Mr. Pollan, People Need Cooking Lessons

Undoubtedly, gardening is the comeback hobby of 2009. This year, the National Gardening Association reported that 43 million households planted a backyard garden or has a share in a community garden - up from 36 million in 2008.

But what about cooking? In Michael Pollan’s most recent article in The New York Times Magazine, “Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch,” he asserts that cooking has become a spectator sport:

“Today the average American spends a mere 27 minutes a day on food preparation…that’s less than half the time that we spent cooking…when Julia [Child] arrived on our television screens [in 1963]. It’s also less than half the time it takes to watch a single episode of “Top Chef”…. many Americans are spending considerably more time watching images of cooking on television than they are cooking themselves — an increasingly archaic activity they will tell you they no longer have the time for.”

I’m thrilled that Mr. Pollan has drawn attention to this issue, especially the fact that the more we cook, the healthier we are and the less we weigh - which is pretty much the entire focus of my career. However, I disagree with him that people are cooking less because they “no longer have the time.”  I do think that’s an issue for some folks but it’s been my experience as a cooking instructor that people often don’t cook because they don’t know how to - can you imagine how much time it would take you to do a task that you are completely clueless about?

The art of cooking has been lost. “Scratch cooking,” (i.e. cooking a meal entirely from scratch) according to Mr. Pollan, is a rarity these days. He mentions many reasons for this - the least obvious one being that food corporations spend billions of dollars convincing us not to cook so that we spend more money on their products. And for a couple of decades, it seemed like a good idea to let other people prepare our meals - even if it meant families stopped teaching each other how to cook.

“Scratch” cooking used to be passed on from generation to generation - and for good reason. Even the best written recipes can be hard to figure out if you’re a novice cook and never made them before - learning how to cook is hard to do unless someone actually shows you how to do it. To make matters worse, home economics classes are now almost nonexistent in schools.

If no one is showing you how to cook at home or at school, there are limited options as to where else you can learn the basics, like knife skills or when to use a saucepan versus a skillet. As Mr. Pollan points out, most of the cooking shows on television don’t offer step-by-step instructions like Julia Childs’ real-time shows.  Bookstores are stuffed with cookbooks but it can be overwhelming for a newbie cook to figure out which one to buy. You can plow through the internet and find every recipe under the sun but what if you don’t know what the word “mince” means? The simplest of recipe instructions can frustrate someone with zero kitchen experience.

It’s only recently that we, as a country, started to realize that we should be more involved in our food preparation (and growing it too). I don’t mean to absolve people from personal responsibility - that is not my intention here. Rather, I think it’s important to recognize that there is still a growing awareness emerging about reconnecting with food and getting back in the kitchen. And this movement, similar to the gardening movement (I hope) can’t happen without more culinary education opportunities.

We need modern home ec classes back in the schools and parent/child classes available in the evenings or on the weekends. We need to take it upon ourselves to ask family members and friends to teach us how to prepare simple dishes. I’m curious to watch Jamie Oliver’s new show this fall where he will teach Americans how to cook! I think that viewers will be surprised at how enthusiastic Olivers’ students will be to learn.

I truly believe that if people had the necessary kitchen skills and access to healthful, inexpensive food, they would be cooking more - and cooking well. As Mr. Pollen said so beautifully in his article (and I also mentioned in my “Can Cooking Make You Happier?” post), there is something about cooking that we need:

“Maybe the reason we like to watch cooking on TV is that there are things about cooking we miss….Why? Perhaps because cooking — unlike sewing or darning socks — is an activity that strikes a deep emotional chord in us, one that might even go to the heart of our identity as human beings.”

Some of us just may need a little help finding our way back to the kitchen….

Tips on how to learn how to cook without spending a lot of money:

• Cooking stores that offer free cooking demonstrations to help sell appliances

• Large “community kitchens” where you prepare two weeks worth of meals while socializing and receiving guidance from chefs

• Private cooking classes in your home with a chef instructor – do it with friends and the cost comes down per person

• Your own at-home cooking “class” – invite a mix of friends who are beginners and experienced cooks

• Join Rouxbe, a wonderful online cooking school with professional videos at http://rouxbe.com/cooking-school