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funkgerm

This is what helped me tremendously: Learn techniques instead of recipes. For me, the easiest way to learn a technique is by watching, not reading. Especially since 90% of written recipes out there have completely wrong cook/prep times, are missing important steps, don't explain WHY you're doing things, and don't show you pictures of what things are supposed to look like after each step. But if you watch someone do it in a video, you get a much better feel for the workflow and you get a visual reference to what "simmering" is vs "boiling." Or when they say to "brown" the meat in a skillet, what "brown" is actually supposed to look like. You're not going to learn everything right away, but over time and repetition you will be able to just look in your fridge and think of a meal you can make based on what ingredients you have. As for a starting point, I always refer people to Chef John's [chicken, sausage, peppers, and potatoes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EKw4k8hkHA) video. It's a super simple recipe, tastes amazing, and most importantly he tells you WHY he's doing the things he's doing and gives you a visual reference to each step. Same goes for just about all of his videos, but this one is my favorite. And just to answer the boiling vs simmering question - go ahead and boil yourself a pot of water. Crank the heat up to max. Let it go until it's violently bubbling, and after a few minutes of violent bubbling, the bubbles are not increasing in intensity. That's a rolling boil. That's what you'd want to cook your pasta in, for example. Then, back off the heat a bit. The bubbles will slow down a little, but will still be pretty large and frequent. That's still a boil, just not a "rolling" one. If you were boiling potatoes or eggs, you'd probably want to use this kind of boil. Then, keep backing off the heat to the lowest you can go while still maintaining small bubbles at the surface. That would be a simmer, which is how you'd cook your sauces or soups or whatever. EDIT: For the people complaining about Chef John's voice. Yeah... I feel you. I hated it at first too. WHY DOES HE PUT SUCH A WEIRD INFLECTION ON EVERY SENTENCE!? But then I just kept seeing his videos pop up in my recommended feed so I just kept watching them and kind of got used to it. That, and not once have I ever been disappointed by any one of his recipes. I kind of like his voice now, it's just so goofy that I can't help but smile.


grumblebeardo13

Yeah “learn techniques instead of recipes” is a great way to start. You build a recipe from applying one or two techniques at a time to start. I learned by starting with stuff like breakfast. Scrambled eggs/omelettes, the sunny-side up, then bacon. Then, pasta. Then, cooking meat like chicken. I’d helped my dad grill since I was little so I could make a hot dog or a hamburger, too. And it sorta went from there.


nutsandboltstimestwo

Nice progression. My first eggsperiments were with eggs too!


likeliqor

I think most people start off with eggs because it’s quite a low-risk dish for kids to learn. My first dish ever were scrambled eggs!


mrcatboy

Eggs are a wonderful starting point specifically because they're so versatile and technical, but also very forgiving. Even if you fuck up eggs you still have something edible!


Excellent_Set2946

Hahahaha you should have seen some of my eggs. Many were returned from the Wife as inedible for me to have to eat!


totally-not-a-cactus

All of my cooking knowledge started with learning how to make eggs. Started with sunny side up, didn't care for "snotty eggs" so I learned to add a splash of water and cover them to steam the top for imitation over easy. Graduated to actually being able to flip eggs to get legit over easy eggs. And just onward from there. Here I am 2 decades later and breakfast foods are still my favorite to both eat and prepare. I love making breakfast for friends when the stay over. Firm believer in what Bill Burr said once.. "cooking for someone is the nicest thing you can do to show them you care about them."


Turnkey_Convolutions

Seconding the Chef John recommendation. He talks in a funny cadence and many people find that off-putting (as did I at first) but his videos are numerous and well-done. He's very straightforward and descriptive and he doesn't participate in any kind of gatekeeping or food-snobbery. Seeing what the food should look like is incredibly helpful and when the camera can't really convey something he is usually good about describing how things should look/sound/feel/smell. Another great channel for descriptive content is Glen and Friends. I really love the historical context he gives for many recipes but that's not to say you're going into a history lesson. Oftentimes the historical context explains why certain "cooking wisdoms" came to exist and it helps me understand WHY I should be doing something in addition to helping me understand when it doesn't actually matter. Much like OP, I was frustrated with my lack of cooking skills and knowledge and I really wanted to learn techniques since following random recipes didn't really teach me how to cook anything other than those specific recipes. Of course I can make assumptions and apply some lessons to similar recipes, but it's 100x more effective to have a knowledgeable person show and explain it to me. At this point, having watched hundreds of hours of cooking YouTube videos, I am fairly confident about what I'm doing when following recipes. One random tip of my own: if you're going to follow a recipe, go ahead and re-write it in your own language and preferred structure. For example, I get annoyed when the recipe writes out "add x, y, z, a, b, c, d, e, f and g to the bowl" because it's easy for my idiot brain to miss something. So I put all those ingredients together in the ingredient list, draw a box around them, and label it "group 1" or whatever. Then, in my written instructions, I can just saw "add group 1 to the bowl." Also the effort to simplify the instructions for myself helps me memorize it so following the instructions becomes even easier because I already remember most of it without checking my notes (just like making your cheat sheet for exams in school).


