Chef Ron isn't a professionally trained chef, yet he has a considerable following online, especially on TikTok. Two million people follow him on the platform, marveling at his mouth-watering dishes while also learning some cooking basics.

"I have gained all my skills from cooking myself and watching a ton of food content throughout my life," Chef Ron tells us. He believes that cooking is an essential skill most people should have. "It allows you to take control of your diet, health and wealth."

"It is actually the driving factor behind why I started my social media account," he admits. "I was super broke in college and the only way I could survive is by cooking all my meals. It was a very crucial and eye opening time of my life and I knew I could help people to start cooking."

"My meals in college were always super cheap, super delicious and very easy to make. Knowing the struggles I had to go through, and how much cooking helped me through that process, I knew that the meals would be helpful to a ton of other people too and that's what made me start posting food content," the creator tells Bored Panda.

There's a lot of content on social media nowadays about cooking hacks and tricks; how to cook faster, with less effort, and more efficiently. We asked Ron for his opinion on the topic, and hes has mixed feelings.

"I think it's a mixed bag when it comes to cooking hacks because a lot of the hacks are actually very useful but there is definitely a large number of people who make irrelevant/useless hacks just to get engagement, views and favorable metrics for themselves," the creator admits.

However, that doesn't necessarily mean that every cooking hack or trick is useless. "For example, a recent hack I saw was putting a tiny bit of oil around the rim of a pot before cooking pasta, and that way the water will not boil over at all. It actually works and is a super useful cooking hack," Chef Ron says.

For those who have lost their inspiration in the kitchen, Chef Ron advises to rediscover the joy in the process of cooking. "Finding ways to make cooking more fun and exciting changes the whole perspective around cooking," he says. "For example, something I do a lot is create cooking playlists, play them loudly on my speakers, and just start prepping and cooking from there."

"I have gone through several hours of cooking just by doing that and I always have a great time. It gets me excited to cook and come up with new recipe ideas. Recognize things that you really enjoy and add them onto your cooking process to make it more enjoyable. There's always ways to make even mundane activities a lot more fun and exciting for yourself," Chef Ron believes.

You'd think that if you're hungry, it's better not to scroll through such a list – it'll make you even hungrier and possibly even annoy you that you don't have that delicious food right in front of you. However, recent research actually shows that looking at pictures of food can satiate our hunger.

Aarhus University researchers found that if we look at pictures of tasty food repeatedly, we can somewhat satisfy our hunger. "In our experiments, we showed that when the participants saw the same food picture 30 times, they felt more satiated than before they had seen the picture," the author of the study Tjark Andersen explained.

What's more, the participants of the experiment who saw a picture of the same food repeatedly even ordered smaller portions than those who saw the pictures a few times. Andersen explains that this is our brains tricking us into thinking we're full even if we haven't eaten.

Scientists call this the grounded cognition theory. "You will receive a physiological response to something you have only thought about. That's why we can feel fully satisfied without eating anything," Andersen pointed out. So don't fret if you're hungry, Pandas, scroll away, and perhaps you'll trick your brain into thinking you actually ate all of these delicious foods!

Watching someone else make food can also make us want to do the same. Have you ever heard of the Great British Bake Off effect? It's the phenomenon the supermarket Aldi noticed after an episode of the show. 74% of their customers said in a survey that watching Bake Off inspired them to try out baking at home.

Other supermarket chains observed surges in baking equipment. In 2015, Waitrose reported an 881pc surge in the sale of baking trays prior to the season premiere. Stores also saw rising sales of certain ingredients like almonds and Brazilian nuts which the show featured in particular episodes.

Some chains like Morrisons even have appointed "bake officers" to prepare for the demand for certain ingredients. Series 6, for example, featured some exotic ingredients such as crystalized ginger and goldenberries, a superfruit from Peru. The bake officer for Morrisons was responsible for all the chain's stores not running out of these unusual ingredients as well as staples such as vanilla extract, flour, icing sugar, and yeast.

Interestingly, experts say that fine dining is currently going out of style. Copenhagen's legendary restaurant Noma, for example, is closing at the end of 2024. Industry insiders point to the fact that the vision of such fine dining restaurants was never viable in the first place. "People want to know that the restaurants they frequent have a positive impact on their communities; that the employees have work-life balance, fair pay, and happiness," chef Telly Justice told Bon Appetit.

So, as people are perhaps craving more of the simple home-cooked and baked food, it's time to give it its praises? People in this subreddit are certainly doing their part, and we are trying as well. Which foods on this list were your favorites? Do you have any perfect or nearly-perfect foods to share with us? Don't hesitate and let us know in the comments!