Michael: Cooking has always been a part of my life... but I seldom made time for cooking or gave it much consideration. I counted myself lucky to have a parent, my mother, who loved to cook. One image I can easily summon is of the turquoise casserole from which she ladled out beef stews and chicken soups. The pot symbolized the home and the family. Its lid, a kind of roof over a domestic space. For me, that's what cooking with water represents... to gather together and to harmonize. But nowadays cooking is optional. It's not just given that we're gonna cook.
And it was, for most people, for most of history, just given you have to cook if you wanna eat.
Cultures that once held tight to their way of eating are finding it difficult to spend time in the kitchen. How did we get to this point... and what have we lost in the process?
This is more important than people realize.
(theme music playing)
Michael: In India, pot cooking is the dominant kind of cooking. It's characterized by combining this remarkable array of herbs and aromatic spices.
And that way of eating is part of a daily ritual.
Lynett Dias: What would you like to have today?
Charles Dias: Uh...
Same what I made.
Couple of dosas.
Dosas. How many you want?
And, uh... Two of them.
Lynett: You want to have chutney as well?
Charles: Sure. Sure, why not?
(sizzling)
Lynett: I'm making lunch for my husband. Chicken curry, called kori rotti. Kori means chicken and the pancake is called rotti.
It is traditional. It takes long time to cook.
A lot of effort goes into it.
You prepare it with the coconut milk.
This is coconut.
Coconut items are to be ground.
(grinder whirring)
Add a little water.
Now I will extract milk out of it.
My mother did this. That is how I learned.
When we were growing up, it was required for girls to go into the kitchen and help the mother, so that when they get married and when they have their own family, it is not very difficult for them to feed their husbands.
Then I had three girls, one after the other.
So, naturally, we have the concept of having a proper meal in the house.
Sunita Narain: India is a country which grows well, eats well.
Every part of India has a different ecosystem.
We eat what we grow locally and we built a whole culture of food around it.
Lynett: This is the coconut milk gravy where you can dip those pancakes and eat.
In North India, they make gravy out of grind tomatoes and onions.
Here, we don't grind tomatoes, onions. We grind coconut.
This culture of food is also very high in nutrition and medicinal value.
Lynett: This is star anise. It is a good antiseptic.
This is mustard seed. This controls your gas.
(chuckles)
The link between food and nature, nutrition and nature...
and to be able to use all the skills to bring the right ingredients together, the flavors together... so that the tapestry of taste together is critical.
Thank you, dear.
Okay.
Have a nice day.
Thank you.
So are we doing a fine mirepoix or a chunky?
I don't think it needs to be too fine.
Maybe, like, about that big.
Oh, that's easy.
Michael: I'm so accustomed to you, like...
Samin Nosrat: Forcing you to go smaller.
Dissing my chunky mirepoix.
Michael: I wanted to master pot cooking, so I sought out a teacher... somebody who could teach me how to make a beautiful braise, make stews, make soups.
I chose to work with a woman named Samin Nosrat. She's cooked in many restaurants. She cooked at Chez Panisse. I was teaching a class on food writing, and she audit my class.
So we turned the tables.
I had been her teacher on writing and she became my teacher on cooking.
Samin: One of the first things I taught Michael and I teach anyone who cooks... we're taking the things that aren't immediately delicious and working flavor into them to make them delicious and nutritious and transform them into something really great.
We're just gonna make a simple braise.
The most traditional way to do that is to start with onions.
Such a good source of sweetness.
Sweetness.
In France, it's called mirepoix.
You add celery and carrots.
In Italy, you chop it really, really fine, and it's called soffritto.
Michael: So this is the beginning of combining flavors in geographically distinct ways.
Meat cooked over fire, you can't tell where you are in the world.
It's one food, right? It's a pig and some salt.
So this is more complicated, this is more advanced.
Samin: Oh, look, yours is smaller than mine.
Oh, those are--
Those are crude. Ew!
Oh. (laughing)
Samin: Mine are too big.
(both laughing)
(sizzling)
Samin: And it already smells good. That's what's so crazy about onions.
You cook an onion and your house smells like you're cooking.
I know, that's really true.
(laughs)
You're cooking now.
