lol I thought that first point about simplifying the cooking prep was going to be a setup into a "by the way this video is sponsored... by HelloFresh!"
I learned how to cook quite early in my life: my approach was putting everything together what was unheard of def helped me understand concepts behind dishes rather than boringly praying down recipes (I really despise that)
I agree with most of the conclusions made in the video. But when I think of cooking in terms of learning science, cooking becomes an activity where I must achieve more and more competency in, and it almost becomes an objective rather than a necessity, which I see as redundant. From my perspective, I don’t understand why you would try to improve your cooking skills beyond basic competency to cook for your family. I can understand trying to optimize your skill set for work, but not for housework like cooking. My overall criticism is that it just seems redundant to apply learning science to cooking when u can already cook just fine & feed urself.
As a cook and an engineer, i really appreciate what is being communicated here. Breaking down complex tasks and systems into separate and iterative parts really is the essence of cooking. However, i disagree with the premise, because the mechanical and absolute explanation of the process misses the entire point of cooking. The exact amount of salt pepper and garlic is irrelevant. Cooking is a creative and exploration based process. You're not "allergic" to exploration and experimentation, sure. But it is the _essence_ of cooking. Food made without love and art is bland. Be well.
Hey Benjamin! I have been watching most of your videos, and I find your content great and very fruitful. I would be interested to know if you have ever considered the idea of creating a course or writing a book that serves as a guide for any student. I hope you can continue growing on this platform because the work you do is really interesting. Greetings from Argentina!
Interesting! Would love more videos like this, where you apply all those principles to learning different skills, especially physical ones! Seems to be a somewhat unexplored area. Interesting thing about cooking is that while it offers almost instant feedback (taste, or e.g. the temperature of meat we're cooking), it's not something we get to practice as much as most other skills - you're not going to cook 10 meals and eat them all in a single day, so there'll naturally be a heavier focus on theory here and relatively few opportunities to practice. We need to make more assumptions and then test them, and if somebody can't cook then it's not guaranteed that they've even tested those assumptions properly (because it's easy to mess up an ingredient). Then there's the entire chemistry of different ingredients coming together to create a taste, a bunch of miscellaneous skills. Definitely an interesting skill to learn 😉
Yes that's a good point about the fewer feedback cycles. Cooking is extremely complex. And my goal here is to be a good cook for the family (not necessarily learning to cook classic foods - just the foods we like and serve our purposes). That narrows the scope for me.
Hey, ben nic video as always. I have a question. Can you tell me something about "brainstorming" I have been hearing about this term a lot lately but don't know whether it is legit or just a myth. Just like learning styles and YO I LOVE SAMOSAS TOO😂
I love this concept! I learnt many languages, but the learning techniques aren't easily applied outside of the textbook. I'm trying to learn hip-hop dancing with these concepts. Would you like to give it a try?
Hello Benjamin, congratulations and a great video. One other important aspect that comes to my mind is how the emotions play a key part during the whole process. This happens to me all the time, despite knowing the sequence of all the steps in preparing a certain dish while being in the right emotional zone makes a huge difference in the final outcome. For eg, the emotion i have towards people who are going to have my dish along with the experience i would like them to have. V/S me being indifferent towards the emotional aspect or the people who would be savoring it. Another eg, having the dish which is made by my mother v/s the same dish i may have it in a fast food restaurant.. May be a topic for another Video? 🙂
That's interesting - I certainly think that thinking about the experience that someone is going to have (or the experience that you want, if cooking for yourself) is important. That also leads to things like presentation, ambience, etc.
