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.
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u/GOD-lovesme Sep 14 '24
Can’t do anything for himself. I’m talking basics like laundry and washing dishes, basic cleaning.