What if you eat packaged foods because you're too scared of making yourself sick because you've missed something very obvious while cooking that everyone else knows about?
Are there any YouTube videos of paranoid cooking? ie they'd teach where to look to see if you've screwed up etc.
Paranoid cooking as in "how can I be sure what I'm cooking isn't toxic"?
I started cooking relatively late in my life, and the lesson is: unless you're doing something strange, it's really hard to poison yourself by cooking. Also: real cooks improvise, they don't follow a recipe set in stone.
You can always screwup and cook something that doesn't taste nice (especially by overcooking), but if you mix and cook random vegetables, chicken, rice, etc, you'll generally have something edible and non-poisonous. If you follow an actual recipe it's even better, of course. Eventually you'll learn some tricks (e.g. sautéed onions go with everything and smell nice).
I suppose stay away from seafood or anything you're unsure of how (long) to cook.
I wonder if you might be approaching the problem from the wrong direction. In all likelihood, you're not going to make any grave mistakes -- you're just going to make food slightly below par a couple times until you hone in your cooking skills. It's probably worth practicing cooking some simple meals until that sense of paranoia diminishes rather than trying to cater to it.
(I honestly used to avoid cooking because I wasn't good at it -- the only thing to "fix" that was to start cooking, and now I feel comfortable with it and cook all the time)
Heh heh, I used to avoid cooking because I thought cooks followed a rigid set of instructions, and if they missed anything that meant the whole preparation became inedible (maybe that was the programmer in me!). Then my brother -- who's real good at cooking -- told me the truth: it's hard to screw up a meal. Beyond some basic tricks, he improvises. Exact quantities don't matter. Don't use too much salt (this is subjective and you get better at it), don't overcook (ditto), butter and oil may be unhealthy but make everything better, etc.
I'll never be a great cook, and I occasionally overcook something -- which is in my opinion the number one sin -- when I'm not paying attention, but I manage. Cooking doesn't scare me anymore.
This matches my experience! I thought there was a rigid set of instructions and that if I couldn't follow them perfectly I would ruin the meal. Definitely the programmer in me :). And definitely, in retrospect, a totally misguided notion.
I've been cooking in one way or another since I was about 10 years old and this perspective has simply never occurred to me. And for the life of me I could never understand why people thought cooking was so difficult.
I'm like your brother; I innately understand cause and effect when cooking; I can see something in a restaurant, and mimic it on the first try with reasonable results.
a fellow programmer shared that not everybody understands cooking like that, that the causal relationships, understanding of temperatures, or additions of flavors.
This is going to sound like it’s not directly addressing your concerns, but stay with me: watch Alton Brown’s old Food TV series "Good Eats".
I used to think cooking was this sort of mysterious voodoo with arbitrary rules, and could not (and still cannot) memorize a recipe to save my life. Good Eats changed everything.
Alton Brown had a background in children's television, and decided to apply that approach to a cooking show.* Instead of simply saying "this meal will taste great, here's how to make it," he goes into weird Sesame Street-style digressions into the science behind things like the "Mailard Reaction" (how the browned crust on a burger or steak happens and why it's delicious) or why different oils get used for different things.
Once the science, chemistry and physics of cooking started making sense to me, I quickly became a pretty goddamned good chef (if I do say so myself). I think this will have a similar effect on your fears — once you get how it all works you won't be afraid of fucking up.
Most edibles in a supermarket you can just wolf down. Some things to consider:
-If you use dried beans, soak them overnight and boil them for an hour. Discard the water. You'll save yourself stomach pains this way.
-Do not eat uncooked wheat. Your stomach will thank you.
-Do not eat potatoes with green bits. They're a bit toxic.
-If the vacuum-sealed packaging meat comes in is starting to bulge, pick another package. The meat is releasing gases in the initial stages of spoiling. (Probably still fine to eat,cooked)
-Wash your vegetables. Soil bacteria can give you a bad time, although the risk isn't terribly high. In some countries, human excrement is still used for fertilization - this carries a risk of Hepatitis C and you want to heat the produce properly before consumption.
-If it smells off or tastes bad, don't eat it!
I can't think of anything else off the top of my head. This list is already full of "very unlikely to give you trouble" items as is. Have fun cooking!
No! You absolutely should not ever rinse raw chicken. It doesn't do anything except cross contaminate your entire kitchen!! There is really no reason to and very good reasons not to.
As long as it's fresh and piping hot throughout, it's safe. If you're paranoid, buy a meat thermometer. The safe minimum temperatures are listed at the link below.
I think a meat thermometer is the best kitchen tool you can own, but folks should be advised that the "safe minimum" temperatures are (understandably) very conservative. The recommended 145 for pork, for example, is done. Anything higher will be overcooked and dry.
A book that we've used a lot for ideas on cooking healthy and cheap meals is "Good and Cheap" by Leanne Brown. You can download the PDF for free from her site, or buy a hardcopy from several sites (I have no affiliation, just a happy buyer/reader/cook):
It's based on trying to counter this very idea ... and has a lot of great ideas for what feels like "fancy" meals, but with pretty simple ingredients/instructions. Highly recommended if you are interested in expanding your kitchen repertoire (whether you're a cooking newbie or an experienced "foodie").
