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They have 18 different bowls with ingredients and a commercial-grade kitchen set up in advance. Then they spend a long time with lots of steps and manual labor to produce some food. And they call it "simple", "easy" and "quick". Anyone can do it. It's oh-so-basic.

Except it would be very difficult for me to even obtain those ingredients in the first place, and cost a fortune, and there would be lots of waste because only very little of each thing is needed for the specific meal, and it would take forever to set up like they have it on the show. And then I have to stand there and spend lots of time doing it all right before I can eat.

How is that simple/easy/quick? Why do they always claim this? It's absurd. They are a professional with lots of experience and don't have to buy/set up anything. I'm a hungry non-chef/cook with zero energy and money. It is objectively difficult, expensive, time-consuming and cumbersome.

Typical example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Yqw6J8WHo

A. Picken
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  • nobody wants to watch the hours of prep that enables a chef to throw together a dish in a few mins. – dandavis Nov 24 '21 at 20:59
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    Do you think it’s possible that your lack of experience/skill in cooking might lead you to mis-estimate how simple/easy/quick other people would find the process? In any case, this sounds like a rant, rather than an actual question you’re looking for help with. – Sneftel Nov 24 '21 at 21:00
  • @dandavis I didn't suggest that such is the case...? – A. Picken Nov 24 '21 at 21:04
  • @Sneftel Everything is a "rant" according to people on this site. – A. Picken Nov 24 '21 at 21:05
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    i'm just saying, good TV edits out the boring parts. The rest is marketing; who would click on a video titled "laborious meals you can make for way too much time and money"? – dandavis Nov 24 '21 at 21:10
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    Hi, I see you are new here. We are quite specific about the types of question we take. On the help pages, you can see what is excluded - https://cooking.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask. Specifically, questions which are actually a rant are considered out of scope. – rumtscho Nov 24 '21 at 22:18
  • @dandavis *looks at Binging with Babish* Quite a few people, actually, if you're framing it as "creating a high-quality luxury food item". He'll bake his own bread to make a sandwich... – nick012000 Nov 25 '21 at 06:20
  • "Easy" in cooking doesn't really mean cheap and fast. It means there's a large margin of error where you can still get good results without much training or practice. That's in contrast to recipes that require precision to get right. And "cheap" is relative. The ingredients for that beef bourguignon you linked are cheaper than, say, ordering 3 pizzas delivered, and can feed as many people. – Karl Bielefeldt Nov 30 '21 at 15:11

1 Answers1

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Mise en place is (one of ) the proper way of successfully doing a recipe;

You do all the prep work in advanced, so when you start the recipe, you are not distracted by chopping up more stuff and at the same time burn something something on the stove.

TV/Youtube chefs sometimes show the mise en place, especially if it's something different or needs special attention,

Cutting all the vegetables, measuring stuff into small bowls, but once you understand that, it does not need to be shown every time (watching someone cut onions is boring)

For example, in your example, the chef seems to have prepared some of the ingredients in avance and some

Also, TV/Youtube chefs have to create and show/episode that will captivate the viewer, it needs to be quick and concise.

Max
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