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 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.
Following a lot of different recipes for the same dish, also Alton Brown
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.
I took adult classes for about 3 years. I could have passed the exams to become a professional cook and pastry chef, but didn’t bother as I didn’t actually want to enter the industry. I just wanted to learn.
I recommend school books for people who actually want to learn. They’re usually a good ressource. Typically better than generic recipe books.
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.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.
I didnt yet. When I left home i was too poor together any real ingredients, and lived off whatever the supermarket was selling for “about to throw it away” prices. Usually cakes and bread, remade sandwiches and whatever. Now that I’m in a real family again the other members are all super picky and only eat about 5 meals, so theres no room for trial/error to learn, and most staple ingredients are blacklisted anyway.
my moms is like that only does expensive takeouts and barely cooks herself, she used to before she got lazy and just goes out shopping all day. i can sorta cook, but not entirely self-sufficient, we do use rice cooker.
My parents had a restaurant and needed some help for the differents services. So they put us at work (brother, sister and I).
Younger I didn’t understand the luck I had to eat restaurant quality meal every day. I was kind of happy to eat a junkfood in a US burger chain.
Now that I grew old, I cook because it’s way cheaper and also because it’s a moment where I could decompress from an exhausting week. Also when we are cooking I let my son participante, and I explain to him the differents ingredients that we put in the recipe.
My bet that he will also Cook when the time comes.
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.
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.
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 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.
My mom made a point to teach me and my sister when we were kids. We even had to plan dinners and cook it. I then made a point to take home ec in middle school. But my mom has a collection of cookbooks she is very proud of. She reads cookbooks like people read fiction books.
Home cooking was a staple for my family. My grandparents raised my mom and her brothers on the farm. For a little while I even lived on that farm. But even though we mostly lived in town for most of my life, the fact that most meals were home cooked didn’t change.
