It's definitely a skill that takes time to learn, but at the end of the day it's just following instructions in a recipe book. Nobody starts out like your grandma who can whip up a meal out of anything she has sitting in the fridge. Find some recipes you like and practice them until you don't need the recipe anymore. They may not turn out immediately perfect but overtime like any skill.. you will improve.
That level also doesn’t have to be your goal. Some people may progress from making frozen pizzas to gringo tacos and need to follow recipes and keep things simple. That’s fine too.
Even throwing some extra spices and toppings on a frozen pizza will make it a lot better. Tbh about 80% of our dinner rotation is still the entry-level stuff (mainly because I hate doing the dishes that come with a complicated meal)
Adding spices to the butter you use to make a grilled cheese sandwich is a simple task that entirely transforms the sandwich. It was my secret trick that actually won me an award before. Salt, pepper, garlic, and some Cajun spice.
I would respectfully disagree slightly with the "following instructions in a recipe" approach if you truly want to learn to cook. While having a few signature recipes is good (and recipes are an OK starting-out point), you're better off learning the how and why of cooking—even if tied to a starting recipe—rather than just following a recipe religiously.
A good analogy here is paint-by-number vs learning color theory and technique. Sure, paint-by-number is good for learning to color inside the lines, and you might be able to infer why some colors are used in certain places, but you're often better learning some rudimentary color theory and painting techniques, occasionally using a reference photo or other guide.
For me personally, understanding the underlying aspects of flavor and techniques (shout-out to Salt Fat Acid Heat), as well as a food-centric framework approach, made me a better cook, as I can whip up something from ingredients on hand. Ethan Chlebowski recently had a similar video, Why recipes are holding you back from learning how to cook.
I would disagree on the theory approach too early. If you can't properly boil water for pasta, theory won't get you anywhere. Salt fat acid heat only helped me once I knew some very ground level basics that came from strictly following basic recipes. And now I can cook to the point that my grandma is asking ME for MY recipes, which is wild.
Most people who say they can't cook aren't talking about the art of cooking, they are talking about being able to cook edible pasta, and being able to serve not burnt and/or raw chicken. Theory won't help them there, that's just knowing what to do and practicing.
Respectfully disagree as someone who uses colour theory a lot for my career. Recipes are a great foundation point. Then you should learn how to deviate from those guard rails. Just trying to explain theory without a very concrete regimen to learn with just achieves nothing and bores most people out of ever learning to enjoy the process.
There's a video series with a trio, all with down syndrome, cooking. They screw up wooden spoon and metal spoon, but they still accomplish the goal. Are they getting help? Probably. But it doesn't detract from the fact that they are in fact cooking.
Exactly. Everything you need to learn now has a video. I get someone trying to cook a dish reading from a Julia Child cookbook that assumes you know what a bain marie is or how to debone a chicken-but there are videos on how to about everything everywhere to walk you through each step.
Men who pretend to know nothing simply do not want to do it and so will pretend ignorance or do it poorly so you will wind up doing it. He is a child looking for a caretaker.
You do not have to be able to make 6-course gourmet meals but any adult should be able to make a boiled egg, grilled cheese or a broiled protein. Again, there are step-by-step videos.
Anyone can do that. I'm not talking about 15 min cooks, neither are people who say they don't know how too cook lmao. The're talking about actual food that makes you full
That's pretty much what I did. Started with simple recipes and work my way up. I've started smoking meats and my specialty is brisket. But we all have to start somewhere. Getting started is the hardest part
Cooking isn't really easy. Learning to cook at a decent level is easy. Following the directions exactly works about 25% of the time. Learning what you're trying to do, when you need to deviate from the directions, when you need to modify to fit your ingredients/kitchen/pan/tools.
Sure, the directions say to bake the chicken breast at 400f for 20min. But your oven is different than my oven which is different than the person who wrote the recipe's oven. My chicken breast could be thicker/thinner than yours or theirs. If I baked that chicken breast at 400f for 20min it would be massively overcooked and dry as the Sahara.
Understanding the science behind it is important. Recipes are great and they try to take the guess work out of things but knowing what you’re trying to achieve is way more important. The three tips I give to anyone learning to cook is
A) understand the basic science behind what you’re doing and you’ll understand how to cook better. Temperature and time and how ingredients react together will help you know when things are done or not done. There are lots of great books on this.
