Current Events > Why do people say they can't cook?

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Literally all you have to do is follow the recipe and you can't go wrong. Unless you're making your own recipes or doing fancy tricks like flipping omelets in the air without breaking them, I don't understand how people can think cooking is hard. If you can read a recipe, all you have to do is follow it like a robot and you can cook. Are people just making excuses for being lazy and eating out?

Healito posted...

Are people just making excuses

yes

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People over complicate cooking as well
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Lazy people

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Huh, I remember seeing you on the PS4 boards

Is this true?

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lazy humans. In my case, I need to get a cook because I have a High-Grade.

theAteam posted...

yes

emblem boy posted...

People over complicate cooking as well

ColdOne666 posted...

Lazy people

Pretty much what I thought. No wonder life expectancy is falling.

There is such a thing as "bad at following instructions".

Definitely not that easy. Wish I magically had ingredients and recipes to follow.

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Not everyone has Heisenberg's cooking skills....

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Ok so what if Ive never used anything other than a microwave before so I dont know how to use an oven or stove and dont know any of the terminology used or best practices like how to know when its done cooking

The complexity of cooking is highly variable. Making microwavable mac & cheese? Easy. Making boxed mac & cheese? Still easy, but marginally more complex. Making mac & cheese from pasta and a custom cheese sauce? More complex than I'd usually care to do.

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how many cloves of garlic is enough garlic

My friend has had several failed attempts at making cookies from scratch. Her last attempt tasted too plain because: "I was following the recipe, but it was too powdery. So I added an extra egg. But then it was too sticky, so I added more flour..."

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NoxObscuras posted...

so I added more flour..."

misty fucked up her cooking once. added more ingredients in stew. came out to be 40 ingredient stew and it tasted awful.
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Healito posted...

Literally all you have to do is follow the recipe and you can't go wrong.

Demonstrably wrong. There are many things that require greater knowledge and skill than just "following a recipe." Like, I literally can't make a cheese sauce from scratch, despite doing exactly what the recipe says.

TheOtherMike posted...

Demonstrably wrong. There are many things that require greater knowledge and skill than just "following a recipe." Like, I literally can't make a cheese sauce from scratch, despite doing exactly what the recipe says.

Then you need to read better recipes. That makes no sense at all.

Healito posted...

Literally all you have to do is follow the recipe and you can't go wrong.

this tells me you haven't cooked much. this is true, to a certain extent, sure. but cooking has terminology to learn and techniques to master. some stuff, like "dicing an onion" is pretty straight forward, but other things like "fold the egg into the batter" aren't quite as obvious and require practice to do correctly. recipes will sometimes use subjective terms like "until soft" or "until done" and it's hard to know what that exactly means without experience. then sometimes things don't go as planned, or a recipe doesn't work out exactly right and you gotta improvise.

i am with you that cooking is a lot easier than some people think. i used to be one of those people who "didn't know how to cook" until i was like 37 years old. i survived on eating out and easy / instant foods (canned, boxed, frozen). then the pandemic hit and restaurants closed or shot up in price so i 'learned' by looking up and following recipes.

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Healito posted...

Then you need to read better recipes. That makes no sense at all.

I've read and tried multiple recipes. It either turned out lumpy or oily no matter what. Either way, the point was to demonstrate that your claim was wrong, which I did.

Because they're lazy. It's easy as hell to cook decent food, people who say they can't are just making up excuses for their laziness tbh

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Giant_Aspirin posted...

this tells me you haven't cooked much. this is true, to a certain extent, sure. but cooking has terminology to learn and techniques to master. some stuff, like "dicing an onion" is pretty straight forward, but other things like "fold the egg into the batter" aren't quite as obvious and require practice to do correctly. then sometimes things don't go as planned, or a recipe doesn't work out exactly right and you gotta improvise.

You shouldn't have to improvise if you just follow the recipe. And those "advanced" techniques should be written out step-by-step in the recipe.

TheOtherMike posted...

I've read and tried multiple recipes. It either turned out lumpy or oily no matter what. Either way, the point was to demonstrate that your claim was wrong, which I did.

No offense, but all you're proving is that you have difficulty with reading recipes and following simple instructions.

honestly I tend to interpret "I can't cook" as "I don't have a kitchen stocked with the right tools/appliances to cook"

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Healito posted...

No offense, but all you're proving is that you have difficulty with reading recipes and following simple instructions.

No, I do great reading and following instructions with everything else except cooking. Because I can't cook.

Recipes almost always assume a certain base level of knowledge that people don't start with. Dice, wash, prep, grill, boil, braise, julienne - all ultimately meaningless without the context of knowledge.

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I can cook but my cooking isnt good. I mean its good enough for me which is fine but Im not rushing to share my trash cooking with others

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In order to follow instructions you would have to know what ingredients are what and what tools what

TheOtherMike posted...

No, I do great reading and following instructions with everything else except cooking. Because I can't cook.

Why can't you cook?

OliviaWildThing posted...

to know what ingredients are what and what tools what

Huh?