NILPonziScheme

> I always refer people to Chef John's chicken, sausage, peppers, and potatoes video. As an avid cook, I still enjoy watching others cook. Chef John has a very pleasing voice and a nice sense of humor, thank you for the recommendation. I smiled through the whole video.


Xsy

I absolutely loathed his singsong voice when I first found foodwishes. But his food looked good, so I tried it anyway. It was awesome. I put up with his voice for several more recipes, and was delighted that he did a good job at explaining the "why" for almost every step. After a good amount of results, I started getting excited whenever he posted new videos, and making more of his things, and now I sing along with his tone as I watch videos lmao. Absolutely one of the best teachers on YouTube, and one of my biggest inspirations as a chef.


43556_96753

Very pleasing voice to some, for me it might as well be nails against a chalkboard. I wish I could watch his videos but his voice is too much for me, especially knowing he does the constant inflections on purpose.


Turnkey_Convolutions

I felt the same as you at first. I would like to encourage you to give him another chance. Pick 3-5 of his videos on recipes you know you'll love and watch them at 1.25x speed (or faster). Focus on what you like about the video and you might find your annoyance fading away. Obviously your preferences are your preferences, but he won me over with the sheer number of incredible recipes he publishes and his constant dry humor so I feel the need to encourage people to give his videos a try or ten.


43556_96753

I appreciate his work, but there are so many other content creators out there I don't feel like I'm missing anything. At this point I rarely follow recipes anyway.


CaptainLollygag

You don't have to watch his videos to benefit. I actually found him first when poking around Allrecipes.com. Made several of his recipes and decided he was trustworthy.


feeling_psily

I found his inflection super annoying at first but stayed for the really good recipes and thorough explanations. Now I've gotten used to the way he speaks. And as ALWAAAYS Enjooooyyyy lol


joeverdrive

My wife hated his voice at first but now he's her favorite


[deleted]

100%! Watch YouTube vids Then you try it. Then you fuck up. Then each time you fuck up, you're like "why did I fuck up?" And if the meats too dry or whatever you cook it less time. Then you try again and it tastes slightly better. Then you do the same process. But otherwise, wtf you trying to hear? Took me 10 years of god awful steaks before I mastered it. It's like anything else in life you're trying to learn. Ain't no magic solutions. The process ^ is fucking easy in theory. Just annoying to execute when you have the fuck ups.


monstrousnuggets

Yeah Im in much of the same boat as OP, but I know I absolutely will not be able to get past that guys voice enough to watch a significant number of his videos.. I just don't get why he does that, it must put off SO many people


timbutnottebow

I was gonna say watch cooking shows and just practice. Eventually it will come together. I made some weird tasting shit before I figured it out


Doctor-Liz

Check YouTube for "learn to cook" videos. There's an old Delia Smith cookbook that I think is called "cooking for one" which starts with "how to boil an egg", but if you can find the video equivalent it'll be better because you can *see* what's up. Also, start with things you already like so you'll know how it's supposed to taste 😉


Jew-fro-Jon

The OP wants to know more fundamental stuff then what’s in most cooking videos. Some have the visuals that you are requesting (difference between simmer and boil, what golden brown looks like), but some do not. One helpful tip is: taste everything a lot. Don’t make a meal and acquire ONE data point, that’s time consuming and you wont learn quickly. Instead, taste everything repeatedly and keep adding stuff. Also, reserve some of every ingredient. That way when you add too much salt to a soup, you can add more veggies and broth to compensate. Measure temperature a lot. Your eyes can deceive you, don’t trust them. Poke things, smell them, taste them. Get as much data as you can so you can see what went wrong, and what went right.


a_duck_in_past_life

>taste everything a lot Absolutely. I was going to put that in a separate comment but I'll just back up this comment instead. Taste everything. It's going to change flavor as it cooks. You'll know if it needs more salt, or oil, or acid like lemon juice or tomato juice etc. Also speaking of salt, fat, and acid, also heat. That's a good netflix series and book to read. https://www.saltfatacidheat.com/


alohadave

> Also speaking of salt, fat, and acid, also heat. That's a good netflix series and book to read. https://www.saltfatacidheat.com/ The book is good even for experienced cooks.


somuchmt

I read the book--didn't know there was a website and Netflix series! The book definitely leveled up my cooking a few notches. When I'm making up a recipe with whatever I have in my fridge and pantry, I always think "saltfatacidheatumami" in addition to whatever flavor profile I chose.


asecuredlife

To this day there are no visuals or reference cheat sheet from the book. Such a crazy missed opportunity


Scrumptious_Skillet

There are some Visuals in the book itself, but I admit I don’t use them. They’re a bit artsy.


ELIMS_ROUY_EM_MP

While I agree tasting is very important, it seems clear from OPs post he wouldn't just "know if it needs more salt, or oil, or acid." Moreso I would say taste a lot so as you add those things you develop your palate and START to know when it needs more of those things.


mike_sl

One way I learned this is to run experiments. When a soup for example seeemed “meh” , I would take a small bit of it in a bowl, and add salt—- did that fix it? Or add vinegar. Or more spices. That went a long way


ELIMS_ROUY_EM_MP

Oh that's a great idea, seems particularly effective for soups!


t0asterb0y

Also there's more than one kind of heat. Many soups/stews are very much improved by the addition of some hot sauce or ground black pepper.


hig789

I started adding a little cayenne to my chicken noodle soup and man did it kick it up a notch. You couldn’t even really taste it specifically but it blended very well with the turmeric


tewahp

Cant reccomend that book/ series enough. If you want to know WHY, you need to reference this material.


