In theory yes. But the question is do you really need that 10k hours? I think it depends on each case. Ultimately, passion is more important than anything, can help to sort out most problems. Also, there are people who just love to simply make perfect hotdogs, but there are cooks that want to learn to cook everything, including bread making and pasta, I think the time needed for perfection isn’t the same.
Professional cooks have the advantage to hear from the feedback of lots of clients with different tastes to improve. Home cooks, unless, you have huge families or always inviting people.
I actually have no idea, I thought most people cook more or less like me. Only when some strangers start to make compliments in events (which I was in charge of cooking), in the beginning, I thought that was just out of politeness, but slowly, even people talked about the food they have eaten months later. Those are serious encouragement, also makes one to have more confidence. Now I’m seriously maybe to go pro. Seriously, I don’t think I could be a cook with great techniques, because I don’t have enough patience, but I’m more interested in flavours and how different tastes and texture work together, especially in different cuisines.
So just putting in 10,000 hours is not going to make someone an expert vs someone with a lot less practice but targeted instruction (leaving aside natural ability)…
10,000 hours is 1.14(and some more decimal places) years, not accounting for time off. I mean, we need to sleep and do laundry…maybe go outside once in a while and see people… I’d feel pretty ok about my ability to tackle something after a year or so of doing it continuously, but I certainly wouldn’t call myself an expert!
And, there are practitioners/professionals out there who would still say that they see themselves as learners even after a lifetime of employing skills.
So true also for chapatis, tortillas, and other home foods that are prepared either daily or in bulk.
Many Indian women cut vegetables daily with any old knife and no chopping board - one-handed, against the thumb. They’ll sit and prep chatting with each other, or in front of the TV, or doing anything else - not even in the kitchen, and not looking down at the vegetable or the knife. Quick, mechanical, uniform.
I was mesmerized as a child watching a neighborhood bhelwala (street food guy) finely mince an onion - he held it in the palm of his left hand, using a small knife to rapidly slice down first, then across, until it was reduced to a fine mince in a minute or two. Not gimmicky - he just had no counter space, so that was his process.
The key here is “so many taxes are not being paid.”
Cash is king in restaurants, no doubt. But it does not mean that there are no taxes being paid, just, um, not as many as the tax authorities would prefer.
Which, in all honesty, is true in all industries – just to varying degrees.
Yeah, I was doing simplified math on a professional kitchen - if they spend 10h a day doing prep across 2-3 meals, that’s still 1000 days, a bit under 3y.
Muscle memory is a powerful thing.
A friend’s kid is an amazing pianist who was accepted to an elite summer program. Friend’s assessment was that the kid was middle of the pack - but the only difference between the kids ahead was 30h of practice per week vs the 10h his kid put in (and they’re not willing to take 20h away from the rest of his life / activities).
I prefer to think of in terms of the number of working days, probably between a thousand and a thousand and a half, somewhere in the range of three to four years. Probably triple that for a home cook. If you have been cooking three meals a day for ten years you should be proficient at all of the things you do. Proficient is not the same as a professional cook, but you should have mastered all of your techniques.
As a mostly self-taught home cook myself, the pro instructions and tips I have received were extremely helpful. Home cooks definitely don’t need to strive for the consistency that a restaurant does, but knowing how a pro kitchen functions can help a lot.
My father in law’s family ran a butcher shop for may years, so he was able to teach me a lot about cuts of meat and how to properly hone a knife.
My godfather was a chef for 30 years. He’s been an invaluable source of advice on what equipment to get that would befit a home kitchen, as he’s now retired and has set up his own happy place in the kitchen. He’s also scaled down several recipes to make at home.
While I don’t measure out every ingredient into small bowls prior to cooking, I do make sure I have all the ingredients out and the counter clear before I start.
Seeing professional presentation is inspiring as well. Taking a moment to arrange a meal artfully on a plate does make for a more pleasant dining experience, once that is easily done at home.
CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
53
Interesting. When my youngest daughter started working in the bakery of an Italian Deli, I wondered how tips would be handled. Particularly because this is a singleton, family-owned place.
They’ve got some system for sharing out the total, pooled tips received during the day depending on job type and hours worked that day, and they get this figured out and paid off in cash the next day. But all of it (wages plus tips already paid) is reported on the biweekly ADP paystubs and all of it gets reported to the government.
In the Army I knew a reservist who owned what was at that time a Holiday Inn[1] who bragged about keeping 2 sets of books and said everyone in his country did that, and that Americans were stupid for paying all the taxes they owed.
[1] Due to upkeep issues they parted ways with him some time later.
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CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
54
Damian, that would have been nice, to be able to take a leave every so often. I ended up forfeiting unused vacation every year.
To your point about your mom, I think something about cooking - call it a sense for what goes well together based on good memory for taste/smell, or just call it a “knack” - is inheritable. I’ve no proof of this, of course.
My mother (and my grandmother, her mom I mean) were miserable cooks. On a transfer to a new duty station my grandparents’ house was within driving range of work so I lived with them for a month while my apartment was getting ready. Grandma gladly ceded dinner duties to me and they both gained about 10 pounds that month. Gramps used to ask me to come cook weekends.
My father never cooked while I was in the house but at some point after he divorced his second wife (or vice versa), it was either eat frozen meals ad nauseam (pun intended) or learn to cook. So he got a standard McCormick wall rack with 24 basic herbs/spices - same one he got me as a wedding present years before, and I still have it. And then he learned very quickly to cook what he liked. He had a definite flair for getting good flavors out of whatever he was doing; I only ate at his place a few times but it was always much better than standard home fare.
My older sister and I are both told by others that we’re really good cooks. Guests often tell me that this or that dish “belongs in a restaurant”, or that I should open a restaurant. My kids begged me to do that for years - despite my explanation that startup for a restaurant would have me working more hours than I already was, not fewer.
Anyway, I think we inherited that something, whatever it is that makes a person amenable to being a better cook than someone who didn’t get that something, from our dad.
And dare I say neither do 99% of restaurants in Europe and the rest of the world.
Do we die from eating leafs and herbs with small amounts of rotten decay on them ?
Nooooo, but we risk getting a bad stomach from it and that’s simply not acceptable.
This is one of the reasons why I took up serious home cooking back in 2015/2016.
I want control over the ingredients and how they are rinsed, handpicked and prepared.
My goal was to outperform most middle of the road restaurants using my own techniques, skills and ingredients in my own home kitchen.
I’m partly there now some 7-8 years later but I’m still learning. And still improving my techniques and skills.
I won’t die, but I seem to be sensitive to a preservative that is sprayed on produce in Canada and the States.
I get hives fairly often after eating a salad or raw vegetables in a restaurant. I don’t get hives after eating restaurant salads in the UK, Italy, Austria, Germany or Japan, so I think it’s probably a sulfite that isn’t used and maybe isn’t allowed in the UK, EU and Japan. The reaction doesn’t happen with my homegrown vegetables or commercial vegetables I wash before preparing.
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CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
58
Weird. It would seem to be some metabisulfite compound used in US/CAN but not elsewhere?
There’s no way to test for a sensitivity to it, since it’s a salt, not a protein. My allergist told me to avoid the stuff that seems to make me react, and gave me a prescription for a preventative antihistamine I can take before dining out.
It often happens after tasting menus for some reason.
I also keep track of which restaurants I ate at, and which dishes I ate, whenever I have an episode.
Maybe I’ve been lucky in EU. I do know many Germans and Italians tend to be more cautious about organic vs conventional, etc., so wouldn’t surprise me if less or no preservatives are sprayed on their produce.
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CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
60
I think that sooner or later this may, eventually, help you pinpoint the exact irritant or irritants if there are more than one. I’d hope so, anyway.
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