I think level 1 should still require some effort. It’s pretty hard to mess up boiling an egg. (Yes, you CAN mess it up, but the ability to not do so is not at a level that we should be rewarding with extra dopamine)
In my experience it’s actually fairly easy to mess up boiling an egg, in practice, if one doesn’t have a good way of figuring out when it’s done boiling. Pancakes, you can see when they’re ready to be flipped; rice can probably be tested somehow. (Hot pockets aren’t food, much less cooking. ;) )
Really? I haven’t actually done in recently but I thought there was a huge window in which eggs were boiled, before they became “overdone,” and it was pretty easy to make sure you were in that window. (I think it took about 20 minutes, and you could forget about them for like an hour+ and they’d still be fine)
Maybe I’m just impatient, or had bad directions, but the last few times I tried—several years ago, now—mine came out under-done. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a problem with my technique, as I’ve successfully boiled other, testable things in water (speaking of which, pasta might be a reasonable benchmark for level 1 or level 2 or so); I think it was just a timing issue.
I think the very fact that there is an argument about this, should suggest that “boiling an egg” is not a bad starting place. Why make Level 1 more difficult than it has to be? It’s not like we’ll run out of numbers. “Making a hotpocket” would be one step under that, and while it’s not technically cooking, it’s still “preparing food” which I think is a nice first step.
I think level 1 should still require some effort. It’s pretty hard to mess up boiling an egg. (Yes, you CAN mess it up, but the ability to not do so is not at a level that we should be rewarding with extra dopamine)
In my experience it’s actually fairly easy to mess up boiling an egg, in practice, if one doesn’t have a good way of figuring out when it’s done boiling. Pancakes, you can see when they’re ready to be flipped; rice can probably be tested somehow. (Hot pockets aren’t food, much less cooking. ;) )
Really? I haven’t actually done in recently but I thought there was a huge window in which eggs were boiled, before they became “overdone,” and it was pretty easy to make sure you were in that window. (I think it took about 20 minutes, and you could forget about them for like an hour+ and they’d still be fine)
Maybe I’m just impatient, or had bad directions, but the last few times I tried—several years ago, now—mine came out under-done. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a problem with my technique, as I’ve successfully boiled other, testable things in water (speaking of which, pasta might be a reasonable benchmark for level 1 or level 2 or so); I think it was just a timing issue.
I think the very fact that there is an argument about this, should suggest that “boiling an egg” is not a bad starting place. Why make Level 1 more difficult than it has to be? It’s not like we’ll run out of numbers. “Making a hotpocket” would be one step under that, and while it’s not technically cooking, it’s still “preparing food” which I think is a nice first step.
That’s my experience too—and yet people in my life think I’m a “great cook,” go figure.