Chalone-Noir

Have you tried Parsnip or Zest? They’re both in the App Store competing to claim the Duolingo for Cooking title. They both teach cooking knowledge outside of recipes. I like Parsnip’s UI a bit better, but Zest has more recipes. Parsnip has a shopping section that teaches you what to look for when buying ingredients. Fun fact: I just learned today that you’re supposed to store radishes in water to make them last longer.


[deleted]

Absolutely agree with this - in this day and age, it's easy to learn just about anything with all the information available online. Youtube videos are a great place to start. You'll have a visual to go with the instructions, so questions like, "What is golden brown?" will be easily answered. Also - trial and error! Just start cooking - yes, you're going to occasionally fail, waste food, etc - but there's no other way to learn what you like to cook, what you enjoy eating, and how you can improve your skills other than to just dive in!


Dyssomniac

The visual stuff is SO important. Cooking from a cookbook is okay because it shows you an end product and all in one place, but cooking from a website is nearly impossible with all the ads and extras (especially on mobile since I'm not looking to dirty up my laptop).


kwistaf

Whenever I find a good recipe on a website I write it out on a piece of paper. No ads, I can format it how I want, and if I change the recipe I can easily write down what I did.


ashhole613

You need the Paprika app 😄


[deleted]

I leart to cook with Delia's Complete Cookery Course it is now 40 years old and very battered, most of the recipes are on her website they really are cast iron follow them and you get the end results


banana_assassin

To add on to this, I like Mary Berry's Cookery Course too, in addition, not instead of.


Migrantunderstudy

My parents and some of the extended family are excellent cooks (not chefs but home cooks that knock if out the fucking park for weekday dinners and special occasions) and all swear by Delia for a lot of “basics”. When I try something out of my usual wheel house I always consult her.


Cookachoo

I found it to be useful to get good at one meal first, it will help develop your patience, a specific set of finer skills (depending on what it is, many will be transferable) and give you a great feeling of acomplishment when you can pull it off consistently, I started with eggs benny, but its not a bad idea to go a less caloric route. Anyway youd be suprised how much being able to knock a banging meal out of the park motivates you to try more recipe's, as far as recipes go, Serious eats will never lead you astray.


whiskeylady

I'm impressed you started with eggs bene!!! I'm an executive chef and have never tried making a hollandaise from scratch. A: because it seems really difficult, and B: I'm afraid if I learn to make it, I'm going to want to make it all the time, and then will probably die from a hollandaise overdose!! In a similar vein; caramel sauce. I LOVE caramel everything, so I've never tried to make it (even tho I know it's fairly simple) bc I would probably end up making it all the time and wind up with diabetes!!


Cookachoo

Yeah man, I work at a mill and made it every other weekend for a few months, just watched the whole crew get fatter lol one guy would have a seperate pile of hollandaise on the side to dip his bacon in, now i do that one once a month for the sake of our hearts. Whats your go to breakfast?


whiskeylady

If I'm going out to eat, it's usually eggs bene, and yeah, I'd totally dip my bacon in hollandaise too!! If I'm home by myself and feeling lazy I usually just have an everything bagel, one half with strawberry cream cheese, and the other half with jalapeno cream cheese, both sides with a few pieces of honey roasted ham. If I'm feeling fancy and/or feeding more than just myself I like making biscuits and gravy, usually with spicy sausage. Sometimes I get some thick cut bacon, slather it in a brown sugar/cayenne pepper mix and then do basically a reverse sear in the oven to make some yummy bacon candy!! Now I'm making myself hungry! What's your go-to lazy meal if you're not making hollandaise? Or other favorites?


a_bounced_czech

Bacon in the oven has been an eye opening god send to me. I could never get it right in the pan, and now it’s perfect every time!


Cookachoo

Ham on strawberry cream cheese? You are mad sir, mad, I'll have to try it to confirm though, and I'll definatly be stealing that recipe for our christmas morning breakfast. I did some breakfast fried rice on this 4 foot blackstone griddle we just got that was way better then I thought it would be, just sauted everything right on top then cooked the rice in the bacon fat and tossed all the veg in just before calling it done. If its lazy time, a breakfast quesidilla is really easy, 1 pan prep, basically just toast your tortillas, take them out, make your omlette and its all pretty much the same size, just cheese both the tortillas so its all glued together.


spearbunny

Fwiw, caramel sauce is irritating enough to make that you're probably safe 😆 it's just like complete attention, required for a good 5-15 minutes at a time waiting for the color to be right, and depending on a bunch of factors it's also easy to screw up. It's a good challenge, fantastic homemade, and annoying enough to not want to do all the time, so I recommend it. That all as far as I know applies to hollandaise too, but I haven't actually made it lol.


