A good cook is one who can make the inedible delicious. True or false?

[purplepoppy]

Any idiot can fry a steak, that's not cooking, it's heating. It takes zero skill to drop a lobster into a pan or put a chicken in an oven. As for salad, if you can't stick veg on a plate, I ask didn't your mother teach you anything?

Nay, I say a good cook can take something totally inedible and transform it into something delicious. Take the humble bean, any cretin can chuck a tin of kidney beans into a chilli but only a cook can take raw hard dried beans convert them into soft packages laden with absorbed flavour.

Any moron can roast a leg of lamb but only a cook can take a fatty sinewy a slab of breast and turn it into a crispy gooey wonder.

How many can't even joint a raw chicken or debone a pigs head or even fillet a flounder? How many think home cooking is when you open more than one jar of sauce?

Thoughts?

[MrOracle]

I can cook a bunch of different meals, but there are 12 year olds on TV that run circles around me when it comes to this kind of creative cooking. I never put that much energy into it - I learned about 30 dinner meals, basic breakfast stuff, and some baking, and I never bothered to go beyond that. Hey, it's a lot more than most people know today.

At some point I had to accept that there wasn't time to become an expert in everything, so I had to pick my battles and add to other areas of knowledge more sporadically over time - and I really didn't even do that very much with cooking - I can't really claim to have learned very much at all about cooking since I was maybe 22 - which was 30 years ago. I can follow a recipe, but I can't just invent things from scratch like someone with real training.

[DJB72]

Liver is the real test. Cooked badly - literally just 30 seconds too long and it has the texture of reconstituted doc martens. Under by the same amount and you need to serve it with a tampon.

But there's that perfect spot - different for every animal from chicken to venison and everything in between - where it's juicy but not bloody and cooked but not tough.

Then there's turning different types into pate. That's an art to itself. Farmhouse, coarse, smooth, blended, each with their own peculiar subtleties. And it's amazing how many people don't realise truly great pate is actually liver!

[Anonymous]

No, any idiot cannot make a steak. There are plenty of people who destroy that, along with a basic egg, and even boiling water for them starts fires. A good meal does not need to be mystical and magical. Food seasoned well, cooked out of the salmonella stage, not burned, is a well cooked meal. A cook by definition is someone who prepares food. If "heating" a steak required no skill at all and anyone could do it, why is that there are plenty who cannot do it even when given simple instructions. Now if you want to talk about being a chef, that's a different ball game, that's where by nature of the definition, you are in the upper realm of cooking where you need to have well developed skills to transform food and be innovative with it.

[FreyaRed]

Even master cooks cook only with water and even Wernher von Braun couldn't build a rocket out of dirt.
I'm sure there is a margin where a good cook can make something edible with less interesting ingredients, but this margin isn't huge. I'm not a pro in cooking but I think when something doesn't taste like it should there is no way to give a dish its taste back.

[bean2k21]

I'm moved by your passion. One of my favorite artists is René Magritte. This painting called 'The False Mirror' is a work of art. Without the clouds, it would be just an eyeball. Same thing for this

recipe that I make over and over. Why do I love it? The 1/4 cup of mint. It's like what the fuck? Mint with feta cheese and artichoke. It's fucking art, this artichoke.

[bean2k21]

www.foodnetwork.com/.../artichoke-risotto-2371058

[Jaximus-Lion]

Most peals ! From Citrus fruits i nake marmalades. Other veggies like potato, onion, eggplants, carrots or any other rooty veg, i take the peal and make soup stock of it by boiling it in water then filter it to get just water with all the goods in it. Other peals, we cook them and use the water for plants.

[oddwaffle]

No. A good cook brings out the flavor in the ingredients and know what ingredients to choose for each cooking method. You can't turn rocks to food. Stop dreaming.

The easiest way to see it the Thanksgiving turkey. The number one issue with it is that it's always dry. It's because nobody knows how to cook it.

A good cook will be able to turn that nightmare into something more palatable or even incredible.

[Jewishbabygirl1]

Very true. Like everything else, it just takes practice. I think more and more people will get creative (myself included:) when we start dedicating more time in the kitchen on a weekly basis and cut down on fast-food consumption. Fast-food is okay every now and then, but home-cooked meals should take precedence in my opinion. 🥩🍷😋💖

[Surely]

I can kill, pluck and cut up chickens, ducks, geese and other birds. I can cut up a hog’s head, and cook it off to make scrapple.
Never did any fish. But still don’t consider myself a great chef. Though I would not starve on my cooking!

[purplepoppy]

I had to Google scrapple, looks very similar to British haslet

[Surely]

@purplepoppy. Probably would be the same as German Pan Haus. Think that is spelled correctly.

[Ninania]

I'd say a good cook is someone who can work with the nuance of different tastes and create something with depth in flavour. Anyone can pour premade sauce on their food, but a good cook can work with raw spices.

[AviatorTom]

150% agree. That's what differentiates a cook from a chef.

[joeldalton]

I'd say it takes a great cook to make the inedible delicious. You can still fuck up dropping a lobster in a pot or chicken in the oven.

[Tamera952]

Not so much the inedible, edible, …. I think it’s anyone that can make ANYthing edible, that’s slightly above average.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure I'm convinced, the Malliard reaction does an awful lot of heavy lifting.

[Anonymous]

Plenty of morons can’t roast a leg of lamb 🙂. But in general I think you’re right.

[exitseven]

Yes, cooking is an art. I have been learning how to cook a little when I was unemployed . Let's just say that I try to keep things simple.

[Pete671]

I agree, I can make burgers taste like steak,,,

[LiamJHayden]

Pretty much true.

[Hummertime]

You worldly people make me laugh.

[panamared1]

Totally agree

[Tonyblony5150]

Yes that's right 👍