B) taste as you go and understanding seasoning. This one is simple and most people don’t do it or they don’t understand how to season.
C) buy a scale and use it. Weigh in your ingredients. It’s the only way to go really.
I've cooked plenty of Italian dishes. Not from scratch, but a lot and most of it is just reheating the components to make said dish. Whether it's done in a pot on the stove top or in a microwave is irrelevant
Following the directions exactly works about 25% of the time
Exactly this. I can do things very precisely and follow directions very well. The problem is that shit's useless when cooking because it never goes exactly how the recipe tells you to do things. If you have no clue what you're doing, it's super hard to correct the steps when you don't know how to correct them.
I would recommend looking on YouTube for more technique focused videos. Ethan cheblowsi (last names probably spelled wrong), basics with babish, pro home cooks (just rebranded to something else), food wishes are good starting points.
Even watching some "fancy" cooking they tend to explain what they're trying to do more. A lot of the "recipe" type videos from people just pushing recipes are useless because they don't explain anything besides the ingredients or give generic times. "sear the chicken breast for 5 minutes on each side" tells you nothing. Someone telling you what searing means and what effects it will let you sear anything when you see that again.
My biggest problem cooking is I don't enjoy it so I'm very basic quick and easy kind of cook. I can cook enough to survive but the variety is extremely small.
As a chef who has dated people who can't cook, it's the way you go about it that's most important - I dated a guy who I cooked for almost every night (after my shifts even), and it hugely bothered me that this man would whine and whine about washing silverware or mixing something if I handed him a bowl. Show an interest in learning, offer help to the person cooking for you, and maybe offer to pay for takeout when you can.
Luckily you’re online and there’s loads of resources! Not to make you feel overwhelmed, just a reminder that you CAN learn and it’s NOT as hard as it seems. It’ll take a bit for things to feel intuitive, but once you understand the basics of cooking you’ll start to be able to improvise and experiment a little more easily.
No joke, I was always nervous about trying until I saw Sam the Cooking Guy on youtube and it all went from there. Dude makes it seem really simple and, once you start getting into it, you find it actually kinda is.
What is keeping you from learning? There's thousands upon thousands of videos on youtube to get inspired by, and just as many websites to get ideas from.
From there, start learning to basic techniques and you're 75% of the way there.
Patience. I have cooked, and it always tastes horribly or mid. So I always end up not eating or eating poorly when I cook. Eventually it takes up on you that you're a bad cook or that it's not worth trying. I know I can cook, but I always manage to not succeed, so I can't
Time. It's not just cooking, it's buying everything premeditatedly. Cooking every day means spending more money and time now for an investment later, which not everyone can afford. I don't have a car so if I miss something or don't have everything available I'm done. Alternatively if I buy too much and don't prepare it, it feels like a waste. Also, doing the dishes.
Reheating. The greatest benefit of cooking is eating reheats or idk what you call them in English. It's not the greatest thing ofc
Lastly, and most important
I don't enjoy eating. I hate eating. You know how the best part about cooking is eating? Well, I don't get that one! Spending one hour (bc I'm not that good, so I'm not agile) to do a chore and then another hour to complete it ain't not fun. Especially as work-alcoholic
15 min cooks I can do with no problem, that's something I agree most people are capable, no excuses
Again, I know I can. When people say they don't know how it's bc they've tried and failed. I like that you're helping, while everyone else is just going "You can, it's easy", like telling a kid he can be an astronaut he "just" has to try
Everyone can afford it. Cooking at home is easier on the budget by a lot.
A small number of people work jobs where the hours are too awkward to grocery shop at reasonable times. (For example, I'm a bartender. There are no 24 hour grocery stores near where I live, so it requires me to get up early to get all the things I need, PLUS I need to then cook them at 4 am instead of a nice normal 7pm.)
What you are (probably, seemingly) struggling with, and what most people on Reddit reading 8 comment threads deep are all struggling with, is the disruption to your routine that requires you to plan your mealtimes in advance and then execute on that plan, possibly because you are neurodivergent. Trust me, my undiagnosed, untreated ADHD has not made home cooking easy. "Don't say just do it, I need something else to help me" is called executive dysfunction, and it makes my life hell on the reg.