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OliviaWildThing posted...

In order to follow instructions you would have to know what ingredients are what and what tools what

If only you had a device that can look up anything in the recorded history of human kind

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ColdOne666 posted...

Lazy people

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ChocoboMogALT posted...

Recipes almost always assume a certain base level of knowledge that people don't start with. Dice, wash, prep, grill, boil, braise, julienne - all ultimately meaningless without the context of knowledge.

Nope, some do, but some websites break recipes down into very simple steps designed for beginners.

Healito posted...

Why can't you cook?

Because I can't. I help my husband with dinner by chopping veggies and otherwise staying out of his way.

Healito posted...

You shouldn't have to improvise if you just follow the recipe.

this one recipe from a usually good cookbook asks me to simmer stuff in a skillet for "20 minutes or until sauce is thick". the first time i made it, i followed the instructions to a bloody T and after 20 minutes it was soupy as fuck. it took another 40 minutes for the sauce to cook down. i made it two more times, each time doing exactly what it said, and each time it was soupy. now i know to leave the lid off, despite the recipe saying it should stay covered, and i add 1/2 cup less water.

also, sometimes people are human and make mistakes then need to improvise to correct them.

Healito posted...

And those "advanced" techniques should be written out step-by-step in the recipe.

the Joy of Cooking cook book that i have has a giant glossary that explains standard cooking and baking terms because most recipes don't do that.


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TheOtherMike posted...

Because I can't. I help my husband with dinner by chopping veggies and otherwise staying out of his way.

So you're just lazy and want others to do all the work for you with this excuse?

Giant_Aspirin posted...

this one recipe from a usually good cookbook asks me to simmer stuff in a skillet for "20 minutes or until sauce is thick". the first time i made it, i followed the instructions to a bloody T and after 20 minutes it was soupy as fuck. it took another 40 minutes for the sauce to cook down. i made it two more times, each time doing exactly what it said, and each time it was soupy. now i know to leave the lid off, despite the recipe saying it should stay covered, and i add 1/2 cup less water.

Yea, so that recipe had the wrong steps.

MC_BatCommander posted...

If only you had a device that can look up anything in the recorded history of human kind

so itll take 3 hours to cook?

thats like saying I dont know how to code isnt valid because if you studied long enough youll learn

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Healito posted...

So you're just lazy and want others to do all the work for you with this excuse?

No, I just can't cook. Why don't you go do something you have no skill in doing? Why are you so hostile about the fact that different people have different skills?

Healito posted...

Yea, so that recipe had the wrong steps.

but you said that as long as you blindly follow a recipe it will always work out fine and there's nothing to ever learn or figure out?

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Healito posted...

Nope, some do, but some websites break recipes down into very simple steps designed for beginners.

And if you have to put in extra effort seeking out those websites, learning the techniques, and probably failing a few times...

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ChocoboMogALT posted...

And if you have to put in extra effort seeking out those websites, learning the techniques, and probably failing a few times...

You don't need to spend that much effort to find easy recipes, this is just proving that laziness is the primary reason

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It's just being lazy but people gotta stop acting like real healthy and tasty cooking will only take 5 minutes. I remember arguing with some dude on here trying to say that putting crackers on canned sardined is considered healthy cooking lmao.

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MC_BatCommander posted...

You don't need to spend that much effort to find easy recipes, this is just proving that laziness is the primary reason

How do I know what's an easy recipe?

It's like saying art is easy, you just need to follow the instructions. Or math, or programming, or sports...

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This topic is lazy.

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TheOtherMike posted...

No, I just can't cook.

Why not?

Cooking can be easy or it can be a lot of work depending on what is and how you want to prepare it. I dunno why this is something hard to grasp.

Whenever I cook, I ALWAYS factor how much time and effort I put into it which includes preparing the food, the utensils I use, actually cooking it and how much cleaning I do. I honestly dunno why people don't factor these things in it, prolly because they're not actually doing all the cooking by themselves.

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NoxObscuras posted...

My friend has had several failed attempts at making cookies from scratch. Her last attempt tasted too plain because: "I was following the recipe, but it was too powdery. So I added an extra egg. But then it was too sticky, so I added more flour..."

She made a mistake in measuring the flour. Ideally you fluff the flour in the bag. Then spoon into your measuring cup. Never stick the cup into the flour to scoop it out. You will pack the flour and then use too much for your recipe.
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ChocoboMogALT posted...

How do I know what's an easy recipe?

It's like saying art is easy, you just need to follow the instructions. Or math, or programming, or sports...

ChocoboMogALT posted...

How do I know what's an easy recipe?

It's like saying art is easy, you just need to follow the instructions. Or math, or programming, or sports...

... By reading it? Y'all inflate the difficulty of cooking so much. I'm not saying producing restaurant quality food is easy, but cooking a decent tasty meal sure is.

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There's definitely more to a lot of cooking then just following a recipe. There's technique to almost anything. Just like with anything else, technique really only improves through practice and repetition.

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