Rachel Martin

Project #3

English Composition

5 May 2023

Let’s Taco ‘Bout Cooking

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. Everyone perceives everything differently, and not everyone is going to agree with the same definition. Most of society can be persuaded very easily by many factors such as celebrities, television, and social media. 

Cooking shows were not always flashy and hectic. Julia Child’s cooking show “The French Chef” had changed many households for the better, including Michael Pollan’s. Pollan states that “Julia Child had improved the quality of life around our house” (Pollan 1). That era of television cooking shows were more informative and educational rather than flashy competitions for the entertainment of the viewer. Julia Child was able to educate her viewers and teach people how to make proper household meals. Families and homes are more comforting when you know that there will be a warm meal waiting for you when you get back. Julia did more than educate, she became a staple of comfort in houses nationwide. Her show was filmed with no cuts or edits “so it had a vérité feel completely unlike anything you might see today on the Food Network,” (Pollan 2). From here, cooking shows started to change. Pollan noticed this as he said, “The Food Network has figured out that we care much less about what’s cooking than who’s cooking” (Pollan 11). Society started to stop caring about home cooking. Most people saw it as inconvenient and expensive, so they stopped trying. The Food Network picked up on this societal shift and decided to take the opportunity to profit off of it. They created shows such as “Chopped” and “Top Chef”. Cooking became competitions and large sums of prize money. Cooking should be more than that. Cooking has a deeper meaning than entertainment. From the Food for Thought archives, Brooke Parks said “Aside from just eating it, I am able to have a meal that we are all expected to sit down and talk” (Parks 2019). Brooke was just explaining how her favorite meal is her mother’s spicy pot roast. She talked about how this meal was an opportunity to talk with her family and connect with them.