1. Crusting up and cooking the bread. You want a good texture and maillard reaction for the bread flavor to come out.
2. The cheese to be warmed up and softened to bring out it's flavor.
You don't actually need to cheese to _melt_ fully. That is just aesthetics. And the bread in the video was only just a touch overdone, really not meaningful. I'm not sure the video actually is a mistake at all.
Compare this to the same tradition-repeating bad advice in self defense/martial arts and it becomes suddenly more sinister.
The temperature of the food you're dropping into the pan has a very real effect on this, and I've found that everything works better at room temp vs right out of the fridge because it reduces the amount of heat pulled from the pan in the first few seconds.
So, to your point, there are a lot of factors involved and some of them have nothing to do with the core temp of the meat.
This isn't a bug, this is a deliberate choice to disable a browser feature that some people might actually need for accessibility purposes.
It's especially infuriating on mobile. Whoever decided that websites should be allowed to disable zooming on a web page needs to never be allowed to touch a computer again.
Gordon Ramsay is perhaps a perfect example of an entertainer that people mistake for an expert.
His job first and foremost is to entertain. That’s what he does.
Many people will jump to defend entertainer “experts” like this because they are actually good in their field and they share a lot of accurate advice. They’re making an effort to do the right thing and share the correct advice most of the time because doing anything too obviously bad too frequently would shatter the illusion.
But entertainment comes first. If it comes down to being pointedly correct and consistent versus being entertaining, they’ll choose the latter when they can get away with it. Praising a terrible grilled cheese is a perfect example.
This happens a lot in the workplace, too. Every company I’ve worked for has accumulated a few people who were very charismatic, loud, and entertaining, but everyone who knew the subject could see they didn’t know what they were doing. These people can persist for a remarkably long time, coasting on charisma alone. My clue that it’s time to leave a company is when those people start getting promoted and put in charge even after a year or two of consistent underperformance. Fortunately the better companies I’ve worked for have eventually caught on to the bullshitters and pushed them out, but it can take a painfully long time.
I would say that a lot of these examples fall under the category of "cargo culting". There is a lot of cargo culting in the culinary arts. Since a kitchen is basically a chemistry lab where biological miracles happen several times a day, no housewife or chef can be fully versed in the actual biochemical sciences that are governing what they do every day. There is so much "institutional knowledge" and "traditional know-how" that can't be written down or codified; it's merely handed on from one expert to the next. It's like Zen Buddhism, which has no formalized doctrine, but there's a lot of expertise to transmit from one master to the next!
Therefore a lot of cargo-culting intervenes here. Everyone has their idea of how to make perfect hard-boiled eggs. Everyone wants to show you exactly how to season a cast-iron pan. Everyone has one weird trick that will make the perfect roasted vegetables.
And I've found that nearly all these recipes online leave out vital information. If you don't already know how to cook, don't try learning by following online recipes. You'll fail bigtime. Also, any recipe on the side of a container, like the ones which come with your spice bottles or a box of yeast or something. They're omitting valuable expertise that only a seasoned chef will know. You'll always need to re-inject your experience when following someone else's instructions, because even if they intend to comprehensively explain the process, they'll always assume that you know how to get from Point A to Point B. Not everybody does.
I don't know the motives for passing along bullshit like that "room temperature steak" tidbit. Perhaps it's just to honor the people who taught him how to do it. Perhaps it's better safe than sorry. But oftentimes it's just cargo culting -- they've done it before this way, it turned out great, don't mess with perfection, just keep following the ritual correctly.
In terms of epistemology, not all information falls into pure true and false values. Sometimes the truth is fuzzy.
In terms of phenomenology, it's possible to have a uniquely subjective experience such that something is true for you and not for others. (Maybe Gordon really does get a better sear everytime he takes the steak out early, due to some hidden variable. Maybe hes falsely perceiving a perfect sear. Maybe he has different criteria of what that means)
In terms of communication, language is imperfect and the true message might get lost in translation. Maybe you intended to convey sarcasm but it was perceived as authoritative.
In terms of social dynamics, this resembled a reverse prisoners dilemma - cooperation is hard but ideal, meanwhile there's personal gain in bullshitting others.
Further there are positive reasons to distort and omit the truth such as discretion, dignity, social cohesion.
As for whether Ramsey's culinary entertainment is a positive justification, I think it's said best by the Prestige:
"Now you're looking for the secret... but you wont find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled."
blueflow•9mo ago
And you are the weirdo for believing that that the Moon is not related to the Day/Night cycle, that the rainbow is a gradient, that butterflies are not X-shaped but rather a triangle.
lesuorac•8mo ago
Although, the rainbow is discrete colors as opposed to a continuous gradient [2]. Hence how you can get a monochrome rainbow [1] (it only splits the colors present).
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow#Monochrome_rainbow
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradient
esafak•8mo ago
A "monochrome" rainbow is still a continuous decomposition of low temperature (warm) sunlight. A truly monochromatic "rainbow" requires a spectral light source.
blueflow•8mo ago
c-linkage•8mo ago
bmacho•8mo ago