Hacker News Reader

I think you're leaving out the extent to which cooking is an analogue process. Your particular ovens temperature envelope, the rate at which your pan or wok heats (due to its thickness and composition), the specifics of the varieties of plant or cuts of meat you're cooking, the quality or specifics of the spices or oils you're using. I'm no chef, but it seems like these can all make quite substantial changes in cooking times, sauce thickness, flavour profiles etc etc, and all necessitate observation and analogue adjustment of cooking processes.

Timer is accurate only if you have first done experiments with your unique settings. However temperature gauges are very useful. I usually trust my eyes and nose more than a timer.

> I think you're leaving out the extent to which cooking is an analogue process.

The main difference between cooking and process chemistry is that the latter actually cares about quality of the end result.

There is some unavoidable variation because of the inconsistency in ingredients and lack of access to tools that would mitigate it. However, the typical kitchen tools are also just bad by design, with any kind of precision or consistency long ago "value engineered" out of them. And now we also learn that cooking recipes are mostly pulled out of their writers' arses, to the point you might as well ask GPT-4, and save money on a cookbook / avoid exposure to ads and made up life stories on-line.

Hell, GPT-4 can at least also give you a Gantt chart to go with your recipe[0].

In the end, the only way to deal with this is by hand-holding the process, performing minute adjustments as guided by experience. This makes cooking much more of an art than it could - or should - be.

--

[0] - Some assembly required. Taste and safety not guaranteed, as I can't cook to save my life. https://cloud.typingmind.com/share/a349a38e-0e24-470e-a1c8-3...

> However, the typical kitchen tools are also just bad by design, with any kind of precision or consistency long ago "value engineered" out of them

Its ripoff engineered. I just threw in the trash an obscenely expensive pan with Vegan, cancer free, teflon free and gluten free coating thats coming off.

> The main difference between cooking and process chemistry is that the latter actually cares about quality of the end result.

Do home cooks not care about how the food tastes? This seems like a strange take. People started cooking by roasting or boiling things over an open flame or searing them on a hot rock. Most of the techniques learned and passed down are about how to ensure good results under contexts where the inputs are naturally inconsistent and hard to control.

I don't know why we'd have an assumption that people have or want to work with precise scientific instruments all the time.

> I tend to disagree on that one, unless you are particularly experienced, or naturally gifted, measuring tools (timers, scales, thermometers,...) will give you the best results. At least for me, that's the case.

Both. Have both. Ingredients are not 100 uniform and always cook in same way. Have "how it should be done" and "how it should look during/at the end of the process". You can't have exact same temperature on the pan as recipe, I guess unless you're constantly using IR thermometer to check

And humidity, altitude/weather, variations in stoves/ovens, shape and thermals of the pan, etc. There are too many variables for the same process to produce the same results.

I cook a lot and although you’re right in some regards (scales, thermometers are very useful) you’re discounting the variance in many things making following a recipe precisely not always possible.

For example smoking a brisket. There is no perfect temperature that tells you it’s done. We know the thereabouts but one brisket might be done at 203 while another is at 200 and another at 205. You need to feel it.

Each animal is different and each smoker is different and the weather really matters. A humid day will influence cooking differently than a dry day.

Unless you can get uniform ingredients you’ll never be able to follow a recipe to the letter and get great outcomes every time. You should use tools but in the end you need your senses and you should taste everything you can before serving.

> I tend to disagree on that one, unless you are particularly experienced, or naturally gifted, measuring tools (timers, scales, thermometers,...) will give you the best results. At least for me, that's the case.

If you’re baking then you usually must follow the recipes as it will yield the best results. Experience will tell you more or less water will result in what. More or less baking soda will alter the result in what way. Etc

But if you’re cooking dinners, you don’t really need to follow recipes. Soup? You can often just throw whatever you want in the pot and it doesn’t matter. If it said 1 onion and you added 4, just tastes more oniony”

> So yeah, no matter how good at cooking you are, if you "just follow" a recipe properly and it doesn't work, then the recipe is wrong or incomplete.

No, this is 100% false, and this is exactly why recipe collections are popular, because people think they can just follow a recipe to get a delicious meal. There is an immense difference in quality and properties of ingredients, difference in cookware, difference in appliances, etc. What's "medium heat" ? What's a "medium-sized potato" ?

You need to know basic cooking to work around these differences, you need to know what something feels like and looks like when it's done, otherwise you will forever fail.