Not a snob on cooking and food wise, I found this to be a good question when debating my friend over beans on toast (UK here).

He says it doesn’t really count as cooking cos you’re just buying already produced ingredients to whack in a microwave or pot and that proper cooking is done from scratch.

I argue this is bullshit as you’re still USING common cooking equipment to make as something as simple as beans on toast because you still have to watch it not burn or dry out.

What are your thoughts on what counts as proper cooking? Would you say canned soup counts? Or frozen pizza since you’re still needing to use an oven and watch the food accordingly?

  • Wolf314159@startrek.website
    2·
    5 hours ago

    You’re not really making your own bread unless you grow and harvest the ingredients yourself. What do you mean you don’t mill your own grains? Refine your own sugar?Can’t really even call yourself a baker unless you build your own oven. /s

    Cooking and baking are basically ALL prep work and cleanup. The actual cooking and baking is overall a pretty small fraction of the overall effort that goes into making dinner or a loaf of bread. Go ahead and feel proud of yourself if you take on more of those preparatory tasks, IF it makes for a better end result. But that doesn’t mean you get to act superior to somebody else on a different path of their own personal cooking journey. Drawing an arbitrary line in the sand and saying “this is cooking, but that is not” is kind of like drawing a line between blue and indigo on a rainbow. It’s arbitrary and adds little to good the discussion.

    Go ahead and cheat on those components where it works. Not everybody has the time, space, energy, or skill to make every bread, sauce, or spice blend from scratch. If you can make something better by getting back to the basics and fundamental ingredients, go for it! But let’s be honest when it’s more about pride than the final product, enjoyment of the meal.

    Personally, the biggest reason I prefer to avoid pre-prepared foods that only require heating is so that I can avoid certain common ingredients that are often pumped into those things in insane proportions, particularly salt and sugar. It’s not so that I can feel proud of an arbitrary label.