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Comment by silveroriole | Hacker News Reader

“While cooking is for many a hobby, it is also a thing that nearly everyone has to do, usually when time is short.“ If only this wasn’t the case. This is always unpopular whenever I say it, but we no longer expect everyone to sew their own clothes or bake their own bread - why do we still demand that everyone cook for themselves (and, often, that they enjoy it too)? As this article demonstrates, the barrier for even understanding what you’re doing, rather than rote instruction following, is pretty high. I wish we could move away from every individual cooking for themselves and towards socially acceptable communal kitchens or something.

I mean, sure, this is mainly motivated by the fact that I hate cooking. But it also just makes logical sense to me as a way to organise the universal human need for food, like we’ve done for other universal human needs.

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100% agree. South East Asia was heaven for me, in Bangkok you never have to cook, you never have to think about cooking. Even in smaller villages in Thailand you could find tons of places serving cheap, good food any time of the day (and numerous at night as well).

Now that I'm back in the UK I mostly just prepare a bunch of sandwhiches twice a week.

I hate cooking.

hmm, food courts are ok for a couple of weeks, but I find them lacking in variety. I don't think they are a substitution for cooking by yourself.

For someone who hates cooking... I can tell you, they definitely are.

You can cook a meal of almost any kind in 30 minutes or less. Your comparison to sewing clothes is wrong cause it usually takes days, or many hours, to do such a thing. Baking bread? I do it almost every day...from scratch...no bread maker.

>this is mainly motivated by the fact that I hate cooking

And there you go. I would add that you lack cooking knowledge and ability. If you knew how, you wouldn't say such things. I make breakfast every morning and dinner every night. I make lunch when I'm home. It isn't hard.

> I would add that you lack cooking knowledge and ability. If you knew how, you wouldn't say such things.

There are a lot of things in life that people know how to do but still hate...

I might know how to drive to work for 45 minutes everyday, I can do it, I can do it well, I can still hate it because it's a waste of time that I'd rather be using for something else.

Hell, people do jobs to earn a living that they're entirely competent at but still hate.

So no, knowing how to do something doesn't automatically mean you don't hate it, does it?

You can place your bet that way but I'll place my bet my way. Lack of understanding how to do something is more likely the cause.

> You can cook a meal of almost any kind in 30 minutes or less.

So the recipe magically chooses itself?

So the food magically appears in your fridge?

So the dishes magically wash themselves afterwards?

So the left-over ingredients magically use themselves up?

I really hate when people downplay the time cost involved in food preparation by focussing on only one step of the procedure.

When you cook at home, you decide what you want to cook and find a recipe. From there on out, you have the recipe. Just like restaurants don't magically appear when you decide you want a hamburger. You must choose one.

In the time it takes you to go to a restaurant, or order online, I can cook a meal for four at half the price you paid.

I hate when people downplay the time and cost involved in eating out as if there is none.

Last night, I made a two prime, strip steaks with red potato chips and a side salad. It took me less than 30 minutes. Admittedly, the salad came from a bag my wife bought on the way home cause I forgot to buy vegetables.

Most of that time was waiting for things to heat up. A few minutes for the pan. Longer for the oven for the potatoes.

This morning we had eggs with melted cheddar, english muffin and bacon. I bought the muffins cause it's harder to make than regular sourdough bread I bake. It took me 10 minutes not including opening up the packages and getting things out of the fridge.

The time-saving alternative to cooking is not eating out (that's insanely expensive if it becomes the norm). The alternative is foods that scale well. I can buy a pack of bread, a pack of cheese and a pack of sausage in 3-4 minutes, and then use that for a week or so to make sandwiches. Preparation time will be 2 minutes per sandwich.

Eating sandwiches may be boring, but it is very time-efficient.

You seem do think in a waterfall model of cooking: a big plan first and starting from and ending in an empty kitchen.

Speaking for my experience: I go to the supermarket once a week, replenishing staples and looking for interesting (and cheap..) stuff. Then later in the week I know what's fresh in my fridge and what's stored the pantry and when I get hungry late afternoon my subconsciousness is thinking about possible meals while I do other stuff. Leftover ingredients go back in the fridge and the cycle of "What's available today?" continues. And I ignore the dishes for every other day or two, because I'm lazy.

There is most of the time just one or two steps, because there is a rhythm and practice and a cycle. One-time event cooking in a tabula rasa environment, yes, that's more complicated. But that's not daily life.

But it is daily life for me. The only meal I ever cook myself is dinner (lunch is at work), but I'm not at home many days of the week. If at all, I would be cooking twice a week. Given this situation, it doesn't make sense to buy large quantities of ingredients in advance. Most would just perish.

> And I ignore the dishes for every other day or two, because I'm lazy.

That's cute. I do the dishes every Sunday. That's how away-from-home I am.

You might want to consider services such as HelloFresh. They're more expensive than buying the individual items at the supermarket, but cheaper than eating out. But the best thing is there's no food waste, and they sell you items meant for just one person - so your grocery bill would remain roughly the same (just with less food waste).

