/ck/ - Food & Cooking

versatility in what you can cook

decent knife skills

ability to tell when meat is done correctly

ability to multi-task

good intuition with dishes, as in you don't need to use recipes because you know what goes with what and in what proportions (excluding baking)

those are probably the basics

you can try to follow a recipe perfectly, but that doesn't mean that you won't fuck it up and that doesn't measure anything other than your ability to follow directions. A good cook doesn't need recipes.

>>6183185
>A good cook doesn't need recipes.

I'm waiting to reach this level.... I need recipes for almost everything. Feel like an autist in the kitchen.

>>6183185
>>6183197

assuming your goal in life isn't a career in fine cuisine, why does it matter whether or not you can come up with a dish on the spot?

if following recipes gets you some good food, who the fuck cares?

>>6183205

Does it matter? No, not really. But I don't consider someone to be a good cook if they need recipes for everything, especially because if you haven't cooked for long enough to be able to do so then I really doubt that you're capable of properly cooking certain things (many sauces, hell even just a good steak).

Tasting and adapting is part of cooking that can't be codified in a precise recipe unless you're dealing with very consistent ingredients like salt or sugar. An onion can vary so much from one to the other. Same with any herb or flavorful plant ingredient. So there's that. A good cook knows how to balance things and adapt.

Some dishes, like fried chicken, would be less variable, and with the right equipment and ingredients, a good recipe shouldn't be hard to master.

Fish will depend a lot on your fish supplier...I guess at that point, part of being a "good cook" is picking good ingredients. Or adapting to what looks good at the market...sometimes what you want to make looks like crap at the market, but something else looks great, so you might improvise.

You'll also have to get a handle on timing, with a multi-dish meal, so things can be held or are finished at the same time.

hey man what makes a good car or liqour
cooking is one of those crazy things that is infinitely subjective right up until you get to actually discussing whether its good or not, and then its black and white

what do you like? i think thats a more important question. what do you want to cook?

then do the best job possible

>>6183205
Honestly, it's more lIke a convenience factor for me. I hate having to calculate how much time I'll need to do x, y, z and monitor this and that, etc. I wish it was more lIke second nature. Can feel overwhelming, I guess.

understanding flavor and how to build it

>>6183170
>if I follow top-tier recipes 100%

That is in and out of itself a problem.

Ingredients vary in taste, texture, and size. Therefore it's silly to follow a recipe exactly because of the variation introduced by the ingredients.

Instead, you need to observe the ingredients (taste being most important) and adjust your technique and seasonings accordingly. Observation and attention to detail is key.

for example, it's silly to insist on using exactly X amount of chili pepper because the flavor of the chili pepper varies, so sometimes you need to use more (to compensate for a weaker flavor) and sometimes you would need to use less.

As others have said, ingredients are not commodities. There is a big difference between farm-raised and wild salmon. Among wild salmon, the diet and time of year they were harvested matters. So does the size and age of the fish. Hell, even where on the fish your portion was cut from would matter (a cut taken from the belly has a different fat content, and therefore different flavor and cooking method than that taken from the back, for example). Being aware of those things (for various ingredients, not just fish) is important if you were aiming for "high star chef" sort of quality.

>>6183185
>>6183197
>>6183205
>>6183170

Buy Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Childa, read it front to back like a novel without trying to make any of the recipes in it. Then start with working on the techniques she discuss.

That particular cookbook goes into great detail about how learning the methods of cooking will free you from relying on recipes. The explanations of how to properly use a knife and other hardware are crystal clear and absolutely excellent.

It's all about the end result, however you got there is a moot point! Good memory does not equate to good food, so yes a great cook can follow a recipe, it justs gets to the point that once you learn the basics you rarely need to, meaning you pretty much know what was done to most dishes by looking at and tasting them. The rest is just style!

>>6183170
Good cook = efficient use of available ingredients, good improvisation, a mind that focuses and even if the food turns out bad, tried its best and had a definite presence all throughout. Learning how things are intertwined. Being able to make something come around and taste good, or replicate roughly something that has a spectrum of "good" results is definitely a part as well. Intelligent and efficient use of tools plays a minor part.

I don't really have a definition of a "bad" cook. I guess it'd be someone who is wasteful, careless, and has no intention of learning or using their own creativity. They will likely stay bad at cooking, even if they nail a certain recipe a few times.

>>6183170
>what separates a good cook from a bad one

On a home level? I'd say tasting and progressively seasoning your food while cooking. The worst cooks are always the ones who either season without tasting or don't season at all.

I am a trained organic chemist with a PhD in total synthesis and I had difficulty with coordinating multiple complicated dishes in the kitchen when I was first starting out. It is not trivial and can require a lot of consistent, focused effort with few breaks.

I'm a shitty cook by /ck/ standards, and the only recipe I use, I use for everything, and that is our family's secret family recipe:

>enough of
>whatever you want
>in a skillet
>'till it's done

It hasn't steered me wrong so far.

>>6183467
>It hasn't steered me wrong so far.

No. It has. Your palate is just too fucked to realize it.

I'll chime in with some different advice. In order to become a good cook, you have to start thinking about food differently. Next time you're hungry, do this:
find a recipe for a dish you like, and follow it as closely as you can. Once done, taste it, don't eat it, really taste it. Try to pick out each and every ingredient. See if you can taste the Onion, the spices, the lemon, or whatever you are using. Then try to imagine how it would taste if it was made with more or less of each ingredient. Then, the next time you are hungry, make the same dish again. Change a few of those flavors. See how it was. Did it work out like you thought it would? If not, what happened? Do this again and again until you understand how to modify the flavors of that dish. Then do it with another. And another.
Try to vary more subtle things in the food, the texture, the aromas. Try swapping out certain ingrediants, onions and leeks and similar, but different flavors. See if you can tell. Try messing with the cooking times of things. See if you can make them more tender, or more tough. The first dish will be the hardest. You'll likely feel overwhelmed with everything Im asking you to keep track of, but it gets easier, trust me. Soon it fades to the back of your mind, and you hardly think about why you're adding musterd powder to Mac and cheese, but the results speak for themselves.
And finally, one day you go and make that first original dish. You take a bite, and you instinctivly know what to do to make it less sweet, to bring out the tomato flavors, and what you could have done to thicken the sauce.
And on that day you have become a good cook.

>>6183383

this is good advice