Michael: Cooking with water represented a very big technological advance 'cause you can't cook with liquids until you have pots that can survive over fires.
So fired clay pottery that has that kind of strength, it doesn't come along till about 10,000 years ago.
(sizzling)
Now you can do these amazing new things. You can mix flavors.
You can mix the flavors of plants with meat.
Samin: By browning the meat and adding the brown meat to the stew, you're adding sweetness. There's acidity.
Michael: You can use spices and herbs.
What about the garlic cloves? Wait?
Samin: I think the garlic, we can...
They can go?
Samin: ...leave in whole. Yeah, let it soften a little bit.
Michael: There's so many foods that we couldn't eat unless we had water to soften them and kind of bring them to life.
Michael: Oh, that smells great.
And the stems are good, right? Most people throw out the stems.
Samin: Yeah, for this, it's perfect. Yeah.
Michael: This is a big deal. It opens up a whole new palate of possible flavors.
And suddenly, you have the birth of cuisine.
Samin: So the formula's liquid, meat and vegetables is really what makes it delicious.
And then we'll just put it in the oven on low.
It's all about giving it the gentle heat it needs.
And the lower and slower you cook it, the better it will taste.
The more tender and luscious and, like, melt-in-your-mouth rich, velvety yumminess.
(laughing)
Yeah. Right?
Yeah, exactly.
(laughing)
So, shall we put this in? Okay.
Yeah, let's do it.
Michael: Pot dishes depend for their flavor on the reactions that occur when ingredients are combined with one another in a hot liquid medium, building the flavor of a simple dish by extracting the deepest, furthest, richest flavors from the humblest of ingredients. Time is everything in these dishes. In a slowly simmering liquid, vegetables and meat exchange molecules and flavors, in the process creating new end products that are often much more than the sum of their humble parts. Water is the medium of flavor as well as heat, allowing spices and other seasonings to make their presence felt. Given enough time, water will break down the toughest fibers in both plants and animals into a tasty, nutritious liquid. The aroma instantly tells us where in the world we are, culinarily speaking.
Samin: Transforming a piece of meat like this into something delicious, it's all about time.
And that's where I think this kind of cooking really came from was...
You know, the grandma cooking, the cucina povera, the idea of, like, taking the humble ingredients and really using skill to turn it. And time.
Yeah.
And that's a really important lesson of cooking, is time.
And that's the thing that... most of us have lost the ability to do.
I mean, we want everything to be instant.
And we feel in a complete panic about time, that we don't have enough time, we're too busy.
Michael: Time is the missing ingredient in our recipes... and our lives. Most of us are moving too fast for slow cooking. For years now, Americans have been putting in longer hours at work and enjoying less time at home. In households where both partners work outside the home, it is difficult, if not impossible, to weave this sort of cooking into the rhythms of weekday life. Shortcuts suddenly seem more attractive. Nowadays, there are so many cheap and easy ways to outsource the work. Today, the typical American spends a mere 27 minutes a day on food preparation. That's less than half the time spent in 1965, when I was a boy. Americans spend less time cooking than people in any other nation. I learned this from a veteran food industry market researcher named Harry Balzer.
news reporter: Harry Balzer, what are the trends you're seeing these days? Well, we hear a lot of people say that Americans are cooking more in their homes again. They're not. They're not cooking at all in their homes. They're looking for the easiest way to have that meal. You're absolutely right. I go to the supermarket, they got a nice little chicken all roasted for me. I take it home, in the microwave for five minutes, my kids are eating.
You'd be hard-pressed to find anything that says, "In the bigger trend, we are spending more time, more effort in the kitchen."
The future of eating, throughout humankind, is, "Who will do the cooking?"
It always follows that question.
"Who will do the cooking?" And the answer, since the days back in the fire pits of Mesopotamia, has always been the same.
And you know what that answer is?
"Not me."
We still want good foods. We still want new experiences. But eating and preparing foods are not one and the same.
The preparation part is a job.
Somebody's gotta buy that food, somebody's got to store that food, somebody's got to prepare that food.
So it's that task that has changed the most, 'cause it's work.
And right now, I think we're saying we're happy that it's a restaurant that will do the cooking. We're happy the supermarket's doing the cooking. C-stores, convenience stores, gas stations, places that used to fix my car today aren't fixing cars, they're giving me pizza and hot dogs. They're feeding me. Everywhere I go, I can get food.
