I'm now realizing that I'm an elitist of a kind because when I say cooking I mean something totally different from "making something to eat" and more akin to dinner service. And that's what most of Alton's recipes are aimed at, not desperation dinners.
And when you're doing this kind of thing for family dinner you and up using shortcuts like bagged premixed salad, bottled dressing, rolls from the bakery, premade desserts, jarred sauces and gravies which all hide the real time it takes to put something like that together by outsourcing it. I think the miracle of modern logistics being so normal makes people forget how much of home cooking is shortcuts that weren't always available and were marketed toward homemakers who labored over a hot stove and needed a break.
> shortcuts like bagged premixed salad, bottled dressing ...
At what point is something no longer a shortcut? Do you also consider the time it takes you to track, shoot, carry, & butcher an animal? Or do you take the shortcut of buying your meat? Do you grow your own wheat? Grind your own flour? Or are those shortcuts too?
No, obviously. Are you being deliberately obtuse or do you really not know what ingredients are considered culturally to be atomic and what is considered composite and therefore a shortcut? Like there is a floor and it's not very far down.
* A cut of meat is atomic, that cut pre-marinated isn't.
* Flour is atomic, a Jiffy box is composite.
* Oil is atomic, bottled dressing is composite.
* Potatoes are atomic, frozen french fries aren't.
* 5 spice powder is atomic, but cinnamon sugar is composite.
* Cream is atomic, bottled Alfredo isn't.
* Hidden Valley packets are atomic, but bottled ranch isn't. But when bottled ranch is used as an ingredient in a larger dish it becomes atomic again.
* Rice is atomic, Uncle
Ben's isn't. Same rule as ranch when it's used in a larger dish.
* Bread is composite until you make a sandwich with it.
* But this rule doesn't apply to jarred pasta sauce when made into spaghetti. But it does apply to jarred pizza sauce when made into pizza.
Like sure the rules are organic and messy as all cultural norms all, but if you cook with any regularity you just "know" them because it defines when you're allowed to say "I made this" when presenting the dish to others.
Many of these items are complety arbitrary. As someone who's been cooking some pretty elaborate dishes for over a decade, I don't actually recall ever coming across these two distinctions.
Why is cinnamon sugar "composite" whereas 5 spice is atomic? Who defines these? Are you suggesting that if you use packaged cinnamon sugar on donuts you can't claim to have made them?
For reference, I mostly roast and grind from whole spices. If I need garam masala, Chinese 5 spice, Lebanese 7 spice, etc, I'll make it from scratch. If I new cumin or coriander powder, etc, I'll grind them in my spice grinder.
Are you suggesting that jarred pasta sauce and pizza are different to each other? Following your criteria, I'd classify both as composite.
Not to say that I disagree with most of the list - there's a distinction between highly processed and cooking dishes from scratch, but it's more nuanced than what you've presented here.
I cook a fairly standard south Indian dinner of daal stew, rice + stir fried veggies a couple times a week in ~30-45 minutes of total work. Nothing preprocessed, premixed, or premade other than (and these are really stretching the definitions thereof):
* Asofoetida powder that's been preground and dried for me
* The rice has been polished and debran-ed (ie, turned into white rice)
* pressure cooked lentils (I make a big batch every weekend or so and freeze it into dinner sized portions)
And that's what most of Alton's recipes are aimed at, not desperation dinners.
It's admittedly been years since I last watched Good Eats, but that is not how I remember it all. Almost everything he demonstrated was just as applicable when throwing together a quick pasta dish as it is to making a full 7 course dinner.
And when you're doing this kind of thing for family dinner you and up using shortcuts like bagged premixed salad, bottled dressing, rolls from the bakery, premade desserts, jarred sauces and gravies which all hide the real time it takes to put something like that together by outsourcing it. I think the miracle of modern logistics being so normal makes people forget how much of home cooking is shortcuts that weren't always available and were marketed toward homemakers who labored over a hot stove and needed a break.