hate cooking

And there you go. I would add that you lack cooking knowledge and ability. If
you knew how, you wouldn't say such things. I make breakfast every morning and
dinner every night. I make lunch when I'm home. It isn't hard.

~~~
majewsky
> You can cook a meal of almost any kind in 30 minutes or less.

So the recipe magically chooses itself?

So the food magically appears in your fridge?

So the dishes magically wash themselves afterwards?

So the left-over ingredients magically use themselves up?

I really hate when people downplay the time cost involved in food preparation
by focussing on only one step of the procedure.

~~~
sureaboutthis
When you cook at home, you decide what you want to cook and find a recipe.
From there on out, you have the recipe. Just like restaurants don't magically
appear when you decide you want a hamburger. You must choose one.

In the time it takes you to go to a restaurant, or order online, I can cook a
meal for four at half the price you paid.

I hate when people downplay the time and cost involved in eating out as if
there is none.

Last night, I made a two prime, strip steaks with red potato chips and a side
salad. It took me less than 30 minutes. Admittedly, the salad came from a bag
my wife bought on the way home cause I forgot to buy vegetables.

Most of that time was waiting for things to heat up. A few minutes for the
pan. Longer for the oven for the potatoes.

This morning we had eggs with melted cheddar, english muffin and bacon. I
bought the muffins cause it's harder to make than regular sourdough bread I
bake. It took me 10 minutes not including opening up the packages and getting
things out of the fridge.

~~~
majewsky
The time-saving alternative to cooking is not eating out (that's insanely
expensive if it becomes the norm). The alternative is foods that scale well. I
can buy a pack of bread, a pack of cheese and a pack of sausage in 3-4
minutes, and then use that for a week or so to make sandwiches. Preparation
time will be 2 minutes per sandwich.

Eating sandwiches may be boring, but it is very time-efficient.

------
croon
> Any one of these recipes offers a fix under specific conditions, but after
> cooking through enough of them, those isolated recommendations can congeal
> into a realization

> The downside of learning to cook primarily through recipes, then, is that
> these small eurekas—which, once hit upon, are instantly applicable to nearly
> any other dish one prepares—are most often arrived at via triangulation.
> It’s like trying to learn a language only by copying down others’ sentences,
> instead of learning the grammar and vocabulary needed to put to paper lines
> of one’s own.

Is that necessarily bad?

I can totally buy individual differences in how people take to new
information, but I've always had best results with applied learning, and later
reading or realizing the rules. It's how we all learned to speak, and it's how
I later learned this language.

I'm sure that it's most efficient for a machine to learn the game of football
by just parsing all the rules, but for a human I imagine it's much harder to
retain those rules without having played some touch football in the park or
watched games as a kid to build a model on which to apply those rules.

~~~
coldtea
> The downside of learning to cook primarily through recipes, then, is that
> these small eurekas—which, once hit upon, are instantly applicable to nearly
> any other dish one prepares—are most often arrived at via triangulation.
> It’s like trying to learn a language only by copying down others’ sentences,
> instead of learning the grammar and vocabulary needed to put to paper lines
> of one’s own.

So, exactly like how people learn the language they speak best -- their native
one...

------
PMan74
> But recipes, for all their precision and completeness, are poor teachers.
> They tell you what to do, but they rarely tell you why to do it.

This drives me crazy about recipes e.g. adding vinegar to poaching water is
recommended in lots of _perfect_ poached eggs guides but few explain why
(makes the whites firm even faster to prevent them from dispersing in the
water). It's really 'teach a man to fish' kind of stuff, knowing the why gives
more flexibility.

~~~
dalore
That's why I loved cookings shows like Good Eats by Alton Brown or ones with
Heston Blumenthal. They approach cooking from a more scientific approach in
that they explain the why (and with Good Eats often a funny demonstration).

And with the knowing why things are done, you can use that to experiment a bit
more yourself.

