Fire, The Fridge, or Simply a bit of Patience
It’s a horror story in miniature: a spoonful of swallowed dry chia seeds, chased by a swig of water leading to a choking hazard as they expand exponentially inside someone’s throat. The viral reel made its rounds online where a doctor explained how chia seeds can absorb about ten times their weight in liquid, swelling rapidly into a gel-like substance that blocks the esophagus. However, given a few hours of rest in milk, those same seeds turn into something completely different: a thick, gooey and sweet pudding. What was once dangerous becomes breakfast.
This same story plays out in many other foods. Raw red kidney beans contain phytohaemagglutinin, a toxin that can cause violent nausea and vomiting. Yet all it takes is a few hours of soaking and a pot of boiling water and the danger disappears, leaving behind a hearty meal. And in foods like yoghurt and kimchi, it isn’t fire at all but bacteria that does the cooking. Lactic acid is the invisible chef, the Remy hidden inside the chef hat, quietly fermenting the sugars into lactic acid.
In other words, cooking has never really been about fire. It’s always been about transformation.
Fire, of course, was one of humanity’s greatest tools of change. Thirty thousand years ago early humans dug the first “earth ovens”. These were large pits filled with coals and ash where meat was placed to cook.
Fire made food safer to eat, easier to digest and crucially, more nutritious. It killed pathogens, broke down toxins and neutralised antinutrients—compounds that interfere with our ability to absorb nutrients. The ‘cooking hypothesis’, championed by anthropologist Richard Wrangham, suggests that cooking food was a pivotal factor in human evolution. The less time spent chewing and digesting, the more energy could be devoted towards growing larger brains.
Today, heat still plays a central role in how we define cooking. Methods are categorised into three main camps: moist-heat methods (involves using water or steam to cook, think poached eggs or steamed fish), dry-heat methods (using hot air or fat to cook, your classic Thanksgiving roast turkey), and finally combination methods that involve using both, such as braising or stewing, typical for curries or braised meat.
And yet, our kitchens are no longer built on fire alone. In fact, some of the most beloved dishes in the world rely on the absence of it. Chefs cure fish with acid to make ceviche, they freeze ice-cream with liquid nitrogen, and even slowly smoke salmon under low temperatures until it melts in your mouth.
In the US, these ‘cold’ methods are often seen with an air of exclusivity. But in their original contexts, they are surprisingly humble. Prosciutto, one of Italy’s more prized ingredients, is simply pork, salt and air left long enough for the moisture and blood to be drawn out, deepening its flavour and making the meat safe to eat. In Peru, ceviche is a lunchtime staple; nothing more than seafood marinated with lime juice and a drizzle of waiting. In Korea, kimchi can be found quietly fermenting in every household’s fridge.
I think the difference among cultures lies in how we think about patience. What unites all these methods is time. A risotto, for example, requires constant stirring and attention, a roast demands careful timing and a watchful oven. In the US, a culture that values busyness, that measures worth in productivity, there’s something decadent about food that makes itself. Fermenting, curing, and soaking are all almost absurdly hands-off. You stir together a few ingredients and by morning they’ve transformed without you lifting a finger. It’s food that works while you sleep. What’s ironic is that foods that appear to be very labour-intensitve–such as sourdough, homemade yoghurt or kombucha– are often just a result of the magic of waiting.
Still, there has to be something more to real cooking. Surely it can’t just be a mere transformation? Maybe then, it’s about intentionality. The intentional desire to bring pleasure or comfort to the dining table.
I think there can be a tendency to equate cooking with labour; the Thanksgiving dinner wasn’t really made with love unless someone sacrificed hours sweating by the stove. But this narrow view of what it means to cook excludes many contexts: the dorm rooms without stoves, or simply speaking, any night when energy is low, time is short, and the goal is just to get something into your stomach.
Cooking isn’t defined by heat or effort but by purpose. Whether that be the Thanksgiving dinner, the midnight ramen with your floor, or the tupperware boxes of experimental chia pudding–it’s all still cooking, whether it came from fire, the fridge, or simply a bit of patience.
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