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Cooking for Founders

tylertringas.com

81 pointstylertringas71 comments

I've been teaching my friends how to cook. Here's what I've learned:

Follow the recipe, then don't follow it. As a beginner, follow the damn recipe. Read the ingredients list, buy the ingredients, and follow the instructions to the word. I know too many beginners who get lazy, don't follow the recipe and then the food doesn't taste good. Then, once you've gotten it down, start to tweak and experiment. Try adding a new ingredient or substituting something you don't have. Once you're not a beginner, you can skip following the recipe.

Learn the basic science of searing, emulsions, salting and temperature (hot & fast versus low & slow). The Food Lab/Serious Eats is a great resource for this. Salt Fat Acid Heat is also good.

Gain intuition. Learn to taste the food and see what's missing. You probably need to add more salt. Maybe a little acid? Or you could slip in some butter.

You will need to use more fat and salt than you think. When beginners watch me cook, they're shocked at how much salt and fat I add. It's still a fraction of how much you eat at a restaurant. This is especially true if you're blanching or boiling something, as the water needs to be really really really salty. Pasta water needs quite a few tablespoons of salt. Don't worry about it.

I read a theory that the whole bacon wrapped whatever craze was due to bacon being essentially fat and salt. People became obsessed with adding bacon because they weren't adding enough salt and fat.

American food tends to not have a lot of vegetables, but a crapton of carbs and meat. Try to learn Indian, Chinese, Korean or Mediterranean dishes. Beans are a great meat substitute.

> Follow the recipe, then don't follow it. Yes! At first I found it super helpful be ultra-precise: read the recipe twice, use a digital thermometer exactly, measure everything, etc. Then you learn what "good" is by tasting, then you can start improvising and substituting. True of how to learn a lot of things I think

Your advise is very good and I have gone through the exact steps before I could cook decently. I am a hardware enthusiast and working with my hands was a big outlet from my day job as as software engineer.

Being Indian and Doing Indian cooking I learned a lot by going through the basics of Spices and blends. I have a list of recipes from my mother and grandmother and understanding why they were blending the way they were was very helpful.

Also I learnt to meal prep for the weekday on the weekend. Most of the foods is more of preparation (creating batter, dough etc) and the cooking on actual heat is simpler.

I am sorry to be so harsh, but this guide will not teach you anything about cooking, nor will it be of any particular relevance to founders [^].

The blog post is a 3,500 word advertisement to Amazon affiliation links. A selection of "helpful" advice given in the post:

- How to chop food? "Just search them on YouTube"

- "When you are first learning to cook I recommend avoiding complex recipes"

- "Get cooking"

Finally: "The goal of this post is [..] to provide fairly comprehensive [..] roadmap for going from a cooking noob to solid home chef." Sorry. This is not it.

[^] Alternatively, the title might be interpreted to mean "Cooking for founders [who are visiting you]". This is also not the case.

Always appreciate these thoughtful critiques on HN :)

100% agree. If you read this entire thing, you don't end up with anything close to the skills needed to cook a meal. You could watch a five minute cooking tutorial or just make a simple recipe instead, and then you'd have something to show for it, plus you'd have learned something about cooking.

YouTube channels were helpful for me... That's it

I'm bemused as to why this is aimed at "founders", but whatever. I would like to say, though, that if I'd made a list of essential kit, I would have included a sauté pan; it's like a frying pan, but deeper and with vertical sides and usually with a (transparent) lid. You can cook great meals in a sauté pan - do your onions/spices/garlic etc, then add meat (if that's your thing), then stock, pasatta (or whatever) and then the bulking stuff - pasta etc - and all on the hob, rather than in an oven. Really versatile bit of kit.

Indeed it could have been called "cooking for grad students" which is when I started cooking on my own. Or, "cooking for busy parents" when I learned it from my mom.

Granted I already knew how to cook at the point where I was suddenly living apart from my spouse for a few months. It being Texas, I picked up a huge package of tortillas. It's amazing how well you can eat if you just know how to quickly saute some meat and vegetables.

> I would have included a sauté pan

Yep. It's the first recommendation on the list! Though I typo'd (fixed now) as sauce pan.