I know how to cook, on the whole I really enjoy it and I'm even pretty good at it. But the fact that I know I'm required to start doing it every single day as soon as I get home from work, mainly to satisfy other people, no matter if I feel like it or not can really suck joy straight out of it for me. If it was purely upp to me I'd eat out 3-5 days a week and save the cooking for when I wanted to.

I can cook a few meals, and I know a fair amount about cooking because my family are all foodies. I’m just not very motivated to add more to my repertoire, or to actually do it often, because I find the whole thing unenjoyable. I agree it’s not hard, but it’s like washing up - a chore. If I can avoid spending even half an hour doing something I hate, well, that sounds good to me!

I'm a good cook now, but when I was first learning I spent a lot of time and effort trying to find good recipes that didn't seem to difficult, too expensive, too unhealthy, etc. There was a lot to learn! I think a lot of things seem easy in hindsight like that. A lot of recipes didn't go into enough detail for a total newbie. "Brown the meat". Easy now a days, but when I started that meant I had to go down this rabbit hole of figuring out how to do that correctly. In the past few years I had to teach my SO to cook and just properly browning ground beef and chopping it into small bits took a few rounds to get right on his own. What does it really look like when it's "done"? What size should each piece be?

Yes, overall it's definitely going to pay off(even just after a month or two), but I think it's easy to forget there's still a decent barrier to starting. I ate a lot of burnt chicken when I first moved out. :P It took a while to afford the pots, the pans, and eventually the thermometer to fix that vs just eating the cheap banquet meals / boxed food.

After hearing several friends say that they cooked for fun, to unwind after a long day, I decided it is ingrained in personality, possibly genetic --- so vast was our difference in attitude, like how some people marvel that I like programming.

I wonder if your dream of communal kitchens are somewhat hampered by urban layouts, at least here in the U.S. If every time you want to eat you have to hop in the car and drive a mile, it adds a strong point to the side of just finding something at home.

> we no longer expect everyone to sew their own clothes or bake their own bread - why do we still demand that everyone cook for themselves

And yet a lot of cultures do expect you to know basic sewing (eg reattaching a button is expected from every recruit in the military) and I assume everyone who was a scout has made his own bread.

> I wish we could move away from every individual cooking for themselves and towards socially acceptable communal kitchens or something.

You have that everywhere where life and work is mixed: Small, cheap breakfast joints and inexpensive roadside kitchens that have a very limited menu and serve traditional, local food.

As someone who loves cooking, the idea of real communal kitchens does not sound good - been there, done that and the countless hours spent cleaning before I dared to handle food did not fill my pension fund... (You don't need "cyber"-laws to shut down a hackerspace, just send hygiene inspectors.)

My troop had a Heavy Cream Patrol which prided itself on making gourmet food in the backcountry. This usually meant carrying extra equipment, learning to cook well with both backpacking stoves and live fire (more than just boiling water), and spending extra time cooking at night. After hiking all day you are going to sit around the campfire anyway, why not make it a productive period? Plus there is nothing better than a stellar meal and dessert while sitting in a beautiful spot.

Cooking is still a way I relax and one way I show affection to friends and family. There is a certain satisfaction from having a meal where you raised and/or made every item on the table from raw materials. For instance this morning I made my wife and I egg sandwiches with sourdough bread we baked yesterday morning, red pepper jelly we put up last year, onions we grew and stored over winter, bacon we smoked from a hog we helped raise, eggs from some chickens we help take care of, and microgreens we grew in the basement. We (clearly) live in a rural-ish setting so I realize what is possible for us is not possible for those living in a major metro area (except maaaaybe Portland), but aspects of this are possible almost anywhere if you want to try.

Then there is the nerd factor where you can get into the science of cooking a la modernist cuisine and that takes it to a whole other level in engaging with my engineering side....

I made Crème Brulee at a camporee with my Troop once. They still talk about it.

_Nice_. I tried a cheesecake once and the cooking time in the dutch oven was about 8 hours longer than expected (gave up waiting at 10p and left it in the coals overnight to finish). At least it was a nice breakfast.

I have an idea on how I would do it but do you care to share your method?

I used a cardboard-box oven (box with 1 side removed; cover with foil; set over pan of coals with grating). Remember to bring the gas torch!

Food delivery (not the fast food one) is changing the need for cooking, I haven't cooked in ages.

In principle, the price of food preparation should be smaller when done on a large scale, but for some reason it's not the case, except for the Southeast Asia.

Are you talking things like buying minced garlic instead of a bulb?

Delivery from restaurants.

nobody demands that you cook your own food. but if you aren't willing to put in the (considerable) work yourself, you are expected to pay for the labor, ingredients, and kitchen space.

what exactly makes your idea of a communal kitchen different from a restaurant? is it free?

I’d say - you turn up, there’s a big pot of whatever is available that day, and a cheap/flat fee. No choice, inexpensive building, not a social event (fine to go alone), cheap and simple bulk cooking. Almost more like a soup kitchen than a restaurant. More expensive/complex food could be optional or once a week, and yeah, if you want nicer food, go to a restaurant.

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