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michaelkeenan comments on Mistakes repository - Less Wrong
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I once thought I'd skip learning to cook, thinking I'd specialize in something else and trade money for someone else's cooking. I've since learned to cook moderately well, and there are benefits:
Very inspirational! Do you have any resources in particular that helped you learn to cook?
I would recommend the book Ruhlman's Twenty (http://www.amazon.com/Ruhlmans-Twenty-Techniques-Recipes-Manifesto/dp/0811876438). It's not a cookbook, though it has recipes -- it's a thorough overview on the purpose of twenty basic ingredients in cooking (water, eggs, butter, salt, etc.).
Thanks for the recommendation.
My primary resource was The Four Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss. It isn't a recipe book (though it does contain recipes), but rather is a book describing how to actually cook, like how to do various techniques of cutting and braising, and what tastes go together, and how to learn what tastes go together.
I recommend it, but this isn't the kind of high-quality recommendation you get from someone who's tried a bunch of things and has an informed decision about which one is the best.
As I was working through the book, I asked a much more skilled-at-cooking friend for recommendations, and she said that On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee is highly regarded. I haven't checked it out yet.
Thanks. I actually checked out Four Hour Chef but never actually got around to any chefing before it was due. It looked pretty good for people with no cooking skills.
On "satisfying geeky tendencies to learn", the book "Cooking for Geeks" by Potter is actually quite good. It won't make you a chef in and of itself, but I now know enough to, say, know when to bake something at 375 versus at 350 degrees F based on the desired result rather than on what the recipe tells me. There's a lot of interesting tid bits in there and good a solid base of cooking information. It also has some good 'food experiments' to try, like cooking an egg very slowly wiht constant stirring at low temperatures in a frying pan. After about 20-30 minutes it turns into a custard-like substance. Not very appetizing, but it's really interesting to see how you can control what happens by changing the temperature.
Seconded. Learning to cook at a minimal level long before going to university has been a great asset to me, and allowed me to learn to cook well very quickly.