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 (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.
Ya gotta toast it
Nope. In English, if it doesn’t involve the application of heat, you ain’t cooking, you’re preparing, making, or other terminology.
Only if making the sandwich involves cooking, like a grill cheese or something
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”
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”
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.
No, it’s food preparation but nothing is being cooked.
Depends on your start point. You can bake your own bread, cook/combine your own condiments, and roast/cure your own meats.
IMO, assembling a sandwich from ready-to-eat ingredients without using a stove, oven, microwave, etc. is meal prep, not cooking. If you roast, saute, toast, smoke, or even zap any part of it, now you’re cookin’. (Though zapping might just be reheating something that was cooked previously. Ugh, this is more complicated than it should be. English can be frustrating.)
Personally I’d define cooking as something that creates an irreversible physical or chemical change using heat.
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.
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.
What if I microwave it?
Beenut putter?
Butter, peanutbutter and jelly?
Butter, Peanut butter, and Just a little more peanut butter
Making ceviche or sushi officially not cooking confirmed - how dare those posers call themselves sushi chefs.
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.
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!
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.
I guess that it depends on context? Typically I wouldn’t call it cooking, as it doesn’t involve applying heat to the food. But if I were to teach a kid how to cook, then I’d consider it cooking - as teaching them how to prepare a sandwich would be a good start.
So… we started with waffles and baking. They get to mix the batter and dump things into the bowl, and such.
Though the first thing my nephew made without help was mac and cheese- everything was from scratch, the sauce and the pasta. It might have taken him… uh… hours… to roll out the pasta by hand, but eh, you are allowed to have fun with your food.
If anyone hasn’t, making pasta is not that difficult. I wouldn’t say there isn’t a place for dry pasta; and it’s certainly more convenient, but if you’re interested don’t feel intimidated. (though, if you don’t have a pasta machine, I’d suggest something like Orecchiette; but there’s plenty of other shapes that don’t require a machine or rolling out in the video,)
Mixing batter and preparing pasta seem like great starts, too. The general idea is to not let the kid handle anything with heat or sharp knives until they’re old enough to “respect” the danger behind those things.
My own initiation was whisking mayo (where I live it’s traditional to prepare a potato-mayo salad on Sundays). Then when my nephew was young I kind of tried to teach him how to prepare some onigiri (he already liked them better than sandwich), with already cooked rice and fillings, but he was a bit too lazy to do it, and a bit too eager to eat the ingredients.
Absolutely, on the safety. Another thing to look out for is mixers and other machines.
though, they’re big and scarry enough sometimes they don’t need a warning… but eh… yeah. Those things will take a finger without even noticing.
“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?
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.”
Depends on the sandwich. If you’re constructing a sandwich without using heat, I would consider that “making lunch” or “making dinner” but not explicitly cooking. I’m not sure that the difference matters in any significant situations, though. Why are you asking?
Why are you asking?
Boredom.
