I got into cooking during lockdown, and have managed to get surprisingly good at it, to the point where if you asked me to make a meal of your choosing I could probably make it without looking up a recipe. It’s actually unbelievably simple to make even complex stuff, basically using all the same rules you apply at work:
- Use the right tools for the job
- Plan it out first, do your prep and the actual work is simple
- A simple dish will take much longer than you think
- RTFM. Many sauces and dishes from classic cooking are basically a mixture of a small handful of base ingredients/techniques, and they’ve been written down for decades.
- Once you have the basics down, you can basically make it up as you go. You’ll make amazing meals, and you’ll never be able to replicate it again because you eyeballed it or cooked it in a way that made sense at the time. You say you’ll document it well, but deep down, you know you won’t.
- Nothing is original, everything is stolen. Adapt recipes you see, look at ingredients of sauces and sachets you buy/use, etc.
- You can be a solid hobbyist, but against a pro that does this shit all day every day, you don’t know a fucking thing. You’re also probably not going to replicate what they can do in a professional setting while at home unless you’ve got money.
“RTFM” My irritation is that most recipes make a huge amount of assumptions - at least as many as code that assumes a certain version of library. You can get recipes that say things as vague as “prepare the chicken” and aren’t at all clear what they mean, unless you’ve seen someone do it first, but it’s published in a book like you should just know. I hate that. I also frequently see quantities like “1 can” which just drives me insane as though that’s a standard unit.
There’s also plenty of cooking specific jargon, so densely packed that beginners might spend the majority of the recipe looking up what the terms mean. “Chop” parsley - how finely? “Mix the ingredients” how long? What the fuck is Golden Brown actually?
Golden brown is however seared you like it, as long as it’s cooked, and there’s no pink. Cooking is not a science, unlike programming. Personally, I like a good crusty sear.
As someone who loves cooking but doesn’t have a dishwasher: it is the cleanup afterwards that kills me. Especially if I don’t do it immediately.
With certain things, you can clean as you go, but sometimes I need to tend to something and I end up fucking it up because I’m running around the kitchen trying to wash out the pan I just used while something else is burning.
