Personally, I don’t* but I was curious what others think.

*some sandwiches excluded like a Cubano or chicken parm; those do require cooking.

  • @untorquer@lemmy.world
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    62 hours ago

    The specific language you speak has significant impact here. For some, "to make food* is used to refer to cooking. Where as in English it’s not so clear. I prefer the use in terms of survival. IMO, if you can make any food enough to survive you can cook, because in English there is not a better colloquial verb. Though i wouldn’t call you ‘a cook’ or ‘a chef’ if you can’t apply heat to produce edible food from raw.

  • KingJalopy
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    72 hours ago

    The word cooking, to me, means using heat with a stove. Baking is for the oven. Grilling, is outside on a grill. But a sandwich is only ever “made” in my house. “Will you make me a sandwich?”, “I’m making a sandwich”

    Good question though. Never thought about it.

    • @nous@programming.dev
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      15 minutes ago

      I see cooking as a more general term. Both baking and grilling are forms of cooking. You can also roast and grill things in the oven. Cooking on a stove also has different specific terms, boiling, simmering, frying etc.

  • Obinice
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    165 hours ago

    No, it’s food preparation but nothing is being cooked.

    • @Pilferjinx@lemmy.world
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      11 hour ago

      Depends on your start point. You can bake your own bread, cook/combine your own condiments, and roast/cure your own meats.

  • Boozilla
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    145 hours ago

    IMO, assembling a sandwich from ready-to-eat ingredients without using a stove, oven, microwave, etc. is meal prep, not cooking. If you roast, saute, toast, smoke, or even zap any part of it, now you’re cookin’. (Though zapping might just be reheating something that was cooked previously. Ugh, this is more complicated than it should be. English can be frustrating.)

  • CrimeDad
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    358 hours ago

    I don’t think it’s cooking unless you are applying heat to cause a chemical reaction. So, making a grilled cheese sandwich counts as cooking, but a BP&J does not.

    • @xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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      108 hours ago

      Making ceviche or sushi officially not cooking confirmed - how dare those posers call themselves sushi chefs.

      • Miles O'Brien
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        76 hours ago

        I think of a chef as a “preparer of food” not necessarily “food cooker”

        So sushi chef is still accurate to their opinion, disclaimer I agree with them so I could always be rationalizing it.

      • CrimeDad
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        97 hours ago

        Some of the constituent ingredients have to be cooked, but ceviches and sushi rolls aren’t cooked any more than salads or burritos. They’re assembled or prepared.

      • @kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        Ceviche is said to be “cooked” with acid, even if that’s not the most accurate term. And most forms of sushi are made with cooked rice, at minimum, and not uncommonly with other cooked ingredients. So those things kind of muddy the waters for your point. But a clearer example may be something like beef tartare, a garden salad with a vinegarette, or sashimi. Those things are “prepared”, not cooked, because no cooking is involved in their making. Cooking is specifically the preparation of food utilizing heat. Chefs prepare plenty of dishes that do not involve the act of cooking.

  • Lvxferre
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    76 hours ago

    I guess that it depends on context? Typically I wouldn’t call it cooking, as it doesn’t involve applying heat to the food. But if I were to teach a kid how to cook, then I’d consider it cooking - as teaching them how to prepare a sandwich would be a good start.

    • FuglyDuck
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      235 minutes ago

      So… we started with waffles and baking. They get to mix the batter and dump things into the bowl, and such.

      Though the first thing my nephew made without help was mac and cheese- everything was from scratch, the sauce and the pasta. It might have taken him… uh… hours… to roll out the pasta by hand, but eh, you are allowed to have fun with your food.

      If anyone hasn’t, making pasta is not that difficult. I wouldn’t say there isn’t a place for dry pasta; and it’s certainly more convenient, but if you’re interested don’t feel intimidated. (though, if you don’t have a pasta machine, I’d suggest something like Orecchiette; but there’s plenty of other shapes that don’t require a machine or rolling out in the video,)

      • Lvxferre
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        16 minutes ago

        Mixing batter and preparing pasta seem like great starts, too. The general idea is to not let the kid handle anything with heat or sharp knives until they’re old enough to “respect” the danger behind those things.

        My own initiation was whisking mayo (where I live it’s traditional to prepare a potato-mayo salad on Sundays). Then when my nephew was young I kind of tried to teach him how to prepare some onigiri (he already liked them better than sandwich), with already cooked rice and fillings, but he was a bit too lazy to do it, and a bit too eager to eat the ingredients.

  • “Cooking” to me, requires the combination of ingredients AND heating them to create a new thing. Making a grilled cheese is basic, but cooking. Slapping meat, cheese and veg on bread is not cooking.

    • @Nighed@feddit.uk
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      125 minutes ago

      Is combining microwave rice and a frozen meal portion cooking then? Or to they have to be heated together?

    • @sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip
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      7 hours ago

      True, but, turn that into ‘I’m cooking up a sandwich’, and now the phrase potentially expands its domain to basically mean any kind of food preparation.

      The addition if ‘up’ makes it less literal, more jovial and less bounded.

      • Lvxferre
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        66 hours ago

        True, but, turn that into ‘I’m cooking up a sandwich’, and now the phrase potentially expands its domain to basically mean any kind of food preparation.

        The phrase expands into any preparation or invention, even ones that clearly do not have anything to do with cooking. e.g. “I’m cooking up a plan to deal with this.”

  • @TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub
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    108 hours ago

    Depends on the sandwich. If you’re constructing a sandwich without using heat, I would consider that “making lunch” or “making dinner” but not explicitly cooking. I’m not sure that the difference matters in any significant situations, though. Why are you asking?

  • FuglyDuck
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    1 hour ago

    Cooking is simply the preparing of food.

    It doesn’t necessarily require the application of heat.

    If some one is being proud of a sandwich- let them be proud. We all start somewhere.

    edit: to all the people downvoting me: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/cooking

    1. the act of a person or thing that cooks.
    2. the art or practice of preparing food; cookery.

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cooking

    1A) the act of preparing food for eating, especially by heating 1B) a manner of preparing food

    To say that “cooking” requires heat is inaccurate. It’s the usual qualification, but is not necessary in a general sense.

    and more to the point: If some one is proud of their sandwich, why would you take that from them? dick move. Even Gordon Fucking Ramsey had to start somewhere.

  • @TootSweet@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    If someone told me they “cooked themselves a BLT”, I’d assume they meant they’d baked the bread, fried the bacon, and emulsified the mayonnaise themselves and the slicing and assembly were just the final parts of the process.

    • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️OP
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      7 hours ago

      Interesting… I wouldn’t have thought of a BLT either, but you do have to at least cook the bacon most of the time. Now I’m wondering what a BLT made with Tactical Bacon (pre cooked and canned bacon jerky) would taste like… 🤔

  • @TheBananaKing@lemmy.world
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    26 hours ago

    Entirely context dependent.

    Who’s cooking tonight? Me, and if it’s sandwiches, salad, etc - still counts.

    No cooking in the room. Combining sliced bread with sliced cheese out of the bag - doesn’t count.

    • KingJalopy
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      12 hours ago

      Care to elaborate? Other than toasting it, how do you consider it baking?

  • @andrewta@lemmy.world
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    47 hours ago

    I guess it would depend on the type of sandwich

    . Peanut butter and jelly? No

    A simple cheese sandwich? No

    Grilled cheese sandwich? Yes

      • FuglyDuck
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        159 minutes ago

        peanut butter and jelly and pickles sandwich

        this sounds like something my SiL would eat when she was pregnant.

        also… what kind of pickles? I bet i could get my nephew and nieces to eat it, and they’d probably love it.