This is not good advice, it's just an attempt to cash in on Amazon affiliate links.

If you have someone who needs to learn how to quickly, you don't teach them theory, like the different kinds of heat transfer (which this says you should learn, and then names them, and then does not teach you about them). You teach them how to make some basic, healthy things that work with a bunch of ingredients.

It's really easy to teach someone to make a stir fry or a one-dish oven-baked dinner, and those are great starting points because you can use a lot of different ingredients with those techniques. Once you can manage those, you'll be able to make yourself a quick, easy, cheap and healthy dinner. You can read books about theory and heat transfer methods after that.

>If you have someone who needs to learn how to quickly, you don't teach them theory

Elon would disagree: "One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to."

https://lifehacker.com/elon-musk-on-learning-new-things-view...

You’re overthinking it.

Elon is talking about literal rocket science, not making a stir fry.

Actually the question was about broadly how to learn things quickly.

Yeah. When I started cooking I read a bunch of articles on theory of cooking, what utensils to use etc, but in the end I realized they are all counterproductive. The first few attempts at cooking are bound to fail, and spending hours and hours on preparation and decision paralysis makes the failures much more disheartening. It's much better to stick to a few simple recipes and just do what they say without questioning why. The analysis / innovation can come later.

Love the sentiment behind the post - cooking is great life skill to get good at, but I think the "Essential Gear" is definitely far from "essential" (and maybe this will help the new cook from being too scared of the list).

Here's my version of the "minimum viable set": 1. big, sharp knife 2. cutting board 3. wooden spoon 4. pan.

IMO, the particularly dispensable: "instant read digital cooking thermometer", "micro-plane zester", "fish turner spatula", "large heat-safe glass measuring cup", "honing rod".

Again, still love the intention. Nice post!

Actually, that honing rod is very useful to keep that nog big blade serviceable for longer in between sharpening. I do agree with the mvs though bear in mind that having a few of these will greatly speed up cooking times.

You don’t need a honing rod, use the bottom of ceramic tableware instead.

I suppose this works with the cheaper, softer steel, knives. But does it also work for the harder steel professional knives?

Agree that's the true minimum viable set, and you can cook a lot of things with just that. But I think if a novice cook was trying to work through the cookbooks I recommended, they would find it frustrating not to have some of the other stuff I recommend. My "minimum viable" is sort of "your lack of X won't be a substantially annoying obstacle from completing most of the recipes in these essential books"

Want to actually learn how to cook, no bullshit?

Read Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Then read Jacques Pepin's La Technique. Then watch Jacques' old tv show Fast Food My Way. You will become a decent cook just from these 3 sources. It covers all the basics you need to know, and the rest comes from experience. (Jacques also put a 3 hour video of techniques on YouTube recently, go find and watch it. And check the JP Foundation website for more recipes and videos)

All recipes are just patterns and methods applied to ingredients. Often there is a vast range of tolerance in each, and you learn the tolerances mainly by exceeding them. So experiment with recipes and you will learn what doesn't work, which leaves only what does.

> Home-cooked food is almost always healthier than restaurant food, so don’t try to learn to cook and cook the healthiest possible version of each dish. Most veggies taste better roasted in a generous amount of olive oil...

It took me way to long to learn not to be afraid of oil when cooking and grilling food. I burned a lot of food for awhile under the assumption that I shouldn't be adding too much fat to homecooked food.

Definitely - that and salt. Whenever you watch a professional chef cook you realize how much fat and salt going into making something taste "restaurant quality".

Watching old Julia Childs videos gave me the impression that all vegetables were primarily different substrates for butter :D

That's the French for you.

Some good cooking shows.

* Matty Matheson - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpqH8-BBNTsluhcOzFKWLuw

* French Cooking Academy - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0lG3Ihe4LGV851lODRIS5g

* Bon Appetit - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbpMy0Fg74eXXkvxJrtEn3w

* J. Kenji Lopez-Alt - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqqJQ_cXSat0KIAVfIfKkVA

* Munchies - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaLfMkkHhSA_LaCta0BzyhQ

I'd particularly recommend Kenji. For home cooking I don't know many better at teaching (maybe Chef John from foodwishes.com). He's great at differentiating between the must-haves and the nice-to-haves in recipes, and what the trade-offs involved are. This helps me build intuition, which then helps me with all cooking.