There's only one group here who's going to cook more... and that's food service.
Because they're being paid to cook more.
They're gonna find a way to feed you as easy, as cheaply as possible.
Michael: Tim and Nina Zagat wrote this editorial a couple years ago in the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal, and I realized, "There it is in a nutshell." They said it makes much more sense for you to work a little longer, stay at your office a little longer, and let someone else, who's a professional, cook for you. It's much more efficient, much more economical.
But how can you continue to eat wholesome, home-cooked food in such a world?
(horns honking)
Michael: In India, people are also working more. They feel the same time crunch.
And Indians are the least likely to succumb to Western food.
So they have figured out a very clever system of getting home-cooked food to people at work.
(sizzling)
Maushi in Hindi: A lady once called to ask me if I could cook for 10-15 people. I said yes. I cooked rice, lentils and some vegetables. They complimented me on my cooking. The next time, I got an order to cook for 20-25 people.
(sizzling)
Since then, we get orders for ten, sometimes eight, sometimes six or even seven.
(conversing in Marathi)
Maushi in Hindi: In Mumbai, a 500 rupee note doesn't get you far.
If circumstances require me to work, then so be it.
Maushi's daughter in Hindi: Nowadays, ladies can also work like gents. In Mumbai, it's not possible for an entire family to survive on only one member's earnings.
Maushi: My daughter also works as a housemaid. She earns $32-$47 a month and I earn $79 a month.
It took me five years to learn to cook such large quantities.
(Maushi speaking Marathi)
Maushi speaking Hindi: Some people like the taste more than others. Some order it for two weeks, some for a month, some for two months. We will keep going with the flow.
(Maushi speaking Marathi)
(Maushi's daughter speaking Marathi)
(chuckles)
(in Marathi) Keep these tiffins at one side now.
Start filling them now, I'll give you everything.
Maushi's daughter: What else needs to be added? Chapatis?
Maushi: Yes. Fill them with chapatis.
Maushi's daughter: These?
Maushi: Yes, put four chapatis in each.
Open the tiffin. Fill it properly.
Where is the dabbawala?
(in Marathi) How many tiffins are there today?
Only four.
Which ones? Yari Road?
Yes. The tiffin for Yari Road is there.
Rice, salad, lentils.
This one is done.
(bicycle bell ringing)
You know, Dad, it's funny.
What's funny?
Well, whenever we cook inside, Mom always does the cooking.
But whenever we cook outside, you always do it. How come?
Well, it's sort of traditional, I guess.
Uh, you know, they say a woman's place is in the home, and, uh... I suppose as long as she's in the home, she might as well be in the kitchen.
Michael: For far too long, cooking was women's responsibility.
There was a very clear division of labor.
And even in many traditional societies, where... men are out there hunting, women are doing the cooking.
By '50s America, in particular, and this is true elsewhere in the world, too, you no longer had these extended families, and it was a nuclear family and women were marooned in the kitchen alone for a lot of the time and a lot of the day.
The typical way the story is told, which I think is too simple, is that, uh, the feminist revolution came, women went to work and they stopped cooking.
And that was the end of cooking in America.
But it's a somewhat more complicated story. The food industry's been trying very hard to get into the American kitchen for a very long time. Beginning after World w*r II, the industry put a lot of effort into selling Americans on the processed food wonders that it had invented to feed the troops. Canned meals... freeze-dried foods, dehydrated potatoes, powdered orange juice and coffee, instant and super convenient everything. Processing food is extremely profitable, much more so than growing it or selling it whole. Writer Laura Shapiro recounts the shift toward industrial cookery was mainly a supply-driven phenomenon.
Laura: So the food companies come out of World w*r II, they had to get their product into people's kitchens and then they had to get them used in a lot of different ways.
So you could sell someone a can of soup, fine.
But how much better to sell them a can of soup that was not only soup for lunch, but soup for a casserole, soup for breakfast, soup for a salad dressing.
So the idea was to use these products in all kinds of ways that would just get you buying them more and more.
There was fruit cocktail. You could either just dump it into a bowl, or you could put it in the coleslaw, or you could pour it over the roast.
