What do you guys think of Serious Eats/Food Lab/Kenji Lopez-Alt?
Pursuit of perfection, or unnecessary autism?
>>7307885
>>>/reddit/
>>7307934
>implying irrelevant hillbillies matter
lol
>>7307885
It's a good source of information, especially if you are interested in sous vide cooking. Actually in general his equipment recommendations are spot on.
>>7307885
>unnecessary autism
Definitely this.
The highest rating they gave jarred marinara was 7.1/10 followed by 5.8/10 and descending. They only reviewed the "Chef" brands.
http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/04/what-are-best-tomato-sauces-pasta-celebrity-chefs-brands.html
They did it again with cheese dip with the highest rating being 5.4/10.
http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/05/taste-test-queso-cheese-dip-what-is-the-best.html
Do I think the scores are unfair? Nah, probably not. But the whole thing just seems setup to circlejerk about their perceived evils of mass-produced food. Like omg Conagra amirite?
It's like when Bourdain said the worst food he'd ever eaten was a McDonald's chicken nugget. If I recall correctly, he ate wild boar intestine covered in shit and hair on camera. He's just saying what's popular with the libtards.
>>7307969
Saying that jarred supermarket tomato sauce and queso isn't the best thing in the world somehow makes someone a libtard?
Do you have any idea how retarded that sounds?
it's pretty autistic but i refer to it if i'm cooking something and i'm being autistic about it
otherwise i just ask /ck
>>7307980
The point is that they're stating the obvious just to pander to their audience. Their reviews are useless.
>>7307980
No, but circlejerking about it does.
>>7307934
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/306e93/congratulations_to_j_kenji_l%C3%B3pezalt_for_being/
>the pursuit of perfection
this never sits right with me.. i get wanting to have food cooked properly, even perfectly.. but the different methods and processes add so much to the experience that you need to look past perfection
like you could call the honda accord a(n objectively) perfect car but i would personally rather bomb around in some two stroke beater piece of shit because i like to live
>>7307991
>>7307995
What is he supposed to rate one jar 10/10 just for the hell of it? It's common sense that shit you buy in a jar probably isn't the most amazing thing in the world. Their is nothing circlejerking about that, he's just saying that if you are in a hurry this particular product is the best in his opinion.
met him IRL
really chill guy
Lots of great content on the site and the reviews are very far, but James himself is absolutely up his own ass sideway and so deep in the closet he can Narnia. He wants to be a working man's Heston Blumenthal but he's not anywhere near as skilled or perceptive as he thinks he is and he's got a whole bunch of crackpot halkf baked ideas that he thinks constitute "food science"
>PROTIP: science happens in a lab and real food scientists are light years over his head
I heartily dislike his attitude and his fully autistic confidence in his own bullshit. I rarely read his recipes or posts, they trigger me. He puts fucking fish sauce in his chili.
ITT: I don't like him because science is kewel and I need a double blind peer-reviewed journal to tell me if I like the taste of food that is literally inside my mouth being chewed, by me, also cuck cuck cuck muh race mixing
I like the concept, and SOME of the info is good, but KL-A can go fuck himself in the ass with glass. I can't stand the fucker and wish he'd go the fuck away and never come back, the little pretentious guttersnipe.
>>7308682
he puts fish sauce in chili, bro
>or sis w/e
this is a perfect example of what I mean:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/05/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boiling-tips-the-food-lab.html
>fucking ten billion words
>immediately says "trained as a chef"
>hahaha my wife can't cook liek me dumb bitch
>lists a bunch of bullshit strawmen and proceeds to "test" them
>oh wow holy fuck high school physics is real omg nobody told anyone
>EVERYONE I HAVE A VARY IMPORTANT ANNOUNCMANT TO MAKE
>"shits really real yo"
and he get's BTFO in the very.first.comment.
>oh yeah just like that thing my mom AKA everybody always does
Bonus:
>I spent a couple years working the pasta station at a restaurant known for its pasta. We did at least a hundred covers a day, and at least three-fourths of them would have at least one pasta course. That's an awful lot of pasta to cook. I cooked it all in a large, six-slot pasta cooker that held about 15 gallons of water at a constant boil.