Watching Matty Matheson is fun but damn do I feel ill with some of his recipes. They are food porn - a fantasy not intended for the real world.

> Chef John from foodwishes.com

Funny how you can hear written text.

So much complication. As a long-time happy and healthy vegetarian "cook", here is my utterly simple heuristic that never goes wrong: assuming you have a good-quality non-stick pan: on medium heat olive oil you can toss in any and all vegetables, a source of protien, ginger, garlic, and some freshly ground black -- or mixed -- peppers and salt. You're set. (Also assuming no allergies to said basic ingredients.)

E.g. tonight (I'm in CET) I made this simple veggie delicacy; happens to be vegan too:

1. toss in some freshly chopped ginger and garlic in some olive oil on medium heat

2. add a couple of finely chopped shallots (or even a plain white onion is fine)

3. sprinkle some cumin seeds, salt, and freshly ground black pepper

4. next up: two chopped green courgettes

5. then, toss in two chopped, medium-sized portobello mushrooms

6. finally, add some precooked chickpeas (but if you have the discipline for it, the best chickpeas are dried peas that you soak overnight for 10 hours, and boil the next morning for 30 minutes; no contest).

Stir-fry it all for 10 minutes or so, and you'll intuitively know it when it is ready. You can have this with any kind of carbs -- couscous, tortilla wraps, rice, some variants of pasta, bulgar, you name it.

Rinse, repeat with many other vegetables and protien combination (flavoured tofu, seitan, et al). No need to go wild over following a recipe to the dot, or on heat transfer mechanics.

> I’m calling it Cooking For Founders because I think it will resonate with a lot of entrepreneurs who think like me.

Uhh, ok. Includes tips like "Make it taste good"

I like how much thought went behind this post. I think it can be very useful to anyone looking to start in the kitchen.

However, it really doesn’t resonate with me. I was hoping to get some extra tips for min/maxing my kitchen time or some tasty slow cooker recipes. Perhaps a recipe for a macro and micro nutrient rich smoothie with minimal ingredients.

I worked as a line cook for half a year, changed my life. I learned how to live on $10/hour and how to cook anything quickly and have it come out tasty. And I only cried in the walk in occasionally.

Cooking well is mostly attitude and confidence. Prep and cook everything at the same time, figuring out the order to do it all in parallel is a fun puzzle and executing it gives you a rush. I never measure any ingredients and improvise recipes constantly.

"Don't cook everything evenly" is very good advice. Let things sit at appropriate heat, amateur cooks are too touchy. But I disagree about recipes, they are just suggestions to me, good to know the outline and then leverage your general knowledge of cooking to get it done.

Agreed! But, I think very novice cooks should rigorously follow recipes, learn what a good result is across a wide variety of dishes, then learn how to substitute things or change up recipes. Or rather that's what worked for me.

> [...] others, like searing in a pan, use convection where the heat is transferred directly surface to surface.

Maybe cooks use these terms differently but in physics this is heat conduction not convection. Convection is when heat is moved by moving matter in gases or fluids.

Good catch! I just typo'd and used convection twice.

No. You’re spot on. When in doubt read Harold McGee. Conduction is “direct contact”. (Vs convection and radiation)

>Baking is much harder and less forgiving than any other kind of cooking. If you’re just starting to get into cooking, don’t start with baking.

Well, that depends a lot on what you're baking. Baking bread can be very easy, and very rewarding. There are few things more delicious than freshly baked bread with butter. There are some simple cakes that are also easy to make. But yes, fancy desserts are hard.

> But yes, fancy desserts are hard.

They’re not that hard, the issue is that most of the recipes online are lying to you. A lot of tips and tricks for working with pastries and chocolate are basically an oral tradition and aren’t well documented anywhere.

There's a whole lot of things in baking that require more precision with proportions of ingredients and technique than ordinary cooking.

How about "avoiding cooking for founders that want to eat healthy but really hate cooking?"