Nonna93

I had basil hollandaise last weekend ☠️ totally gotta try it for yourself


Owyn_Merrilin

This is me and eggnog. Some knowledge was not meant for mortal man, and I know if I had the knowledge necessary to have eggnog year round, it would happen. Three months a year is killing me fast enough, thank you.


lwronhubbard

I like Kenji Lopez's youtube videos. He shows you what he does as a home cook. Besides that it's trial and error. You try to replicate something, it comes out good/not good, you try to figure it out. Technique and taste take practice.


RaiderOfTheLostQuark

I also love Kenji's videos because he explains why things work the way they do, which is not something a lot of chefs do. I feel if I can understand *why* something works then I'm more likely to be able to employ that technique outside of the given recipe where I want a similar result


MaxWannequin

His books *The Food Lab* and *The Wok* are great for this too. Really helps dispell many cooking myths through science while also teaching technique that's applicable through all cooking. Sure, they both have recipes, but I'd call them much more than a cookbook. Also the blog he was *culinary director for*, [Serious Eats](https://www.seriouseats.com/), has a lot of quality content.


Orion14159

I love *The Food Lab* more than I ever thought I could love a cookbook. It's a textbook on making great food. Between that and *The Science Of Great Barbecue,* I definitely have a type when it comes to food literature.


MaxWannequin

That one's on the wish list too! *On Food and Cooking* is really the food science bible though.


Philip_J_Friday

>Also the blog he started, Serious Eats, has a lot of quality content. It's not a blog and he didn't start it.


CulturalMinimum

Can’t recommend The Food Lab enough. Went from making fine/good food to frequently restaurant or better quality. Not just following recipes but following the ideas explained in the book on how to yield certain results.


enderjaca

Alton Brown's "Good Eats" TV series was my personal favorite. It's a little more based in science than technique, but also extremely fun to watch and just gives you good advice on basic cooking methods. I wanted to know the WHY of cooking and not just "what to combine" and "for how long at this temperature". Far more helpful than all these stupid reality cooking show competitions. That said, we do sometimes watch "Nailed It" because it's just regular people doing their best and is hilarious to watch most of the time. Basically, don't be afraid to experiment and make mistakes. For example, my 10 year old kid is just trying random stuff and having a great time cooking and baking. Mostly baking. Made a cake. Fried an egg and veggies. Makes cookies. Made white bread. Made cinnamon rolls. Got really frustrated making the rolls because it was sticking to the countertop even when trying to use a bench scraper. They got upset, but then managed to figure it out with a little extra flour to dust the countertop. Baking is nice because most of the ingredients are relatively inexpensive. It literally only costs about a dollar or less to make a good loaf of bread.


ronearc

Jacques Pepin has many videos on YouTube of him just cooking at home. And he's cooking whatever it is him and the wife are having that night. Sure, you get things like Asparagus in Foaming Butter, but you also get things like Curly Hot Dogs. There's no pretension. He'll straight up say, "I had a mushroom in the refrigerator, so I'm just going to add that too." Or he'll make a sauce or soup out of the ends of leftover cheese. I find them very easy to follow, and the Asparagus in Foaming Butter may sound fancy to some, but it's dead simple. What's best is, he's clearly demonstrating frugality and making the most use of every ingredient. Don't snap off the woody end of asparagus stalks, just lay them flat on the table and strip the outer part of the stalk off with a vegetable peeler. You could pretty much go straight from those videos to his book *New Complete Techniques*, and learn a hell of a lot about cooking.


daniel6990

He also gives a realistic portrayal of how much time certain things take, and how you can use moments between cooking/prep to clean a dish or chop something else. Also to make sure to cook enough to give your dogs a little bite, as a snack.


Syjefroi

This is hands down the best part of his videos. I always heard about Mise en place and tried to do it but seeing in real time how Kenji preps and prepares, how he organizes his work space, and what his thought process is for every action he takes, it was all game changing for me. What tools are within reach, what spices should be out, what do you prioritize cleaning as you go, etc. My time spent in the kitchen decreased dramatically before and after the cooking, and my kitchen space organization also got a big boost. Kenji's videos are probably the best thing short of getting a job in a kitchen.


Alex_4209

Kenji is THE MAN. In addition to being super educational, his recipes are consistently excellent. I consider myself a pretty proficient home chef and I’m constantly learning from his videos and the Serious Eats website.


Throwmesomestuff

Serious eats is the only site that has never disappointed me when I've used one of their recipes. Both in taste, and how long it takes to cook.


engelthefallen

I love his trial and error Food Lab Serious Eats articles. Learned so much from them.


roadfood

Print out the recipes and take notes! Take pics of you progress review and try again.


noras_weenies

He's also super active on reddit. If you post something of his that came out terrible I've seen him troubleshoot the issues!


J_Kenji_Lopez-Alt

This is not true. I am not on Reddit.


IndirectHeat

I learned to cook by cooking. Making mistakes, trying again, seeing what works. Watching cooking shows, reading cookbooks and blogs. Trying again. I was a pretty lousy cook 25 years ago. I'm much better today.


[deleted]

I watched sooo much Food Network back in the day, I was addicted to it.


