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Comment by dmitriid | Hacker News Reader

That's a really bad advice to give beginners. If you're lucky, you'll guess right the first time, and end up with a good dish. And then you'll use that.

If you're unlucky — and the more inexperienced you are the more unlucky you are — then you'll guess wrong, and your dish will be at best okay, and at worst inedible.

A few failed experiments like this, and you'll hate cooking, or approach cooking with fear. Recipes have to be very precise, because recipes are aimed at people who are new: new to cooking or new to the dish.

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Experimentation is part of learning though. Heck, failing is part of learning! We really need to teach kids that just because you fail a few times at something you're not bad at it - it's part of learning.

There's time for learning and time for "I want to make this right-ish". Basically if it's a lazy weekend and I'd like to experiment, being vague would be fine. If I'm a beginner and there are people coming over tomorrow evening, I want you to guide my every step.

If you’re a beginner cooking for multiple people - stick to something that you already perfected. Even with a superdetailed recipe something can go wrong or be unexpected for a first-timer.

A beginner cook doesn't cook a new dish they've never made before for dinner guests. Hell, I've been cooking my entire life and I wouldn't cook a new dish for dinner guests in most cases.

You can't experiment if you don't even know the basics.

> We really need to teach kids

Ah yeah. Because every single beginner is a kid, and everyone learns to cook when they are kids.

Guessing at obtuse instructions with no prior knowledge when there are many variables in play is not experimenting and learning from it is nearly impossible. You have to have some baseline knowledge to draw on, whether you’re a total beginner or just new to the dish.

Imaging cooking was putting raw food in a box and a meal comes out of the other end. Imagine that box has a series of dials each ranging from 0-100. You don’t know what any of the dials actually do. Depending on your input, any number of settings can make a meal ranging from edible to amazing. But far more settings result in “Dubious Food.” Any individual setting can ruin the entire thing. Sure, you can power through 100 to the X combinations and ultimately, after much frustration and time and ruined food, sort of figure things out. But it’s much easier if someone says “set dial A to 53, dial B to 36,”. This lets you just tweak one dial and figure out what that dial does. Once you’ve done that you can go from dial to dial and then see how multiple dials interact. But if you just start fiddling with knobs you either get lucky or learn nothing; or you’re relying on knowledge you think everyone has even though they don’t.

I guess it's a good thing that cooking is nothing like this painful thought experiment! :D

Failure is ok.

I'm an adult with a busy life. I literally don't have time for failures with food. Except on a weekend. And even then I'd prefer not to fail.

Recipes should have all the ingredients in measurable quantities. All steps should be laid out in proper order, with proper technique, times and temperatures explained.

Sure. Once you're past the beginner stage, you can just glance at the description and figure out what you need. But you have to pass that beginner stage first.

People who can cook greatly underestimate how much pre-existing knowledge they possess. To a compete novice, my analogy is exactly what cooking is like.

Failing at chicken parmesan is almost impossible with a decent recipe so the recipe should for most part not be "add a dash of this and add a dash of that, you decide!" It's a fairly predictable dish.

I wouldn't call this a decent recipe, since it doesn't explain how to prepare or incorporate the tomatoes.

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