Chlebowski has done videos like this a lot over the years. I can’t with him ever since he has gone full diet guru for Brand purposes but I really enjoyed his chipotle video from a few years ago and still make it on the regular.

In a nutshell: If you have solid knife skills and are organized/planned, you can usually beat all but the most efficient of fast food trips/deliveries. Otherwise? it is a 30 minute meal that takes 90, like any other.

Portions and costs get messy (especially for stuff like lettuce) but usually comes out cheaper. And… the reality is that most home food is WAY better if you just add 2x the salt and butter you think you need to because… home chefs are really bad at that.

He accounts for every minute of shopping, prep, and reheating. He can’t make meal one for less money and time but with leftovers things get cost and time effective real fast.

I mean… How hard is it to grab two tortillas, sandwich cheese between them, and heat it up in a pan?

And soon you are going down the rabbit hole of making everything. Homemade tortillas, raise the vegetables in your garden, buy land in the country so you can raise you own beef. Then you go the next level and are making a new universe from scratch…

Have fun, cooking is a fun hobby that gives you better food (often healthier tastier, and cheaper!).

A lot of people never learned how to cook, period.

But for the rest? It takes a LOT of time and repetition to really incorporate those foundational recipes/systems unless you grew up in that culture.

I assume most people reading this are aware of a (let’s just say) european sandwich: Two slices of bread, some fat for lube, and then meat and cheese. Maybe some veg. People tend to not think in terms of “Okay, now I add three slices of pastrami and a tablespoon of mustard. Oh no, there are five different kinds of mustard on the shelf”.

But for tacos and burritos? Suddenly there is that thought. Maybe they tried and overstuffed their tortillas in the past. Maybe they don’t know what spices to add to the meat. And so forth.

Speaking personally? I am Chinese-American. So you give me some veg and some meat and I’ll make a stir fry of some form without thinking. But when I cook Japanese food I often find myself having to remember “This is literally just a weeknight dinner where you add whatever is in the fridge to some dashi and curry bricks… or chicken broth and curry bricks… or water and curry bricks”. Because I didn’t grow up with japanese curries and I mostly have eaten them in restaurants and at friends’ houses. Whereas… I probably had some kind of stir fry 200 times a year until I moved out of my parents’ place. And probably 80-100 times a year on my own.

Its the same reason you either are passionate about “is chili a soup” or roll your eyes. Because it is either a recipe you follow or it is just… any other stew… which is a thick soup.

I’m halfway there.