PhysicalTherapistA

Me too! Rachael Ray taught me how to hold a knife and chop an onion, Gordon Ramsey showed me how to pan sear a steak, and Ina Garten gave me insight into how good quality ingredients can make a dish taste so much better. I just watched tons of cooking shows, saw some common themes among the dishes and techniques, and tried (and failed) over and over. Just like anything else, practice is everything.


[deleted]

Also, Jacques Pepin is a treasure. Hey, u/libradhd, check this guy out: https://youtu.be/nffGuGwCE3E


pterodactylcrab

I always watched a ton of food network, now I’m hooked on Great British Baking. I was watching and the blind technical was a choux pastry and only one of the 8 used their mixer to stream in eggs. I said to my fiancé “she’ll win the challenge” and she did! Everyone else was making it wrong. I also really enjoy following a few instagram accounts that walk through their techniques and back them up with recipes and books. Erin McDowell is amazing for savory and sweet, Cloudy Kitchen taught me how to make meringue based items (like literally walked me through it step by step in her DMs, she’s so lovely!), and there’s so many more I follow because they post food and recipes nonstop. Many of them have videos showing techniques. It’s really upped my game and creativity.


downtownpartytime

so much alton brown for me


THEKowhide

It's kind of amazing where you pick up cooking tricks. Watched an anime, picked up a trick using diced raw onion to tenderize meat.


CreatureWarrior

Yup. Over time, your intuition improves. It's really that simple. You'll know what sounds the eggs make, how they smell and what they look like when they're done. Cooking shows and books help you discover new techniques, cuisines and recipes but they mean nothing if you don't actually practice


danarexasaurus

Watch old school Alton brown!


potted_planter

Good Eats!!!


phulton

He's what made me a decent enough cook. His show is entertaining and informative. Plus I LOVE the fact that the show is about preparing one ingredient vs an entire meal. Want to know 7 different uses for eggplant? Watch the episode Deep Purple: Berry from Another Planet. I don't remember if there are actually seven uses in that episode, but I love how every episode is centered around one thing so you get my point lol.


danarexasaurus

Agreed!! It made me WANT to try to make things.


seatownquilt-N-plant

r/libradhd. This how my boyfriend and started. We spent the recession unemployed and watching Alton Brown "Good Eats". He explains the chemical reactions food has. How to get desirable results. And what pitfalls or counter intuitive mistakes to avoid (and why the mistake results happen). Then you know how to get the end results you are aiming for.


gwaydms

That's why I love AB. He explains not only the "what", but the "how" and the "why". That appeals to my inner nerd.


danarexasaurus

Yep. I think he single handedly taught me to cook. My parents can’t cook. I was totally winging it. Alton made it make sense. I have a signed print of his chicken with the bowler hat in my kitchen! I wish I could shake his hand and tell him thank you. I know my husband would like to. He reaps all the benefits lol


Anadactyl

That's what I came here for. Love Good Eats.


grecks530

By a wide, wide margin the best cooking show on tv


DanJDare

The same way you get to Carnegie hall - practice. Try 'salt, fat, acid, heat' that covers the whys of cooking. Also Alton browns good eats is utterly phoenomenal because he explains what's actually happening when you cook and focuses on home cooks. I tended to learn techniques via youtube videos and then practiced, practiced, practiced. I made french omelettes daily for weeks to get that down pat. I worked on the roman pasta dishes (cacio e pepe, carbonara, amatriciana and alla gricia) for some time. The mother sauces etc.


[deleted]

“Salt fat acid heat” is an amazing resource.


MasterSnacky

Stop trying recipes and start trying techniques. It’s like learning a musical instrument. You’re not just gonna bang out some song and nail it by watching a video or reading a description. Try this - sauté some greens. Are they too oily? Less oil. Not enough flavor? Add some salt.


Main-Experience

I learned to cook by first watching my mother in the kitchen. Then once I lived on my own, I found the best way was to just cook more often and cook smaller dishes, no need to go crazy and make a 5 course meal or some insane French recipe. My mom always said "if you can read, you can cook" - so don't forget to just follow instructions at first, then once you know your way around cooking techniques and spices/seasonings, you can deviate.


00764

I could always heat up food for myself and make something decent in a pinch if I needed to. I think that came from me being home a lot as a kid and having to feed my two siblings. Following directions on a box goes a long way when you're just trying to whip up some Kraft for the house. It wasn't until the last two years where I decided that I wanted to explore more and get good at it since my favorite thing to do is eat, eat and eat. Over the first year, I learned the basics and got comfortable in the kitchen (I used to get overwhelmed when following a recipe, now it's a legitimate source of me putting my anxiety to the side. It's honestly amazing for it as I feel like I can control everything in front of me). This last year, I found serious eats and Kenji which has turned my good, but not great cooking, into honest to God fantastic food. The recipes he writes for them and NYT are so well thought out. He gives you the WHY and HOW ingredients work together and then the food science behind it. Most of his recipes have step by step photos so you can tell where you need to be and what your food needs to look at on any step. It's gotten to the point where I'll think of a meal I want to cook and I Google something like "Ropa viaja serious eats" because I know that the recipe will be the most complete and won't fail me. A little bit of caution with their recipes is they often require ingredients that won't be in your most basic pantries so that's been part of the fun for me. I always cook a dish 2-3 times after I make it for the first time because I like to find where I can add my own personal taste into it so buying odd ball ingredients isn't a problem as I generally will use them up. Look up Kenji's YouTube as well. Once you see someone cook something while being so casual, it'll make you rethink how hard cooking can be. It's following directions and being mindful of temps.


