Personally, I don’t* but I was curious what others think.
*some sandwiches excluded like a Cubano or chicken parm; those do require cooking.
Cooking is simply the preparing of food.
It doesn’t necessarily require the application of heat.
If some one is being proud of a sandwich- let them be proud. We all start somewhere.
Cooking, also known as cookery or professionally as the culinary arts, is the art, science and craft of using heat to make food more palatable, digestible, nutritious, or safe.
Wikipedia says so. Can someone make a really good sandwich without cooking? Sure. I wouldn’t even pull an “um ackshuly” on them. But you’re putting words in OP’s mouth now.
Cooking (in the English I was taught) involves the application of heat - frying, baking, roasting, boiling etc are the names for specific ways to do this. A sandwich would be made or prepared.
Some go as far as saying cooking requires a chemical change, else youre just heating
Yeah - an application of heat to create a chemical change. You’re correct there. My answer was incomplete.
Just for the heck of it, if you heat protein enough to denature it but have no Maillard reaction (let’s say you’ve just made a hard boiled egg), would that not be considered cooking by that definition?
My understanding is that denaturing is a physical structure change, not a chemical one (and according to Wikipedia can be reversible in some cases), not a biochemist or food scientist though so totally accepting that my understanding is incorrect/incomplete.
The specific language you speak has significant impact here. For some, "to make food* is used to refer to cooking. Where as in English it’s not so clear. I prefer the use in terms of survival. IMO, if you can make any food enough to survive you can cook, because in English there is not a better colloquial verb. Though i wouldn’t call you ‘a cook’ or ‘a chef’ if you can’t apply heat to produce edible food from raw.
This might be different depending on the speaker, but at least for me Portuguese and Italian are even stricter on interpreting cozinhar/cozer and cucinare/cuocere as involving heat. Like, if I were to say for example ⟨*cozinhei um sanduíche⟩ (literally “I *cooked a sandwich”), I’m almost sure that people would interpret it as “I picked an already prepared sandwich and used it as ingredient for something else”
I mean that’s true of the english term as well. But if someone says they can’t cook i default to thinking they order out every meal or use a microwave fot cup of ramen. Making sandwiches, salads, and other cold foods is still a skill but there’s no word such as cold-cutlerist and i refuse andwich artist.
Perhaps I’m overthinking it, but the English verb seems to have different meanings when it’s used transitive and intransitively. For example, let’s say that you ask someone to prepare you a salad, and the person answers:
- “I can’t cook.” (sounds OK?)
- “I can’t cook a salad.” (sounds weird)
I think that’s grammatically true but i tend to think of it more in terms of colloquialisms or slang. I imagine intransitive use of the verb developed out of convenience for lack of a lazy alternative. “I can’t prepare food” would either suggest you require assistance to eat, you can’t legally work at a restaurant, or your aristocratic status is beyond that of a mere peasant who has seen a kitchen before.
No one ever says “I’m cooking a sandwich”
Maybe a panini.
True, but, turn that into ‘I’m cooking up a sandwich’, and now the phrase potentially expands its domain to basically mean any kind of food preparation.
The addition if ‘up’ makes it less literal, more jovial and less bounded.
True, but, turn that into ‘I’m cooking up a sandwich’, and now the phrase potentially expands its domain to basically mean any kind of food preparation.
The phrase expands into any preparation or invention, even ones that clearly do not have anything to do with cooking. e.g. “I’m cooking up a plan to deal with this.”
“Cooking” to me, requires the combination of ingredients AND heating them to create a new thing. Making a grilled cheese is basic, but cooking. Slapping meat, cheese and veg on bread is not cooking.
But what if you toast it?
Is combining microwave rice and a frozen meal portion cooking then? Or to they have to be heated together?
If you cook it, like a grilled cheese, then yes. Otherwise, it’s sandwich arts.
I don’t think it’s cooking unless you are applying heat to cause a chemical reaction. So, making a grilled cheese sandwich counts as cooking, but a BP&J does not.
Making ceviche or sushi officially not cooking confirmed - how dare those posers call themselves sushi chefs.
Some of the constituent ingredients have to be cooked, but ceviches and sushi rolls aren’t cooked any more than salads or burritos. They’re assembled or prepared.
You’re ignoring the chemical process in ceviche.
Yea, ceviche is cooked with acid rather than heat - you can also cook some foods with salt!
You could cook using an exothermic reaction between ingredients, but I don’t think that’s what’s happening when making ceviche, so a ceviche is not cooked.
Cc @SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
The proteins are being chemically denatured.
By heat?
gotta cook the rice for sushi. checkmate.
Sashimi: do I not even exist, bro?
Slap a whole fish down in front of you.
You: “Not cooked”
slice filled of fish off and present it.
