Why are Americans so inept at cooking?

Your standard middle class and lower class Americans, if they didn't live in an area with a high concentration of a certain type of immigrant (Italians or Mexicans, for instance), don't really have a strong food culture. They don't develop a love of particular flavors or ingredients so they just eat whatever.

A lot of Americans work such horrendously long hours and are surrounded by so much take away that it's easy to fall into the take-out meme.

I always kind of figuered it was this, combined with the fact that "american" cuisine never developed as the US always had enough food to not think about making it taste good with limited ingredients.

>that "american" cuisine never developed as the US always had enough food to not think about making it taste good with limited ingredients.
Do you listen to yourself?

The reason immigrant families might cook more at home vs others would be to save money or to enjoy cultural dishes not found in restaurants as easily.
The rest of your statement is just grossly lacking any facts. Americans don't skip cooking at home, and grocery ingredients aren't limited at all, nor did they fail to develop any cuisine. The fact there is a fucking cooking network, a huge cookbook industry, and grocery stores on every corner indicates people cook at home and not just immigrants. Polls indicate americans only each out once a week. I probably hit 2-3x, as would anyone very social, varies time of the year too.

Diner food, bistro food, steakhouse food, BBQ are all american menus. Having disposable income, upper and middle class, means luxuries like eating out as much as you damn well please, especially in urban and city settings is frequent. Shopping where money is no object such as Whole Foods,Wegman's, Publix is just as common as shopping where money is tight like at Wal-Mart. You don't know much about the business, stocks or the economy, let alone American food history. Your "evidence" is anecdotal, but just not right.

As a 21st century nation the US is highly specialized. People do specialized work and buy food from specialized workers. Like, a few minutes at work pays for your day's food, so why spend an hour cooking? Pay someone with less valuable skills to cook FOR you. That's the american way.

At the lowest level this falls to automated systems which produce frozen / processed shit for pennies, so even the poorest human worker is better off buying it than making something personally.

I actually have a answer to this, and you need to get off your mighty high horse because same thing is already happening in Europe.

So think for a moment you live hundreds of miles away from the nearest supply of fresh ingredients, and you can't grow a garden anymore because you live in a city. Your source of food will be packaged foods, canned foods, meats. Fast forward a hundred years and you have newer already made foods on the market that require you to do even less cooking than before, add to that the fact that a large enough group of women is now working and are to lazy or don't have enough time to cook from scratch because of the perception that it is more complicated or takes longer or it is freedom from the kitche, that leads to a explosion of growth for the prepacked premade food in grocery stores.

Move forward at least three maybe four generations and the result is several generations that never learned how to cook, starting with people born in the 20s and 30s, that is the first generation of people who didn't learn how to cook.

And now here we are.

Fag

>few minutes of work
>days of food

I'd like to know where I can make 30 dollars in a few minutes.

Plenty of lawyers bill out at $500 an hour - of course they work plenty more than billable hours.

I'm in New York and at minimum wage here it takes about 5 minutes to earn that dollar for your frozen single serve pizza or whatever.

Even for some huge filling 2000 calorie fast food dinner it only takes about a half hour to earn. At minimum wage.

many americans are consumed by capitalism.
people in the cities are exposed to more media and advertising and are more easily seduced by the convenience of fast food, pre-packaged food, etc. but those living further away from major cities would be less inclined to drive 500 miles for a big mac and therefore wouldn't be "so inept at cooking".

/theory

Lol

how does anyone live in NYC at minimum wage?

I've lived in rural areas, they are just as lazy as city-folk. They may not go for fast food but they use a lot of frozen and prepackaged food they buy from stores.

I don't know, it makes me wonder how poor those million niggers really are if they can afford $1200 rent.

This

America's work focused culture means most people are just too damn tired to cook. Cooking takes a long time, or at least, longer than what most people are willing to spend. It's not just cooking time, but it also takes time to plan out the meals, buy all the ingredients, cleaning it all up when you're done....Hard to do all that while also working a full time job.

because we are lazy

What does $1200 get you in NYC? Show us your apartment and the inside of your fridge.

>Not to bash on americans, but I've noticed this when going to my non American friends houses when I was younger..
Fast food/packaged food/processed food culture.

Same reason 3rd generation chinks here can't cook but the FOBs and 1st gens usually can.

Nobody teaches you how to cook in murga and few people actually like cooking for 30-60+ minutes when they can just throw some shit in the microwave and eat in 5 minutes.

They're worse, IMHO. City people don't do as much bulk shopping, don't have huge freezers, and tend to make stuff more from scratch as a foodie/class differentiation.

>cooking takes too much time and effort!
>the man on telly taught me that
>his name was ronald mcdonald
capitalism

Mainstream American food (the food chains, typical MidWest cooking etc) seems awful but the traditional regional food from the South or coasts like that from say Louisiana, or the food of newer non white immigrant communities seemed outstanding when have lived in the U.S. compared to Europe or Asia.

You can't rape the willing

when i was working at a warehouse, and in construction, for 10 hour shifts i just wouldn't eat if i didn't stop for fast food on the way home or have something easy in my freezer/fridge because i was much too tired to actually cook.

>Hurr durr Americans

Kill yourself

Because they're consumer whores

How does that explain why housewives cooking is also shit?

Lack of values.

Better things to do.

because most people, let alone most women, don't have the patience, motivation, or humility to improve themselves

what if

and hear my out

what if

they aren't.

Huh?

If you don't have anyone in your family who can cook then most Americans aren't exposed to it as a general skill.

So you have a generation of parent's whose parents/grandparents -might- have been able to cook. The older generation generally didn't bother to teach their kids because jobs/employment/it being the women's thing. So the kids had to learn to want to cook on their own. This resulted in varying levels of kitchen capabilities in the Gen X's. I started because I didn't like what my parents were cooking. But I had aunts/uncles who had kitchen/cooking experience who made really great food during the holidays. So once I figured out that something better was out there, I wanted to learn how to cook.

So you have parents who can't cook raising kids who are unlikely to be able to cook either.