Lately I buy a healthy roasted nut butter (pistachio, walnut, pecan etc) and dip it (covered completely) in a mix of hempseeds/shredded-coconut/flaxseeds and eat that with a spoon. I'd buy a non-cookbook that gave me more paleo/AIP/low-lectin food-combinations like that. Or just info on how to make better salads. (I add a lot of fermented foods like pickled red onions lately)

I do sometimes bake a bunch of turkey meatballs and eat those over a couple days - but I've given up on making turkey burgers or chicken. It's just too much work. I'd rather heat up frozen broccoli daily with a side of canned tuna. I really hate cooking, it's a huge time-sink and extremely unenjoyable.

It is not convection but conduction!

I’ve wanted a Cooking For Founders book for a while. Particularly tips of foods that are easy to preprep and remix and reheat easily, for people who have little cooking experience.

One tip: get a sound vide cooker. It’s so foolproof and you have a lot more leeway, sometimes even hours, when you actually eat. Great if you get locked into something and don’t want to be interrupted until you’re done.

Tyler, baking is not hard! All you have to do is follow the instructions. Which recipe scorned you? I will help you learn to bake.

The key to understanding roasting is that every cookbook and Google result is lying to you. Roasting doesn't mean just putting something in the oven on high heat, the things you're roasting need to be far enough apart on the tray that there is space for air in between them. Otherwise you're steaming, not roasting. The point of roasting is to make the outside super crispy, while keeping the inside moist and chewy.

E.g. how to roast chicken thighs:

- Preheat cast iron pan in oven until the oven has been at 450 for at least 10 min.

- Place four chicken thighs in the cast iron pan with a good amount of space in between, after tossing them in a gallon ziplock bag with olive oil, sea salt, and pepper.

- Roast for 20 min at 450, then pour out excess fat. (If you don't do this, then again you're just steaming the chicken.)

- Turn down oven to 400, and cook for another 25 - 30 min.

You can apply the exact same technique to most vegetables and mushrooms, but understanding and nailing the principle is key. This recipe for roast maitake mushrooms also explains it well: https://foragerchef.com/simple-roasted-hen-of-the-woods/

> Roast for 20 min at 450, then pour out excess fat. (If you don't do this, then again you're just steaming the chicken.)

Excess fat won’t steam whatever you’re roasting.

With meat there are three stages, searing to seal the juices inside. Then roasting in dry heat. Finally, resting it. All meats must ‘rest’ for 15-20 minutes because it continues cooking evenly right after the oven.

When you get it out depends on preferred doneness. Medium rare, medium, well done. Most white meat is cooked well done.

Or you cook sous vide. Wherein, the Maillard reaction is to be done separately.

Chicken legs have to be seared first and then goes into the oven. And then rested. If you have seasonings, let it sit in marinade for 20 mts in the fridge and then 40-45 mts in a 425 deg oven.

While chickens and legs can also be brined for a crackling crispy skin but whole birds cook unevenly. Spatchcocked birds make for more even cooking.

> searing to seal the juices inside

Searing does not seal anything inside. It does provide a pleasing texture and usually flavor, though.

Cooking chicken legs starting in a cold pan produces wonderful results.

Maillard reaction seals in flavor and texture. That’s the purpose of searing meat as the first step.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction

But you should feel free to enjoy chicken legs cooked in a cold pan. It’s not a food safety issue. Just a texture and flavor process.

Yes, I know all about the Maillard reaction--been baking and cooking for decades. My point is that searing as a means for "locking in juices" is an old wives' tale. The reverse-sear approach is superior for steaks and roasts, although the sear-first technique is fine for braised dishes.

As for chicken legs, an approach like this one works very, very well and and is an interesting counterpoint to the common wisdom that the pan and oil must be preheated: https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-lemon-thyme-chicken-thighs-...

ok. fine.

[..] The key to cooking chicken thighs is to start them in a cold cast iron skillet. Yep, you read that right. Cold. Season them well with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then put them skin-side down in the skillet over medium heat.

Then just don’t touch them for 14 to 15 minutes. As the pan heats up, the skin will slowly get crispy. It might pop and hiss, but all is good. As long as you watch your heat, it’s almost impossible to burn or overcook these. [..]

i suppose the above is your understanding of NOT searing? english is not my first language.

