Do you like to cook? If yes, why? If not, why not?

[Anaamika]

@pulykamell

Just boil it and strain it like pasta. You can’t screw it up. (And it’s a trick I first learned from a South Asian restaurant.) But rice cooker works, too.

I might try, but probably not. I have tried so many times and all it means is I ruin rice. I love my cooker.

I don’t know if there really is a good starting point. Sometimes I don’t add any. Sometimes I add a lot. It really all is “to taste.” Start with less than you think and keep adding and tasting until it tastes right for your preferences. I personally have no idea how much additional salt I add when I make a stew, for instance. I just add about a half-teaspoon to teaspoon at a time (depending on the quantity of stew), and just taste until it’s just right to me. This applies to salting to taste at the end, before serving. While cooking, if it’s something like a stew, I way undersalt as the liquid evaporation concentrates the salinity of the solution as it cooks. So that’s where experience and knowledge comes in.

I mean things like stir-frying or pan-frying a pile of okra, Indian style. Can’t the book at least give me an idea?

(Don’t get me started on Indian cookbooks! See, India was occupied by the British so most books are written such, and everything is in metric measurements, eggplants are called aubergines, zucchini are called courgettes, corn starch is called corn flour, cream of wheat is called semolina, all the spices have different names, and you need access to the Internet just to understand Madhur Jaffrey’s (otherwise fabulous) cookbook. )

[Czarcasm]

I love to cook, but I hate recipes. Just stick me in the kitchen and I’ll fix something edible, every time.

[Inner_Stickler]

@Anaamika

I might try, but probably not. I have tried so many times and all it means is I ruin rice. I love my cooker.

I don’t see anything wrong with that. Technology is here to help us and if using a rice cooker gets you perfect rice, what’s the problem? I’d buy a rice cooker in a second if I had the space to store it when it’s not in use.

[wonky]

@Anaamika

I mean things like stir-frying or pan-frying a pile of okra, Indian style. Can’t the book at least give me an idea?

For savory dishes, try a starting point like “1/8 of a tsp per serving” and see if that works. (I think that’s low enough to avoid oversalting. Someone correct me if that’s just too high a starting point.) The amount of salt will vary depending on the ingredients; certain things just won’t pop without a significant influx of salt. Other things are flavorful enough on their own, or bring some nice zing and acidity that compensates for salt. Ideally, salt is not a flavor but a flavor enhancer. It’s the thing that brings out complex flavors in other ingredients, so what the other ingredients are matters a lot.

But pick a starting point, see if that’s close/not close. Start low because you can’t really unsalt something.

[pulykamell]

@Inner_Stickler

I don’t see anything wrong with that. Technology is here to help us and if using a rice cooker gets you perfect rice, what’s the problem? I’d buy a rice cooker in a second if I had the space to store it when it’s not in use.

I was going to agree. There’s no need if you already have a cooking vessel you’re comfortable with and produces good results.

[pulykamell]

@Anaamika

I mean things like stir-frying or pan-frying a pile of okra, Indian style. Can’t the book at least give me an idea?

I would start with a sprinkle, taste, and go from there. What’s a sprinkle? I don’t know. Maybe 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon? It depends on how much you’re making, and it really does depend on your tastes. For my wife, “to taste” would mean about twice as much salt as I put in. For my mother, “to taste” is about half the salt I would put in. It really isn’t there to make it difficult–it’s really that “to taste” with salt especially is so variable. I never put salt quantities in my recipes unless absolutely pressed to because I have no clue how much I put in nor what your tastes are. Add to that it also depends on the ingredients you’re using and their salt levels. Are you using salted butter or unsalted butter? Are you using homemade chicken stock or low sodium chicken stock or are you using a can of broth or even a bouillon cube? All these kinds of things, plus personal taste, affect how much you should salt something.

Really, it’s not all that difficult once you learn to trust yourself. Just taste the food (you should be tasting as you’re cooking along anyway, IMHO, except when you have like raw chicken parts and stuff like that that need to reach a safe temperature.) If I know what a dish is supposed to taste like, I know other spices will often also require a bit of tweaking, but salt is the most obvious and important one to taste for. If a dish is bland, undersalting is often one of the main culprits. (And you anti-salt folk, please note I said “often” and I understand you disagree, but we’ll agree to disagree and leave it at that, please.)