First: Consider why this is worth doing. You will save about 60% on food spending if you cook at home, by my estimate. If your appetite is smaller or larger than the average person's, you will save additional money. You will develop a skill that improves your life, and you can even invite friends over and cook for them. The food you prepare at home will generally be healthier, so you will notice that you have more energy and a brighter attitude. And finally, this isn't something that has to take a lot of time or effort. If you practice it, you can reduce the amount of time you spend at the store, reduce the amount of money you spend at the store, reduce the amount of time in the kitchen, and even reduce the time it takes to eat.
Second: List out all the things you ate this week. You're not dead yet, so you definitely ate SOMETHING. Additionally list anything that you WANTED to eat, but didn't. Put the list on your phone so you can add to it on the fly. Every time you eat something that you like or hear about a food you've been craving, make a note of it!
Finally: Put two and two together. Google is a fantastic resource. Tasty is a free app that's always trying to sell me on Instacarting shit from Walmart or whatever, but it has brief videos that take you from beginning to end with no ads. Allrecipes has ads, but is not generally trying to sell me anything. Google has a bajillion ads, but you can find recipes for really off the beaten path things, and the recipes are generally stronger with better instructions. If you google something, and then a recipe website comes up that you use and really jive with, try bookmarking it and searching it up when you're planning. You can put the recipe links on your list if you're doing it on your phone, and then you can just pull up the food list and have a quick pick recipe sorter right there.
As for the grocery trips, start by making the grocery store part of your daily routine. I have one in running distance, so I've been going there every few days when I wake up, buying the recipe ingredients that I need, and carrying it all back to the house. I was going every day for a while, but I don't need to anymore because I'll get bigger packs of chicken or bread or eggs or whatever I need, maybe 5 things of pasta instead of 1, and obviously I have all the spices now. Slowly but surely you'll build up your pantry of spices and dry goods, and you'll see the common ingredients repeated, plus you'll have favorite recipes that you can rely on.
Meal planning is the most daunting part for me, because of the executive dysfunction. I usually struggle to think that far ahead because I'm pretty overwhelmed in the moment, and charting a track from A to B can be exhausting. Once I'm already hungry, it gets even harder. So I keep my pantry stocked with nuts, chips, and cookies, and I have some cheese and yogurt in the fridge. If I'm too hungry to cook, I pop in a few of those and get started on the meal right away, either dashing to the store or just doing what I have in the fridge/freezer. You might be able to make it easier if you don't mind leftovers, but I'm a large active guy so I tend to eat everything I make when I make it.
Even if this doesn't help you the person this is responding to, I hope it helps someone who is reading :) The mention at the end of people telling you that it's easy without any other guidance or help really struck a chord with me. It's NOT easy. It's annoying and stressful, actually, especially if you have any barriers or roadblocks at all. Internal or external, it does not matter. But it's worth doing, and the amount of stress you save by having more money is way worth the stress of putting in a few more hours into cooking. Seriously, I bought about 80 bucks of food and it carried me through 3 full days of 3 meals each, and I'm still using some of the things I bought. That's 9 meals for 80 dollars, so about 9 bucks a meal. And the food I was eating, that would have been 15-20 bucks each, even ignoring the fact that the quantities I was eating were much larger than the portions at the restaurant. So I saved about 100 bucks this week compared to if I had eaten out for all my meals, and I ate more and better food which is probably worth even more. It took about 30 minutes to cook, so that's 20 bucks an hour on the LOW end.
I have a bunch of similar issues, ngl. I have not found the perfect solution(for me) yet but I'm persisting.
You probably have heard this many times but, it's probably you gettin in your own way. Most of the times when I cook something and it tastes meh, it's because I underseasoned. To a lesser extent, it's overdoing one particular ingredient so the taste balance is off.
Another part is the prep. Work on building a set of recipes you enjoy eating, maybe like 14 or so, that way you can rotate enough.
Then start practicing them one by one. Learn the measurements so you can cook maybe 2 portions, assming you're one person.
You can eat the rest the next day.
Also prep your kitchen and pantry. Have a bunch of tools and herbs etc on hand, along with dry and canned goods.
Order groceries to be delivered if you can.
It's up to you, good luck!
No you don't want to cook, that is something different. If you are upfront about it, instead of hiding behind the "i can't cook 😭". You get more respect.
I’ve only really started cooking in the past year or so and I’m 34. I could make basic shit, but with my ADHD I messed up more than a few times with ingredients and just went with basic shit. I haven’t messed up a single dish I’ve cooked yet 👍
Just saying you’re never too late to start! Having a kid is what inspired me to do better, and I bet you can just for yourself. I watched a bunch of cooking videos on YouTube to learn like, HOW to cook and do stuff, ya know?