Yes. Searing means fairly high/intense dry heat to produce browning/crusty texture in seconds or minutes. Such as putting a steak on a grill or very hot cast iron pan.

On the other hand, bacon cooked in a 300F oven or on low stovetop heat for half an hour may become crispy, but is not seared. Breads become brown via Maillard reaction but are not seared.

I really didn't set out to hound you about this whole searing thing...

I didn’t think of it as ‘hounding’. This is a matter of interest to me because I am a classically trained chef. And I have worked and staged in restaurants including those that dabble in molecular gastronomy. There are many ways to cook meat but there is a reason we have some standard methods.

So..I also understand why it’s not always necessary to sear meat. I have cooked meat several ways including sous vide as well as slow braises. A pre cooking sear has many uses and one of them is certainly to create a barrier to ‘keep the juices in’(said colloquially) and to retain shape.

Further, food safety issues require meat to be handled in a certain way and searing ensures that the food is fit for consumption with minimal risk of contamination or undercooking it. There is a reason why we prep even before we prep food to cook it. (Ditto with fish. Most ‘fresh fish’ is frozen and then thawed. Especially if it’s from the sea. They come riddled with worms. It is a right of passage in the kitchen to be handed tweezers to pick worms. Hands down, one of the most unpleasant jobs ever)

I am not trying to nit pick, but these kind of details were important to what I did for a living some years ago and part of my job was also to train others like I have been trained. I can assure you that if we used a cold pan to start meat, we’d get a fail grade with the health inspectors in a restaurant.

Happy to continue a cordial discussion, then! When do you treat searing as necessary for food safety? Certainly we don't want to hold food between 38F and 140F for longer than needed, yet there's a lot of latitude in preparation between a 2" rare ribeye and duck confit.

"Cold pan" here means room temperature, just giving extra time for fat to render out of the chicken skin, but it only takes ~5 minutes on the heat to reach 300F+ pan temperature. It's hard to imagine this is more time in the bacterial danger zone than a 160F sous vide bath?

Oh!! Bacteria in food will multiply really fast at room temperature..40F begins the danger zone.

Duck confit is an entirely different preparation than steak. 145F for steaks, 165F for chicken and everything else is around 160F in the USA.

I have cooked fork tender gigot of lamb at 250F for a seven-hour lamb but I still seared it first. Standard is 375F.

Searing and into the pre heated oven must be really quick. Immediately. Most known bacteria will be killed at high temperature above 140-145 F.

A sous vide bath is air tight environment and again..like the duck confit..is not relevant here.

Cooking is chemistry. Leaving meat around at room temperature is just bad deviation from standards. I would never teach anyone to start anything on a ‘cold pan’. It’s one thing if you have been cooking for years and years and know the ‘why’ of the standards. It only comes from experience and kitchen discipline. But to put it out on an online recipe or hand out instructions when there is no way to audit the follower of the recipe is just unacceptable. My 2c.

Would I start on a cold pan? Maybe. Would I run a kitchen like that? Never! Would I teach students to start on a cold pan? Absolutely not! Not all stoves and ovens are calibrated right. We take so many things for granted and cooking is also about taming heat and fire.

But that’s just me. Meat has special handling and storage and cooking instructions because in a restaurant it affects everything from liability to failing inspections to the risk of making a small mistake that will affect so many people. I just find it very irresponsible.

this made me think of what my take on "Cooking for Engineers" would be- roughly based on what I do personally.

essential gear would be a chef's knife, a stainless or cast iron pan, a nonstick pan, a large dutch oven, a sous vide circulator w a large bucket, a 10qt instant pot, and a vacuum sealer.

learn braising, roasting, sauteeing, and baking (veggies and proteins)

whenever you cook something where you can make extra, make a LOT extra, keeps a couple portions and vacuum seal the rest off and freeze them flat (keep your freezer really well organized)

find your core recipes and keep those perpetually in the freezer in small portions

learn to improvise and make gold out of whatever's in the kitchen (if you need inspiration, watch chopped)

Skip the nonstick pan and get a "black steel" (high carbon) pan instead. Matfer is a good brand but there are others. Fairly inexpensive, can be seasoned like cast iron, but is much lighter and more responsive. Super response on induction too. These are not pretty cookware but are real workhorses.

