<story><title>Based Cooking</title><url>https://based.cooking/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>deanclatworthy</author><text>On this subject, can an American please tell me what a spoonful is? There is a great video series on youtube, with his recipes online, but all measurements are spoonful: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ethanchlebowski.com&amp;#x2F;cooking-techniques-recipes&amp;#x2F;pakistani-chicken-karahi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ethanchlebowski.com&amp;#x2F;cooking-techniques-recipes&amp;#x2F;p...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Spoons can vary in size, so is it a tablespoon or a teaspoon? When dealing with spices you&amp;#x27;ll be adding 3 times the amount if you go with tablespoon interpretation so it&amp;#x27;d be a pretty big difference in flavour and intensity.</text></item><item><author>hardwaregeek</author><text>Some of these recipes seem decent if you&amp;#x27;re already somewhat experienced and have developed cook&amp;#x27;s intuition. Otherwise they&amp;#x27;re way too vague. For instance, the chicken parm recipe:&lt;p&gt;- There should be a photo of how to slice the chicken breast. Saying &amp;quot;through their width&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t good enough. I had to explain what &amp;quot;lengthwise&amp;quot; was once because my friend cut all the vegetables the exact opposite of it.&lt;p&gt;- Pound with what? A lot of people will come up with very bad answers to this question.&lt;p&gt;- How much flour? How much egg? I&amp;#x27;ll bet that plenty of beginners will use a tablespoon of flour or a singular egg&lt;p&gt;- Ditto with oil. Beginners do not know how much oil is necessary to fry stuff&lt;p&gt;- How high heat? You probably want to turn down the heat after the oil starts smoking.&lt;p&gt;- Is there a single mention of adding salt? Sounds like a pretty bland recipe&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t mean to be too harsh but recipes are hard. There&amp;#x27;s a reason why professional recipe developers have developed certain standards like measurements, terms (folding batter, shimmering oil, etc.), and development procedures (cross testing).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thaumasiotes</author><text>&amp;gt; On this subject, can an American please tell me what a spoonful is?&lt;p&gt;The problem isn&amp;#x27;t with American conventions. We have no &amp;quot;spoonful&amp;quot; measure any more than you do. That website is not following any American convention by declining to specify its spice amounts.</text></comment>
<story><title>Based Cooking</title><url>https://based.cooking/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>deanclatworthy</author><text>On this subject, can an American please tell me what a spoonful is? There is a great video series on youtube, with his recipes online, but all measurements are spoonful: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ethanchlebowski.com&amp;#x2F;cooking-techniques-recipes&amp;#x2F;pakistani-chicken-karahi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ethanchlebowski.com&amp;#x2F;cooking-techniques-recipes&amp;#x2F;p...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Spoons can vary in size, so is it a tablespoon or a teaspoon? When dealing with spices you&amp;#x27;ll be adding 3 times the amount if you go with tablespoon interpretation so it&amp;#x27;d be a pretty big difference in flavour and intensity.</text></item><item><author>hardwaregeek</author><text>Some of these recipes seem decent if you&amp;#x27;re already somewhat experienced and have developed cook&amp;#x27;s intuition. Otherwise they&amp;#x27;re way too vague. For instance, the chicken parm recipe:&lt;p&gt;- There should be a photo of how to slice the chicken breast. Saying &amp;quot;through their width&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t good enough. I had to explain what &amp;quot;lengthwise&amp;quot; was once because my friend cut all the vegetables the exact opposite of it.&lt;p&gt;- Pound with what? A lot of people will come up with very bad answers to this question.&lt;p&gt;- How much flour? How much egg? I&amp;#x27;ll bet that plenty of beginners will use a tablespoon of flour or a singular egg&lt;p&gt;- Ditto with oil. Beginners do not know how much oil is necessary to fry stuff&lt;p&gt;- How high heat? You probably want to turn down the heat after the oil starts smoking.&lt;p&gt;- Is there a single mention of adding salt? Sounds like a pretty bland recipe&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t mean to be too harsh but recipes are hard. There&amp;#x27;s a reason why professional recipe developers have developed certain standards like measurements, terms (folding batter, shimmering oil, etc.), and development procedures (cross testing).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Jetrel</author><text>If I had to hazard a guess, our table cutlery (i.e. the stuff people eat meals with) has somehow managed to get really bizarrely standardized.  There are basically only two sizes of spoon in the normal set - a regular spoon, which has a fairly consistent size, and then a &amp;quot;soup spoon&amp;quot;, which is a bit inconsistent (sometimes it&amp;#x27;s a larger size, sometimes it&amp;#x27;s round rather than teardrop-shaped, etc).&lt;p&gt;So most likely they&amp;#x27;re relying on the &amp;quot;incidental standardizing&amp;quot; of normal silverware, and making a guess that most people&amp;#x27;s regular eating spoons are bizarrely similar in size.&lt;p&gt;Since we&amp;#x27;re on HN, there&amp;#x27;s probably a really interesting philosophical rabbit hole one could go down, concerning the idea of things that aren&amp;#x27;t officially standardized (by some standard-setting body), but end up gravitating towards almost being so, due to industrial pressures and consumer expectations.</text></comment>