From the moment we’re born we require food and water to enable us to survive. For most animals this comes from the mother who delivered their baby and if you’re fortunate enough then the parent can provide for long enough until you begin to grow enough to be able to gather food for yourself.
For humans the world isn’t really much different to the rest of the animal kingdom, across the board there are the fortunate and the less so. One of the things that separates us from other animals and our ancient ancestral origins millions of years ago is the discovery of fire, but more importantly being able to control it and use it for things like cooking.
Why do we cook
I think the first question you should ask before ‘how do you do something?’, is ‘why do you do it?’ because without understanding the why its difficult to properly achieve how every time. When it comes to food there are a few reasons ones that have developed more so with our ever advancing lives.
Before we cooked, we just ate. Mostly fruits, seeds, nuts, roots and tubers (eg potatoes), whatever we could scavenge, but also at some point we started to eat meat. We had developed tools to be able to hunt and this new source of protein allowed a species to evolve once more, with their bodies changing and adapting with the new source of fuel. Our stomachs and bodies changed along with our teeth and brain sizes. We were even proficient in some culinary skills already, by slicing meat thinner to reduce chewing. So why did we change?
Once we had ‘discovered’ fire for our own uses, we started to cook food, but why?
Food borne diseases
The most obvious reason for anyone would be food poisoning. As humans at this point, we had developed a pretty resistant stomach to some of the bacteria we found on meat, and unlike a lot of the meat we eat today, the animals we consumed were wild, free but most importantly freshly killed, butchered and eaten. This freshness reduces a lot of the chances for bacteria to develop, so in a lot of cases mitigated any need for cooking for safety.
However our intelligence/understanding wasn’t what it is now, so gathering meat, transporting storing, distributing to our tribe etc threw a variable into the equation allowing bacteria and germs to grow and become a problem.
Eating raw meat today is still safe in theory as those bacteria and germs that grow and develop on food aren’t present whilst they are alive, so if you know your animal and its health it is not a problem. Animals that are wild and free, you don’t know and just like a lot of the animals we eat today (in mass) we don’t always know their health, and there lies another issue for uncooked meat in that an animal could have a disease already, thus eating them fresh or not still resulted in food poisoning.
Now not all humans at this point were chowing down on animals and it wasn’t the largest part of their diet. However food borne illnesses are not just an issue with meat, in fact leafy vegetables carry more of a risk of food borne illness, especially in the world we live in today.
All of these issues were discovered slowly and with the creation of cooking food, not just meat, and killing off these bacteria the mortality rate decreased.
Convenience
A big part of choosing to cook food would have been through convenience. As mentioned before chewing through meat too a lot of effort, aside from slicing thinner cuts it would have given most of us a rugged jaw line, which is what we had at that time. Since the discovery of cooking, you can see the evolution of our bodies to have a much smaller jaw and teeth, showing that it made it easier to consume the food.
Digestion/energy
This is up for discussion, however with cooking food came with better/quicker digestion. Evolving from apes, a species which only occasionally eat meat, we never seem to be set to have a whole meat based diet, but with the advancements in energy it gave us, we clearly recognised it as an important part of our survival. When we cook our food, a lot of the cell walls are broken down and the fibres softened. This allows us to chew our food easier breaking it down into small pieces in our mouths, also allowing some of those enzymes in our saliva to start to react with the food and also break it down. Then when it hits our bellies we’ve got a head start on taking out the good stuff and passing out the rest. This is how I understand it.
This process is meant to give as an increased level of energy from our food (mainly meat). Studies show that cooked vs raw meat give us more energy, which in turn would have boosted our evolution.
These seem to be the main reasons cooking began and eventually grew and evolved into what it is today. With our ever growing brains and striving to learn and grow more and more, we have come to understand things like food to an even more profound degree which helps us to make better informed decisions. For example.
Nutrients
Cooking is a process which alters our food, different ingredients are packed with different minerals and nutrients all of which play a key part in our bodies growth and cell reproduction. In its raw state, an ingredient will contain all that it has but when we cook it some minerals can be lost. Water based minerals tend to break down and leach out of the food when cooked, like Vit B & C. Therefore advocating for raw seems suggestible. However in some cases like leafy vegetables heating them is needed to be able to release their minerals, making them more nutritious than raw. Often it is a choice of benefits.
Flavour
I’m sure even early man enjoyed the better flavour of food that was roasted over a fire. With more and more ways of controlling energy and how we cook with it, we have unlocked a plethora of ways to cook our food and give us the flavours and textures we desire. We live in an age where for some food can be a luxury experience not just an ingredient for survival. Different techniques give us different flavours to our food which helps us enjoy something we need to do even more.
How to cook
Now you know why, it is a little easier to understand how. The first thing I would suggest doing if you looking to learn to cook, is to understand your ingredients. Start with a few simple ones. The onion is one of the best. taste it raw, read about it, cook it and taste it at different stages.
Cook ingredients on their own not in a dish, and keep cooking them so they taste good, this way you get to learn their flavour. If you can cook 3 or 4 ingredients well, then you can start to combine ingredients to make a dish, knowing that what you put in that dish tastes good on its own.
Read about different ways of cooking, but master one before moving on.
With meat, don’t be scared and buy a thermometer. You know why you’re cooking it so those are the areas you’re looking to cover. It is recommended that meat should be cooked to 74oC to be safe, this kills off all food borne germs instantly and is your starting point for meat, try not to go over that temperature as your meat will start to dry out. Your thermometer should be checking the middle of the piece of meat so test it regularly after a minute or so, jab it in and wait to hit that number.
Start cooking smaller bits of meat in a pan with a little oil or fat rather than larger bits and work your way up.
experiment with different ways of cooking your meat, knowing that your thermometer will keep you safe.
How many days does it take to learn to cook? This all depends on how much you want to do it. If you cook something badly you can learn from it, so don’t be afraid to fail, but watch what happens and try to understand why. If you cook something 10 times you should be able to get it right. Start small and build up, if you can cook and onion and some mince you already have the basis for lots of dishes. Within 2 weeks you could master cooking a small selection of ingredients which all feed into a wide variety of dishes.
Investing in the time to learn how to cook opens up a whole world of confidence and control over your life. If the recent pandemic taught us anything, it’s that anything can change and you need to be adaptable. Any questions please ask as I’m happy to help. Are cooking courses worth it? If they help improve your life then definitely.
References
H. erectus cut, chewed way through evolution
Study finds cooking increases energy from meat, may have driven human evolution
Why Cooked Meat Is Easier For Humans to Digest Than Raw Meat
All About Raw Meat
Evidence for Meat-Eating by Early Humans
Want to learn how to cook and understand food?
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They’re fun, informative, fit around your time, you do all the cooking yourself and best of all you go away with some tasty food each time, made by you.
How to cook meat so that it is tasty and safe?
A common question. Why not look at my meat course and leave confident knowing you’re getting the best from your meat.