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.
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.
My dad forced me to cook as a kid, that was stressful. Then when I moved out, I was way too broke to eat out, so I learned more by trial and error/looking things up. Then later, I worked in a kitchen for like 5 years.
By making mistakes! I have always been experimental with food and it eventually paid off. I can cook very well now, and love to. Lucky you to have a cook!
My mom made food for us, and kept easy to make stuff too, we were well fed, but she was not a good cook, just spaghetti and chili and eggs, wirh an occasional crab/shrimp boil, it was fine but she didn’t enjoy cooking.
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
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.
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”.
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.Alton Brown.
Alton threw a drum of gasoline on my interest in cooking as a child. He’s probably the biggest reason I went to culinary school and spent 15 years in kitchens.
Id love to see OOPs “manly man” dad try to survive a week in a kitchen.
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.
YouTube
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Food Wishes, Chef John M
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Chef Jean-pierre, god bless the man. He taught me everything I need to know about Onyo
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I did cooking at school, all the way to GCSE, very nearly went to culinary school instead of doing A Levels and Uni. I decided against it as chefs are more likely to work evenings and weekends than your average IT nerd. I do not regret it, IT can be toxic but nowhere near as toxic as a lot of commercial kitchens.
As I got older I realised that I enjoy cooking, and I am a good cook, but I am not a chef and being a chef is a completely different level due to the volume of food and dishes you have to make. Cooking for yourself you make for a handful of people most of the time, usually a single meals worth of dishes, and you will still eat it even if its bad most of the time. A chef might do over a 100 covers from a menu of dishes and they have to be at least good, while working as a team to do so.
At least for GCSE there was a lot of repetition over dishes to get good at them and their basic techniques, and an encouragement to experiment with them. I must have spent six weeks making victoria sandwich cakes for example.
Post school, cooking books and youtube to expand the range of cuisine that I can cook.
Opened cookie book. Followed directions. Suddenly had delicious cookies. Realized that I could do this with other things.
I also had that “what if I made everything else delicious too?” moment.
I watched a lot of PBS and YouTube videos to better under what I should look for when cooking. After that it’s really just get in there and try it. Flavor is subjective so that videos kind of stop being helpful at some point. ATK and Babish do a pretty good job of explaining what is happening and what to look for to know that something is done cooking.
What pbs shows? Currently a pbs passport supporter and would like to watch new shows
Americas Test Kitchen, Cooks Country, and Milk Street are great explainers for beginners and intermediates. Rick Bayless might be in there for some good Mexican. For a bit more upscale and the OGs of TV cooking shows, Julia Childs is probably in there and Jacques Pepin is also probably in there.
Something my mom said, I am slightly paraphrasing: Cooking is simple, you just put things on heat source, don’t let it burn i.e. add ingredients in the ‘right’ order, control the heat, stir and stir; balance the salt and pepper. Voila.
The updated version is: heat the pan, add little oil or butter, lightly fry chopped onions, add stuff to it, stir to prevent burning, sprinkle salt and pepper, Voila. When you’re ready to start being fancy, experiment with spice mix, later you don’t have to rely on spice mixes.
Following a lot of different recipes for the same dish, also Alton Brown