What you’re likely meaning is cast iron.

Carbon steel cookware is good, too.

Neither is good for cooking acidic sauces for long periods of time, use stainless steel if you need to make a tomato or pan sauce.

I'm perplexed by your reply; I definitely mean (black|carbon) steel and note it is lighter than cast iron. Never a problem making a pan sauce in a black steel pan.

Stainless steel or enameled cast iron is my choice for long cooking tomato sauces, although even plain aluminum won't be an issue for a few minutes contact.

My experience with pan sauces in carbon steel is that the acid in wine will typically start to strip the seasoning and leave ugly black specks in your sauce.

Maybe I’m doing something wrong though.

You are not doing anything wrong. Liquids with higher acidity will strip the seasoning. Avoid cooking liquids with tomato, lemon juice, wine, vinegar etc..for long slow braises and pan sauces etc.

You are giving the exact opposite of the right cooking advice in this case.

Acidic liquids will strip the seasoning of the pan.

The very first useful cooking website I remember was cookingforengineers.com. From 2005, it predates the nonsense the has become the typical clickbait recipe sites.

I also always loved the tabular layout that included both ingredients and actions in the same format.

e.g. http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/60/The-Classic-Tir...

Looking forward next to reading Founding for Cooks.

Huge fan of Tyler Tringas. Do you have any advice for startups founded by parents with toddlers?

Thank you for this resource and the conversation! Trying this year to really up cooking game.

Why are founders special in the kitchen?

As another post has stated, this isn't a very helpful post on learning to cook, and is more Amazon affiliate links than anything else. If people are genuinely interested in cooking and Culinary Arts, below is a book suggestion list, which should have free online PDF versions of them. This list is meant for people who wish to cook professionally, but for themselves, at home, for friends, so on. The list circles around recipes, theory, history, technique, so forth. More generally put, "kitchen knowledge."

Note, these books are meant for dedicated inquisitive cooks who are eager to learn. If they're gonna sit on a coffee table or be used for average homemade meals, then these aren't for you. These books are the starting point and foundation of some of the most important chefs in history. It's up to you to Google the book and figure out what it's about and why it's so important (most should have Wiki pages). This is list is only meant to serve as a starting point for what to Google in the first place.

All the books (should) have English translations, however they vary. Some translations leave things out, or give literal translations rather than the meaning, etc. The original title is used so you can have a source point to choose your own translations based on reviews/descriptions.

Listed by order of importance (per my opinion). Mostly focused on haute cuisine and Italian, but another list for Japanese at the bottom. Note, I am biased against nouvelle cuisine, so you'll have to Google that for yourselves.

[Haute Cuisine] Le Guide Culinaire - Auguste Escoffier

[American/Haute] The Professional Chef - The Culinary Institute of America (As well as the Bakery/Pastry version)

[Haute Cuisine] Le Répertoire de la Cuisine - Louis Saulnier

[French/Haute Cuisine] Larousse Gastronomique - Prosper Montagné

[Haute Cuisine] L'Art de la cuisine française au dix-neuvième siècle - Marie-Antoine Carême (Completed only 3/5 volumes before death)

[Italian] La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene - Pellegrino Artusi

[Italian] Il cucchiaio d'argento - Domus

[Haute Cuisine] Ma Gastronomie - Fernand Point

[Italian] Ecco il tuo libro di cucina - Pellegrino Artusi (Still looking for a copy, much less a translated one)

[Technique] La Technique [OR/AND] New Complete Techniques - Jacques Pepin

[Why ___?] On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen - Harlod McGee

[Pairing] The Flavor Bible - Andrew Dornenburg

---[Japanese]---:

Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art

Sushi: Jiro Gastronomy

*[Next 3 are "maybes", haven't had time to read/research them fully.]

Ivan Orkin (Chef focused on Ramen)

Cooking with Kimiko-san

Kimiko's World: Cooking, culture, and festivals of Japan

---[Additional]---:

Ruhlman Twenty - Michael Ruhlman

White Heat - Marco Pierre White

Sauces - James Peterson

Cookwise/Bakewise

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