Not a snob on cooking and food wise, I found this to be a good question when debating my friend over beans on toast (UK here).
He says it doesn’t really count as cooking cos you’re just buying already produced ingredients to whack in a microwave or pot and that proper cooking is done from scratch.
I argue this is bullshit as you’re still USING common cooking equipment to make as something as simple as beans on toast because you still have to watch it not burn or dry out.
What are your thoughts on what counts as proper cooking? Would you say canned soup counts? Or frozen pizza since you’re still needing to use an oven and watch the food accordingly?
For me, I’ve always gone by the typical english definition of “combining and heating” ingredients.
If you’ve combined more than one item together and applied heat somehow, that counts as cooking, otherwise you’re doing something else. Like, if I made myself a cold sandwich, I wouldn’t say I ‘cooked’ a sandwich and the same for if I threw a burrito in the microwave.
So, from that, as long as you either warmed up the beans or threw the bread in the toaster and those items weren’t pre-combined somehow, I’d personally say you cooked it.