I love cooking, but because my mom is too much of a bimbo and my dad too much of a “manly man” to ever step into the kitchen, I never had the chance to learn from them. I grew up on delivery, takeout, eating out, and the incredible food made by the amazing woman who cooks for our family. I became deeply interested in cooking at the start of my teenage years and taught myself through the internet, books, that same woman, and other relatives.
looks in fridge
Oh,hello stack of tv dinners.
I learned to cook the same way I learned to have sex. Trial and error, usually by myself, sometimes with a partner, and I read some publications about it that had plenty of pictures.
Not from your parents then?
My sex talk and cooking talk both came too late and were both variations of “you probably know as much as I do”.
Trial and error. Lot’s of meals that I just… forced down. Learned what I did wrong and changed it. But well, I don’t really cook specific recipes, mostly I just boil things and know when to add stuff and what spices might go good with it, if any.
I’m happy other people had their parents to teach them but my parents mostly made stuff from boxes like hamburger helper and kraft dinner. Then they had all that free time to themselves to watch tv and get drunk.
Very much this. Watch a few chefs on TV / the internet and just trial and error. Cooking is a skill like anything else and you simply need to put in the time to get experienced.
I do highly recommend you own a wooden chopping board, a Mercer Culinary Chef’s Knife (or better), and a 1000 grit whet stone for sharpening. A sharp knife makes cooking easier and more enjoyable. And a wood board is kinder to a blade and is surprisingly more hygienic than alternatives.
If you don’t want to bother with home sharpening you can get your knives sharpened professionally. I recommend every year or so, but in my household it’s usually whenever all the knives slip onto a finger
I have a cheap, but really good bamboo cutting board from the dollar store and a tiny one from ikea that I use more often (because my kitchen is tinnnyyy). I also bought my knife from ikea a decade ago and I hone it before every use with an old steel I found in a thrift shop that was made in Sheffield. I say this because it seems to be better then any of the steels I bought new from any other store.
I learned cooking from observing my father, but he never really taught me to cook. He loved cooking and I always remember himself saying, “the hardest part about cooking is figuring out what you want to cook.” Cooking is easy when you’re not afraid of making mistakes.
My mom allowed me to watch, so I understood the basics. But she also was a terrible cook, so I didn’t really git gud until I started watching Good Eats. The inclusion of the science was a huge help, since I am one of those people that benefits a lot from knowing why I am doing something and not just knowing that I need to do X. So I can follow recipes, but also can concoct my own things knowing what will work as a substitute and why, or what flavors go well together and such.
Have kids to feed. Have random things to cook. No time. Get creative. Fail. Try again next time. Succeed. Repeat. Fail. Succeed. Fail. Succeed. Start to plan ahead. Continue to fail or succeed. Try to teach kids so they fail less than me. Hope kids teach their kids. Break cycle of family not knowing how to cook. Family line succeed. Humanity saved.
My dad did most of the cooking, it is serviceable food some great some just okay, but he’d have a thing where he introduced me and my sister to cooking by starting with asking us to taste food during cooking and going “do you think it needs any salt? Any pepper?” type questions
This progressed on to “can you make the mash whilst I make the sausages? Can you slice that vegetable whilst I…?” - easy tasks that are out of the way of the main bulk of the meal
Then on to eventually “wanna try making the Sunday Breakfast today?”
A steady progression of increasing responsibility, in a way that disguises that’s what’s happening
A really great way to teach, tbh
adam ragusea’s videos have taught me so much about cooking. he’s very much an advocate for cooking by feel, he teaches a lot of the food science behind his recipes, and his recipes are very easy to follow.
I learned in chapters.
- Teen/young adult years I just got the basics down, how to cut meat and veggies depending on their application and making meals I grew up with and knew well.
- Twenties, mostly cooking in restaurants learning new recipes and commiting the “correct way” to memory while learning foods from other cultures
- Thirties, breaking out of my comfort zone and just making food that sounds like it’d work together instead of making what middle-of-the-road restaurants taught me. Lots of YouTube videos absorbing general concepts.
The biggest things I’ve learned is that food needs twice as much fat/oil as I think it does and three times as much salt. When I have bits of veggies I’m not gonna cook, I freeze them in a bag until I have enough to make a stock—it’s free flavor. Also, spice and season everything; I used to season my main ingredients and then just plop unseasoned ingredients on top thinking it’s fine (for example, an egg scramble needs salt and pepper added to both the eggs and the sautéed veggies)
By cooking.
In order to learn how to cook, you must first learn how to cook.
Cook badly until one day you don’t.
I don’t think I have that much perseverance. I’m super grateful for cookbooks with easy-to-follow recipes - I’m pretty sure I would have starved under the fail-until-you-figure-it-out approach.
Absolutely nothing wrong with using cook books and recipes, especially when you’re starting out.
Cook books is what I used when I was learning.
No, you’ll probably fuck up plenty starting out (I did), but that’s OK, just do your best to follow the steps and you’ll get the hang of it. Fucking up can be a valuable learning experience.
There’s lots of videos out there that can help, but if you know someone who can cook, that can be a big help!
People suggest cook book as a start, however be careful that complicated receipts are tedious and might remove the joy of cooking.
Most actually good receipts are also simple - keep that in mind.
My two cents will be to find simple stuff and start from it. You will discover that most cooking consists of
- “Fry onions / other vegetables” Add meat.
- On the side boil some granes or potate, mix in. 2.5. Or smash everything together into the oven and wait.
It is possible to have a nice home cooked meal without the major struggle if you learn simple receipts. And then you can start buying food based on your knowledge of cooking - keep the stash of universal cooking supplies is as important as the cooking itself.
Back in 2009 our youngest was born and I had lost my job due to the economic downturn. My wife was the cook at the time, but was also the sole bread winner as well.
I had some basic skills in the kitchen, but really could not say I could cook. My wife was a great cook. However, it did not make any sense for her to work a 12 hour day and come home to cook. When I had been home with the baby and our older son all day.
So I had her teach me what she knew. Mainly it involved in how to read recipes. Learning the difference between a TSP and Tbsp and those types of things. While I would not say I have a talent for cooking, I did have a penchant for it. That lead me to cooking almost every day and discovering that a lot of getting good at cooking is practicing cooking techniques.
Fast forward to today and I’ve been a hobbyist cook for 17 years. I can confidently open any cookbook to any page and at least competently make that recipe, if not put restaurant quality meal on the table.
Am I as good as professional cook or chef? Oh hell no. I’m a home cook… A great home cook, but still a home cook. I’d probably be lost in a professional kitchen.
YouTube
-
Food Wishes, Chef John M
-
Chef Jean-pierre, god bless the man. He taught me everything I need to know about Onyo
-
I just started trying recipes on the internet. Did Hello
rottenFresh for a bit but quit that because of quality reasons. Now I have a collection of “signature” dishes, a few I’m refining, and a good sense of what to do with ingredients and how seasonings interact to make something without a recipe to guide me.I had a mom who was able to pass the basics of cooking down as well as home ec. classes. We’ve done a major disservice to the younger folks by not offering such classes honestly. Learning how to read recipes, basics of cooking, knowing when food is good to eat, etc. is a highly useful skill even now.