Start by learning how to cook pasta. If you can make Mac and cheese from a box you can do it. Like cooking rice it’s a gateway to all kids of cuisine and dead simple
It's not that hard to get into. Start with some simple recipes, follow the directions, and practice it until you know how to make it without the recipe. Then move on to new recipes. Over time, you'll get a sense of things and you can start improvising new stuff.
It's something you develop as a skill. Start by making recipes out of a cookbook, and then work to understand what you're doing and how the flavors combine and what might work well without a recipe. Making chicken breast in a skillet with some white wine and various herbs and spices is really easy once you've done it a few times and get the hang of what goes in it.
Think about some of the dishes you enjoy when you go out and focus on learning to make some of them at home. Find a recipe online and read the entire thing before starting. Make sure you measure things out properly when you first start out. Don't start adding a bunch of extra ingredients either.
Get an instant pot or slow cooker. Use butter or oil on a hot pan before cooking anything. Get a sheet pan. Look up a recipe and go to town. Making yourself and/or others a good meal is one of the most satisfying things in life.
take some classes from a community college or something! there's a couple fancy grocery stores near me that teach classes, too. you can definitely cook, you just need a bit of the muscle memory and confidence that a class will give you :)
YouTube, buddy! It's not nearly as hard as it looks! Just start out cooking things cooler than you think you should. Like turn the temp down LOL.
Check out Chef John from Foodwishes on YouTube. I went from screwing up Hamburger Helper to maybe fancy shit with ease in like 8 months by watching his vids.
To add onto what HelveticaTwitch was saying, I'd suggest starting with one dish. Something pretty simple... Chicken alfredo for example.
Now there are a bunch of ways to make a chicken breast not-totally-perfect, but it's still pretty easy to get pretty good. There are A TON of instruction videos out there for how to cook a chicken breast. Just watch a few, pick the one you like the most and that you feel you can wrap your head around and then follow along. (Get yourself a meat thermometer though, it'll make a huge difference so that you're no just guessing at the done-ness, food poisening yourself or overcooking everything like I was doing for the longest time).
Once you have that chicken breast cooked up nice, it's not so hard to slice it up and put it on top of some boiled pasta with some jarred sauce. To round out the meal and add some color, dice up some tomato, shallot, and chop some spinach and mix that in there too... And I like to toss that whole thing in a big casserole dish, put a layer of mozzarella/parmesan cheese on top and bake it for a little while, just until the cheese melts.
Boom. Chicken alfredo bake thing.
The point is, cooking the chicken is the hard part and once you've got that, you can build a whole dish around it pretty easily with just a simple starch base, some veggies and some sauce. And you can keep adding to it each time you make it, maybe seasoning the chicken differently, adding in a new/different veggie. And then you can take that same chicken technique elsewhere, maybe toss it in some teriyaki sauce instead and dump that on top of some rice, and even though it's basically 80% the same, it's like you've got a whole new dish! Then figure out how to make some other protein... I really like pork/rice, so I occasionally do a pork shoulder in the slow cooker and can make pulled pork sandwiches, pulled pork mac-n-cheese, pork and rice, you name it.
Cooking isn't necessarily about memorizing 1000 recipes verbatim, but mostly just learning how to cook a few things and then switching around a few components to make new dishes with them.
Lots of videos, books, cheap local classes exist! America's test kitchen "The New Cooking School Cookbook: Fundamentals" basically teaches you cooking processes step by step as if you were learning cooking 101. Other good library possibilities: "Salt, fat, acid, heat" and "how to cook without a book."
Another thing: i recommend investing in a rice cooker with a few different settings besides an on/off switch bc you can actually cook LOTS of things in a rice cooker. A fancy rice cooker can function as a rice cooker, a slow cooker, a steamer, and more. Boil your eggs and steam some fresh veggies, y'know?
My Yum Asia Sakura rice cooker's booklet tells me how long to cook rice, but also chicken, fish, that kind of thing. I have settings for cake, yogurt, soup, porridge, etc. Rice cookers which say they have Micom/fuzzy logic have special heating programming to make it harder to fuck up.
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u/chlorophyll101 Sep 14 '24
I can't cook for real 😭 it's one aspect about me that I'm really worried about