
Ask HN: How can I learn to cook for myself without making decisions? - awaythrowaway
I&#x27;m roughly halfway through university and try not to think too much about food to make more time for hacking. However, perhaps I should learn to consume food that isn&#x27;t prepared for me and isn&#x27;t Soylent at some point. I have absolutely no direction: no idea which ingredients I should buy, no idea which recipes I should make, no idea how I should make these decisions, and overall pretty much zero cooking experience.<p>I&#x27;m fully prepared cook algorithmically and fully deterministically if it can grant me the eating autonomy I&#x27;d like while keeping decision-making and time expenditure to a minimum.
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montrose
Learn to make rice and beans. The rice part is set and forget if you have a
rice cooker or buy microwaveable rice. The beans part requires a little
learning, but very little. You fry onions, then toss in a can of beans and a
bouillon cube. The only learning involved is how to chop the onions and how
long to fry them first.

How I chop an onion: Cut off the top and bottom. Cut the onion in half across
the top (or bottom). Peel each half. Put each half flat side down and make a
grid of cuts. It's worth investing in a good sharp cooking knife.

Many grocery stores sell frozen chopped onions. If you can find these, you may
as well start with them.

Start by frying the onions in olive oil for 10 min at medium heat.

Rice and beans is about as good as it gets in nutrition/cost. Once you master
the basics, there are a lot of options to add variety. And it's the sort of
thing you can invite friends over for and it will seem like an actual meal.

~~~
dragonwriter
> How I chop an onion: Cut off the top and bottom. Cut the onion in half
> across the top (or bottom). Peel each half. Put each half flat side down and
> make a grid of cuts. It's worth investing in a good sharp cooking knife.

It's a lot easier to cut in half from bottom to top, then cut the tops off
both halves, then make the grid starting with lengthwise cuts almost to the
root, then discard the root after cutting.

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0xBA5ED
I experimented with several liquid meals including Soylent for awhile and
couldn't find one that did it for me. Now I've been eating MealSquares for a
month and it's great. Extremely easy, zero thought, and I feel fantastic. My
mind is sharper (drastic difference, actually) and I have steady energy all
day. Only thing I know for sure that it's missing is Omega-3s, which you can
get easily from canned salmon.

I realize that doesn't directly answer your question, but I think the fact of
the matter is, in order to maintain a high-quality diet the old fashioned way,
it simply requires a good deal of effort and planning.

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tenken
Food algorithms are called "recipes". You follow the steps, and the food gets
made.

Look at /r/cheapmeals or /r/slowcooking for ideas of simple dishes.

... If you happen to be asking "what do I like to eat, or what can I cook that
I know I'll like once I've prepared it rather than buying pre-made" .... Well
I'm sorry there's no substitute for experience and knowing ones own tastes --
this is learned through experimentation and decision-making and time
expenditure; aka trail and error.

Jump in the pool, and start swimming.

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elmerfud
I would suggest the book Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday
Cooking by Michael Ruhlman. This isn't a straight up recipe book by instead
tries to tell you ingredients go together to make different things. This
should give you the basic algorithms for cooking from a more engineering
mindset.

