Why Recipes Are Holding You Back from Learning How to Cook

[00:02] on your grocery shopping or do you feel like life is so busy and there's never enough time to cook and even when you do have time on the weekend you end up spending $100 on ingredients for like two or three meals worth of food but at

[00:15] the same time you don't want a meal prep and just eat the same thing every night or maybe you find yourself constantly throwing out random leftover ingredients some special ingredient you bought and used once 6 months ago that is still

[00:28] used once 6 months ago that is still sitting in your fridge or this is the video for you because these common annoyances or problems are

[00:41] byproducts of a recipe based cooking approach where we see the recipes first buy food to match the recipe then we cook the food instead today I'm going to show you how to develop a food-based cooking approach where you actually buy

[00:57] the food first then there are multip ways you can figure out what to make to fit with your lifestyle and this food constraint-based cooking approach will simplify your grocery shopping help you spend less money on groceries reduce

[01:10] food waste and it makes cooking fun and flexible to fit in with whatever you this works I actually made an entire second YouTube channel where you may be surprised to learn that I made the food

[01:22] and just filmed the videos first then we wrote the recipes after the fact and in these recipes you learn a completely different different set of skills and I'm using this comment from Kevin as proof this channel has helped me do so

[01:36] much more home cooking even though I haven't made a single recipe just the way you show things in real time and if you know some basic principles you don't have to be fussy about cooking and the goal of this video is not to get you to

[01:49] swear off of recipes forever but instead to help you find the balance between these two approaches recipes are great for teaching the hard skills of cooking like what temperature to cook a piece of meat to or how to replicate a specific

[02:02] dish from another country but they're not good at helping you with the soft skills of cooking and feeding yourself every day and in the current day it seems like 95 or maybe 100% of the time an average person Cooks it is done with

[02:16] a recipe based approach for me this has changed a lot in the past couple of years and I would say about 80% of the time I grocery shop and cook with a food based approach so where will you fall let's figure it out and to start we need

[02:31] to take a quick look backward and understand how recipes were created in the first place in terms of History doing your planning shopping and cooking based on recipes that you want to make ahead of

[02:44] time instead of being constrained by the food you already have is an entirely New Concept the first steak recipe if you can even call it that was created threw a hunk of meat on the fire to sear it and it tasted good or a better

[02:59] example Le today is Carbonara it seems like you got to follow the recipe in a very specific way with a very specific set of ingredients like Guan chal instead of bacon and you better not use any garlic or else you will provoke the

[03:11] ire of an Italian so some recipes have garlic some don't but what they probably won't mention is that part of the reason why

[03:24] carbonara ended up becoming a popular dish in the first place is because of the Allied Liber ation in 1944 quote when Rome was liberated food shortages were extreme and one of the few resources were military rations

[03:39] distributed by the Allied troops these included eggs that were powdered and bacon which some unknown genius had the idea of mixing together to season the pasta now some people theorize the dish was invented earlier but simply put if

[03:53] you have a lot of bacon powdered eggs and pasta you'll end up making a lot of carbonara type pasta dishes and then over time as those food shortages stopped the troops left the ingredients were likely refined into the modern

[04:07] carbon R recipe with Guan chal instead of bacon and a sauce made with real eggs the point is all of the popular recipes that we know today were born out of the constraints of the food that people had available to feed themselves the

[04:21] Oklahoma onion burger was a Depression era creation to make ground beef go a little further by mixing it with a bunch of thinly sliced onions the first version of pizza was created when the poor people of Naples placed Tomatoes

[04:33] onto their yeast dough so why did poor people have tomatoes well because when Tomatoes were first introduced into Europe everyone thought they were poisonous so why would the rich take the risk of eating them and long before

[04:45] biria became a viral recipe on every platform the heavily spiced sauce was used to mask out the gaminess and strong smell that goat meat typically has no one was cooking to make the perfect burger the best pizza or the most viral

