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I'm more of a coffee nerd than a steak aficionado but I've often made the comparison between those two. In both cases, the enthusiast considers their skill in m
by MerrimanInd 1mo ago
I'm more of a coffee nerd than a steak aficionado but I've often made the comparison between those two. In both cases, the enthusiast considers their skill in making coffee/cooking steak to be a differentiator and they immerse themselves deeply into the process, skills, and tools. But for both coffee beans and steak the most important factor for a good end product is starting with high quality inputs. In other words, most of the work is being done by the farmers, the processors, and the quality of the raw stock (the cow or the coffee plant). Your job at the very end of that long value adding chain is to not ruin the hard work that others have put into it.
I'm not sure if this analogy holds up in the AI software metaphor that the author of the blog post is making.
- SoftTalker 1mo agoTo achieve the best outcomes, I agree. But even a cheap steak can be decent if it's cooked properly. And an expensive prime cut can be ruined by cooking it improperly.
- recursivegirth 1mo agoAny steak can be delicious with a butter bath and then hit it with that A1 :).
- shen 1mo agoWhy don’t you skip the meat and just make a butter and A1 soup :)
- epihelix 1mo agoThis sounds like A1 slop to me.
- chuckadams 1mo ago> hit it with that A1 Sir, I regret to inform you that you are going straight to hell.
- geodel 1mo agoFor a moment I thought it is hitting with AI.
- ErroneousBosh 1mo agoNo, AI is how you create the steak in the first place, if you have any sense. CBF with having to travel a bull up here when a dewar goes in the boot of my car.
- _carbyau_ 1mo ago> hit it with that A1 This is likely some food thing I don't know about rather than a quite large piece of paper yeah? But when I google "A1 food": - AI summary: "A1 is a famous Malaysian food brand known for herbal soups and instant noodles" - top link is "A1 Nutrition Lean Protein Blend Dry Dog Food 15kg" At this point, I don't know what is going on.
- BenjiWiebe 1mo agoA1 steak sauce. Been around for 195 years, hence the GP didn't feel the need to expand.
- _carbyau_ 1mo ago...doing more research... That's almost as long as Australia has been colonised and certainly older than Australian federation and yet, A1 steak sauce is not a big thing in our supermarkets apparently.
- Spooky23 1mo agoMaybe HP / brown sauce. Would be familiar.
- antonvs 1mo agoIt’s pretty much limited to the US now though. Most people elsewhere are unlikely to have heard of it.
- RajT88 1mo agoYes. It is about learning all of these things. Knowing what kind of cut you have, and how to treat it to best effect. A very tough gristly cut can be improved by tenderizing. Going low-and-slow/sous vide to melt the connective tissue. Even grinding it up to make a hamburger steak / loco moco. Once you know all of those things, choosing the right approach and executing it is not that hard. The steps themselves are simple. It's this story all over again: https://engineerine.com/10000-dollar-chalk-mark/ https://engineerine.com/10000-dollar-chalk-mark/
- MerrimanInd 1mo agoBut the point is that no matter how well you cook the steak you're not creating quality, you're just getting the most out of what you have. The cow and the farmer created that quality. I believe we lose sight of that because so much of the value chain is not visible to us and we hyper fixate on the fun part, becoming a better barista/chef.
- jaggederest 1mo agoCoffee is a good metaphor here too, because bad technique can ruin a good steak just as surely as good coffee. "knows how to use a meat thermometer and reverse sear" describes like 10% of the population or less, same with coffee - there are people who use a bad grinder and a not-regularly-cleaned Mr. Coffee with good beans and get gas station coffee, and there are people out there making solidly B+ class coffee using costco beans, a no name burr grinder, and a french press. Edit for people who've never had good coffee: "I don't like coffee. Can James Hoffmann change that?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-iNAyu-ejo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-iNAyu-ejo
- spiffytech 1mo agoI know people who can cook a lot of food pretty well, but don't understand why they can't use a laser thermometer to check their meat. Knowing really is half the battle.
- jmaw 1mo agoOk, using a laser thermometer for food is hilarious. Thanks for this xD
- psalaun 1mo agofor a caramel or some sauces it's legit
- OJFord 1mo agoIt's not wrong for all food, surface temperature measurement has its place, you just have to understand it is surface measurement.
- buildsjets 1mo agoI use it to spot check the temp of my cast iron pan all the time.
- Ekaros 1mo agoIt is reasonable for measuring cooking environment. Like say pizza oven. Just have to be aware of things like right emissivity.
- miyoji 1mo agoI don't know if I agree with the take I've written below, but I think you can make the analogy work: It has been argued, even in the before-AI-times, that most professional software is just gluing together open source tools and libraries. Your job isn't to write software, it's to set up redis and postgres and a programming language and a react frontend or whatever in a way that lets them do what they're there to do. Most modern programming is just configuration of pre-existing tools. It doesn't really matter how good your code is as long as it isn't terrible, Real Programmers already did 95% of the necessary work before you decided to build your little app.
- Hikikomori 1mo agoI'd say that using a manual espresso machine and getting good tasting coffee from light roasted beans is vastly harder than making a good steak.
- jonfromsf 1mo agoUsing a manual espresso machine is one of the hardest culinary preparations. It takes much more skill than one would assume!
- tshaddox 1mo agoI don't know much about cocktails, but aren't traditional mixed alcoholic drinks an even more straightforward example? There's very little that goes into an old fashioned, or a Manhattan, or a martini. Just 2-3 ingredients each that should be as high quality as possible. I guess you probably want nice ice and glassware too.
- brunoborges 1mo ago> Your job at the very end of that long value adding chain is to not ruin the hard work that others have put into it. "Your job is to not mess up." Also applicable to any corporate job.
- mizzao 1mo agoI strongly disagree with this on the steak part and maybe the coffee too. Many people pride themselves on buying expensive ingredients and thinking they have the best steak but it actually sucks. To get good steak you don't need USDA Prime dry-aged steak. You just need USDA choice, picked for a bit of marbling, salted the day beforehand and dried out uncovered in the fridge, then a ripping hot heat source (grill or cast iron etc) to get a good sear on the outside (reverse or not) and a thermometer to hit medium rare on the inside. Even a modest steak made this way tastes better than a prime steakhouse steak that was doused with salt right before cooking, where you're going to get hypertension immediately yet the meat tastes weirdly unflavorful. To extend this analogy further, consider making BBQ brisket Texas style. Brisket is a cheap cut of tough, fatty meat. The input quality matters even less there, and it's all dependent on chef skill. Same thing with sourdough bread — 4 ingredients, all outcome depends on skill. Source: we make an app that teaches people how to cook (https://parsnip.ai https://parsnip.ai)
- MerrimanInd 1mo agoOne way to phrase that would be to say that you have a vested interest in supporting the idea that end user skill is more important than ingredients since you sell a means of improving end user skill. Not sure if that's a source or a conflict of interest. I'm not saying cooking a steak is easy or hard, I'm saying that you are not creating quality when you cook a steak; the maximum attainable quality is capped by the ingredient. It's like the "I made this" meme. You're arguing against a strawman on your other points since I didn't make a generalization about all cooking and wouldn't have listed sourdough or brisket in the analogy.