79 replies to this topic

[annabelle]

Most people under the age of 40 have a very low failure tolerance...

And you know this exactly how?

[jrshaul]

Most people under the age of 40 have a very low failure tolerance...

And you know this exactly how?

I used to work tech support.

[PlatosPlate]

The Crock Pot.

I think that this is deeply reflective of our American mindset: set it and forget it. Throw the ingredients of success in a pot and see how they simmer. Not only does it take away the dexterity in mastering kitchen instruments, but in doing so it values function over form. For children, it distances themselves away from cooking...and champions cooking that lacks a heart and a brain. In essence, it is a meal that cooks itself; a surrogate chef!

[Toliver]

The Crock Pot.

I think that this is deeply reflective of our American mindset: set it and forget it.

Or how about "set it and use the time you save by using a crock pot doing a multitude of other things in your busy life"?

Throw the ingredients of success in a pot and see how they simmer. Not only does it take away the dexterity in mastering kitchen instruments, but in doing so it values function over form. For children, it distances themselves away from cooking...and champions cooking that lacks a heart and a brain. In essence, it is a meal that cooks itself; a surrogate chef!

It doesn't take anything away from the home cook. It's just one tool in a cook's arsenal. Like the microwave, like the chef's knife, etc. Like any cook's tool, what you can achieve with it depends on the cook's skill in using it.
Time saving devices do not equal the dumbing down of the home cook.

[David A. Goldfarb]

I don't own a crockpot, but braising seems like a fairly well established and venerable method of cooking. I do it in the oven or on the stovetop, but I don't think it takes much more skill than using a crockpot.

[TylerK]

Actually, I think the crockpot has been a boon to the home cook. I went to visit my brother recently and he prepared a very nice orange sesame chicken for dinner one night. Previously to getting the cockpot his dinners were more likely to be a pot of KD or takeout. In allowing people to be away from the kitchen, or not paying attention to the kitchen, the crockpot/slow-cookers have opened people up to experimenting with flavours more often, and being more interested in their food.

[ChrisTaylor]

I'd rather keep my slow cooker ticking away during the day, making stock, say, then leave the (gas) stove running.

[andiesenji]

I have several Crockpots or slow cookers as well as the large electric roasters that (after a hiatus of a couple of decades) came back onto the scene about twelve years ago.

Use of the slow cookers allows me to experiment with many other kitchen tasks that require more "hands-on" effort.

For some families, the slow cooker has brought them back to "real" cooking instead of heating prepared or frozen foods.
Because the long-slow cooking works well on cheaper cuts of meat, it also saves them money.

[Jenni]

I don't think it's about particular products. The education and empowerment of women has lead to families where everyone works and time for food preparation is minimal. If food and/or nutrition is not important to them, they will opt for covenience products or domestic help.

I'll give you two examples from India. One friend of mine lives in a large traditional joint family of around 40 people of different generations. They are well to do but she works as she is educated and her family are enlightened enough to realise there is a positive mental effect of work that goes beyond money. She gets up early each day to join in with communal food prep before she goes to work. All the women in the house pitch in to make meals and they also have household help (very common in India). It works because there are many if them. Junk food, convenience products and eating out are "treats". On a daily basis the family prefers traditional home food.

Another friend lives in a nuclear family with just her husband and two teenage children. They are lower middle class (ie. comfortable-ish but not super well off). She also works and does some prep before she goes to work. She has some household help. She often expresses disappointment that she cannot offer super fresh exciting meals everyday, but she just does not have the drive to do so. Making roti in the morning and reheating later is easier, routine dishes are easier, etc. Convenience products save her time and her kids like them, though she likes the idea of fresh traditional food more.

Looking at these examples we see a clear dilemma: It is very easy for those of us who like food and cooking A LOT to rave on about the importance of fresh and from scratch meals. But this means someone has to make it. In many societies this task falls to the women of the house, though I will stress that this is not always the case. This person may not enjoy cooking. Having to cook may stop the from working or pursuing leisure activities they enjoy. There are people all over the world who spend hours each day cooking and turn out amazing meals that would impress all of us here. A number of them do it because they "have to" and they hate doing it.

BTW if I must pick one thing it would be maggi noodles. Many housewives in India no longer whip up traditional snacks and breakfasts because their children beg for maggi! They would rather have maggi than a meal! The second friend I mentioned struggles to stop her kids from eating only maggi!

[PlatosPlate]

I merely think that using the Crock Pot is conceptually, a step back from home cooking. When I think of home cooking I think about something that is constructed with my own hands. It's more of a novel idea; using the crock pot reminds me that the meal is a task (Marx...) instead of an art or a craft...there's something about being a part of the process -- whether it is the constant check of a low simmer or the art of prioritizing ingredients -- that really defines home cooking for me.

I just worry that the slow cooker is taking the "easy way out," and I wonder if by constantly turning to it, we will eventually forget, or never learn how to cook.

