Rachel Martin

Project #3

English Composition

5 May 2023

Title

What is your favorite meal? I bet it is something tasty like home cooked mac n’ cheese. Or perhaps something comforting like your mother’s famous lasagna. Or maybe even something simple like homemade chicken noodle soup. Whatever it may be, I am sure it is important and sentimental. In “Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch” by Michael Pollan, Pollan discusses the changes in cooking, especially within cooking shows. I believe that as cooking shows progress and change into entertainment rather than education, society loses more and more motivation to cook or bake. 

Everybody perceives cooking differently. Some define it as mixing ingredients and heating the recipe until the chemical composition is changed. Some define it as simply putting any ingredients together. Cooking as defined by Oxford Languages is “the practice or skill of preparing food by combining, mixing, and heating ingredients.” In my opinion, I agree with everybody. I see cooking as simply making something new using other ingredients. I see it this way because it is changing each ingredient as a whole. By mixing or combining two or more ingredients, the flavor is being changed. Changing the flavor is going to result in something entirely different. This could mean that steak and potatoes, beef stew, and even sandwiches would be categorized as cooking.