10 Commandments Of Cooking

Former cook Jonas Mikka Luster has a great post on Quora concerning his 10 Commandments of Cooking. It’s worth repeating.

Honor what you use. For every piece of food, every ingredient, every vegetable, slice of meat, herb, or spice, someone had to work, an animal had to die, trucks, vans, trains, and boats had to move. Every celery stalk and every pork loin has made a permanent impression on this planet. Honor the men and women who worked for your food, the animals who had to die for it, by giving everything the best treatment, thinking about how you can make it better, and by not wasting or throwing away food items.
  • Don’t lose touch with your food. Tongs and other contraptions only serve to keep you away from it. Losing touch, figuratively and literally, yields worse dishes. Touch your steaks, your salad, everything. Learn how it feels, smells, looks, and tastes.
  • Try something new every month. Follow foreign cultures and preparations. Your life will be richer and your food better, even when you’re preparing common staples.
  • Before you use the tool learn to do it with your own hands. Buying a julienne peeler is nice and can save you hours over the course of a lifetime. But only by learning how to cut, mash, grind, sear, saute, and whisk with your hands will you keep touch with your food and get the best results.
  • Cook for others. Enough said.
  • Use fresh where possible, canned where necessary and frozen when desperate.
  • Taste everything. Repeatedly.
  • Let your food items come to room temperature before throwing them into pans.
  • Work clean and clean as you go.
  • When cooking, taste. When baking, measure.
 10 Commandments Of Cooking

2 thoughts on “10 Commandments Of Cooking”

  1. I would add two things I learned from Jeff Smith:

    1) Hot pan, cold oil–food won’t stick

    2) Frugal doesn’t mean cheap, it means not wasting anything. Applied to decisions about buying kitchen equipment, it means, avoid buying something that has only one use, like an omelette pan, and buy something that can be used for a number of purposes. And don’t skimp on quality. It’s frugal to spend a lot of money on a good chef’s knife, or a cast iron skillet, if you’ll get years of good use out of it.

  2. But regarding foods from other cultures, I’m not eating tofu, or wraps. My ancestors all came from lands where they knew how to leaven bread, and they ate meat, and I see no reason to change. I’m not eating bugs, either, until civilization crashes and I have to, to survive.

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