[CookingWithGas]

I like to cook. I started my first summer away at college when I boarded in my fraternity house. No meal service over the summer, so I started to make the suburban quick meals my mom used to do–broiled pork chops and frozen peas. I said to myself that there has to be more than this, so I started looking at recipes, and doing a lot from scratch. I mean corn tortillas made from masa harina and refried beans starting with dried pintos. I lived in Ann Arbor, at the time a haven for nature children (haven’t been back for decades), so there were very good natural food stores and markets for a great selection of ingredients. Years later I got a gift certificate from my wife for classes at a French cooking school, and I also love Italian cooking. I once heard Garrison Keillor say, “If you can read, you can cook.” I have more cookbooks than I will ever get through but I can nail a recipe after one reading. And two failures

The better I cook, the better I eat. And cooking is a great way to bond with family and friends.

I am not a chef, because I’m not that creative. But I’d be a good line cook.

[eenerms]

I like to cook, but I don’t enjoy it as much as I used to. I used to cook professionally, and I had a passion then. Now not so much. But I am a good cook.

[MrDibble]

I love cooking.

I like that other people like my food, and I love exploring the wonders of various cuisines, or medieval cooking, and surprising people with it.

[Chefguy]

@Skald_the_Rhymer

Wikipedia says it’s mise en place, but I thank you mightily for introducing me to this word. You get the fourth piece of fairy cake.

Slippa da fingah. Another you can dazzle someone with is mirepoix (meer-uh-pwah), which, in its basic form, is a chopped mixture of carrots, celery and onion.

[Missy2U]

I love to cook but hate the prep work. So my husband does all the chopping, slicing, etc. - he also does the clean up. I’m really very lucky.

That being said, I can’t really cook the way I really love to anymore - we can’t afford it and there are only two of us and I don’t do leftovers, nor do I eat a lot. I can make maybe - MAYBE - one really nice meal a week. The rest of the week we kind of graze.

It was a lot more fun when we were both working versus just me, I was getting my old salary, and there were more mouths to feed.

Now, it’s more of a chore I suppose.

[perfectparanoia]

I used to love to cook. When I was 14, I became in charge of all the dinner cooking in our house. I loved learning to make new things and experimenting.

Then I went to University and I was a god because I could cook. I would agree to do so for as many people who wanted to eat as long as I got some and didn’t have to pay for the ingredients.

I can make almost anything (except cake, I suck at cakes) and you will enjoy eating it.

But the joy got beaten out of me. After working all day I get home and I have to prepare yet another meal for my family. It has to be fast, cheap, tasty and healthy. You get in a rut of about a dozen recipes and you are just too tired for creativity.

Now, if I had time and a sous chef (even to just chat with), I would love to actually cook again. Now, it’s just to survive and seems like such a waste of time and effort.

If the food could instantly appear cooked without costing more, life would be much better.

[Q.N.Jones]

I like to cook. It used to be one of my major hobbies. But I do NOT enjoy doing it on a daily basis. Preparing 3 meals a day for myself and my SO so that we can be healthy and save money is a drag, especially considering we both work at least 40 hours a week.

I like holding dinner parties. I like cooking on the weekends, when there’s time. I do not enjoy the everyday drudgery of hurrying home to prepare a meal, serve it at a set time, and then cleaning up. I will agree with Anaamika that there is a certain off-putting sort of tyranny in that. It generally takes 1.5-2 hours every night after work to do all that, and it starts to feel like a waste of time and just another thing to stress out about.

When I was single, I could make a giant double-batch of soup and eat it all week long. I loved that. It seemed like a huge payoff for the work. Now I share my house with a man who eats like there’s no tomorrow. That soup is gone in two days. I feel like, what should have lasted until Friday is gone by Tuesday night, and that feels depressing.

I have to take into account what he feels like eating. That was OK for awhile, but has become a drag. I used to improvise all kinds of salads and stir-frys from random fridge contents. Not anymore, because he often says he doesn’t feel like eating that sort of thing (because his mother only made meat and potatoes and, ugh, casseroles and processed shit from boxes). He will eat and cook other things now, but he wants it to be from an established recipe. Also, if he does agree to eat an improvised meal, I get a million questions about what’s in it.

