Instructions for perfect ramen:

1.  Fill pot with 3 inches of water & start heating it.

2.  While waiting for it to boil, open the ramen packets and carefully remove the noodles and sauce packets but do NOT put them in the water yet.

3.  After the water has reached a RAGING boil, put both noodle blocks in at the same time, one on top of the other.    As soon as possible, flip the stack.  Do not reduce heat yet.

4.  As soon as the water reaches a RAGING boil again and the noodle blocks soften, remove the pot from the heat and place it on a different burner.

5. While waiting 15 seconds for it to cool a little bit & finish cooking, open both seasoning packets.  At the end of the 15 seconds, pour both into the water at the same time and stir immediately.

 6. Once the seasoning is dissolved uniformly, let the noodles sit for another 15 seconds to absorb the flavor.

7.  Using a fork to restrain the noodles, pour almost all the liquid down the drain.

8.  Transfer the noodles to a bowl and enjoy!

Obvious design goals for pots & pans on a gas stove:

1. Unlike an electric stove, there is very little contact surface, so a large fraction of the energy is transferred in the form of electromagnetic radiaton.   This makes it important to have an outer bottom surface that is nearly black both in visible and infrared wavelengths.   Polished metal mirror finishes on the bottom dramatically reduce efficiency.

2.  The bottom of the pot/pan should be made of a good conductor such as copper or aluminum.   If they can make a multiple-pound solid copper heatsink for $50 then they can do pots and pans like that for a reasonable price also.

3.  However, the outer surface of the upper part of the side of the pot/pan should be fairly well insulated to avoid wasting heat.

4.  The pan shouldn't be too heavy, since you'll be wasting energy heating up the pan itself in addition to the food inside it.

 I got a cute little pan (just large enough to fit one burger) that follows all of these criteria, and it's pretty amazing.   I can set the burner one and a half notches lower and get the same effect as if I was using a larger pan.

Frozen Food:

Freezing eliminates the need for preservatives, and preserves food more thoroughly than refrigeration (or worse, sitting out in the aisle at room temperature with everybody touching it), while it is not necessarily the case that a longer period of time elapses between the production of the food and your purchase.   The cold slows down all chemical reactions and preserves the nutritional value of the food without the need for any questionable additives.

 Some people complain that frozen food tastes bad, but most of the real problem is microwaving.  Most frozen food ends up getting microwaved, and microwaves make everything taste shitty.   If you take decent quality frozen vegetables or meats and prepare them properly on a stove instead of a microwave, they'll taste great.

Another quality-reducing factor that freezing itself gets unfairly blamed for is cooking things twice.   Any time something gets cooked before being frozen and then gets cooked again afterwards, it won't taste as good as if it was just frozen raw and cooked once.

And don't even get me started on fozen meals.   They're an abomination and a public health hazard due to all the crap that gets put in them, but that's nothing inherent to freezing food.