Cooking Levels (Wheaton Scale)

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Ego
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Re: Cooking Levels (Wheaton Scale)

Post by Ego »

@jp, I think a lot of the higher level stuff has to do with how one learned at the lower levels. I cooked in an Italian restaurant when I was young so I learned the importance of timing and presentation but not much in the way of creativity beyond the menu. Mrs. Ego learned much of what she knows while teaching her cooking classes in a wide variety of locations, some in extremely limited facilities, so she is really good at being creative and wowing the participants with her MacGyver skills but she struggles with sequencing multiple dishes.

FBeyer
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Re: Cooking Levels (Wheaton Scale)

Post by FBeyer »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:32 am
Can anyone recommend any 3+ cooking resources? I have found Alton Brown's Good Eats good for that, but I'd like some printed resources too.
My GF bought me this when I started resorting to basic building blocks rather than recipes. I find it highly inspirational, althought my cooking has definitely taken a back seat lately...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flavour-Thesau ... 0747599777

horsewoman
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Re: Cooking Levels (Wheaton Scale)

Post by horsewoman »

Peanut wrote:
Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:40 am
A more useful question is how to become an accomplished home chef within the context of ERE.
By treating it like a system? At least that's what I do. Take pancakes for example. When I started cooking years ago we were omnivores with a set of Teflon coated pans. So I made the dough with eggs and milk and it was very easy to cook the pancakes in the non-sticking pans.
when my hens got older and stopped laying eggs I experimented with leaving the eggs out instead of buying some. It took me awhile to tweak the recipe to get good results.
Some time later DH gave up on drinking milk, so I experimented substituting water, tweaking until I got it right.
then my Teflon coated pans gave out, and I got some old stainless steel ones without any coating from my MIL for free. It took me 3 months until I managed to make good pancakes in these pans, using only water, flour, baking soda, salt and margerine for the pan. They literally cost pennys and are super delicious.

I do this with most of my "recipes" (I don't use recipes but often write down amounts in the "tweaking phase" to find out what I could alter to get better results).

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Alice_AU
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Re: Cooking Levels (Wheaton Scale)

Post by Alice_AU »

I would take levels 4 and 5 towards a different direction. Things that go beyond just cooking. Skills in pickling and preserving, home brewing, being able to pluck a bird and butcher a carcass...

7Wannabe5
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Re: Cooking Levels (Wheaton Scale)

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Another thing to consider in overlap with ERE scale would be crossover to barter/make money with your cooking skills. IME, cooking skills are one of the top 3 skill sets which you can barter for free or greatly reduced rent. However, as is generally true in restaurant settings, I have found that reducing cost of groceries/ingredients for household is not considered as valuable as cooking skills applied to individual preferences in barter situation. This is obviously due to fact that difference in expense between restaurant meal and something similar prepared at home is much greater than difference in expense between home-cooked and extreme frugal home-cooked.

subgard
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Re: Cooking Levels (Wheaton Scale)

Post by subgard »

I think a lot of these Wheaton scales could be compressed, considering the original definition.
-2 Appears hopelessly stupid
-1 Just needs help

+1 Something to aspire to
+2 Crazy, not able to comprehend.


0 Doesn't cook.

1 Follows recipes. Includes complicated processes and techniques.

2 Modifies recipes. Includes making a known dish out of novel ingredients.

3 Creates recipes/dishes. A master of this could create their own cuisine, if they wanted.

4 Uses the diner's palate as a conduit to the brain to influence emotion.

daylen
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Re: Cooking Levels (Wheaton Scale)

Post by daylen »

The more scales the better; synthesis can grow out of the weeds. Condensation versus expansion probably has a significant preference factor given that the culinary arts are, well, artsy. Perhaps even a categorization could be made for different types of cookers. Given there seems to be a general consensus that cooking requires 'skill' then extracting away a constructive scale that is generally agreed upon should be possible for the majority cooker type.

bostonimproper
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Re: Cooking Levels (Wheaton Scale)

Post by bostonimproper »

@AnalyticalEngine - Not at all ERE friendly, but I've been extremely impressed with my foodie friends' copies of Modernist Cuisine for serious level 4+ cooks. Most of these folks have (and regularly use) sous vide setups and blow torches, so take that for what it's worth. Paging through that has seriously expanded my understanding of culinary technique, though it's probably too intense (and expensive) for me to really dive into personally.

thavelick
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Re: Cooking Levels (Wheaton Scale)

Post by thavelick »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:32 am
Interesting concept. It explains why a lot of cooking books can be lacking because they focus on level 2. Can anyone recommend any 3+ cooking resources? I have found Alton Brown's Good Eats good for that, but I'd like some printed resources too.
I've had a lot of success moving up the scale from 2 to 3 with Pam Anderson's, "How to cook without a book" book. Instead of just being a list of a bunch of recipes, it walks the reader through how to make various categories of things such as soup, stir fry, sautéed dishes etc in each chapter. For each, after discussing some technique it gives a really simple generic version of the thing, then several variations on it so you get an idea of why each ingredient is there and what could be swapped out.

Before reading this book, I did a fair bit of ad hoc experimentation with dishes as Jacob described, but most things I experimented with turned out to fail 80% of the time. Now my creations are successful 80% of the time.