There is also the problem that I really like cooking with someone. I thought living with an SO who likes to cook would mean teamwork. It doesn’t. He is terrible at that. He’s a disorganized cook (can’t figure out how to do prep tasks in an efficient order), and he has no concept of knife safety, so being his sous chef is frustrating and terrifying, because I have no idea what he’s doing half the time, and he’s waving his chef’s knife around while he’s doing it. In turn, when I cook, he is a horrible sous chef. He can’t anticipate me, doesn’t know what the names of kitchen utensils are, doesn’t remember what equipment we have, and–cardinal sin–doesn’t clean up after me as I go. I have to tell him every little thing. So we don’t cook together, which is depressing. I tried for over a year to be patient and teach him things, but I give up now. He either can’t or won’t retain what I’ve told him. So when I cook, he stands there and stares, usually standing in a spot that will impede my access to the fridge and pantry. I hate that. I want to yell at him to stop it. I have asked him politely not to, but he does it every time anyway.

I like almost everything about living with him, but cooking is definitely a very disappointing aspect of it. When we first moved in together, I thought it would be so great to have someone to cook for/with. Nope. It turned a beloved hobby into a miserable chore.

[Labrador_Deceiver]

@Chefguy

Slippa da fingah. Another you can dazzle someone with is mirepoix (meer-uh-pwah), which, in its basic form, is a chopped mixture of carrots, celery and onion.

You’ve got one too many syllables there.

[dogbutler]

I like finding flavors that pair together. I like making stuff that my tailgate group likes(I’m cooking for professional chefs, so it’s like winning Iron Chef ) Plus it’s nice to cook something good that’s healthier than commercial stuff.

[Mangetout]

I like to cook, because it’s an opportunity to create. It’s also vastly cheaper than buying prepared meals, getting takeaway or eating in restaurants.

But mostly, it’s just because it’s normal. Cook a meal, sit down as a family to eat it.

[Johanna]

@Anaamika

(Don’t get me started on Indian cookbooks! See, India was occupied by the British so most books are written such, and everything is in metric measurements, eggplants are called aubergines, zucchini are called courgettes, corn starch is called corn flour, cream of wheat is called semolina, all the spices have different names, and you need access to the Internet just to understand Madhur Jaffrey’s (otherwise fabulous) cookbook. )

The Indian cooking guru I rely on is Yamuna Devi. She was American, and her recipes are eminently clear, well written, and easy to follow, as well as absolutely delicious. She was ISKCON, a religion I do not like at all, but her awesome cookbook Lord Krishna’s Cuisine actually doesn’t have much Hare Krsna theological content and it’s all about the food. I cannot recommend any cookbook more highly.

[overlyverbose]

I really like to cook, and here’s why:

1. I feel like crap if I eat too much restaurant food.
2. I can cook to my own taste.
3. It’s satisfying to see my family enjoy what I make for them.
4. It’s satisfying to be able to use the stuff that I buy.

[Anaamika]

@Johanna

The Indian cooking guru I rely on is Yamuna Devi. She was American, and her recipes are eminently clear, well written, and easy to follow, as well as absolutely delicious. She was ISKCON, a religion I do not like at all, but her awesome cookbook Lord Krishna’s Cuisine actually doesn’t have much Hare Krsna theological content and it’s all about the food. I cannot recommend any cookbook more highly.

You know I had to look up ISKCON? I’ve never heard of that term, though I have heard of plenty of Hare Krishnas. I’ll try her!
One more thing to all of you people that do cook: I do the cleaning. I think that’s a fair bargain, he cooks and I clean, and this way I hardly ever have to cook at all.

[panache45]

I enjoy cooking for myself and my partner. I HATE cooking for other people, and I never prepare an entire meal, with various dishes that have to be ready at the same time. And I rarely use recipes. I just keep the refrigerator and freezer stocked with raw materials, then combine them however I please. And the results are usually pretty good.

Actually, I like to bake more than cook, but dietary restrictions limit the baked goods I can eat. Oh, and baking is totally different than cooking. It’s about chemistry.