As a programmer, my life was once governed by two things: code and takeout. Until the pandemic locked me at home, forcing me to confront the kitchen — that room I thought was just for housing a microwave.
How It Started
Forced to learn cooking during the pandemic. But what actually kept me going was discovering that cooking shares surprising similarities with programming — both involve combining ingredients step-by-step to produce results.
The difference: code bugs can hide in unexpected places, but food quality is immediately obvious in one bite. This "instant feedback" feels luxurious for someone used to waiting for CI/CD pipelines.
In the kitchen there's no undefined — just "tasty" or "not tasty." That certainty is incredibly reassuring.
Starting with Failures
Early cooking was a disaster zone:
- First scrambled eggs: forgot the oil. An entire layer of burnt egg skin stuck to the pan
- Cooking pasta without salting the water: completely flavorless noodles
- Added way too much soy sauce to braised pork: inedibly salty
- Cutting onions without soaking them first: crying for 20 minutes
But each failure was a debug session. You remember the bug and never repeat it. Exactly like coding.
💡 The most important beginner cooking tip: learn heat control first. Most disasters come from too-high heat. Like code — going slower is actually faster.
Signature Dishes
After half a year of practice, several recipes reached "stable release":
Tomato Beef Stew
My proudest dish. The key is slow cooking — blanch beef chunks to remove impurities, then simmer with tomatoes on low heat for two hours.
Tips:
- Peel the tomatoes (quick blanch makes skin slip right off), the broth becomes silkier
- Add a small spoon of tomato paste for color and depth
- Patience — the lower the heat the better. Time is the secret to tender meat and rich broth
- Finish with chopped scallions before serving
Garlic Broccoli
Quick dish, perfect for worknight dinners when you don't want to spend much time.
Simple enough to write as one line of code: broccoli.blanch(2min) -> oil.sauté(garlic, 30s) -> add(broccoli).stirFry(1min) -> season(salt).serve()
But one detail matters: add a pinch of salt and a few drops of oil when blanching — the broccoli stays vibrant green. Like a small code optimization: same functionality, but the user (your eyes) experience improves dramatically.
Cola Chicken Wings
Highest beginner-friendliness rating. Nearly impossible to mess up.
Score wings → cold water blanch → pan-fry until golden on both sides → add cola to cover → soy sauce, pinch of salt → reduce on high heat
Total: 30 minutes. Success rate: 99%. That 1% is forgetting to reduce the sauce, turning it into cola-braised chicken wings.
Fried Rice
Sounds simple but genuinely hard to master. Took me 20+ attempts to find the feel:
- Rice must be day-old; fresh rice is too soft
- Scramble eggs first, don't break them up too finely
- Press rice flat with spatula, high heat stir-fry
- Drizzle soy sauce along the wok's edge (never directly on the rice — creates salty patches)
- Kill the heat in the final seconds, let residual heat dry things out
Kitchen-Code Parallels
The more I cook, the more it resembles programming:
- Function thinking: Each dish is a function — input (ingredients), process (cooking), output (finished dish)
- Debugging: Taste is off? Adjust — too bland add salt, too dry add oil, too rich add vinegar. Like tweaking CSS
- Version control: Tweak the recipe each time. Too much salt last time? Half a spoon less this time. Continuous iteration
- Separation of concerns: Prepare sides, mains, and soup separately, then assemble. Just like component-based development
- Documentation: Good recipes are good docs. I now record my formulas — no different from writing a README
Reflections
The most healing part of cooking isn't the eating — it's the entire process: the rhythm of washing and chopping, the sizzle when oil reaches temperature, the aroma when plating.
These sensory experiences are something coding can never provide.
Cooking three times a week has become my fixed routine. It's not an "extra burden" — it's a "life anchor." After a day of logical thinking, recharging through sensory experience.
Next Steps
Want to learn:
- Japanese cuisine (especially ramen — broth preparation looks challengingly complex)
- Baking (dessert precision requirements are even more code-like)
- Chinese dough-based dishes (hand-pulled noodles, steamed buns — handmade items bring a special sense of accomplishment)
Once I master these, I might just open a "Developer's Canteen."