I'd suggest that the best way to get over this is to learn food safety, proper handwashing, and get a few materials to help with that (different cutting boards for different things, etc). This sorts of things are the best way to cut down on food-borne illnesses.
And learn the statistics on them as well, so that you have a logical way to dismiss the fear.
Then start cooking simple things and work your way up.
Not true. Incorrectly cooked kidney beans (and to a lesser degree other beans) can cause severe vomiting and diarrhea, because of phytohaemagglutinin toxicity, which needs prolonged heating to destroy:
Cook whichever way, but remember to wash raw vegetables thoroughly! Improperly cleaned raw vegetables are a common source of gastroenteritis and similar illnesses (or more serious ones -- I still remember a cholera epidemic in my country when I was younger).
A meat thermometer is great for quantitatively confirming that your food has achieved a germ-killing temperature.
Other than that, be paranoid about raw meat and its juices. Use disinfecting spray and paper towels to clean up any drips or spills. Don't set meat wrappers on the counter - send them straight into the trash. Immediately wash any utensils or plates that touched the meat, then wash your hands.
Wash your veggies; wash them well. Be sure to get leftovers into the fridge as soon as they're reasonably cool. To be on the safe side, throw away leftovers that have been out for more than 2 hours.
Use minced beef, since it is entirely obviously when it has been made safe (it will turn brown). Always use a clean knife, cutting board and hands for meat and things that come from the ground.
Also experiment with roasting things in the oven because with a cooking thermometer that's pretty much fool proof in terms of safety.
Finally consider a slow cooker/Instapot. Cook things for 8 hours and everything is safe to eat if it ever will be.
This is false. My family and I got to experience dysentery for the first time because of undercooked meat from the supermarket.
Similarly, e. coli, listeria etc outbreaks happen with produce all the time.
Always wash produce, cook meat properly and clean hands, utensils and surfaces after preparing meat. This doesn't mean be afraid of your kitchen at all, just be aware that things can be dirty until they're cleaned and cooked.
What's your source for that? The CDC estimates 1 in 6 people a year get sick from food eaten in the US, and I can't imagine that none of that food is from a modern supermarket. Poultry, for example, "often contains harmful bacteria such as Salmonella and Campylobacter." [1]
That said, it's not hard to cook food safely. The USDA publishes guidelines [2], which you can then adjust with your own experience and research. (The guidelines are just guidelines, and lack nuance. For example, chicken cooked lower than 165 can still be safe, but takes longer to pasteurize. [3])
Of course, despite all this, cooking isn't a high-risk activity. People everywhere of mixed (or lax) skills and safety have been doing it for thousands of years, and yet foodborne illness is not mankind's single greatest existential threat.
No source, but I've simply never gotten sick from food my entire life (excluding alcohol!)
Definitely make sure you cook ground beef, pork, chicken all the way through. Many things like whole beef and fish will really only have bacteria on the outside so it's not particularly important how throughly you cook it. (that's not to encourage people to not try, but to encourage them to not be scared of 'messing up'.)
Leave him be, he must've just learned all those words, and in the great tradition of average human discourse, put them together to form a grammatically coherent yet nonsensical utterance that nonetheless achieves its main objective, namely making him feel good about himself.
I encourage you to not stop reading after he called you a loon. He dedicates a few paragraphs to explain what he feels is wrong with your talk.
Also read the comments, where he says:
I am watching the talk (final minutes now) and except for the history, meaning of interpretations etc., he actually understands QM more correctly than many people employed as physicists...
(The audacity! Someone that actually watches the thing they'll be bitching about!)
> I encourage you to not stop reading after he called you a loon. He dedicates a few paragraphs to explain what he feels is wrong with your talk.
What makes you think I stopped reading? How do you think I knew that he was attacking a straw man (and hence making a fool of himself)?
> read the comments
Well, that's nice. I feel vindicated. But that doesn't change the fact that he published a totally unwarranted ad hominem attack directed at me based on incomplete information and never retracted it, let alone apologized for it. (Sorry, but a comment doesn't count. Most people don't read the comments.) So I stand by my position that his behavior was unprofessional to say the least.
Well his complaints about the talk are after the "loon" bit, and you didn't say anything to the effect of, "well he called me a loon but did explain his position", so I figured.
I explained it as clearly as I could: he called me a loon because I said something that was wrong. And he was correct: the thing he claims is wrong is indeed wrong.
What he failed to notice (or at least failed to mention) was that the wrong comment was preceded by me saying, "I am about to tell you something that is wrong because it makes an interesting and illuminating puzzle to figure out why it is wrong." And it was followed by me saying, "Obviously what I just told you can't be right (because if it were I would at the very least have won the Nobel prize in physics), so there must be a flaw in the reasoning. But where is it? Well, it's here..."
Are there any YouTube videos of paranoid cooking? ie they'd teach where to look to see if you've screwed up etc.
Asking for a friend.