One of the great treats was called the frozen fruit salad. It was gelled with mayonnaise and/or whipped cream. And then you'd cut it in slices and served it on a lettuce leaf.
That was the difference between frozen fruit salad as dessert and frozen fruit salad as an accompaniment to dinner.
Spam. Very, very popular. You would adorn this little loaf of canned meat with canned peaches. This was called a harvest luncheon.
There's nothing that says luncheon and there's nothing that says harvest, but that was the title of this little recipe.
Michael: The food industry got us used to lots of processed food ingredients. And the more you process food, the more money you make. So then you move to this next layer of processing, which is hyper-processed or ultra-processed food.
This is food that's just ready to eat, completely cooked.
male announcer: Science, finally, has cooked up a new idea that everyone can appreciate. This innovation may well end all kitchen drudgery. Over-worked housewives can relax until dinnertime. Equally long-suffering husbands can be saved from the horrors of much home cooking. Now, even Mother can learn what's going on in the outside world. She doesn't even have to don an apron.
Laura: The food industry targeted busy housewives... building up this idea that life at home was this constant state of panic.
man: Having fun? Better watch the time, dinner's going to be late.
Laura: It was just a drumbeat in the advertising.
male announcer: Smart mother. Swanson does the work.
Laura: It was time, convenience, and, "This is better than you could make at home."
I make beef soup, I cut the beef and vegetables into nice, big chunks.
When Campbell's makes chunky beef soup, we cut the beef and vegetables into nice, big chunks.
A moment comes in the '60s and '70s.
(phones ringing)
Michael: Women are working in greater numbers, and this launches a very awkward conversation between men and women.
There needed to be, it was clear, uh, a new division of labor in the household.
There were a lot of fights about this and a lot of readjustments happened.
But before we could kind of complete that renegotiation, the food industry very aggressively steps forward and says, "Stop arguing, we've got you covered.
We'll do the cooking."
And you see this most vividly in an advertising campaign that Kentucky Fried Chicken launches in the '70s. It really is this brilliant strategy on the part of the food industry to align their interests with the aspirations of women and the pressure on men to solve this great problem.
So everybody sees this as the solution and gravitates toward more and more processed food and fast food.
♪ Look at this, this is cooking It's a meal ♪
♪ Oh, real goodness from the Colonel Here's a meal ♪
And that ushers in the situation we're in now, where you have an industry that is deliberately trying to undermine cooking as an everyday practice and does a lot to convince us it's really hard, really time-consuming, really messy, and you'd be so much better off letting us cook for you.
Michael: When you let a corporation cook your food... they cook differently than people do. You can tell just by reading the ingredient label. You don't have mono and diglycerides in your pantry. You don't have high fructose corn syrup in your pantry.
Their business model depends on getting the cheapest possible raw ingredient and making it as attractive as they can without spending a lot of money.
And the way you do that is by deploying lots of salt, fat, and sugar.
When you layer salt, fat and sugar, foods become incredibly attractive. And it kicks off the dopamine network and cravings. In the case of carbohydrates, too, you get these spikes of energy, of blood sugar, uh, and then the crash, and you need more carbohydrates to keep it up.
You see this with people who drink a lot of soda.
Um, they get into an addictive pattern with it.
So this is the job of food companies. They're actually trying to engineer your cravings and get you to eat as much as you possibly can. Western countries are straining with the public health problems caused by this kind of food.
Diabetes in America is up to 8% of the population and Type 2 diabetes, which used to be called adult-onset diabetes, now is afflicting children.
In 1980, you could not find a child with Type 2 diabetes.
And just like cigarettes, just like pesticides, when people wake up... to the problems of these products, the industry turns away and sells them to the developing world.
Sunil Kochnar: Welcome to Nestlé Research Center in India. We are an international company with a very local flavor. Nestlé spends almost $2 billion creating innovative products, meeting the changing landscape of our consumers. We focus a lot on noodle manufacturing. Give and take five billion noodle cakes are made per year in India alone.
researcher: Good morning.
all: Good morning.
Sunil: Consumer is always the focus of our research. Understanding them, creating the product for them, and then providing the right solutions to them. In next 20 years... people will have less and less time to cook food. We are looking into the next generation, and how we could scientifically address it... understanding the local cuisine... the ingredients and how it benefits the Indian consumer.
