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.
My father was, shortly, a short order cook. So we learned some from him. Mother was also an adequate home cook despite her thinking she wasn’t. So we learned cooking from them.
I learned baking from teaching myself by “following recipes exactly and precisely” which usually worked. Having to follow the rules really helped for baking.
I still don’t know why mothers friends didn’t understand what preheating the oven meant!!! Don’t throw shit in there while it’s preheating at least not cookies!!!
My parents are both culinary explorers and taught me several dishes. Mum learned from her mother and from recipe books. Dad is masc (guitarist, surfs, lifts weights), also had a cooking mum, and intuitive cooking just adds to his rizz. I’m a blend of them, although I pick up more from YouTube nowadays. I hope Nebula eventually gets more cooking content.
If you’re feeling cornered by masculinity, look to celebrity role models like Bourdain and Ramsay. There’s good (free) content from them that can be inspiring.
I worked in a group home in college, and part of the job was cooking. When I started, my cooking level was pretty much spaghetti and sauce from a jar. Fortunately for me, there was a set menu with recipes to follow.
I’ve learned quite a bit since then, but I’m still very much a “mechanical” cook. I’m good at following recipes, but I won’t typically be able to improvise a meal with whatever is on hand. I’ll take a look at what we have and start searching for likely-looking recipes.
I like cooking competitions, more so the high end ones than the average cooks ones because I aspire to cook dishes that are amazing. Still working my way up there, but shows like Culinary Class Wars have been great for inspiration.
Also helps that I’m in a financial position where I can afford to grab new kitchen toys, whether it’s wider bowls, nice knives, or gadgets to accomplish specific tasks.
I suggest reading up about specific techniques, because a lot of it has nuance that isn’t obvious. Like for example, for a long time I thought I was frying things when I was actually steaming them because just hearing a sizzle doesn’t mean you’re frying (and I still haven’t fried anything but I do sautee things now).
Other then that, think of something you want to make, then look up a recipe for it and try to make it. Cooking allows for a ton of variation. Hell, even baking allows for it, though the differences you try out can have a larger than expected effect on the final result. But seriously, experiment and be creative, your failures will help as much as your successes. Other than fires, allergies, and freak accidents, the worst result you’ll generally see is needing to throw out some food. But even that is rare from my experience. Most often I either pivot into something else or say “this would have turned out better if X” as I serve it anyways.
Learn how to balance flavours and while it won’t make everything you make amazing, it will bring up your baseline to “not bad”. Also there is a very fine line between “tastes absolutely amazing” and “tastes boring/gross” and knowing how to balance flavours will help you get to that “amazing” state consistently when your food has the potential to be there.
Also knife safety is important. It won’t make you an amazing cook (though knife skills can really help), but following knife safety could have a huge impact on your life, especially if you get some good knives. They say sharp knives are safer than dull knives, but I’d add a caveat: as long as you are using them safely in the first place. A dull knife can make you use enough force that it ends up going through your finger when it gets free from whatever it was stuck on, but a sharp knife will go right through your finger without any force if you’re cutting in a way that aims it at your finger. And as an added bonus, the technique that I use also makes my cutting better because my finger deliberately acts as a guide, which helps with consistency.
Other than that, play around and have fun! And take notes, it sucks so much to make something that is amazing but then realize you don’t remember how you did it the next time. Something as small as forgetting a teaspoon of mustard can have a huge impact on the final result.
By cooking.
In order to learn how to cook, you must first learn how to cook.
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!
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.
I… never learned how to cook properly. Parents did cook all meals at home but only knew how to cook things about as delicious as your average Northern Europe staple, so the only thing I was taught was how to cook rice… but I do not like rice 💀
Out of convenience I ended up just throwing everything in a pot and make sure they are well-cooked, do meal-prep, and eat the same food over and over again; personally don’t mind so it works for me. If it is not enough taste, just throw in some olive oil and spice, if not good enough more spice, if still not good enough add MORE spice, usually works out quite well & is quite healthy
My mother taught me a couple of my favorite meals before I moved to an apartment, and after that I just followed instructions in recipes. It’s remarkable how if you just do the things recipes say to do, and not things they don’t, you’ll end up with the dish they show you.
I never cooked anything in the past. A good friend/neighbor joked about my eating habits while we went grocery shopping together and that inspired me. One day I set myself a challenge to only eat home cooked meals for 4 weeks. I used an app with simple and very easy to follow recipes (KptnCook from Germany). It was tough but I learned a lot and I realized my potential. Since then I usually cook 3-4 times a week, often more than I need so I have leftovers. I love it!
My mom was a drunk and would be unreliable for food and the stuff she made was often bad so if I wanted to eat I needed to figure something out. My first real cooking experience was trying to impress her with a nice meal and it worked. The monster liked me, and food was a great answer for making a bad situation better.
After that it has been… Whatever works. I talk to people about their tricks and try cuisine I might not otherwise like cause it is good to know. Get cookbooks and watch cooking shows sure but also exploring the concepts behind how and why. I chose to learn basics. Why something turns out the way it does from the way you cook it (poached, baked, broiled, fried) and then add to it and adjust.
Humans are great puzzle solvers and cooking is a personal puzzle for what tastes good and what you have to work with. Get the basics down and then be ok with mistakes.
I started as a kid with simple things. Cooking and frying eggs, pimping an instant soup, etc.
Then they had a real chef in a weekday afternoon TV show. I started emulating his job, learned about using the “claw” to cut vegetables, how to make soups and sauces from scratch, and what spices to use.
When I was a teenager, I was visiting relatives, and a bunch of farmers wives were peeling and cutting onions en masse. They invited me to join, more for the fun of having a young man on the table. This was a time and culture where a male had no place in the kitchen, so imagine their surprise when I got a different knife out of the kitchen, sharpened it, and started cutting up onions way faster than they did…
My parents rarely cook, I mostly learned it from just trying some basic stuff first and than slowly trying new stuff. I highly recommend searching some simple stuff wth ingredients you like and expand on it if you want
My mom was just an awful cook and my father didn’t cook. I learned by starting with recipes off the internet. The more I did it the better I got. I also started making bread with my sister as a way to bond with her when our family was falling apart.
Once you understand to season to taste and have some recipes it’s not hard. And you pick up more skills where you see them, and grow familiar with new ingredients as you use them. Simple recipes are simple, and while many of them have depths of complexity the fact is you can’t really fuck up american style tacos or baked ziti that bad if you follow the instructions and set timers. And if that’s still a problem start with something cheap like rice and beans and accept that it’ll be fine and you’ll screw up sometimes. The biggest thing is learning what works/doesn’t and why.
Oh also I grew up on good eats which taught a lot. I then graduated to seriouseats and use J Kenji Lopez Alt’s recipes and guides wherever I can, he explains the why wonderfully
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”.
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.
I wanted japanese dishes, so I was promoted to “Japanese home chef”.
Othee than that: I wanted to keep up with potential peers and not be reliant on Hotel Mom™ to provide me food.
And thus began my quest into collecting and documenting recipies :)
