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.
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.
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.
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.
I learned most of it during my youth, from my mother and my grandmother. Nothing beats the specific instructions like “stir it faster”, “this is enough oil”, “when it looks like that, then it is ready” etc.
And then lots of trying out ofc when I was older.
There is a book called “cooking for geeks” which instead of just giving you recipes explains why stuff is cooked a certain way. What actually happens, chemically, when you cook something. After reading that, I could just improvise dishes and they would usually come out pretty well.
There’s also Good Eats.
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!
My wife and her mother taught me. I love to cook now, but my mother doesn’t like to cook and was too tired as a single mother to cook a lot, so when I lived alone I was totally incapable to cook.
YouTube
-
Food Wishes, Chef John M
-
Chef Jean-pierre, god bless the man. He taught me everything I need to know about Onyo
-
Start by watching YouTube videos about cooking - specifically single skills like how to chop with a Chef’s knife, how to get a good sear on cast iron, how to sauté, fry, etc.
Then try some recipes that incorporate these skills.
Then once you can follow recipes alright then move on to experimenting and tweaking recipes. Try your spices. Identify what goes together. You’ll get the hang of balancing acid, heat, sweet, salty, etc. You’ll fail sometimes but you’ll learn.
Eventually start making your own combinations and you won’t need recipes (which doesn’t mean you’ll never use them).
I learnt at cooking school, because i was a chef at one stage. That was 2 decades ago, and I’ve lost most of those skills now.
It started from sloth and gluttony, actually. I remember wanting a cookie, but not having the motivation to go out into the world to buy cookies. So I looked around the kitchen, looked up a couple of recipes, and tried to make some simple sugar cookies with what I had on hand. I didn’t have the right kind of flour, and ended up using whole wheat flour, so I had these odd looking brown-ish sugar cookies.
They were so good. I couldn’t believe I’d made them. So I started picking up the spices and other ingredients that cookie recipes commonly asked for, and I started making cookies every weekend. Then I started collecting cookbooks. Eventually I changed the way I bought groceries, I don’t buy finished food anymore for the most part, I buy ingredients. I have an impressive spice collection built up at this point, some of which was grown by my wife. I have all the cool stuff like cooking sherry and at least three different kinds of vinegar.
And now, a decade after making those first ugly cookies, I can create an amazing meal at the drop of a hat using only the stuff in my house. And then I can make cookies that melt in your mouth and are so tasty they would make a medieval peasant cry.
Tl;dr: Man is too lazy to drive to town, changes his life and eating habits over a decade instead.
Small steps. Some cookbooks talk through the basics. Lock in some staples and built from there. Eggs 3 ways, pasta sauce, simple desserts. I was surprised how simple and impressive a gelatine-based panna cotta is. Once i got some under my belt, i tried something more intricate - Lemon sabayon pine nut tart with honeyed mascarpone cream from the french laundry.
Funny how desserts are formulaic, so follow the recipe. Daily cooking is usually by ‘feel’.
Oh and always ask that amazing lady for advice.
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.
