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Comment by tshaddox | Hacker News Reader

That’s an interesting characterization, because I would have said precisely the opposite: I’ve seen that he consistently goes out of his way to denounce notions like “it’s not real X unless you make it with Y.” He’s pretty outspoken that it’s better to adapt recipes based on your own preferences, skills, and ingredient availability than to try to chase “authenticity.” It’s not uncommon to hear him say things like “it’s probably more traditional to include X in this recipe, but I don’t like that flavor, so I’m leaving it out.” I’m genuinely curious why you characterize him as a food snob.

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I think the characterization comes from a legion of homecooks online going through a cooking journey and treating Kenji's whimsical opinion as a law, especially when written down for one recipe.

Kenji's videos show how creative and open minded he is with cooking, but I've also had plenty of online encounters with folks preaching the food lab gospel.

> treating Kenji's whimsical opinion as a law,

Whatever his stuff is, 'whimsical opinion' is pretty rare.

Eh if you've been following him for long enough you've seen him get onto kicks and off again. He did a vegan month for a while, but that's gone. Once upon a time he was convinced that using baking soda (something you'll see him use a lot more than most) was the way to perfect, fast caramelized onions. It took a while but Daniel Gritzker and others eventually convinced him he was wrong.

None of this is bad -- the food lab is the cook book most often open in my kitchen and I love his videos -- but develop your own taste and understand the palates of those you're cooking for, don't just assume that whatever Kenji does is right.

I don’t even assume that what I do is right.

I wasn’t suggesting assuming anyone is right, that would be silly,

But I think “whimsy” is just really off target. Most or his stuff (notwithstanding some retractions, we all learn as we go) is either pretty well researched and backed up or he’ll be very clear it’s just the way he is doing something, not canon. He has strong opinions about some things - especially cookery myths - but they tend to be backed up with a bunch of data, otherwise not so much,

I said whimsical because a lot of times Kenji's opinion will be like "I usually just whip this up looseygoosey but if we're trying to be as silly about it as possible, I suppose we could do this fourteen step process..." and then the mantra online becomes "Kenji's Iron Clad 14 Step Process for This Meal -- The Only Way Its Done".

That's why watching his videos is really important. If there's any recipes he ignores completely the most, it's his own.

Ironically, I stumbled across an example pretty quickly: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CXTnq7srJRs&t=7m34s

Might be a good idea to clarify what you mean by example in this comment. Had to click into the video to realize you meant basically an example of him NOT being a food snob.

I usually do recipes "by the book" a few times, and then do it the way I want.

For example: chinese braised pork belly. Generally you cook the pork belly in the sauce until the sauce itself reduces and coalesceses around the pork belly, giving it a reddish appearance. Then you serve it over rice.

Problem for me?

I'm cajun/creole. While I'm perfectly fine with eating plain white rice by itself in the asian tradition, it's just not how we do it back home. We smother things so that the sauce mixes with the rice. So I added more of the liquid ingredients and brown sugar. I added some korean red pepper to up the pepper flavor of the sauce. I addded some cinnamon sticks because I felt it complimented the other ingredients.

Side by side, my pork tastes a little better than theirs. It's got more flavor. It also has sauce to pour over the rice.

It's not authentic (and not as red), but it's also something that everyone who has ever tried it has enjoyed.

Then again... if I see someone put tomatoes in a gumbo or jambalaya... or sprinkle seasoning on top of seafood after they've been pulled out of the boiling pot... that is a friendship breaker lol.

Years ago I had an exchange with him on twitter where he argued that some pre-made taco sauce kit (possibly from Frontera?) made a kind of taco (possibly al-pastor or something like that) that was superior and more authentic tasting than any corresponding kind of taco he could get at taquerias in NYC. It was an absolutely insane and inane twitter argument to engage in but also there was no way that it made any sense to take that stand. He just kind of dug in on things and had hot takes back in the day -- he's mellowed since those days but I will always remember that weird interaction.

Now that he's more into videos and his presence is about instruction and eduction through example as opposed to making a splash with authoritative longform pieces and deriving the perfect recipes and guides through Serious Eats he comes across as more welcoming to all approaches but there were times in the past when he pounded the foodie gavel.

That's different though "it's not real X unless you make it with Y" is about authenticity. I did not bring up authenticity in the criticism. You are right - Kenji rarely cares about authenticity or tradition. That's fine.

If you go through his old recipes though on SE, you'll see "The science of the best XYZ" or "Perfect XYZ" all over the place:

https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-5118015

I stopped following him a few years ago on Instagram because it was tiring. It looks like he's changed a bit.

"The best X" is just good marketing. I've generally found him to be very up front with the criteria he's using to judge a particular food, and where there's a well-known broad range of tastes (like with chocolate chip cookies), he often includes information on how to get different results than he personally prefers. But the goal of those articles _is_ to find the best way to make (a particular style of) that dish, so the title is fair.

Sure, he could put "in my opinion" and "to me" all over the place, but that would just be useless clutter. Everyone knows that "best" when referring to an aesthetic experience is always a subjective matter.

Apparently this is news to you: nearly all writers do not get to choose their headlines, no matter the topic area. This goes from newspapers to books. If you're basing those views on the headlines vs the explicit content in his articles and videos, you've very much got the wrong end of the stick here. He goes out of his way to repeatedly emphasize "but you can do it how you like and that's ok" in everything he's done purely solo.

It’s true that writers often don’t get to choose their titles, but in this case I wouldn’t consider it snobby or ridiculous even if he had chosen those titles himself. There’s simply no reasonable interpretation of titles like “The best X” or “Perfect X” other than as clear subjective claims based on the author’s own preferences. These titles very clearly are not philosophical treatises about how there are actually objective moral truths about different ways of preparing food, and any interpretation along those lines is either extremely misinformed or (more likely) made in bad faith.

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