Four Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss: Not your grannies cook book

I’ve been following Tim’s work for a few years now and was very excited for his new book Four Hour Chef. Tim has an amazing ability to learn new skills and simplify them for others. Although I do love cooking what excited me most about his new book was the break down of his learning methods. Before he shows you how to make some amazing food he shows you how to quickly learn any skill. Combine meta learning, cooking, a huge section on survival and hilarious life stories and you have me. Let me share some thoughts with you my thoughts on why you should grab this book.

Learning effectively.

This was possibly the most important section of the book. Meta Learning could stand on its own as a book. Although the grand scheme of the book was cooking it really is about learning how to learn with cooking being the medium to accomplish that. Tim drops some amazing tips in the meta learning section. The top three techniques to learn and master a new skill are: Deconstruction, 80/20 rule and Minimum effective dose(MED). Deconstruction like its name say is to break apart skills to their base components. For example building a fire. A fire is made up of Fuel, oxygen and heat. Then you can focus on learning smaller pieces, how to maximize getting air into the fire etc. The 80/20 rule or The Pareto principle, states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. For example I’m learning Japanese and 20% of kanji makes up 80% of all that is written. There are is a list of 100 words in Japanese words that are used 57.2% of the time. If we jump to One thousand the percentage goes to 76.2%. So the first step is deciding how best to spend your learning time. What 20% will give you the best results. Lastly is the MED. This is a principle I’ve always used and not knew it even had a name. Basically its doing the minimal amount of work to achieve a goal. Not as lazy as it sounds its just more efficient. It’s the principle I use when brewing beer. What is the smallest amount of work/ money to achieve a tasty alcoholic solution. I’ve detailed the process here. The end result is good homebrew beer for much cheaper than anything as close to this good in a store.

Cooking Made Easy

Cooking does not need to be hard and complicated to be good. Tim lacked any natural cooking talent. He was an utter kitchen failure. He tells some hilarious stories in the book about some epic kitchen blunders. Making cookies with baking soda causing his friends to puke in the yard. In the end a few things helped him out. Cramming 6 months of culinary school in 48 hours! taking a scientific approach to cooking helped as well. He uses a digital scale to weigh everything. To remove the guess work from timing food he used a digital probe thermometer. Eliminating the variables he gets consistent and delicious foods every time. I can see how this method is perfect for anyone that has failed at cooking. I can also see the benefit on certain foods. I tend to play a bit looser in the kitchen though. I did pick up a few tricks though and have already improved. I also plan on making several recipes from the book. Another plus is that 80% of the dishes are either paleo friendly or easily made more compliant. Tim created a slow carb diet which is a legume inclusive cousin to paleo. The only real difference I took from Tim was on spatulas. He recommends a Peltex, silicone coated spatula, I use metal on my cast iron to get a good scrape on it.

Survival Lessons in a Cook Book?!

I’m not going to lie I skipped straight to this section when I go the book. It opens with a gear porn section. Knives and tarps generators oh my! It tells the story of how Tim became interested in survival after having a power outage and the hilarity that ensued. Well funny for us not for Tim who lost a fridge full of grass fed beef. It chronicles him becoming a hunter for the first time and making delicious food from his hunt. You will learn to catch pigeon bare handed. Which I have been thinking about trying. Also he says pigeon is delicious. Tim applies his 80/20 and MED principles here as well. Suggesting an off the shelf Bug out bag. Stating that for hardcore survivalist it is not up to snuff (it is not) but for most as insurance It’s great. I would agree here. I would prefer everyone had a basic BOB than nothing. I would also bet that Tim has added some goodies in there.

Conclusion

This is a monster of a book. It is a full-color 672-page tome! It is so packed with mouth watering goodness. The recipes are shown two ways, a short hand for the experienced of us and a detailed step by step. If you have always wanted to be able to cook but have had a failure after failure in the kitchen this is the book for you. If you follow the skill progression in the book you will become the best cook you know. Your friends and family will be visiting a lot more often. You will learn the tools needed to quickly master any new skills. Most importantly you will enjoy it. I have never laughed this hard reading a cook book before. Tim put a ton of personality into the book. He showed all of his failures as he goes as well. Showing when you fail is a main tenant of Survivalpunk. I show both success and failure here so hopefully my mistakes are learned from. This is the end of my over(Re)view. I plan to dig into the book in the future and review some of the recopies and techniques. This book is too big and influential for a single review. So go grab a copy and start cooking, learning and catching pigeons!

Let me know what you thought about the review, Learning, Tim Ferriss or cooking in the comments!

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