You: “Not cooked”
slice filled into small bite size pieces and squirt some neon green horseradish next to it
You: “Dis is cooked!”
?
Yea, it looks fucking delicious. Thank you for cooking me a fine meal!
Ha, you actually believe in Sashimi? Crazy.
What if I want my raw spam musubi extra crunchy?
Then you should opt the spam out for soused harring.
I think of a chef as a “preparer of food” not necessarily “food cooker”
So sushi chef is still accurate to their opinion, disclaimer I agree with them so I could always be rationalizing it.
chef is french for chief. they are the head of the kitchen.
They still have to cook the rice.
Ceviche is said to be “cooked” with acid, even if that’s not the most accurate term. And most forms of sushi are made with cooked rice, at minimum, and not uncommonly with other cooked ingredients. So those things kind of muddy the waters for your point. But a clearer example may be something like beef tartare, a garden salad with a vinegarette, or sashimi. Those things are “prepared”, not cooked, because no cooking is involved in their making. Cooking is specifically the preparation of food utilizing heat. Chefs prepare plenty of dishes that do not involve the act of cooking.
The acid from the lime is doing the cooking in ceviche.
I agree - and it specifically isn’t doing so through an application of heat.
Just because it’s preparing food and not cooking doesn’t mean that it is lesser.
What if I microwave it?
You can cook with a microwave, but if you’re just reheating something that’s not cooking.
Beenut putter?
Lol whoops. I’m leaving it.
Butter, peanutbutter and jelly?
Butter, Peanut butter, and Just a little more peanut butter
The question is inadequatly phrased. You must describe what kind of sandwich we are speaking of. Unless op is speaking about cold sandwiches exclusively, many sandwiches require cooking.
Croque Monsieur
Grilled Cheese
Cubano
Monte Cristo
Panini
These are just a few that I came up with off the top of my head. I’m sure there are many more.
No, I would call that “preparing”. Cooking is the act of using heat to prepare food for consumption.
Which means that it might be, depending on the sandwich. For example, you cook a panini or grilled cheese.
What about using my George Foreman grill?
What matters is the loaf. Use the upper cut
Nope. In English, if it doesn’t involve the application of heat, you ain’t cooking, you’re preparing, making, or other terminology.
So toasting a sammich is cooking, but making the sammich isn’t?
Pretty much, yeah. Same as grilling a burger and putting it on bread is cooking despite the bread being pre-made.
Afaik, cooking isn’t limited to applying heat to raw foods.
Might be worth saying that I don’t remember which dictionary the definition came from, and that dictionaries only record language, they don’t prevent changes over time. Which means that usage could have changed enough since the last time I looked at any, and now have a different usage added
The word cooking, to me, means using heat with a stove. Baking is for the oven. Grilling, is outside on a grill. But a sandwich is only ever “made” in my house. “Will you make me a sandwich?”, “I’m making a sandwich”
Good question though. Never thought about it.
Sorry. You said “make me a sandwich”
There’s always an xkcd for every forum thread topic.
I see cooking as a more general term. Both baking and grilling are forms of cooking. You can also roast and grill things in the oven. Cooking on a stove also has different specific terms, boiling, simmering, frying etc.
So would you cook a salad?
I mean more general than heat with a stove. Not as is every form of meal preparation.
But yes. I would cook a salad - stir frys are basically just cooked salads with some rice or noodles. I would not consider every salad to be cooked though.
I guess it would depend on the type of sandwich
. Peanut butter and jelly? No
A simple cheese sandwich? No
Grilled cheese sandwich? Yes
What about a grilled cheese and peanut butter and jelly and pickles sandwich with a side of sourkrout?
peanut butter and jelly and pickles sandwich
this sounds like something my SiL would eat when she was pregnant.
also… what kind of pickles? I bet i could get my nephew and nieces to eat it, and they’d probably love it.
I’m going with inedible but yeah that’s cooking
Does it take unreasonably long compared to the time to consume the food?
Yes.
Does it use ingredients?
Yes.
Is it worth the effort?
No.
Sounds like cooking to me.
Is it worth the effort?
No.
Sounds like you suck at cooking, my guy.
Just because you don’t enjoy it doesn’t mean you suck at it
They did not say “do I enjoy it?” they said “Is it worth the effort?” and if having food made exactly to your taste is not worth the effort you either have no standards and would be fine with microwave slop and fast food, or you lack the skill to make something that satisfies you.
Either way, skill issue.
The one exception would be if you’re disabled or something, and I don’t mean “I have adhd” disabled, I mean “I physically can’t stand at the stove for 20-30 minites” disabled.
Entirely context dependent.
Who’s cooking tonight? Me, and if it’s sandwiches, salad, etc - still counts.
No cooking in the room. Combining sliced bread with sliced cheese out of the bag - doesn’t count.
