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Comment by armchairhacker | Hacker News Reader

Learn to cook.

Seriously though. With only a bit of practice you can cook restaurant-quality food at home. And you can buy high-quality ingredients, but they are actually cheap because you’re buying them unprepared and in bulk.

There are many high quality recipes and tutorials online. Look up Ethan Chlebowski, Adam Ragusea, and Joshua Weissman. These are videos for basic recipes with grocery-store ingredients, not fancy expensive stuff.

Ik it takes more effort than eating at restaurants or ordering takeout, but it really is so much better to learn how to cook good food yourself.

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I'll throw in Sam The Cooking Guy as well. I learned how to make a sheet-pan pizza and a simple burger from him. Both were good enough that my kids prefer them over restaurant equivalents, which got us into a good routine that allowed me to add a few more reliable recipes into the rotation, and now we rarely go out to eat. Maybe once a month.

Kenji Lopez-Alt should be on the list, too. His kitchen videos will prove you can cook great food with borderline equipment.

I’ve been watching Gordon Ramsays Ultimate Cookery Course from 10 years ago. There’s also a book you can find that has all the recipes in the vids

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTzMGnJjrsSyDJU9XClzZtuJ6...

I find Joshua Weissman difficult to watch because of the forced unfunny zoomer humour and ADHD editing style

I chuckled at the stereotypically american answer "dont rely on society, just do it yourself".

Even if you know how to cook, life is significantly better in a society with quality inexpensive restaurants. Most cities around the world have this.

I usually eat out socially, im not going to invite people to cook for them because its weird, and very inconvenient. When im on a vacation or visiting a friend in another city im usually not cooking either.

Op's complaint is valid, life has been worse since food doubled in price. If I want to unwind and grab food or drinks with friends on a weekend, I am easily spending $80+, that is absurd. When I lived outside of the US I would not spend more than $20.

It's still a first world problem being "annoyed" that eating out or getting take out is more expensive than it once was.

No, it's not, I lived in a "3rd" world country and in some ways quality of life was better because some things were just so much cheaper. I was with people who weren't rich by any measure, living paycheck to paycheck and both parents working to get by. But despite that, it was STILL affordable to go out as a family every week and have great dinner or ice cream. Also here it's unheard of to get "custom-made" stuff, there it was not too expensive to get anything custom made, need a bigger bed, call the carpenter. Need some shelfs, call the carpenter, Need a door that fits you odd sized hole in the wall, call metal worker. Need pillows of certain size, go to a factory area not too far away and give them sizes, they are making 1000s a day, they can make you one too. There is STILL milk delivery at your door step, an old tradition around the world, but now it's UBER-approach. Quality of life is better because even with low salary you can get lot of stuff... which is a side effect of production being close to you, no sales taxes, and also lack of 1000 rules making 1 man operation feasible. People eat out there like it's free food.

This is so true. I can eat steak everyday if I buy it from costco

I also notice that restaurants make food "better" tasting by adding more salt and oil. More "profitable" by reducing healthy components for cheaper, ie more carbs and less meats and veggies. Its so much healthier to cook for yourself, and you can learn so much about your body when you are able to control what is going in.

What I find sad is masses making average salary, quietly suffering in silence with their heads down and feeling ashamed for not being able to buy even common fruits in quantities as they used to just a few years ago.

This is no longer the solution. I find it costs almost as much to make a meal at home compared to getting food from a restaurant unless you stick to the basics of chicken, beans/lentils, eggs and dairy.

> I find it costs almost as much to make a meal at home compared to getting food from a restaurant unless you stick to the basics of chicken, beans/lentils, eggs and dairy.

Yeah, that's what you do when it's expensive to eat. Stretch a pot of beans, rice and hamhocks over a week. Buy canned vegetables and Hamburger Helper. Shake and Bake chicken and au gratin potatoes out of a box. Stock up on bollilos, ramen and vermicelli. Stop expecting every meal to be an experience, you're not living to eat anymore, you're eating to live.

Cooking can easily take up 2-4 hours a day. 1 hour for prep, 1 hour for cooking, 1 hour for cleaning up afterwards (stove, utensils, dishes, table, kitchen floor, sink, etc)

Frankly, it only takes that long if you're really bad or really inexperienced at cooking. I frequently have dinner on the table (spaghetti and meatballs, Japanese curry, flank steak or chicken tacos) for my family of six with 30-40 minutes of total time invested, prep to cleanup. Even my most elaborate recipes (bibimbap and baked ziti) require about an hour of total time investment. My simpler recipes (instant pot carnitas, slow cooker shaker steak) take less than 20 minutes, usually because a kitchen device is doing the hard or time consuming work.

There were times in my life when these meals would have required twice as much time to execute, but repetition and experience (and necessity, given the busy evening schedule during my kids' soccer season) have led to these timings.

Ethan (mentioned above) has a series of fun videos where he races a Doordash driver (or a friend doing the same thing) to see if he can prepare a similar meal in his home kitchen before the order arrives. He usually finishes a bit earlier than the restaurant order, and I wouldn't say he rushes his cooking.

Lots of subjective variables, of course. Do you enjoy cooking? Are you productive at home while waiting for your delivery order? Is time spent in a restaurant relaxing? Do you count driving to/from the restaurant as part of the "work" of the meal? Don't you still have to clean up after a delivery order?

There is an economic side to cooking if you don't optimize and there is a lot of content out there that helps you optimize. Excluding eating, I spend 30 minutes cooking and washing each day

Suggestion: Learn to make use of a slow cooker and pressure cooker and/or instant pot. You can cut a lot of hands-on time using these tools.

FWIW: I cook multiple meals (often borderline gourmet / better than any local restaurant) for my family of 5 and it doesn't take this many hours. The more experience you gain, the faster your prep. Combining ready ingredients (I'll use that boxed pho broth rather than making from scratch / I'll start with a canned marinara rather than scratch) and being able to reconstitute leftovers can go a long way toward only having to do a major cooking event every-other or every-three days.

Buy a home wok burner, a wok and a rice cooker. There's an entire genre of cooking built around making things in 10 minutes. Chinese, Thai, Indian food.

Western home stoves are underpowered compared to the typical asian home stove. So western recipes are designed for slow western stoves.

Once you use a wok for the first time you realize you've been using the stove equivalent of a car that can only go 30mph all your life.

Nonsense, my wife whips up a delicious meal in under 30 minutes with everything included. Most days we use disposable sal leaf plates so she just tosses the pans in the dishwasher and we’re done.

Agreed. My wife is some kind of wizard in the kitchen. Most meals about 30 minutes, though some dishes might push an hour depending. Better than any restaurant I've been to - completely spoiled.

Sal Leaf Plates, I didn't know that existed, this might make a hUGE difference.

What are you cooking that it takes 2 hours of prep and cleanup?

Cook in bulk and eventually can also be more efficient.

If I'm cooking, I'm missing chances to leave my house, which with all the WFH are harder to come by

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