There are some other things that I wanted to say but struggled to fit in to the OP. I’ll mention them here (in a rather brain-dumpy manner):
I think an important question is, like, why is it important to understand these things when you can just google a recipe for any given food item you’re cooking? The recipe will tell you exactly what to do and following those instructions isn’t exactly rocket science.
Well, the words aren’t really coming to me here but nevertheless, I’ll give it an initial stab. 1) Often times you’ll need to improvise and do things different from what the recipe says. 2) Sometimes you might want to cook something without a recipe.
When I said that this stuff is something you could learn in minutes-to-hours rather than days-to-weeks, I should probably clarify some things. I think a lot of learning does still happen at the days-to-weeks point in the timeline. What I mean is that I think the 80-20 principle applies and that in the minutes-to-hours phase, I expect that a very useful and worthwhile of learning will take place.
When I propose that the benefit is large, to be clear, it’s because I’m multiplying a relatively small amount of utility across a pretty large period of time. When you improve you enjoy your meal a bit more than you otherwise would I don’t think that’s yielding a massive amount of utilons. But when you eat three meals a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year… it adds up. Technology could end up changing this though.
Even if you currently are someone who currently doesn’t get much utility out of eating, I think that can change for reasons similar to how someone who doesn’t appreciate art can learn to appreciate art and subsequently get a lot of joy out of art. And since we eat every day, learning to appreciate food seems plausibly worthwhile. Hm, maybe I’ll write a post about that some time. For now I’ll note that this path also has downsides. Off the top of my head: being tempted to spend more time cooking than you should, to eat less healthily than you should, to spend more money than you should, not enjoying food you otherwise would.
I worry that I wasn’t clear enough about the fact that I don’t think the goals of a crispy exterior and tender interior are as common as… I made them sound? The important point is just that they are relatively common, common enough that if there’s a technique for accomplishing those goals, that technique would be worth learning.
I was hoping to spend more time explaining what exactly the adjacent techniques are, why I think they are adjacent to the reverse sear, and how you might apply them when improvising in the kitchen, but I kinda ran out of steam (no pun intended).
There are some other things that I wanted to say but struggled to fit in to the OP. I’ll mention them here (in a rather brain-dumpy manner):
I think an important question is, like, why is it important to understand these things when you can just google a recipe for any given food item you’re cooking? The recipe will tell you exactly what to do and following those instructions isn’t exactly rocket science.
Well, the words aren’t really coming to me here but nevertheless, I’ll give it an initial stab. 1) Often times you’ll need to improvise and do things different from what the recipe says. 2) Sometimes you might want to cook something without a recipe.
When I said that this stuff is something you could learn in minutes-to-hours rather than days-to-weeks, I should probably clarify some things. I think a lot of learning does still happen at the days-to-weeks point in the timeline. What I mean is that I think the 80-20 principle applies and that in the minutes-to-hours phase, I expect that a very useful and worthwhile of learning will take place.
When I propose that the benefit is large, to be clear, it’s because I’m multiplying a relatively small amount of utility across a pretty large period of time. When you improve you enjoy your meal a bit more than you otherwise would I don’t think that’s yielding a massive amount of utilons. But when you eat three meals a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year… it adds up. Technology could end up changing this though.
Even if you currently are someone who currently doesn’t get much utility out of eating, I think that can change for reasons similar to how someone who doesn’t appreciate art can learn to appreciate art and subsequently get a lot of joy out of art. And since we eat every day, learning to appreciate food seems plausibly worthwhile. Hm, maybe I’ll write a post about that some time. For now I’ll note that this path also has downsides. Off the top of my head: being tempted to spend more time cooking than you should, to eat less healthily than you should, to spend more money than you should, not enjoying food you otherwise would.
I worry that I wasn’t clear enough about the fact that I don’t think the goals of a crispy exterior and tender interior are as common as… I made them sound? The important point is just that they are relatively common, common enough that if there’s a technique for accomplishing those goals, that technique would be worth learning.
I was hoping to spend more time explaining what exactly the adjacent techniques are, why I think they are adjacent to the reverse sear, and how you might apply them when improvising in the kitchen, but I kinda ran out of steam (no pun intended).