[04:58] taco recipe they were cooking to feed themselves with what they had and in the way of thinking and a lot of those lifestyle soft cooking skills that you can develop with this approach instead

[05:13] we have access to ingredients from every country and our grocery stores there are thousands and thousands of food creators all around the world making delicious looking food on reals Tik Tok and YouTube and websites every waking minute

[05:25] of the day and it creates this unreasonable expectation that every time we cook it has to be the most food porn looking the most authentic the best tasting dish when sometimes being a home cook means you need to cook something in

[05:40] it's not going to look pretty you want it to be healthyish and just taste pretty solid now right here is an example of a meal you will never see a recipe for on social media it's a leftover frozen

[05:54] brisket rice bowl with pickled beets and pickled beans no one 's going to bother watching that and remember if you're trying to do dishes you're going to want to make and it's kind of a shame though because this

[06:06] is actually a really good dish you get the tenderness of that brisket you've from the barbecue sauce you get the textural contrast with the pickled beets get a little bit of acidity and then you just round it off with some rice it's a

[06:21] nice well balanced high protein meal and you're never going to see anyone show you how to make this because it's really just a lifestyle thing that I threw together in like 5 minutes with some leftover ingredients I had and I just

[06:33] made something based on the constraints of the food that I happen to have in the fridge and I showed that example of something I made because it's very easy to forget when you are watching us content creators it's our literal job to

[06:47] cook and spend time making things look and taste good but we probably aren't showing you the 5minute leftover dish we threw together late at night or needed something for a quick lunch and a part of the reasons why there is such a

[07:00] dominant recipe based cooking mindset today is because it's a highly replicable format that everyone understands from start to finish I can make 50 different burger recipe videos or 50 different pasta videos I can test

[07:13] this ingredient versus that ingredient I can test this cooking method versus that cooking method but if I try to teach you a food-based cooking approach in videos prepping how to cook healthy meals and never run out of ideas how to grocery

[07:27] shop and cook with a food-based approach like I am in this video I can really only make these videos once and hope the concepts stick I don't think many of you are going to watch videos titled why I use wilted cilantro in My Salsa ver day

[07:41] or this slightly crusty day old cheddar that I accidentally left in my fridge still makes really good mac and cheese this problem is a big part of the reason why we started cookwell in the second YouTube channel because I want to start

[07:54] to figure out how can we help home Cooks learn these kind of Lifestyle soft skills that maybe you see a parent or grandparent use but if you ask them tell you because a lot of the times they're just doing these things without

[08:09] thinking about them on the website we break down the fundamentals of flavor techniques reactions and even molecules and these fundamentals are then built into the recipes where in the ingredients for this Thai Basil stir fry

[08:21] we tagged the Tha black soy sauce as sweet the Sriracha as spicy and then in component if you want to learn more about searing as I mentioned earlier all the videos on the second Channel I really am constraining myself to the

[08:36] food that I have in my fridge freezer Pantry or the garden I already run to the grocery store so much for the Deep Dives and I generally do like going to the grocery store but with these videos I really am trying to use up what I

[08:49] already have this high protein wrap was inspired by a jar of herisa paste that I some pickled cabbage that I decided to make with a half of a leftover red cabbage I bought a few days days ago for klaw this migas video was inspired by

[09:02] some leftover corn tortillas that I had and were going stale so I fried them up and in the migas video I mention I've shown how to do this on the channel but you could also just use a bag of leftover tortilla chips or this

[09:14] 16-minute Tha basil stir fry was literally just that I wanted something the grocery store I had Thai Basil in the garden and I wanted to use up a bottle of Thai soy sauce that I purchased 4 months ago for a video I

[09:27] very purposely did not title this video how to make authentic pad grapow because if you look closely I was actually missing a ton of the ingredients and took a lot of substitution and liberties with that original meal in order to make

[09:41] a robust authentic pad cpow video I would have needed to buy pork as that's kind of most typical I would have tried to find holy basil which is pretty hard the crispy fried egg even though I do prefer the dish without eggs I didn't

