Cooking skills are hardly a skill. 10 minutes watching a youtube video once should give you all the knowledge you need to cook almost anything. Baking can be more of a challenge, but anything involving a frying pan or a pot? I'd be legitimately worried if you can't figure that out within an hour.
I'll give you 2, and to a lesser extent 3, as knowing where to buy produce cheaply, and what meals can be cooked in under 15 minutes, does take a little more effort. But using "I don't know how to cook" as an excuse is more of a sign of raw ignorance to me. Putting a cup of rice in a rice cooker and a chicken breast on a stove is not difficult.
I've been cooking for 30 years, I've made a living out of it, and no it's not that simple. You talk like someone who has never cooked anything outside of a microwave.
But using "I don't know how to cook" as an excuse is more of a sign of raw ignorance to me.
That wasn't what was said, and misrepresenting the content of other people's posts is a sign of raw trolling to me.
Not disagreeing with the overall point, but there is a difference between "haute cuisine" and cooking a meal. There is a lot that you can do that basically equates to slicing ingredients, seasoning with salt/pepper, maybe putting some sort of oil on the ingredients, and throwing it in the oven for a specified amount of time.
Once budget isn't a concern, buy a sous-vide machine and your chances of screwing up your cooking go down drastically.
>I've been cooking for 30 years, I've made a living out of it, and no it's not that simple. You talk like someone who has never cooked anything outside of a microwave.
Okay come on here, you know I did not post this to attack cooking as a profession. I have no doubt that you can make a tastier dish then I can.
My point was only that the basics of cooking is incredibly easy. One pot meals for example are exactly that, dump things in a pot and cook them. Even screwing up the order in something like Chili will still give you an eatable, tasty meal.
>You talk like someone who has never cooked anything outside of a microwave.
I have, and generally they act like it's a hard undertaking, so I give them easy recipes. Chili, Bratwurst, Curry, these are all meals that can be made in a limited number of dishes on the cheap. Serve with rice, and you can drastically cut your food cost.
EDIT: Honestly, I thought you were saying I hadn't talked to people who haven't cooked outside a microwave. I didn't realize you were actually attacking me. I've cooked quite a bit outside of a microwave, thank you.
Whatever the cause might be, the fact remains that for some reason many impoverished people don't prepare the meals economists imagine they would. Calling this "raw ignorance" is a non-explanation. To say nothing of education and knowledge, impoverished people are also often dealing with an incredible number of problems spanning mental health and social issues, and it's not hard to imagine how these problems might individually or collectively keep a person from doing something so apparently simple.
>Calling this "raw ignorance" is a non-explanation.
I called blaming cooking skills an act of raw ignorance. And I'll stand by that, even if people here feel the need to downvote me for it. There are thousands of meals that can be made with bare minimum skill, if you can cut a vegetable or put something in a pan.
Knowing what meals to make is admittedly harder, which is why I said so in my comment. But saying "I don't know how to cook" is not a valid excuse.
If you're living on a dollar a day, you probably don't have access to youtube, a working stove/microwave, or cooking utensils.
Also, if all you have is a couple dollars, you probably can't even buy the ingredients. It's always cheaper in bulk, at membership stores like Costco that you can't afford.
1. Cooking skills
2. Awareness of these cheap ingredients
3.Time
I took basic nutrition and cooking classes as a kid. Many people in lower income areas do not have that opportunity.