What's two-six-three?
all: Ginger.
researcher: Eight-six-zero?
all: Cheese.
Sunil: So there's a lot of work and research and science behind each product which is out there in the market.
Nestlé chef 1: This is a gold standard kitchen. We start our products from this place to create a gold standard recipe.
It can be chef's recipe.
He can create anything with the fresh, raw material.
Nestlé chef 2: We have a chicken tikka Maggi.
So, first we capture the flavor from here.
We take the kabob, we skewer it, and then we just put it inside.
We cook it proper, original, chicken tikka.
And after we do that, we have the flavor of the chicken tikka, so we know how to make this.
We'll do the tasting of the chicken tikka, then we'll taste our product, and we'll see what is the gap.
Definitely, there is a little bit gap, and we have to fill that gap.
Traditional is still existing, but now the cooking is getting more into the modern Indian cuisine.
All the presentations are modern, but the stuff that we eat inside is traditional.
It's very, very traditional.
So that's how we re-create our stuff.
Michael: For the food industry, people cooking traditional foods at home, uh, is an obstacle...
(chuckles) to selling more of their product.
They have a vested interest in destroying food culture and food traditions and getting people to eat the stuff they've gotten good at making.
And they're doing a lot of food science to make this food as acceptable as they possibly can.
(sizzling)
(tapping utensil)
Sunil: We not only focus on how the local ingredients enhance texture and flavor, we are working on how to continuously lower sodium, lowering the fat intake, and also bringing fortification through our products.
(beeping)
Sunil: All set.
Okay.
Sunil: So here we are tasting three different variants.
This is our standard one without fortification and then these are the same versions but different fortifications.
But at the same time, in addition to fortification, it has to taste the same because consumer doesn't want to compromise on the... on the taste.
You cannot just add iron and bring metallic taste, so it has to match to the reference also.
We try to bring in ingredients which consumer easily identifies. So, in addition to salt and sugar, it has garam masala, which is enriched with lot of flavor enhancers.
chef: Most of the chefs in Nestlé have been head chefs or been in Michelin star restaurants, so they're quite highly qualified.
My job here is to translate from fresh to industrial by bringing the culinary element into it.
It's missing a little onion, you put a little onion in there. You have to know your ingredients very well and the interaction between the ingredients to... to bring that product to, uh, the customer.
I think we are producing the best of today.
Tomorrow, if the technology evolves, the knowledge evolves, maybe we can make a noodle which is only good for you.
A very personalized noodle, you know? (chuckles)
In my country, that variety of food is growing enormously.
Processed food consumption in urban India, it's up to about 10%, and in rural India, it's up to 5% of the daily diet.
That's not small for a country like India.
The food trend is changing in India as we are getting in more and more food companies, more and more companies selling processed food coming in, aspirations of people growing and a general sexiness. A sense of, "This is modern" because modern means that you go out and eat, you eat processed food and you eat junk food.
And that's the way it is sold to us.
Pepsi!
men: Oh, yes, abhi!
(indistinct chatter)
(indistinct talking on TV)
(doorbell rings)
Hello.
Hi, baby. How are you?
woman in Hindi: Have you eaten something?
man: No, I did not.
Tell me what you want to eat.
Did you cook something or should we order?
Order something.
Should we eat KFC?
KFC? Why not?
(exhales)
man: We order food from outside three to four times in a week.
woman: We don't get home from work until 9:00 or 10:00 p.m.
Obviously, they are hungry. They want to eat something.
I don't have time to cook.
That's why we order.
Chicken burger?
Okay, sure. I'll eat a burger.
Okay.
man: Right now, kids are mostly interested in burgers, pizzas.
If it were up to them, they would order food every day.
Even if we've made food at home, my son asks if we can order delivery.
It's only when we insist, that they will eat home-cooked food.
Otherwise, they would eat take-out every day.
We used to eat, uh... mostly home food, what my mother used to cook.
If you always eat take-out, then it becomes a habit.
We worry about health issues, but it seems to be the growing trend.
That's the thing.
The young in India, they will tell you what pasta is all about.
They can tell you what a burger is all about.
But they will have no idea about mustard oil.
They will have no idea about coconut oil.