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Alphaville
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Re: Cooking Levels (Wheaton Scale)

Post by Alphaville »

I’m not really good at the numerical reductionism of qualitative processes, so I’m unable to throw numbers here, and if there’s a cooking scale I don’t see it as necessarily on a single path. But I think for ERE, an understanding of nutrition and costs is required along with techniques or processes or cuisines, because that’s what meal planning is about. Home economics really.

The problem with looking at cooking from the point of view of restaurant culture is that it sends us onto an endless quest for technical perfection and esoteric knowledge and rare ingredients and fashion trends that are not really necessary for every day life. A restaurant looks to entertain and dazzle and drug. Home cooking is about filling your belly and strengthening your bones, to poorly paraphrase an old book; and doing it pleasantly within a budget. And yes you can also intoxicate your senses, but it’s not the main thing.

I think I’m a pretty damn good home cook: I can cook anything I want to eat even if I don’t know how to make it because I know where to find the information (thanks, internet! and before that, books), plus I have a good understanding of processes and techniques and costs and sources etc. If I see a recipe I immediately rip it apart and reconstruct it. I can see how different cuisines are variations on the same nutritional and/or flavor themes. I’ve butchered large animals and fed large crowds. I’ve grown vegetables, raised animals, I know where to get the best deals. I have a lot of fun cooking and eating, and my nutrition is excellent.

At the same time, I would not survive 10 minutes in a restaurant kitchen. Not that I would even want to. Seems like a nightmare. The point of ERE is to quit working...

Also, after reading Frita’s post, whose grandmother is ultra-competent in the correct context, I really want to throw some hotdogs on a pizza. A chili dog pizza actually sounds like a fun and tasty weekend project. Also, green chile and spam potato pizza (like a breakfast burrito). Also breakfast pizza with eggs and bacon and tomato (I‘ve made this actually a bunch of times). If I had a food truck I’m sure I could sell such trashy inventions and develop a following, but I have zero interest in sweating inside a metal box all day to feed queueing hipsters.

But yes, I think hotdog on pizza is a genius idea—it just needs to be developed somewhat. A hotdog is salt, fat, protein and umami like any other sausage. Actually, nutritionally, it’s very close to a bacon strip.. just 3g protein plus a bunch of fat. Bacon on pizza is common, hot dogs are just the victims of class prejudice. Once upon a time bacon was treated the same way, it was the inferior meat the poor consumed; but now our culture glorifies it because of Sigmund Freud’s nephew. True story.

Anyway, I got lost in my digression... but yes, to second Peanut’s idea of ERE cooking, just adding that traditional “home economics” with its understanding of nutritional needs and economic costs offers a better frame of reference.

shadow
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Re: Cooking Levels (Wheaton Scale)

Post by shadow »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:32 am
Interesting concept. It explains why a lot of cooking books can be lacking because they focus on level 2. Can anyone recommend any 3+ cooking resources? I have found Alton Brown's Good Eats good for that, but I'd like some printed resources too.
I can't recommend any books as I haven't read any but I will say that watching Youtube videos has helped me develop this idea a lot. Again I have never read a cooking book so this is highly uneducated but I would suspect you have struggled to find some because the level 3 skills require going beyond a recipe and developing a personal intuition and preference ex. a recipe calls for white wine but you have none so you substitute vinegar water, or you substitute spices/especially amounts of spices to taste.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IDhsBd ... V-3ROIa6d2
This series does a really good job of explaining the science behind the use of each ingredient and comparing a professional chef's version of a dish to an average home cook's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkWAYa2 ... WlChDJOoj-
Frugal cooking, ERE heaven. The style might put you off but I really like his methods; there is a clear systems focus. He provides recipes but there are several episodes that are about sets of ingredients and many things you could do with them.

https://www.youtube.com/user/aragusea
This channel is mostly based on recipes but he also makes food science videos pretty frequently. There is a constant theme of development as a cook, ex. using as much or little of an ingredient as you like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMp-IF6uPkk
This is a good recipe in itself but the emphasis on speed provides a lot of useful techniques. I like videos because much of the time they go into detail on the techniques they use and why, which can give a lot of context as to how a certain recipe works instead of simply writing down something to be copied.

white belt
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Re: Cooking Levels (Wheaton Scale)

Post by white belt »

4 Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss may by the type of book you are looking for. It’s not like his other “lifestyle design” books. It’s a book about cooking but really it’s also about meta learning. It’s one of the only cooking books I’ve seen which really digs into strategies and principles of cooking rather than just specific cooking techniques. It also is applicable to any chef regardless of the kind of cuisine you are I interested in.

It’s also 600+ pages so maybe think of it more of a cooking textbook that you can frequently go back to reference.

shadow
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Re: Cooking Levels (Wheaton Scale)

Post by shadow »

I just found Wayne Gisslen's Professional Cooking laying around somewhere and flipped through it. I haven't read the whole thing and don't plan on it but from what I did go through it is very textbook-like. There are many recipes but the first few hundred pages cover overarching principles. It is designed for cooking at scale though so a lot of it would need to be adapted to a home kitchen.

Aspirant
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Re: Cooking Levels (Wheaton Scale)

Post by Aspirant »

The Salt, fat, acid, heat Netflix by Nosrat seems really good. They are doing a few dishes, but emphasis is on ingredients and principles. She seems to really enjoy food and her excitement makes it enjoyable to watch.

I have been cooking a bit more lately. I constructed a recipe for salty breakfast muffins from scratch, pickled some kimchi-style cabbage and made a few curries. I think I used to be better cook, but I am trying to find the joy again.

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