~~~
sizzzzlerz
I loved Good Eats and was devastated when they canceled it. Brown actually
teaches the why to his recipes, not just the how and what. I probably built my
cooking kits up from things he recommended and used during each show.

~~~
bkjelden
He is apparently working on a reboot - I think it's due out sometime this year
or early next year.

------
mark_l_watson
Please pardon my mentioning my hobby web app
[http://cookingspace.com](http://cookingspace.com) but I do something useful:
using 100K public domain recipes, I calculated the associations between
ingredients in recipes and use this to suggest additional ingredients for a
recipe.

------
mbaye
> It’s a shame that the standard way of learning how to cook is by following
> recipes.

It isn't, not where I'm from. The standard way of learning how to cook in
Poland is by watching your parents/grandparents do it.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Same here. I'm from England. But I'm also 62, I suspect that people closer to
the average age of HN commenters and in the US probably have a different
experience.

------
tomcooks
> It’s a shame that the standard way of learning how to cook is by following
> recipe

[Cooking for
enginneers]([http://www.cookingforengineers.com/](http://www.cookingforengineers.com/))
offers a nice system to learn how to cook

------
dsr_
"I tried to read it [On Food and Cooking] straight through, and stopped
dejectedly in the middle of a history of dairy—I think around where McGee
describes the first time humans turned water-buffalo milk into mozzarella."

It's holding my teenage son's interest. McGee wrote a good textbook, not a
novel. You have to want to understand the topic and be willing to put in some
work, to stick with it.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
This suggests that the search for alternative/substitute/new
ingredients/recipes isn't a brute force search. Not sure how much I believe
that.

The idea of applying principles to cooking didn't work for me, even though it
seemed like a reasonable approach to my 10 year old mind. I presume this
happens to everyone to some extent, and that's why we have this recipe
culture, we have it because it works.

------
sorenn111
Many forget that cooking (when our ancestors first figured out fire) is one of
the key factors in our species becoming what it is today.

It's a shame this ancient ritual is not fully appreciated for what it truly
does for society.

------
parliament32
I'm curious about the whole "avoid food packaging" section.

For things like vegetables, sure, but if you need to buy a steak or chicken
breast you... just stick them in your pocket? How does that work exactly?

------
PunchTornado
I so want to learn to cook good food, but it is so hard to start alone.

Meanwhile an evening of sushi workshop in london costs 80£ and it is fully
booked till August.

~~~
dgacmu
I haven't read "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" as recommended in the article, but I
swear by:

Julia Child, "the way to cook"

Jeff Potter, "Cooking for geeks"

Kenji lopez-alt's "the food lab"

The author does compare to most of these, so the recommendation seems solid.

~~~
Tomte
I was underwhelmed by "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat". Good information, great
presentation, but not up there with the very best books, IMO.

I like Ruhlman's "Twenty", maybe followed by "Ratio".

"How to Cook without a Book" by Anderson is great, although you probably
needwhole rooms in your house for food storage if you took her "what you
should have in your pantry" serious.

My most used cookbook is the one my mother gave me and all my relatives when
we were living alone for the first time. It's the book she uses at school.
It's for special-needs children, so extremely basic and easy, with many, many
quirky illustrations.

But it has everything important. Bechamel? Sure. Choux pastry? Yes. But also
how to cook potatoes or eggs.

The only infuriating thing in this book is that the index is worse than
useless. I know the important recipes' page numbers by heart.

~~~
twic
What's the name of that last cookbook?

~~~
Tomte
It's a German one, "Nahrungszubereitung Schritt für Schritt".

------
Tomte
Very important book when you're interested in the details: McGee, On Food and
Cooking.

~~~
dagw
Although be 'warned' that On Food and Cooking spends a lot of time on the
history and anthropology of food and cooking. So if all you're primarily
interested in are the details that you can apply to your day to day cooking
then you'll probably consider much of the book 'pointless' filler.

------
perlpimp
This is awesome. Similar logic applies to academic teaching/learning.