Once you have changed people's taste buds, you've changed the way they eat.
It's difficult to turn it around.
man on TV: With beef and fresh veggies, and drizzled with Pizza Hut's special sauce, the new cheeseburger...
Michael: One of the problems with industrial cookery is that they take these really wonderful but labor-intense foods, like French fries, and they cook them so well and so cheaply that you can have them every day.
There is an economist at Harvard, uh, David Cutler, who analyzed, um, rates of obesity and rates of cooking and found that as amount of time we spent cooking went down, obesity went up.
man: You want?
Michael: So food has a monetary cost, but it has a time cost. And as the time cost of food goes down...
In other words, as you can eat food without putting time into getting it, you eat more of it.
So we eat unhealthy, high-labor foods much more often than people ever did.
And lo and behold, we're a lot heavier.
That's why I love Harry Balzer's, uh, piece of advice. He says...
Eat anything you want. Enjoy all of your food.
Anything you want. You want apple pie?
Have a whole apple pie tonight.
You wanna have cookies with that apple pie?
And ice cream with that apple pie?
I'll allow you to eat all the cookies, all the ice cream, and all the pie you can have tonight.
I'm just gonna ask you to do one thing.
Make all of them.
Make the apple pie, make the ice cream, make the cookies.
And you know what I know is gonna happen?
You're not having apple pie, ice cream or cookies tonight.
That little rule will keep you from eating a lot of junk, because you're gonna do what most people do, which is buy the best-quality raw ingredients you can afford and cook it as simply as possible.
Isaac: Do you want it diced, or can I just mince it?
It doesn't have to be really tiny. Yeah, that's fine.
What you got there is fine.
These are really sharp onions. It's gonna hurt your eyes.
(grunts)
(chuckles)
Michael: You're gonna be good.
They've got to manufacture, like, onion goggles.
Michael chuckles: That's a very good idea, actually.
Michael: If we're ever gonna rebuild a culture of cooking, we need to bring our kids back into the kitchen.
Check out this carrot from the garden. It's really good.
Isaac: Not amazing.
Michael: Not amazing?
Isaac: I do enjoy cooking in the kitchen, though.
When you eat it, you just feel, like, proud of what you've made.
Like a piece of art, except it's in your stomach in a little bit.
(chuckles)
Most art doesn't end up in your stomach.
Laura: We learn a lot about cooking from growing up in the kitchen.
We see that cooking is going on and that it's an important, ordinary part of daily life.
Will you give it a stir?
Mmm-hmm.
Michael: Did you put in the sage and a little thyme?
Isaac: Yeah, I did.
Sunita: I come from Delhi.
I come from old Delhi.
And I have a tradition of cooking which has come down from my grandmother to my mother and now to me.
Michael: I have one of your favorite things to put in there.
Oh, nice.
Sunita: And if I lose that tradition of cooking, I've actually lost knowledge.
And how much more unfortunate can a society get when it loses its most basic knowledge, knowledge to be able to cook for itself?
That's a good smell.
Michael: One of the problems with cooking, if you have a limited amount of money and you're going into the supermarket, you will find yourself gravitating to the middle aisles where all the processed food is and staying away from the produce section.
Um, and the reason is that over the last several decades, produce has gotten a lot more expensive and processed food has not.
Average price of soda since 1980, down 7%. Average price of produce since 1980, up 40%. That coincides with the obesity epidemic.
So, if you've got a dollar to spend, you're gonna gravitate to those middle aisles, and you're going to buy chips or cookies, you're going to get as many calories as you can for a dollar.
And that's the system we've designed.
And the problem with this is, the world's poor cannot afford to deal with the health problems that will come with that food.
They can't afford the stomach stapling, and they can't afford the dialysis centers or the insulin sh*ts, um, but that's where we're going.
Why does organic have to be more expensive?
Why does food which is grown with healthier options have to be only the food of the very, uh, rich?
It has to be the right of everybody.
chef: This is chicken nihari.
It's for 1,200 people.
Mint.
This is turmeric.
This is cumin.
