SLOP1640: Introduction to Preparing Meal
A meal is decided before it is cooked. Ten weeks on choosing, storing, portioning and cutting what you will eat, then two at the stove to measure what the preparation already settled. No experience assumed.
What you will do
Across ten weeks you select, store and cut without applying heat: choosing produce and protein at the market, holding each within the temperature and time a cold chain allows, and cutting only once the material's own structure explains why. Weeks 11 and 12 cook — first to compare identical dishes made from differently prepared material, then once, under time, in front of an audience. You leave with your own written account of a dish: the preparation decisions that produced it, and whether they held once heat was applied.
Who it is for
A first-year unit that assumes no prior kitchen experience, and tests none before week 12. It suits anyone willing to treat feeding oneself as a subject with its own literature and its own failure modes, rather than a skill picked up by watching someone else do it.