The (Surprisingly Unsexy) Truth About Cooking

Thai crab vegetable salad. Braised pork belly entrée. Coconut lime sorbet with a ginger tuile.

If there’s nothing else we’ve learned from the recent explosion of cooking shows, it’s that food can be downright sexy.

My personal favorite is MasterChef, where home cooks battle to show what they can do best in the kitchen.

It’s like the American Idol of food TV.

But shows like MasterChef completely misrepresent home cooking, and make too many people think they can’t ever cook in the first place.

I’ve got a secret to let you in on.

I’d never make it past the first round on MasterChef, and most of the greatest home cooks in the world never would either.

That’s because home cooking isn’t nearly as sexy as what you’ll see on TV. And that’s a good thing.

Food as Art

In my high school class, I was voted “most artistic.”

Although I grew up mostly interested in drawing and painting, I’m sure this is the reason I started cooking at such a young age as well.

Starting out with raw ingredients and transforming them through the twin skills of cutting and heating was an enjoyable experience for me, and is as close to creating great art as you can get.

I think that the elevation of food into an art form is a good thing for several reasons:

• Since we all have to eat, we might as well make eating as enjoyable as possible.
• Food is something that must be enjoyed quickly, otherwise it will rot away.
• Cooking is one of the few art forms that actually takes advantage of tastes, textures, and smells.

But food has been taken way past the realm of plain ol’ humble art and into the realm of fancy pants high art.

I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Exotic spices and herbs. Fussy plating and presentation. Expensive ingredients and equipment… pretty much everything you’d see the contestants of MasterChef use to win the judges over.

At its worst, arty food is expensive and takes way too much time and energy to prepare. Sure, it may be stylish, but it won’t fill you up the way a simple pot roast would.

And frankly, a trained chef will do a far better job than you any day of the week.

Food as Physical Necessity

Today, going out to a nice restaurant is not much different than going to an art museum.

Like painting and pottery, we humans have elevated a once-basic skill to an artisanal craft that few can master without an enormous investment of time, money, and energy.

If you turn on your TV to MasterChef, you’ll see home cooks busting their tails off to create the kinds of creations that you see at art museums–er, I mean restaurants–without the formal education or on-the-job training that most successful chefs have.

But at the end of the day, people eat food in order to get energy and survive. All other benefits are secondary.

Until very recently in human civilization, the food that was prepared and eaten at home was quite humble. A few ingredients cooked simply, resulting in a tasty and healthy meal.

But it was a skill that was passed down informally from generation to generation, and the recent success of the processed-food industry means that we are slowly forgetting how to cook at home.

As a result, now our best look at home cooking from scratch comes from TV shows. It’s very sexy, but incredibly intimidating. So we say, “I couldn’t do that,” and throw in another microwave dinner.

The Mindset of Highly Effective Home Cooks

No matter what your political beliefs are, I’m sure you’d agree that President Obama is a very busy man.

No matter how much you have on your plate, it’s almost guaranteed that the President of the United States of America has much more, especially in an age where communication across the world is immediate and everywhere.

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, he let on how he is able to get so much accomplished, and one passage in particular I think is important for understanding why home cooking shouldn’t be sexy:

“You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,” (Obama) said. “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.” He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting. “You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.”

For most of us, food is primarily a practical matter.

• We need the calories to sustain us.
• We want our food to promote health and fitness.
• We want it to be enjoyable to eat.

And every bit of attention you put towards making an elaborate meal depletes willpower that you could use elsewhere.

Most of us have too much else going on in our lives that is frankly more important than being able to throw together a restaurant-ready meal every night.

And that’s fine.

You can be a black belt kitchen hacker without being an amateur chef ready for prime time television.

The Truth About Home Cooking

There are fundamental differences between home cooking and restaurant cooking.

The primary aim of one is to keep you alive, the other is to create a museum-ready masterpiece.

In a culture that has broken the link between generations of learning how to cook, most people look to things like MasterChef to get an idea of what home cooking is really about.

But trying to cook like a reality show contestant will drive you insane. Trying to cook like your great-grandmother won’t.

The best home cooking has three characteristics:

1. It is simple. It uses few ingredients, which are easy to find. It doesn’t require lots of gadgets or fancy techniques.
2. It is flexible. It doesn’t require strict recipes. Ingredients can be easily substituted without affecting the quality of the dish.
3. It is enjoyable. It tastes great, but it isn’t addictive. It is the kind of food that brings friends and family together.

In short, you want most of what you cook to be go-to meals.

I don’t mean any disrespect to the contestants on MasterChef or any other show. In fact, these people are great examples of how everyone should follow their passion, building valuable skills that they can share with the world.

And I don’t even mean that you shouldn’t ever try to push yourself to the edge and make fancy meals for special occasions.

But too many people think they can’t cook because they compare themselves to the people they see on prime time.

Don’t be intimidated by the cooking you see on TV. Home cooking is a skill that anyone can learn.

Even if it isn’t as sexy as what you see on the networks, It’s still pretty damn great!

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