Dis nigga worked for Olive Garden. That is his entire claim to being an actual cook, he worked the line at a fucking pasta restaurant holy fuck. I was a carpenter for three years but am I the god of woodworking?
JFC fuck this guy so hard. Olive Garden.
Does anyone not know that pasta will get soft in water just from? fucking kitchen
about boiling pasta and yarking about "conventional wisdom that is all 100% made up fucking shit
>>7309011
Have you ever tried chili with fish sauce in it?
>>7307969
Have you ever even had a non-jarred sauce? I was literally shocked the first time I made my own sauce. Jarred sauces are shit and I'm surprised theres one that is 7.1
>>7309026
No but that doesn't matter.
You can't fuck with something that is great and call it "the better" unless the entire fucking world agrees with you. have you ever tried a cheeseburger with chopped celery? IT'S THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST CHEESEBURGER POSSIBLE
HOW DO I KNOW?
I'M A SPERG WITH A WEBSITE
How is this guy any different from Alton Brown? Everyone on /ck/ can't stop blowing him and his unitasker rule. They seem about the same to me. Lots of good information but you shouldn't take it as gospel or even your only source
>>7309059
It does matter. It could be good for all you know but you're dismissing it because "you can't fuck with great things, man."
Regarding your other point, that's pretty much standard clickbait practice. I'm not defending it, but I don't really hold it against the guy. Almost every blog does that. Regular people do that on here all the time, especially on this website. How much of this do you see on a regular basis:
"That thing is shit."
"This thing is great."
Instead of "I like this, or I don't like that."
>>7309093
you need chops before you can fuck with the main. He has none. He's an asspie line cook that squandered an MIT education to write a shitty muh feels column mixed with retard science about food. if alain fucking ducasse comes out of the grave to tell me celery needs to be on a cheeseburger, I'll accept it. Some little slacker dude deciding everything need fish sauce in it because he misses his emotionally distant weeb mom is decidedly not on the acceptable list
I like the site, some of it is overkill but there are lots of techniques I wouldn't have thought of and I like reading some of the articles. Kenji has kind of turned into a shill over time though, trying to sell baking steels and videos and books.
Pic related, it's carnitas I made using a SE recipe.
I've learned a lot and I have found a lot of good recipes on there but because the review function is pretty limited it's pretty much a crapshoot if the recipe you choose is going to be good or not.
I've cooked a few recipes that have turned out like utter shit, but that is true of all cooking sites I guess.
Kenji's content is generally pretty good though, and I'm generally quite impressed with his recipes / articles.
>>7309128
I own a baking steel, and if you enjoy baking pizzas you need to own one. A noticeable improvement over my stone.
>>7309138
That may be so, but it strikes me as overpriced and leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth that he mixes reviews with "recommendations" for things that he is profiting from.
>>7309144
Does he actually profit from the stuff he recommends?
>>7309124
>if you aren't famous you don't get to have opinions
That's reddit thinking, anon. It wouldn't matter who made the celery burger, it would either be good or not good.
You're exaggerating. Name one other thing he puts fish sauce in.
>>7309151
If I remember correctly, he co-designed the baking steel that he recommends all the time. He also shills the sous vide setup he uses all the time, I don't know if that directly results in a kickback though. Plus the Amazon affiliate links, but I guess they can't really be faulted for that, it's a revenue stream.
>>7309128
>baking steel
>>7309138
>baking steel
>google this
holy fucking shit. how in the WORLD did your discover that METAL is more thermally conductive than STONE. Cristofo Colombo and WOW!
this changed my life my god, do you think anyone else EVER thought of this, quick call the commercial pizza oven makers and tell them, omfg
I'll never pretend my shitty home oven is anything like a $50k pizza oven with a pizza STEEL again!!!! fuck those pizza stones, what a ripoff, amirite? even though they were supposed to substitute for a clay beehive oven I also pretended my shitty home oven could be!