[09:54] Tai chilies I didn't have lime juice for prick PLA and I didn't have oyster sauce that list of items is easily a 20 to $30 grocery run and this is just one example where a recipe driven approach can fall flat instead with the video I did make

[10:10] you may learn a completely different set of skills for example I use Sriracha as a decent substitute for fresh garlic and Thai chilies I'm balancing the flavors of spicy sweet and salty sauces and purely making up the measurements as I

[10:24] go I didn't waste time washing my rice and it still came out great I added more of the thae black soy sauce in order to give it a deeper color that I was looking for and I was able to prep cook and clean a few dishes in the time it

[10:36] and clean a few dishes in the time it took the rice and make the entire dish following recipes are great for introducing you to new techniques or helping you explore dishes from all around the world or preserving family

[10:48] recipes you know when Thanksgiving rolls around I have a very specific subset of recipes from my grandma that I want to be exactly the same every year but what re recipes don't help you with is a lot of those lifestyle problems that pop up

[11:03] in everyday life how do you cook when you have no energy after a long day of work or playing with the kids how do you use up that random spice or sh jar that you bought 3 months ago and how do you go grocery shopping without having to

[11:16] spend an hour figuring out the recipes I want to make and all the ingredients that you need to buy and this is where food constraint based cooking comes to save the day for me personally if I want to go out to a restaurant or even just

[11:30] order takeout I literally will spend more time scrolling and trying to figure out exactly what I want to get than I do trying to figure out a meal I can instantly look in my fridge Pantry freezer and figure out what I want to

[11:43] make and if you want to learn this type of skill the best practical First Step that I can give is this go grocery shopping for food and do absolutely zero planning of what recipes or dishes you were going to make we put together a

[11:58] shopping list template based on basic categories of food that you can copy into your notion or your notes on your phone if you want but other than that I truly mean it if you want to accelerate your learning you need to jump off the

[12:10] deep end and what's cool is this approach will work for any budget in typically spend $90 to $100 on groceries or roughly $35 per person for a week's worth of lunches and dinners I do the cooking they would do the dishes now

[12:25] happily spend more but even then I try not to go crazy for example in the past 7 days I spent $52.6 on two different grocery trips on one trip I spent $496 and grabbed a variety of items like

[12:40] chicken and also Buco because why not a couple of vegetables and different carbohydrate bases so the first time you try this out this may seem like the most random assortment of foods but you'd be surprised just how many dishes you can

[12:55] turn this into I mean I don't think many people buy asobo unless they have a specific recipe that calls for it um but for me I'm immediately thinking okay I'm it later this weekend I'm not worried about figuring it out right now I could

[13:09] pair it with maybe these potatoes or I've got rice in the pantry or I think I have a frozen roll in the freezer maybe we do like an brazed shreddable ubuka sandwich I don't know chicken is always just an easy thing to use season it up

[13:22] in a million different ways um these flatbreads are just something that I like to get um you can use them in a bunch of different different ways get a pepper get some Tomatoes get some yogurt get some you know maybe I'll

[13:35] pickle these onions can use them in fresh salads this is just a nectarina a then I'm going to pair all these ingredients with you know some spices that I may already have or maybe I have a can of tomatoes in the pantry maybe I

[13:49] have a little bit of leftover salad stuff in the fridge and and the point is like it's flexible just buy the food and you will figure it out because it puts you a completely different mindset when you're trying to figure out how to make

[14:04] stuff with the food you have rather than putting the recipe first I have a popping in for short grocery chips here and there but some of you may want to make this food-based approach more structured where again you're still not

[14:18] planning any recipes but instead you always buy 3 lbs of protein 2 lb of vegetables two carbohydrate bases one pickled item one new spice and one new bottle of sauce and figuring out what works for you is how you develop these

[14:32] lifestyle cooking skills over time and if you want I've been thinking about a video where I could show my entire week and go very granular I could go shopping with a specific budget I could show how each ingredient is being used and where