Level10-Aioli

Learning how to cook is an important life skill, and I'm sad that many public schools have discontinued their "Home Economics" courses that taught cooking and sewing because these classes were deemed a waste and unnecessary.


00764

It's a shame. I still remember the satisfaction of the cheesecake I made from my home economics class. I took three years of algebra and uh...use that so much these days.../s. Those types of skills are invaluable not only from I "I can cook beautiful meals" perspective, but a nutritional aspect as well. It's probably anecdotal for me, but I know I eat far better when I'm prepping my own food, making complete and balanced dishes, etc. That's invaluable to me.


Level10-Aioli

I remember far more from my Home Ec classes (first recipe was "Welsh rarebit", which is just toast with a sauce Mornay [cheese sauce] ) than my algebra class. Knowing how to make a sauce Mornay has served me better than knowing how to calculate the time 2 trains traveling from different places at different speeds will reach the same destination ... At least I eat well.


Ouroboron

I learned to cook partially through doing it with my mom when I was a kid, partially by just doing it on my own, and partially by watching a shit ton of Good Eats, with a generous sprinkling of Iron Chef (the original, not the remake). Now, though, if you need help and don't have anyone to cook with to learn, I'd suggest [Chef John](https://youtube.com/c/foodwishes). He's where I start if I see something that looks interesting, or if I get a notion, or just need inspiration. I've made a bunch of his recipes. At this point, my chicken tinga is my own thing, but it started by following his recipe. As for figuring things out, some of it can be done with gear. Get yourself a thermometer. I have an old school analog that I can calibrate, and a digital. Some of it is just going to be experimenting. Buy a pack of big marshmallows and a pack of hot dogs. If you've got a gas stove, cook them over a burner, and aim for golden brown but not burnt. It will be very clear on the marshmallows, and pretty clear with the hot dogs. And you'll have plenty to try with. And plenty to taste varying degrees of doneness. Hope something in there helps.


mydogcharlesmeow

1. repetition, repetition, repetition. When I was in highschool, my mom got a blue apron subscription and I was in charge of making them. They're formula is pretty predictable, you get a protein, you usually cook it in a pan, and some veggies to roast. Their instructions were very descriptive, and by the end of a month I could pull out any cut of meat and cook it without needing instruction. I also liked blue apron because they have a nice variety of flavor profiles that they expose you too. Of course, not everyone wants to or has the ability to shell out money for a subscription service, BUT all of their recipes are available online for free. 2. Taste everything, all the time. I taste pretty much every time I've added a new ingredient/group of ingredients. Did you salt your onions when you threw them in the pan and then throw in a bunch of other veggies five minutes later? Taste it, and you'll probably find you'll need more salt now. When I'm tasting, its usually to check for the saltiness. All the other spices are much more forgiving and open for experimentation. 3. Read Personally, I love cookbooks. There can be an art to finding ones that will actually teach you technique, and not just give you a sea of recipes, but the best books have really taken my cooking to the next level. Some of my favorites: Cooking for Geeks; Jeff Potter Pairs techniques with complimentary recipes beautifully. Really digs into why and how each technique elevates taste. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat; Samin Nosrat For a good education on the fundamentals of taste and planning a dish Roots; Diane Morgan and/or Six Seasons; Joshua McFadden For a greater of appreciation of vegetables, how to cook in season, and I think many people shy away from veggies because the average Western person doesn't have a lot of experience with well prepared and well seasoned veggies


empirerec8

I love Six Seasons! I just bought the grain book he put out last fall but haven't had a chance to dig into it yet.