Also realized I didn't properly introduce myself to this forum...my name is Kristine, and I am quite happy to join and see such wonderful discourse on food. ;)

[annabelle]

Oh boy. Quoting Marx and talking about the demise of homecooking? Welcome, anyway.

Women have increasingly entered the workforce in the past fifty years and that has certainly impacted the frequency and perhaps quality of home-cooking. Only the upper middle class can truly afford to have only one wage earner per family these days. (Excellent article about same in the WSJ yesterday by James Taranto.) It has also been quite unusual for most families who are not very wealthy to have household help until the last generation or so. Even then, help is usually reserved for the care of children (au pair) or a once a week housekeeper. There are exceptions, of course, but I am speaking in the aggregate.

Most people work longer hours than in the past to make a modest wage and their work often requires a great deal of travel. If nothing else, plain old exhaustion is more of a culprit than a lack of caring. It's easier to stop off at the market and pick up a rotisserie chicken than to come home and prepare that chicken from scratch. At least it is hot and it's not pizza.

[Kouign Aman]

I dont see the crockpot as being any different than a pan buried in the coals on the edge of the fire, or sitting on the back of the Aga.

Lets try a cause for the putative demise: the community baker. All of a sudden, people didnt all have to bake their own household bread. It was the gateway 'prepared food'.

[Alcuin]

I wonder if we can approach this question of demise in another way. When do you think we hit a high water mark for home cooking? I'm talking skill-wise, and product-wise.

I say the water's still rising, but it's been rising faster and faster. I reject the notion that there was a golden era in the past, and we are living in a time of constant decline (this idea's been around as long as history has, you can see it in the decline in lifespans in the Bible, i.e. no one lives as long as Methuselah any more, and it also plays a role in Marx's positive view of feudal Europe).

I think things are on the rise. I don't have a crockpot, but if I had the room for one I'd get one just to make confit onions or whatever. There's cool new stuff coming out all the time (sous vide is becoming more and more accessible). But on the other hand, technology's also making it easier for people to live without basic cooking skills like cutting up a chicken or making gravy.

Somebody once proclaimed in a grandiose way to a group of people I was in at a party that nobody knows how to make gravy as if it was ancient knowledge. I said I knew how, and explained how easy it was by telling everybody right then and there how to do it. They were amazed; I was amazed at their amazement. Then again, why do they need to know this, when they don't know most of the basic principles of cooking? They just order or buy a can/packet/etc. Is this demise? It depends, but ultimately it's someone else's demise or not.

So for me, things are getting better and better. The fact that it is so easy to do cooking tasks that were incredibly labor intensive decades ago is great. I just hope as technology gets better, it drives more people into the kitchen than out of it, even if just to make a simple Sunday dinner. I think there's a lot of value in cooking and making food for ourselves and others. As the great Pepin has said, cooking is an important human act, because you are always cooking for the other. This is what I think people lament when they talk about a demise in cooking, that uniquely human act.

[annabelle]

There are a tremendous number of things that I am able to prepare in relatively little time due to modern conveniences like the home food processor, an immersion blender, a KA mixer with attachments, and a microwave oven. There is simply no need for me to spend all day in the kitchen unless I choose to.

I'm with Alcuin on this: I think we are really in the Golden Age of the homecook, not the decline. We have the luxury of cooking for fun and experimentation; the availability of exotic ingredients in far flung locales and instructional video on either television or on the computer on how and where to use them.

When I first moved into my own apartment at the age of 18, I had a set of pots and pans and a chef's knife and that was it. My eldest son at 22 has a batterie de cuisine like I had at 30: food processor, microwave, toaster oven, pots and pans, whisks and good knives, a coffee maker, a range top and oven and a full sized refrigerator.

People who look back with rose colored glasses are misremembering the good old days.

[andiesenji]

Rather than use the "quote" function and reply to individual posts, I'm going to try and reiterate what I have noted in previous posts.

I don't think there was ONE commercial product that "led to the demise of home cooking."

I was born in 1939, at home, on a farm that was largely self-sufficient in that only a few (necessary) food products were purchased.
There was a cook and kitchen help who did much of the work but my grandmother and my aunts and great-aunts also put in time in the kitchen, particularly during visits by outside friends and family.
I was quite young when my cooking instruction began (mostly to keep me out of mischief) and I still use some of the basic procedures I was taught in those long ago days.

Such as making gravy, be it basic brown, red eye, milk, sausage, wine or the white sauce that covered many types of vegetables. I can prepare gravy in my sleep.

Ditto biscuits and corn bread. I don't usually measure these ingredients because after all this time I can eyeball them accurately.

About the Crockpot or slow cooker - if anything, they have brought people back to "home" cooking when before they had relied on frozen entrees (the Banquet effect) and pre-packaged ready-to-eat foods, and have not created more distance from cooking.

