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Comment by alexjplant | Hacker News Reader

I'd never call myself a chef but I'm something of a gourmand and do love cooking. Even if it's mediocre food seems to taste better when you make it yourself :D. I also read someplace that people with desk jobs and busy minds should have a hobby that produces tangible results and involves working with your hands and cooking fits the bill perfectly. As a matter of fact I just finished meal prepping for this coming week and made:

- Natto on rice with scallions, egg, and kimchi

- Chicken curry with daal and spicy raita

- Chicken fajitas with refried beans

- Hummus and carrots

I spent ~$50 for everything delivered via Instacart not counting spices and staples like rice and lentils and I live in southern California... not as cheap as this gentleman but not too shabby all things considered. I need to start cataloguing my recipes so that I can make them more repeatable and share them easily with friends when they ask.

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> food seems to taste better when you make it yourself

For me, it’s the opposite. I’m never very happy with anything I make but when somebody makes something for me, it tastes amazing.

"When you make your own sandwich, you anticipate its taste as you're working on it. And when you think of a particular food for a while, you become less hungry for it later. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, for example, found that imagining eating M&Ms makes you eat fewer of them. It's a kind of specific satiation, just as most people find room for dessert when they couldn't have another bite of their steak. The sandwich that another person prepares is not ''preconsumed'' in the same way."

https://archive.nytimes.com/query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage-9...

I find I'm a mix. I'll never make a sandwich at home that tastes as good as a deli, no matter if I use the same ingredients. I can smoke one hell of a brisket that IMHO is better than anything around me.

I also have to balance foodie obsessions with being economical and healthy. (Growing up, my extended family had a culture of "living to eat" and they ran several restaurants as a trophy thing, i.e., with negligible profit but acclaimed food.) I'm now an experienced home cook who likes throwing somewhat elaborate dinner parties, but when on my own it still makes sense to just batch cook and freeze. When it comes to that, what I notice is that I'm still making the same dishes I did as a poor student, just augmented. The base dish is quite tasty to start with, but now I can afford to use a few nicer or speciality ingredients that take it up a level. If you're making a cauldron of risotto or tomato sauce or whatever that will yield dozens of servings, it doesn't cost that much more per serving to add the extra thing or perform the extra technique that makes it really delicious or interesting (and compensates for the fact you're freezing it). The same applies to everyday things that I whip up to eat fresh, in terms of keeping a well-stocked pantry of somewhat pricey powders and potions that only get used up slowly.

All of those can be made on a relative dime, too; you mention things like rice, chicken, beans, carrots, all of which can be bought in bulk or from a freezer.

I hope people learn how to use spices and can source them for cheap; we have a source that is bascially a big rack that sells things like paprika powder for €2 for a relatively big bag, it's the basis for a lot of premade sauces / seasoning mixes and a lot of familiar flavours (italian, mexican). Learning to make bolognese sauce from scratch is great. Hummus can also be made from scratch, iirc it's just ground chick peas.

> I'd never call myself a chef

Chef is French for "chief". It's a position in the kitchen. So, unless you happen to work in a kitchen that has a chef, you are the chef by default!

>food seems to taste better when you make it yourself

That is definitely a testament to your skill! I struggle with cooking, and it took a long time for me (year+) where I could make a specific easy dish comfortably, in a reasonable time, and to a texture / taste where I actually like it, and not just kind of not hate it.

How do you find your recipes? Looking to get into meal prepping but I don’t really want to wing my meals for a whole week

This isn't a good answer but I don't have a single spot. I usually think "huh, I'd like to make X" then try and find what I believe to be the most traditional/classic recipe that I can via search engine. From there I'll make it (possibly with a few modifications) and it usually takes a few tries at most to get something that's at least a 7/10. I'm also in the somewhat unique position of being a single dude that's looking tasty food in bulk with good macros which are goals that are sometimes at odds with each other - recipe sites usually don't target all three.

One thing you might try is signing up for a meal kit service using their introductory offers. You can go a month or two doing this while never paying full price via the discounts and it's a good way to try a bunch of different dishes. Save the recipe cards for the stuff you like then contrast them with other internet recipes or ask an LLM for ideas. Once you've done this enough you'll build up an informal database of things you like to make and a framework for how to do it without having to resort to step-by-step instructions.

Thanks for the suggestions! I’m fairly comfortable cooking so this sounds great. I’m also looking to prep meals with good macros, which seem to be pretty hard to find unless it’s something simple like chicken on rice. Some people on instagram have really nice looking high-protein meals, but I’m not sure how well these would prep or if the listed macros or even right. I’ll try out the meal kit service- i never thought of it as a way to just try out a lot of different types of food! Super good idea

https://www.budgetbytes.com/ . All the recipes are easy enough and most of them do not require any special spices etc.

They also offer mealplans for an entire week but iirc that is a paying service (pay once).

How did you get used to eating natto? Did you like it immediately?

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