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Comment by derekp7 | Hacker News Reader

> What’s missing are basic cooking skills Cooking is a form of art, and like other art forms, quite a few people are just no good at it.

The common advice of "learn to cook" comes across similar to "Don't bother consuming mass media produced music -- just make up a song, sing into a microphone and play back the tape. Isn't that good enough?" Yes, I can "survival cook", and follow recipes, but more often than not it just doesn't taste right, or I burn myself, or most commonly I get half way through and realize I'm missing key ingredients. And that is the big problem, many recipes are fairly detailed but a good home cook can easily formulate their own recipe only loosely based on an original (substituting or omitting spices as needed).

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> The common advice of "learn to cook" comes across similar to "Don't bother consuming mass media produced music -- just make up a song, sing into a microphone and play back the tape.

Nobody is saying "make gourmet meals" or be the next Gordon Ramsay every time you step in the kitchen. It can be immensely cheaper to cook most of your meals than eating out or buying packaged food, even if that's just basic cooking.

I meal prep all my lunches for the week and they are not glamorous by any means, but I don't spend much, have a well balanced diet, and it doesn't take much effort.

Everyone in this comment thread is severely discounting how valuable the luxury of time is, both to actually do the cooking and to learn how to cook.

Not nearly as many people as you think have that kind of time.

Most meals that I make are easily prepared in less than 30 minutes. I finish eating in 15 minutes, unless it's a special occasion. 45 minutes for meal prep and eating doesn't seem that crazy.

1-2 hours (per week) of cooking (plus 1-2 hours of shopping) can make you enough for the week (depending on the size of your pot). Not all that time is spent actively either.

Then it takes 2-5 minutes every day to put on a plate and reheat in microwave. Orders of magnitude less time than going out and maybe even ordering in. Make a big pot of soup for dinner and big pot of something less liquid to take with you in a lunch box and you are set.

Learning to cook is one time investment that will save you huge amount of time.

> Learning to cook is one time investment

Right, an investment many people can't make.

Also you realize you're now suggestion an entirely lifestyle shift, not just a meal-based change.

I think the other problem is people expect their first few times cooking to be the equivalent of a restaurant meal.

For one thing, the restaurant meals are often loaded with salt, sugar, butter, or other things our biology makes taste so good, but aren't good for you at all.

For another, you gotta start small. Learn the basics, if you will. There's also a difference between, say, when me and my wife make fresh pasta on date night vs when we use dry pasta (or better yet, a chickpea/edamame pasta) for meal prep. The first takes longer (way longer), and is more indulgent, but the second is more practical.

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