That's just the food lab/serious eats stuff IMHO. Those things are purpose built to be "what if we turned everything up to 11 and made the best possible X/Y/Z?". If you read Modernist Cuisine it's exactly the same thing and you'll spend two days making a single cheeseburger (with from scratch bread, cheese, mayo, grinding your own beef, sous vide cooking the patty for hours, etc).

Watch his youtube channel and more recent stuff, it's a lot more toned down and accessible to everyone.