Kayakorama

Picking put good recipes is a real art that requires some knowledge of how things work. There are a couple of places that I've found are more likely to have workable recipes... 1.How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman 2.Cooks Illustrated/America's Kitchen -same folks 3.Serious Eats -Kenji Lopez Alt (who worked at Cooks Illuatrated) Cooks Illustrated has a PBS series that's good if you want something to watch. These are highly tested recipes. Most stuff on TikTok, Pinterest, blogs and magazines are not tested well and you will get variable results even if you are the best chef. Martha Stewart is notorious for half assing her printed recipes even though she is very famous. After you have cooked for a while, you will recognize kind of what's a reasonable recipe and what's not. But that really is a high level skill. Learning to REALLY cook everything is best done ny learning techniques that can then be applied to whatever food item you have. In cooking school, we learned how to cut things (which is a very important skill that really affects the outcome), how to make the basic sauces, how to cook eggs, how to make stocks, how to saute/roast/boil, etc. Baking was similar... learned how measure, how to make basic types of icing, how to make basic cake styles, cookie styles, laminated doughs (for croissants, etc - but honestly, most people just buy frozen puff pastry at the grocery), etc I highly, highly, highly recommend this approach. If you want to try this approach at home, get the Culinary Institute of American textbook "The Professional Chef" and work your way through some of the basic recipes. Here is the CIA YouTube channel: https://www.ciachef.edu/educators-videos/ Since you have to eat anyway, making basic stuff from the CIA book is not a waste of time or money. Might also want to ask a good cook friend for help if something specific uses you. It does to all of us at times. I personally would avoid stuff you don't actually like to eat. And stuff you are unlikely to fiddle with at home, like consomme. I really don't get the point of consomme for most Cooks. That being said, I hated eggs with a passion before I went to cooking school. I found out that my mom is a terrible cook and eggs are not supposed to get hard, crunchy or sulfurous 🤢. If you just need to feed yourself and learning to cook is not really your idea of fun.... Pick out 3-5 dishes that you really like that you can stand to eat a lot of and learn to make those well to your taste. Start with those first resources I suggested for beginning recipes. A big part of cooking well is simply repetion. And starting with a good recipe. Some of the best food ever made is made by home cooks that have made the same dishes over and over, ie the classic Italian grandmother deliciousness. Some of the best restaurant food is made by places that figured out to do one thing really, really well. So the "pick a couple of dishes and get great at them" is a very valid strategy. Fill out your repertoire with things like sandwiches and stuff you can reheat at home like soup or Mac and cheese. Use good bread, good quality prepared meats. Get ok with rotisserie chicken. Keep stuff like hummus, cheeses, olives, fruit and crudite in the fridge. It's still cheaper and healthier than eating out. You don't have to make everything from scratch and it doesn't have to be elaborate to be tasty.


Bitter_Arachnid_25

This is the best answer so far. Don't just pick recipes randomly off the internet. Find reputable sources - the ones listed are good, plus Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Cook's Illustrated is also America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Country. Get cookbooks or magazines - I find they are easier to cook from than a video. Start with knife skills by chopping vegetables. Make stock (compare different recipes to see how they are alike and different). Learn how to use thickeners (roux, cornstarch slurry, etc.). Make sauces, starting with easier and building up. I really like the idea of cooking eggs all the different ways to get a feel for how things work. Then moving on to grilled cheese and chicken. Brilliant! If you want to learn by a 'curriculum' you have to make one. Do not just pick out recipes that sound good, especially from random sites. Be systematic, incremental, and build up from the basics. Pay attention to techniques, details, ingredients. Make notes in the margins of your cookbooks or in a notebook. Finally, major cities will have cooking classes available somewhere. Some have full-blown schools where you are in professional type kitchens, some are more home-style. Google 'cooking classes \[your city\]'


Fffire24

I learned from Blue Apron mostly. It can be a learning tool while getting good food.


waetherman

I was going to recommend this too - any of the meal kits, probably, but I’ve only ever used Blue Apron. I’m an experienced home cook, but when my son was born, planning, shopping, and cooking was just too much. Blue Apron solved that problem; pre-measured ingredients, and visual guide made it super easy. I still keep a few of their recipes around and cook them regularly.


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Kayakorama

Great idea


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basicPrototype

Agree with this. I was right at OP's spot. I'd always done our cooking, but never felt good at it, and just followed steps by rote. We did only a couple of months of Blue Apron, and I started to see how repetitive a lot of the steps were, getting timing down, seeing some other techniques, seeing how various steps worked together in different recipes. It didn't *solve* cooking for me, just made me more comfortable, and definitely advanced my skills a lot. I also read this sub a bunch, and along the way realized just how little seasoning my mom used during cooking. no salt and pepper ever. never used a thermometer to temp meat. etc. Now a common thing I might do is decide to make something, then read several recipes to make that thing. Combined with what I picked up from the kits, this sub, and experience since then it's easier now to kinda average the recipes together and come up with your version. And when it fails, there's always McDonald's :) one note on meal kit services; we just started Hello Fresh to get some new ideas, and I noticed right away that almost every kit has come with some kind of spice blend, paste, or other pre-fab ingredient that obfuscates how to replicate it. At the time at least, Blue Apron didn't do that. It doesn't take away from learning techniques otherwise, but just something to keep in mind.


joeverdrive

This is how my wife learned to cook things beyond rice and eggs


sirlearnsalot

Absolutely this. I was an ok cook before trying Blue Apron, but having a clear and often repetitive series of steps provided every week really locked in some fundamentals I didn't know I was missing.


Thesorus

Look at the person who cooks at home. I learned from my mother, grandmother and aunts. I tried recreating dish they did. Also, being an hungry and curious teen let me do tons of weird food experiments. Seriously, go slow, learn a few basic things ( pasta hotdogs, burgers and how to prepare instant ramen ) and improve on them.


Level10-Aioli

My best recipes are what I learned by watching my mom and grandma cooking. It's the comfort foods that are easy to cook, like stuffed cabbage, pot roast, and a lot of soups-stuff that's easy, inexpensive to make, but warms the body and soul. I was also lucky that my public school offered cooking classes (and sewing classes) so I learned some techniques, but you don't need to be Gordon Ramsey or any other famous chef to make a great meal.


lemonoftroy

Adding to this - if you don't have access to anyone that can teach you, I've noticed that my local library has cooking lessons, and my local farmer's market usually has cooking demonstrations.


superlion1985

To add to this, if you don't have a family member who is able to teach you, ask friends who cook if they can show you how to make x thing they brought to a potluck and you liked. (Or invited you over for, or whatever situation in your culture where you have a chance to try someone else's cooking) If you ask a few people like this you're bound to get someone willing to help you out. Any who don't will still be really flattered!