There are all degrees of "cooking" some people are so busy with work or family concerns that they simply can't take the time to spend hours in the kitchen preparing meals every day.
Some of these people (and I know quite a few) spend the weekends preparing meals for the coming week and freezing them. They sacrifice what in many families would be recreation time to make sure that their families are well fed with foods that contain fewer preservatives and questionable additives.

I spend a lot of time preparing things that other people do not bother with because they are time consuming and my results probably cost a lot more than the equivalent commercial products.
I do this because I enjoy it. I'm retire and it's better than sitting around watching soaps and in my opinion keeps me from aging quite as rapidly - keeps my brain functioning well.

This is not for everyone but it works for me.

[ChrisTaylor]

I merely think that using the Crock Pot is conceptually, a step back from home cooking. When I think of home cooking I think about something that is constructed with my own hands. It's more of a novel idea; using the crock pot reminds me that the meal is a task (Marx...) instead of an art or a craft...there's something about being a part of the process -- whether it is the constant check of a low simmer or the art of prioritizing ingredients -- that really defines home cooking for me.

I just worry that the slow cooker is taking the "easy way out," and I wonder if by constantly turning to it, we will eventually forget, or never learn how to cook.

Also realized I didn't properly introduce myself to this forum...my name is Kristine, and I am quite happy to join and see such wonderful discourse on food. ;)

Surely old Karly would feel it right and proper and such that every person could enjoy food made with fresh ingredients after toiling away in the factory all day. I mean, fresh vegetables plus meat plus etc cooked in a slow cooker is surely better for his well-being--and that of his family--than McDonald's or KFC or some other Big Evil (doubtlessly American) Multinational, right?

We keep coming back to the point of snobbishness. And I'm not singling you out. Not at all. You're not the only one to mention the slow cooker and, honest to God, it's not like the slow cooker is the snobbiest example mentioned in this thread. If people are cooking at home in any way, shape or form--even if they're using slow cookers or pressure cookers, even if they're taking a few shortcuts such as just buying the bread or purchasing their meat from a supermarket--then I think that's a good thing. I think it's a better thing than ready-meals from the freezer section. Better than takeaway. It's not exactly three courses plus an amuse from Heston at Home or, perhaps, a realisation of the food pyramid on a single plate, but maybe that's just a reality and not at all a cop-out.

[Mjx]

I merely think that using the Crock Pot is conceptually, a step back from home cooking. When I think of home cooking I think about something that is constructed with my own hands. It's more of a novel idea; using the crock pot reminds me that the meal is a task (Marx...) instead of an art or a craft...there's something about being a part of the process -- whether it is the constant check of a low simmer or the art of prioritizing ingredients -- that really defines home cooking for me.

I just worry that the slow cooker is taking the "easy way out," and I wonder if by constantly turning to it, we will eventually forget, or never learn how to cook.

. . . .

I'm still not seeing how a slow cooker would make for a step back from home cooking, or an easy way out: As far as I know, they're only used in homes, never commercially, and although using one does mean that once you've put the food in to cook you simply leave it, this is also true of traditional (and very venerable) braising, and prep can be substantial, it's extent inevitably reflecting the cook's disposition, coupled with the time available.

[gfweb]

The demise of home cooking may well have been World War Two. Women were driven into the workforce at least temporarily. Convenience foods were dawning around then too.

[PrivateTim]

It has been a fascinating discussion. It has had its moments of snobbery, of great insights, of very odd observations and more.

I do think there is a bit too much of nostalgia for eras where cooking was not a joy, but drudgery and a necessity. If it is lamented that not enough people know how to breakdown a whole chicken properly, should it not also be lamented that not enough people know how to chop off a chicken's head and then properly gut and defeather it?

Is the automatic bread maker an advancement or regression? I know my grandmother was eternally grateful to Helm's Bakery for not only freeing her from having to bake her own bread, but actually bringing the bread to her. My father revels in the memory the smell of the Helm's truck and the drawer of freshly baked doughnuts that thrilled a five year old. Since Helm's is long gone, my grandmother is equally grateful for her bread maker that allows her to enjoy fresh baked bread without the work that is difficult at her age now.

If some people are dependent on easy food and prepared food so what. It seems there is a boom in the home cooking world. Who would have thought of people taking vacations for cooking lessons in earlier times. I think a true golden age of home cooking is yet to come, not passed.

[gdenby]

The demise of home cooking may well have been World War Two. Women were driven into the workforce at least temporarily. Convenience foods were dawning around then too.

From what I've read, at least some of things developed to serve the huge number of troops such as pre-made cake mixes developed out of military necessity, and found their way into civilian use. There were more conveniences than ever on the shelves.

I suspect the Depression was also partly to blame. Most of my relatives were dirt poor, and even the ones still on the farm were happy to have any food. Not much fancy cooking going on. I don't believe I ever heard my parents, or any of my aunts and uncles reminisce about the food of their childhoods. My mother only ever mentioned 2 things. Fresh lard sandwiches, and egg's cooked in a hole in a piece of bread, which she called "Buck Rogers' Eggs.