Ask Lemmy

The culinary arts can be a hobby

Dude a hobby is anything that makes you happy. If you like meats there is a huge cured meet community. You can learn every on youtube (things I've watched at 3am when I should have been sleeping)

Barbecuing counts as a hobby, as does cooking in general. I think that if you are doing it in a utilitarian fashion - like, in an assembly like exactly the same way each time for the purpose of saving money on beef jeeky - then I think it is just, like, a chore. But if you are doing it for the sake of experimentation or creativity, etc, then it's a hobby.

My take is a hobby is what you enjoy doing in your down time. Even if you made the exact same recipe the exact same way every week, so long as it's the thing you choose to do to relax, I'd call it a hobby.

You can define anything as your hobby.

One of the most unusual ones I have seen is a guy who uses RV bulldozers and excavators and dump trucks to dig out his basement.

It is wild and incredibly involved.

Dude, I fucking love your head space. Choosing your next fun time thing to do based on a linguistics debate you started with your self.

That's my kind of neurotic.

Hope you have a blast either way!

A hobby is whatever you decide is a hobby.

Why do you need other people to decide that for you? It is both culinary skill and hobby. Life does not fit in categories described by single words.

Imo, preserving is its own hobby. Beef jerky, biltong, pemmican, sauerkraut, kimchi, fruit leather, jams.

My reasoning: brewing beer is considered its own hobby by most. But it could technically be part of culinary > preserving > fermenting (yeast) > beer.

Sourdough is also in fermenting (yeast) as is wine, but people don't expect a hobby beer brewer to try them out as well.

So within preserving we have fermenting (yeast), fermenting (lactobacillus), drying, canning, pickling, smoking,?salt brining, etc.

Culinary is so big, it's like art. If I want to learn calligraphy, do I have to do portraits, photography, music and poetry too? Just a thought.

As a vegetarian, I'm going to say yes because gate keeping is dumb.

Most of my hobbies involve consumables. I love to garden, cook, herbalism (tinctures, salves, teas, etc.) and foraging. Making jerky would totally fit in what I would love to do.

I love making things to share with friends, family and myself. Also I LOVE to eat and drink so it makes sense to focus my time and energy on it. Go for it dude

Yes. Preserving food is literally a whole science

Sounds to me like you are about to start two hobbies.

Definitely counts as a hobby. It just happens to be a hobby that requires and develops cooking skills.

A hobby is pretty much anything you do other than what you do for your own or someone else's sustenance. Getting paid to barbecue for customers paying you? Not a hobby. Grilling some burgers at dinner time because you or your family are hungry? Not a hobby. Spending hours and weekends on end slow cooking a particularly challenging piece of meat? Hobby. Eating an expensive piece of meat (as a treat)? Also a hobby.

I’m just posting to boost and to say that the pic of the rockwool threw me for a loop lol

A trick I use when deciding between closely balanced possibilities is to flip a coin. If you immediately think to yourself I wanted the other side, switch. Job done.

That said, first, IMO hobby shmobby. Perhaps you actually want to do jerky but are caught up on definitions, but also why not both?

Do one hour of each, 4 tomato seeds and a tray of water (+ nutrients? idk) in the sun, see what happens. I know little about hydroponics but have been meaning to try that bottle method (Kratky Method) for mint. Just crack out a minimum viable product and refine later.

I occasionally do jerky, actually got an air fryer specifically because it did dehydrate and it works fine (more than 10C resolution would have been nice, but adjust time as needed), get some stacking wire trays to do more. Use what you have, make it stable at 60-70C, I've used an oven on low cracked open a tiny bit with a thermometer in the past, wasteful but works. To get started just do a baseline without marinade. Get a round or other lean cut, half freeze it (easier to slice), sharp knife, slice as thin as practical, don't sweat the mistakes. Start dehydrating it. Come back in 4 hours and have a look (don't keep checking too often, messes with temperature) and every hour after until you think it's done. Eat. That'll do for a first pass, refine.

TLDR: pick one or two and have a go, try not to overthink.

Cooking can be a hobby. This is just a subset of it.

Taking a step back, I don't understand why it matters. Hobbies and skill-sets regularly cross over. If you're finding personal enrichment learning how, I don't think it really matters.

If the answer is that you're just curious how to classify it, then I'd say it's a culinary skill, which is also a hobby.

Why don't you consider culinary skills as hobbies?

I think learning how to make jerky is a perfectly fine example of a hobby one can take up. My father once went on a journey to make the best salmon jerky he could. He spent years trying out different smokers, different cuts of fish, different times, different wood chips, etc. I definitely consider that hobby activity!

I think you're the one who gets to decide what is and isn't something you would consider a hobby.

Literally anything can be a hobby if you do it for fun on purpose.

Any skill can be a hobby if you're acquiring it just because instead of because you need it.

So your decision for an activity over the next decade or so depends on whether some strangers would label it as a hobby or part of cooking?

Is this some copypasta I dont know?

It is a hobby.

End thread.

You want a hobby that you can take into old age that promotes self sufficiency, raise chickens and ducks. Eggs that taste fuckin amazing compared to store bought. Can set up to support yourself and scale to supply eggs for a whole community without moch added effort. Theyre fun little idiots when it comes to pet quality. Then eat them when youre done with them.

Ngl, and I don't think you are a bot, but this feels like one of those astroturfed askreddit questions that come from bots.

Like who cares other than you as to what you feel like you should do with your weekend be it make jerky or plant tomatoes?

It's all of those things.

Since everyone has already made good points...

What does that picture have to do with the question?