[14:45] it is coming from in my kitchen and at the end of the week we could just collect a lot of data but for this video I don't want to give you too many examples because our lives are completely different and you do really

[14:57] need to figure out how this shopping approach will work for you once you get fun part happens and you get to figure out what to make and it's way easier than you would expect especially if you have been cooking recipes because you

[15:12] have way more knowledge than you realize you've just never been forced to use it out what to make with the food you have in your fridge freezer Pantry or garden first is a technique framework and an example of this is from how to cook

[15:27] healthy meals and never run out of ideas where if you learn the blackening spice technique then you can use this technique with many different spice rubs on many different proteins and serve it on many different bases from rice to

[15:39] bread to Pasta whatever you happen to buy at the store secondly is an ingredient framework an example of this is from how to turn one chicken breast into Infinite healthy meals where if my constraint is I bought chicken breast I

[15:53] then thin it out at 1% salt by weight then I have all these various decision points in i r to cook if yes I'll choose a seasoning method and sear it to 155° am I ready to make a meal if yes I can choose from a variety of form factors or

[16:07] the fridge until I am ready to make something with it another example is the brazing framework where you just buy a hunk of meat like a chuck roast also Buco braze it and figure out what to make with it after and lastly our recipe

[16:22] Frameworks so when you already have the food then watch a recipe on YouTube Tik Tok or see something on the website you will be biased to figure out how to make the recipe work for the food you do have instead of rationalizing why you can't

[16:38] make it for example say someone finds a chicken Kari recipe that looks amazing chicken and are missing two of the spices in the spice mix and with a recipe focused mindset it would be very easy to rationalize well I can't cook

[16:53] this tonight unless I go to the store but when you have this food constrained approach you may go well I don't have chicken but I do have a can of chickpeas in the pantry that I could use and I don't have the specific spices but I bet

[17:05] it would taste really good with the other two or three spices that I do have food constraint approach is not going to be a winner that you're like oh I need to turn this into a recipe sometimes you literally are just cooking to feed

[17:19] yourself and get food on the table remember the goal of this video is to help you find the balance between these two approaches and learn the skills both two approaches and learn the skills both of them offer

[17:36] update on some things that might be coming in the next few months so first on this channel we will be getting back to deep Dives this month I'm having so much fun with deep Dives like every basic ingredient is so much more

[17:50] be and it's really forcing me to think about food and cooking differently and help inform different videos like this video and and what we're building with cookwell like what actually is the point of what we're building speaking of if

[18:03] obviously it'll be linked below and truly I'm trying to stick and keep it simple and not overthink the videos the video uh we filmed this week it was like an Italian sausage hogi I had an eighth of a jar of sauce in my fridge I had a

[18:18] hogi roll in my freezer some uh the the the sausage was in my freezer and then I the sausage was in my freezer and then I kind of spruced it up with uh oregano some shallot good easy quick meal um

[18:31] physical products we're actually working on a wood cutting board high quality I want to share some more soon hopefully and then along with that with cookwell we are in early stages of Designing like the cookwell mobile app and it's going

[18:46] to include kind of a lot of the methodology and ways of thinking like in this video like how can we help people with grocery shopping on this is where videos kind of fall flat in a lot of ways it's like I can make

[19:02] this video and like hope you go try it but you know I can't make this video over and over again um it wouldn't be fun for me it wouldn't be fun for you so mobile app and hopefully I can start sharing more in the next few months but

[19:16] as always thank you for watching you know this is this is the dream job and like being able to work on things that are very you know it just feels like cooking is this thing that like I truly believe it will change your life in some

[19:30] whether it's exploring the world helping you eat healthier helping you you know eat on a budget or whatever truly believe like that's why I do what I do is I believe cooking and food and if you learn about it it will change your life

[19:44] in some way might be small might be big um but yeah that's that's going to wrap you for watching I will catch you all in the next one peace y'all