WOW!!!!?>??~!@?#!@!!
>>7309160
>Name one other thing he puts fish sauce in
is that a joke
>>7309172
What was the point of that shitpost that took you several minutes to write?
Since you obviously didn't know what a baking steel was beforehand, you would have benefited from reading the article about it on serious eats since the entire purpose of the website is to teach people about better ways to cook.
I've never made anything he's posted but they're pretty interesting.
Also his name and the fact that he looks like a white dude is weird.
>>7309185
Why is it weird?
>>7309191
>mexican japanese +random word name
>looks like a white dude
>>7309180
I own a metal pizza pan for my home that was manufactured in the early 1980's? None of this is new knowledge to any degree? If you'd paid attention you'd already know this shit, it's basic? Do i need to continue?
>>7309092
AB is a sperg too.
>muh millions of tiny dishes
>muh made up bullshit about bread
>muh unitasker homergomer when i got a kitchen with one of everything
>muh spitcup
he didn't even eat what he made on the show that poser
>>7309224
If you weren't an utter moron you would know that your shit pizza pan (which is almost certainly aluminum, not steel) and a pizza steel are completely different products.
The point of the pizza steel is to store a significant amount of heat to transfer to your pizza when you put it on after warming it up for an hour.
Nice try though.
>>7309207
Why is it weird?
>>7309246
>OMG the latest fad cookery item makes my shitty home oven a real pizzeria I'ma la dolce vita Italiana mammaria!
kay
>>7309292
>get absolutely blown the fuck out because you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about
>b-but I-I have a pizza p-pan guys i-it's totally t-the same
Gratz, you have the absolute worst way to cook a pizza/bread.
I would like to see a picture of one of your pizzas lel.
>>7309292
does it really bother you so much? what if it's new information to some people?
>>7307885
great website and more /ck/ posters should read it
at least, read the food science articles
the think-pieces on how much some rando loves dumplings bc of his dead mom or whatever are entirely skippable
but there's a lot of good information here & they frequently debunk dumb old dad myths like "searing keeps in the juices" and "never flip your steak" and so-on
this place definitely upped my meat game a lot for sure
>>7309011
fish sauce is actually really great in chili.
>Pursuit of perfection
the wording is going a bit far, but I think he means well. I've learned quite a bit as a beginning cook from seriouseats / (and mostly Kenji's work got me interested at first), like what searing is, long cooked tomato sauce, cuts of meat to buy. def got me comfortable with starting to cook
this was the first post that introduced me to seriouseats / Kenji: http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/10/the-food-lab-science-of-how-to-cook-perfect-boiled-eggs.html
>unnecessary autism
I think there's a lot of this too. that fucking pasta post, and also this bs:
http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/05/the-burger-lab-how-to-make-perfect-mcdonalds-style-french-fries.html
I started to follow Kenji on twitter but after a couple days couldn't fucking stand his head up his ass tweets. he's a douche, and some of his work he takes too seriously, but generally it's a good resource and I appreciate it
>>7309311
dude needs to act more humble and not pretend he's second jesus for coming up with super basic conclusions. that is all.
>>7309327
Advertising what a pizza steel is to people like college students who have never cooked a meal in their lives before and want to learn how to make pizza is not 'being the second jesus.'
How assblasted are you that you can't afford a meat thermometer that you blame all your troubles on a website that uses 'hip lingo' to get clicks, like literally every other website on the internet?
I still want to see a pic of one of your pizzas.
>>7309376
How would you propose someone learn about cooking other than visiting cooking websites?
>inb4 culinary school, some of us want to retire when we turn 55
>>7309383
Ah yes, burnt cheese, uneven toppings, no appreciable crust rise, and a crust that is likely mushy as shit underneath all that because it had to cook at the same rate as the toppings. There's a reason real pizza places put their pizzas into ovens onto stone / steel that is already at 500 F so that the crust will cook quickly and you don't have to burn your cheese / toppings in order to make the bottom of the pizza crispy.
