- Jan 2, 2006
- 10,455
- 35
- 91
I'm pretty clueless when it comes to cooking and I also find that I have zero idea *why* I'm doing what I'm doing when I just blindly follow recipes.
For instance... I don't know why I'm prepping things the way the recipe calls for (dicing/chopping/mincing/etc).
I don't know why I'm using certain ingredients (ex. what's the point of celery? Why am I sweating onions?)
I have a friend who's a chef and he can just look at the ingredients available in the fridge and cupboard and whip something up seemingly out of nowhere. It won't necessarily be something he's made before. He'll take an unfamiliar ingredient, look at it, poke it, and then be able to *reason* through the best way to cook it. (ex. braising vs. roasting by just looking at the tissue composition of a piece of meat and setting the correct temperature based on at what temperature certain tissues start to denature, when they start to overcook and lose moisture, how fast all these changes happen, etc).
He can also taste a bunch of ingredients and mix them together so they're perfect - he knows what happens when he mixes sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami together and how to play around with and create different textures and mouthfeels of ingredients to make something pleasing.
He cooks well not necessarily because he's got a massive dictionary of recipes in this head, but because he has a deep understanding of what's going on at a deeper level.
My goal isn't to learn recipes. I want a deeper understanding so that no matter where I am, no matter what ingredients I have, and no matter what cooking instruments I have, I can strategically reason through the cooking process to make something amazing.
For instance... I don't know why I'm prepping things the way the recipe calls for (dicing/chopping/mincing/etc).
I don't know why I'm using certain ingredients (ex. what's the point of celery? Why am I sweating onions?)
I have a friend who's a chef and he can just look at the ingredients available in the fridge and cupboard and whip something up seemingly out of nowhere. It won't necessarily be something he's made before. He'll take an unfamiliar ingredient, look at it, poke it, and then be able to *reason* through the best way to cook it. (ex. braising vs. roasting by just looking at the tissue composition of a piece of meat and setting the correct temperature based on at what temperature certain tissues start to denature, when they start to overcook and lose moisture, how fast all these changes happen, etc).
He can also taste a bunch of ingredients and mix them together so they're perfect - he knows what happens when he mixes sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami together and how to play around with and create different textures and mouthfeels of ingredients to make something pleasing.
He cooks well not necessarily because he's got a massive dictionary of recipes in this head, but because he has a deep understanding of what's going on at a deeper level.
My goal isn't to learn recipes. I want a deeper understanding so that no matter where I am, no matter what ingredients I have, and no matter what cooking instruments I have, I can strategically reason through the cooking process to make something amazing.
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