Michael: At the Bohra community kitchen in Mumbai, richer members of the Muslim community subsidize meals for poorer members by paying into a collective.
chef: We are serving food to our whole community. It's from our religious leader, his holiness, Syedna Aali Qadr Mufaddal Saifuddin.
woman 1 in Hindi: This concept started because there were many people in the community who weren't getting a proper home-cooked meal.
woman 2: It was Syedna Sir's belief that a balanced meal should be within everybody's reach.
woman 3: There are people who cannot afford food, they get food from here.
There is no class system. We are all equal.
man 1: Nobody should feel pride in being rich, and nobody should feel shame in being poor.
(in English) Everyone eats the same food.
man 2 in Hindi: That menu is for eight days.
(in English) We are using fresh only.
This mutton is being prepared for tomorrow.
man 3: We are doing this for religion's sake.
Just to follow the principle correctly.
Once the blood is out, the mutton is purified.
woman 2 in Hindi: All the ladies prepare food according to the menu of that particular day.
Normally, we concentrate on chapatis.
woman 4: We earn three rupees per roti.
man 1 in Hindi: Sometimes people think that women shouldn't work outside the home.
But if she is free from her household chores, she might have time to go out and earn a living.
woman 2: By working, all ladies become independent.
woman 1: Since this concept of the community kitchen was introduced, (in English) I have done my Home Science B.Sc. in Meal Management.
Now, those skills, I am using in this kitchen.
chef in Hindi: We start the cutting and chopping at 5:00 p.m., and continue until 9:00, 9:30, 10:00. The next morning, we start cooking at 5:00 a.m. Distribution begins at 1:00 p.m.
(indistinct chatter)
man 1 in English: Every person gets this card.
(in Hindi) Every day they bring this card along with them. This is our record of all the tiffins we issued today.
(in English) Everyone should get food, every day.
(in Hindi) This is the concept and the most important thing.
Samin: This is some of my favorite... kind of things to do is just these little... I mean, you almost could call them mindless tasks, but I actually like to think of them as mindful tasks. It's about getting to that point in your own mind where this becomes pleasure instead of drudgery.
(water running)
As a culture, we have just gotten so far away from these little tasks. It seems like it's getting in the way of life... but actually, this is life. What better thing than to be doing the thing where your hand is in the pot, in the beans. Anything where people are actually working and doing something, and making something... I think that's, like, among the most valuable things we can do as humans. Once you, sort of, have done it enough times, it becomes natural, and I think you become more comfortable doing it. And once you're more comfortable, it doesn't seem like the world will end if you have to cut that onion.
Smells good.
Michael: The cook stands in a very interesting relationship to the world. On the one side, he looks toward, or she looks toward people and community and family. You're giving that incredible gift of love, which is the meal. But on the other side, you're looking to nature. You are working with plants and animals, and you reconnect to the fact that industry doesn't feed us, nature feeds us.
And it's something that's available to all of us. We still have kitchens, thank God. We still have a pantry and we still know where they sell the raw ingredients. It really isn't that hard to learn how to do it.
And that was one of the great secrets.
Samin: Let's see here.
Wow.
Samin: Ooh, hot!
Mmm.
So tender.
Good.
Samin: So good.
And it only took like...
This was fast, too. (chuckles)
...three and a half hours.
Three and a half hours.
Yeah. (chuckles)
I don't wanna lecture people into the kitchen.
Hi! How are you?
(indistinct chatter)
Michael: I wanna lure them into the kitchen... with pleasure.
That's what brought me into the kitchen.
It's okay. You go first.
(indistinct chatter)
Okay.
Thank you.
Michael: I'm hopeful there will be a renaissance of cooking and that it will be different than cooking used to be.
woman: What kind of beans are these?
Michael: They're cranberry beans, fresh beans.
They're not dried. They're really good.
It will be cooking as an option, as a choice, and cooking because it's satisfying, not because you have to.
Laura: If you just believe that the basis of what you eat and what your family eats should be real food.
It doesn't mean it will always be a perfect organic meal, it just means it's gonna be real food.
Everybody, dessert is served.
Michael: If we're gonna cook, it's going to be because we decide we want to.
That it is important enough to us, pleasurable enough to us, necessary enough to our health and to our happiness.
Michael: Mmm.
(theme music playing)
01x02 - Water
"Cooked" explores different methods of cooking and their evolutionary and cultural impacts on humankind. Based on the 2013 book of the same name.