Thanks for demonstrating why pizza pans are shit for cooking pizza.
Also your stovetop is absolutely disgusting.
>>7309171
I didn't know he co-designed a steel.
I'd be interested to see a link if you have one.
Is it the Sur La Table one that's the most popular one on amazon?
That's the one that I own.
>>7309464
These posts make it sound like he has some financial interest in it, though it's not clear to what degree:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/04/the-food-lab-the-new-reversible-baking-steelg.html
http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/06/baking-steel-griddle-has-arrived.html
>>7309261
Fuck off Kenji Lopez-Cuck
he's pop science of the cooking world.
>>7308427
exactly, it's common sense. it's like those fools who review doritos on youtube. you know what you're getting it doesn't need a review
There are some good recipes there. The food lab doesn't interest me as much, but it's nice when it sorts out some misconceptions, like it did with polenta
>>7307969
Bourdain also likes In-N-Out and Waffle House so I doubt he's such a fast-food hater.
I love how deeply /pol/ has infested the rest of this site. Some neckbearded redpill MRA angry about muh libtards on a cooking website gets so worked up and calls someone who has no idea who he is nor would he care about him if he did an aspie.
protip: if you write more about someone than they write about you that makes YOU the obsessive weirdo
>>7309404
how does the asspain taste? the crust rose perfectly, the "burnt" cheese was on purpose and the pie was crisp on the bottom and yet not tough at all on the body. it was literally as good as possible from a home oven.
and if you were even a little serious about food and/or science you'd know a)real pizza ovens get up to 850-900 degrees, not 500, and b)aluminum carries heat BETTER than steel. so take your fad cookery elsewhere, young padawan.
>>7310212
>being this reddit
>responding 5 hours after the last post
pls
>>7308678
>He puts fucking fish sauce in his chili.
so does heston
bad example dude
>>7307969
The tomato sauce was one thing that kind of annoyed me, because even though /ck/ can't admit it, it actually is physically possible to read ingredients and apparently the guy only reviewed stuff that contains a gorillion artificial additives.
That said, he's not racist like Alton Brown so I'm ok with him.
I like him, but I like ALL the sciencey cooking stuff. Huge fan of Cook's and McGee.
I have no problem with what you all call autism (the basic premise being that someone takes it too far or is too focused, right)- I like understanding all the steps someone took. I don't follow any of the recipes, for the most part, but feel like I retain teh general idea of how things cook, react, etc.
There are a tone of "new" things that most cooks don;t want to admit work. I put a little anchovy in my meat dishes now because SCIENCE! But, for reals, if I can't taste the fish, and "beefy" flavor is improved, why wouldn't you? Some like to spout that it's nonsense, or stupid, or not right, but I like it. If someone can "prove" to me that it makes something better, then I'll happily do it.
Har boiled eggs are another good example.
>>7310261
they were only covering the ones endorsed/marketed by celebrity chefs and restaurants which tend to be pretty shit
>>7309124
>Some little slacker dude deciding everything need fish sauce in it because he misses his emotionally distant weeb mom is decidedly not on the acceptable list
whether true or not, I did shyly emit a quiet chuckle at this
>LMFAO
>>7309124
jeeeeeeesus, you're really fucking mad at something
>>7310286
you're the one who was comparing him unfavourably to heston in your post, dingus.
>>7309124
>if alain fucking ducasse comes out of the grave to tell me celery needs to be on a cheeseburger
is that after you kill him or what
>>7309246
>steel
>store a significant amount of heat
>after warming it up for an hour.
The amount of pure material sciences potato on this board never ceases to amaze me.
never change, seekay, never change
>heart emoji
Serious eats used to be better. Started shilling and forcing Kenji on everything and going down hill even before they were bought out. I looked at that site without adblock for the first time in years and jesus christ.
Blake Royer/Nick Kindlesperger had some good stuff, Dinner Tonight was great feature.
>>7310286
>going to sleep
>clearing your mind
>still being mad enough to respond on a cooking forum about why someone else is autistic
LOL
