America: Too Stupid To Cook
blog.ruhlman.com
blog.ruhlman.com
Many people just aren't interested in cooking, out of laziness, busyness, and/or simple disinterest. I like cooking now and then, but some people don't find it enjoyable to do, and that's no crime.
America: Too Stupid To Change Its Own Oil
America: Too Dumb To Paint A Room
There's only so many hours in a day, and we all have different priorities. A rotisserie chicken is nice for people who don't work from home, don't want to eat at 9pm, and don't want to pick up KFC. Get over yourself.
The title is sarcastic. It's making fun of the notion that America would think it is too stupid to stick a chicken in the oven for an hour and then put it on a platter.
The problem with his premise that lots of cooking is just as simple as the "convenience" option is that it assumes away the time involved in obtaining the knowledge of how to roast a chicken or bake a cake.
(You don't really have to make yourself a drink or go have sex during the hour the chicken is roasting. The chicken will taste better if you are slightly buzzed and freshly laid, but it will still taste pretty good if you aren't.)
Time spent reading his roast chicken recipe: 10 seconds
Time spent reading cookbooks/articles/magazines/blogs so that I knew that roasting a chicken is easy and good and so that I knew that Ruhlman's blog or book might be a good place to find out how to do it: 8 years
Like the apocryphal story about the itemized index: http://www.ruqus.com/the-red-x
Also a plug for my favorite simple roast chicken is the SF based Zuni Cafe's (you can do it with or without the bread stuffing)
But I like that show!
OK, I agree it's heavy on the vapid drama side. Still, it's oddly entertaining, and it got me somewhat interested in cooking.
One big complaint I have with Hell's Kitchen is that it fails to show enough about the food and cooking techniques. I bet lots more people could be tricked into cooking if such a show would mix in a bit of how-to and here's-why with the yelling and blustering.
There are 2.5 books? Lord knows I've read novels with gratuitous cooking scenes, but I wonder whether that's what he means. One should also consider that cookbooks are a handy gift--about the right cost and heft.
I'm not saying this should be a regular responsibility, but they should be capable of it.
I wish my parents had let me cook more. I recovered in college and now I cook a lot, but there was no reason I should have needed to wait until I was not in the dorm anymore.
I learned to cook because I grew up in a house where meals were cooked, not ordered out. I was making simple dishes and baking cakes on my own by age 10. Likewise, my 9 year-old son is learning to cook from me. He likes helping and the look of pride on his face when I let him make up a batch of meatballs from scratch (everything except putting them in the oven) because I was busy with something else had to be seen to be believed.
Even something as simple as letting a child mix some ingredients helps. They learn mise en place, how to use kitchen tools properly, basic kitchen hygiene and the overriding idea that everyone can cook!
Peeling potatoes with my 4 year old is a test of nerve though - suprised I still have all my fingers left (I hold the spuds, he attacks with the peeler!). I'm aiming for him making cooked breakfast by 7 and meals by the time he starts high school. By then he'll be messing around with sharp knives and fire by himself so no reason why he can't do that and be productive ...
In fact, McDonalds and Chipotle are doing much more to promote sustainability than the typical home cook is.
I don't see what your point has to do with the cost of cooking in vs. cooking out. At least 'kingkongrevenge has a meal plan to offer us. =)
I'm talking about massive, direct economic subsidies for the kinds of crops that tend to go into prepared foods vs. the comparative absence of massive, direct economic subsidies for the kinds of crops that tend to be the ingredients of home cooked meals. (The actual ingredients of home-cooked meals vs. their prepared equivalents are rarely even remotely similar.)
I hope what this has to do with the cost of cooking ingredients vs. eating prepared food is self-evident.
$2 for breakfast. Three eggs scrambled in plenty of butter. Some nuked frozen berries in half a cup of whole plain yogurt. Five minutes prep.
$2 for lunch. Some celery, a can of sardines, and a large glass of half&half. Zero prep time, aside from rinsing celery.
This is roughly what I eat and there is no way you can save time or come close to matching the cost at restaurants or even with pre-packaged food. I don't even go to the grocery store: peapod drops my list off every two or three weeks.
Also: a glass of half and half? Really? I get the milk carb thing, but why not just drink something with no carbs or fat?
It's more about convenience and I what I like, actually. No real effort to each cheap. I like eggs and I like whole fat dairy. And in truth I do often eat cod or flank steak or whatever, so up the daily cost by maybe 50%, but it's still peanuts compared to eating out.
> a glass of half and half? Really?
I go through half a stick of butter, a glass or two of half&half, and some whole fat yogurt daily. First, it's delicious. Second, dairy fat is frickn diesel. You can run on all cylinders for ages.
I agree, don't eat Wendy's (it will also kill you), and I salute you for operating almost entirely on dairy fat, but I think my point stands: it isn't necessarily or even likely cheaper to cook than to eat out.
For food of the same quality, cooking at home is cheaper. The absolute minimum cost of either food is comparable (corollary: there is worse fast food available than you could cook yourself).
Me too, but thats why god (or somebody godlike) invented freezers. The secret to eating good food every day if you don't like to spend time cooking is just to make stuff in big batches and preserve it.
Today for instance I spent 30 minutes or so making possibly the most delicious stew man has ever tasted. I made enough for eight servings and am freezing most of it. It would have taken me almost as long just to make one serving.
People make plenty of excuses about why they can't cook but it's rarely true.
I also have a lot of small portions of meat (french steak, pork chops, etc) that I just fry up with potatoes or occasionally bake in a shake'n'bakeish spice mix.
I do cook a lot but I eat a lot of the prepared stuff too, just because it's good and it's easy.
His blog is also excellent. For instance, duck confit from his blog: take 2 duck legs, salt them, stick 'em in ziploc bags overnight, rinse them, cook them for long time in a pot of olive oil, cool and store. Missing from that recipe: $40 worth of duck fat, complicated curing recipe, ceramic crock stored under basement stairs.
The one caveat in favor of the app is, at least twice I've totally fucked up cookies by spacing out on math when scaling them up.
Cooking seems fun. I'd like to learn it, and will once I live (a) within walking (or driving, outside of NYC) distance of a grocery store and (b) in an apartment with a dishwasher. Unfortunately, these are not to be taken for granted in NYC. Half the buildings don't even have laundry (I'm not joking).