So Your Favorite Restaurants Are Closed and You Don’t Know How to Cook
An innovator’s guide to three-star dining if you’re self-isolated because of Coronavirus
An unwritten rule of modern society was turned on its head this week.
For many people in developed nations, the economic requirements of housing, transportation, and, ironically, putting food on the table have seen a significant shift in how people spend the majority of their days. Longer working hours, more frequent business travel and longer commutes have resulted in more meals being outsourced to everything from restaurants and convenience stores to full-service cafeterias provided by mid-sized and larger employers.
This trend in meal outsourcing has evolved into an unwritten rule for salaried and contract workers: the price of doing business or maintaining a paycheck means that workers do not or cannot cook for themselves regularly.
The Coronavirus has recently turned a corner for many people, shifting from “somebody else’s problem” to a disruption in their own lives that can’t be ignored. Many local, regional and national governments have declared states of emergency which are resulting in schools, gatherings, and business travel being shutdown or restricted for what will be extended and as yet uncertain periods of time.
The cascade of effects is already being felt. Supply chains are being disrupted. Economies are seizing. Panic-buying is occurring. Self-isolation and new work-from-home policies are being normalized and likely will not fully revert to pre-outbreak policies once the crisis has passed. The situation has put tremendous pressure on restaurants, diners and take-out kiosks that depend on the daily flow of customers to stay in business. Meanwhile, tens of millions of workers are suddenly working from home and can’t remember the last time they had to prepare three healthy meals a day. This scenario certainly is a challenging one, but it can also represent an opportunity to develop new skills.
As an example of how a crisis can present an opportunity, I want to share with you a story of how one innovator overcame a similar challenge in his own life.
I’ve worked with some of the largest food & beverage companies in the world and have visited tiny family restaurants in many rural locations. In the process, I’ve learned one rule that applies to all meal preparation. Cooking, no matter how complex or simple the recipe, is a function of combining raw materials governed by procedural, parametric changes including: environmental (temperature, pressure, humidity, etc), chemical (pH, molecular bonding, etc) and temporal (seconds, minutes, etc).
Yup, that sounds really unappetizing.
As with any skill, mastery of tools, materials and techniques can take months or even years of practice. In parallel, innovative advances in technologies and processes can drive more efficient solutions to problems, resulting in easier access to better outcomes.
Translation: What used to be a hard thing that only a few could do well can now be done well by more people.
From 2013–2015, I was managing an innovation services practice in the Asia-Pacific region. During this time I saw a winter-holiday segment on CNBC that featured growth trends in high-demand products. One product in particular caught my attention. It was called, simply, “The Instant Pot”. My first thought was that pressure cookers were coming back into vogue. But the segment featured an interview with the inventor of the Instant Pot, Dr. Robert Wang. Dr. Wang spoke about his invention, not from a sales-y features list but from the perspective of the problems he needed to solve when preparing food for his own family after he had lost his job: starches burn easily, temperature controls are erratic and subject to environmental variance, different fats render (and smoke) at different temperatures and vegetables lose a lot of flavor when cooked.
Dr. Wang combined his expertise in computer science and control systems with innovative problem solving to systematically identify and solve core cooking problems associated with many recipes. More generally, he addressed many cooking process problems involving common ingredients. In so doing, Dr. Wang created a product that people never realized they needed. In my own role as an innovation mentor, I could identify from Dr. Wang’s interview conceptual elements of DMAIC, TRIZ, Kaizen, Value Engineering and other innovation methods that aligned to his approach in the design of his product.
So I bought an Instant Pot, and it’s been an essential tool in my kitchen ever since. Here’s a quick list of solutions the Instant Pot delivers to my own meal planning and preparation:
- A vast knowledge base of recipes are freely accessible online, developed by enthusiast groups around the world and representing culinary delights from many cultural and dietary communities. This variety ensures me a steady stream of new meals that I can create from a common set of ingredients.
