u/Mo_Steins_Ghost

A common theme in cooking subs is shortcuts to perfection: "How do I get my food to be like restaurant food" or "How do I know when" or "what's the hack for" or "What book/video/influencer will improve my cooking". The premise seems to be that if you follow a specific series of steps you will magically produce exactly the same result as the pros. But the missing ingredient here is none of these things. The missing ingredient is experience.

I think this mindset pervades in today's tech-driven world, from the idea that if you push buttons on a touchscreen or you write some code, it will always have an exact result. But cooking involves your senses, your fine motor skills, and this means you have to practice. It's not a formula. It's a physical skill that has to be developed through practice, with patience and time. Sometimes (read: many times) you will fail, but if you stop half way through you stay stuck. Move on, do it again, so you improve your skills across the entire process.

There is no hack for this. You have to learn your pans, your cooktop, your ingredients. You have to develop coordination and proficiency with these tools. You don't magically know the point at which a sauce is stable. Even though it might appear I know this unconsciously, it's because I've done it a thousand times and subconsciously memorized the physical cues and responses/adjustments knowing which change will produce what outcome. You learn to feel changes in viscosity, to smell changes in chemistry. You start recognizing the signals through practice.

Also, you don't need to re-learn these skills. Start learning skills by practicing instead of trying to one-off replicate recipes. Expertise is like compound interest. The more experience you develop, the easier everything seems because you will spend less time figuring out all the little details and the individual recipes will eventually just be like a broad guide for you.

Stop looking for the gadget or the step or the "hack" that "elevates" things and start practicing until you can do it with your eyes closed. And remember, "perfect" is the enemy of "good".