- Recipes are broken down into simple process steps of preparation, cooking and serving that even I can’t mess up
- Major cooking functions involve a “hands-off” approach once a cooking cycle is selected (no “futzing” allowed that could disrupt a cooking stage because I’m impatient)
- Sensors, control logic, and other technologies are embedded in the Instant Pot which help me eliminate many common cooking failures such as burning, over-cooking or under-cooking
- Ingredients for recipes are basic. I can combine simple proteins, vegetables, fruits, sugars, grains, beans, spices, dairy, broths, adult beverages (yes, beer broths are a wonderful thing) et cetera with simple-yet-disciplined recipes and produce amazing dishes with minimal risk of failures
So, what can you do if you’re stuck at home and are worried that for the next 2 weeks, you can’t put together a meal that’s more complex than a bag of pretzels and a cheese plate?
Innovative solutions to problems involve improving or creating systems that deliver high-value, where value is a optimal ratio of benefits delivered compared to the challenges of delivery. A “system” is merely a construct, comprised of either physical or virtual elements (or both) which act together to deliver what innovation practitioners refer to as “the ideal, final result”. The “problem” of preparing high-value meals is no different. Meals as systems can be designed for high-value when a value equation considers parameters such as nutrition, flavor, texture, cost, preparation time, availability of components, ease of assembly, and repeatability. For myself, I’ve discovered over the years that I can whip up many dishes in an Instant Pot (or similar process cookers on the market) that I never would have considered using traditional cooking methods, with just basic ingredients and minimal prep-time. Here are a few examples from my go-to short-order cook list (at my last count, I have about about thirty different dishes that I can prepare) that you might find interesting if you have these ingredients handy for process cooking:
- Got chicken or pork, oil or butter, an onion, soy sauce and mirin? (Every kitchen should have mirin. Yum.) You’re on your way to some incredible pulled pork or pulled chicken.
- Got stale bread, some eggs, milk, sugar, butter, vanilla, nutmeg, raisins and rum? You’ve got tasty bread pudding in your future.
- Got vegetables, spices, mushrooms and water? You’ll wonder why you hadn’t made awesome homemade vegetable broth sooner.
- Got sushi rice, an egg, a touch of sugar, butter, vanilla, nutmeg and raisins? Great! Mind-blowing rice pudding. (Change it up with Jasmine rice and dried cranberries for a completely different and exotic taste.)
- Got beef brisket (or corned beef), spices, and a bottle of Corona? You’ll create a tasty course that makes for a great meal or sandwiches, and sticks it to its viral namesake (remember, though: put the beer in the pot).
At the time I’m writing this article, the current situation suggests that the availability of basic food ingredients is going to be more variable than normal. One of the most useful lessons I’ve learned in my own use of process cooking is how versatile it is with mostly shelf-stable ingredients (i.e. foods that can be stored without refrigeration). A 4-stick box of butter and a dozen eggs can help you transform rice or beans into a number of different dishes, especially with some dehydrated fruits or vegetables. Fresh or frozen vegetables combined with simple grains or flour can make a variety of side dishes or main courses. And, of course, an 8-oz block of cheese with a 1-lb box of pasta and some water (or better yet, some vegetable broth you might have made) will make far better mac & cheese than you’ll every get out of a flavor packet. (Hint: Two tablespoons of your favorite mustard added to the pot will give it a tasty kick.)
Many of us will be spending the next few weeks to possibly the next few months in recommended or voluntary isolation. If you’re facing the problem of what and how to cook, there are process-cooking solutions that you can research and acquire at relatively low-cost. You can also research and acquire shelf-stable ingredients from a variety of sources.
Eventually, the current situation will improve and outsourcing meals will be re-normalized at some level. This crisis, as with every other problem, presents opportunities, even though it may be difficult to see them in the moment. The Instant Pot is an example of how one innovator turned a personal downturn into a game-changing product line. The self-isolation and quarantines imposed on millions by the Coronavirus pandemic is a disruption on a scale not seen in decades, but it may also present an opportunity for many people to gain and share valuable skills.