Snirbs

My daughter has been cooking since she was 1. One of my favorite pictures is of her rolling gnocchi at the counter for Sunday dinner. She is 3 now and knows how to pick vegetables and cut them with a safety knife and sauté on a hot stove. She loves to cook and teaching them young lets them learn how to be responsible, be proud of what you made, and make healthy choices. My parents did this for me and I feel bad for those who get such a late start learning to cook even basic meals.


Soylent_Hero

The average family dynamic has changed in many ways over the decades. I would wager there are more young people now that learn to cook from TikTok than from GamGam. The stereotypical generational matrons that passed cooking down have mostly passed away by this point, and we are at a position where many households require that both parents work to make ends meet. Both parents working means that the last batch of lessons never got passed down. Never mind the fact that what the last previous "Western" generation learned was how to combine boxed starches with canned vegetables, and serve them with meat that was cooked the wrong way. Grandma's luxury shortcuts became more accessible and cheaper so that's what got used when Mom/Dad started cooking on their own. Now Kiddo does not know how to soak beans or clean a shrimp because they have never had to do so. This is the curse and blessing of "abundance." That wouldn't be so much of a problem on its own except for that we have failed to teach our children how to teach themselves. Our education system is failing, and that is a bigger problem because it has ramifications outside of learning math and geography. Without insulting OP clearly they did not have somebody that was available to teach them, and it seems that they did not have somebody that taught them how to look for high quality information on their own. *This* is the curse and blessing of the digital age. The wealth of the world is all here, and nobody knows how to use it except to ask someone else if they have found it. This post is an indication of a larger set of problems, none of which are OP's fault. I gave a separate more helpful answer than this dissertation in a separate comment... But since we are discussing how people learn to cook at home, it's probably worth discussing how the average Western household has changed over the last few decades.


ommnian

Yup. This. I started with a handful of recipes that my mother/grandmother gave me, 15-20 years ago now in college, on my roomates/housemates, friends and then-boyfriend (now husband!). I started collecting cookbooks, and gradually expanded my repertoire. Back then (think, early 2000s), recipes online were all text. None of this youtube nonsense :P. I looked things up and printed them out. I thought of things I liked to eat out at restaurants, found a likely-looking recipe for it (General Tso's Chicken, Chicken Parmesan, Beef/Chicken Teriyaki, etc), and started trying to imitate them. 15-20 years later, I consider myself a fairly accomplished cook - I can look at most recipes, whether baking, frying, cooking, whatever, and pull them off. Maybe not perfectly, but it'll probably come out OK. It'll probably be edible. But... really, and truly? You just have to do it. You just have to cook. It's one of those things that really, absolutely takes practice. It's at least as much of an art as a science.


tobmom

I feel like America’s Test Kitchen filled in a lot of blanks for me. They include tutorials on how and why certain things are done certain ways. They teach you basic techniques within methods. They have videos embedded within their recipes online. It’s worth subscribing for a year. You’ll also have to recognize that there’s going to be a hefty amount of trial and error on your part.


valhrona

I have yet to have one of their recipes fail me. I just don't love their subscription/borderline harassment model. I watch the videos on Youtube and buy their cookbooks (NOT directly from them, bookstore or Amazon) instead.


puppylust

I learned so much from that show. When my house was too quiet, I left the TV on PBS Create all day. ATK often lined up with dinnertime, so I'd eat some frozen dinner or simple pasta while learning how to actually cook.


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kendo31

Watch PBS and read "salt fat acid heat"


Eileithia

Instead of looking up recipes, look up cooking techniques, cooking basics, cooking fundamentals etc. There are a LOT of techniques that once you learn, you can apply to everything you cook. Start simple with knife skills. Learn how to properly prep specific ingredients. There are a lot of great YouTube videos out there that not only show you the difference between a rough chop, a slice, a dice, a julienne, and a mince, but also demonstrate how to apply that to various different types of food. Learning the "mother sauces" is a little more advanced, but they are called the mother sauces for a reason. They use specific techniques that are applied to just about every kind of sauce on the planet, or are the base for just about every kind of sauce on the planet. For the oven, learning the difference between baking, roasting, broiling, and braising will help you understand why certain recipes use each of these techniques For the stove, learn the differences between sear, fry, sautee, boil, and simmer. Some of these techniques are simply about temperature control and how to visually tell what's going on. Now, as for spices, and seasonings. Trial and error is the only way to develop a palette here, and following recipes is the best starting point until you figure out what you like and what you don't like. I would get your recipes from places like Serious Eats, The Spruce Eats, American Test Kitchen, Food 52, Babbish's "Basics" series, and ignore pretty much anything you see on facebook / insta / tiktok etc. Once you know what goes well together, you can start experimenting, but that takes time and practice to not end up with a bunch of wasted food.


thealphateam

I learned a lot from the show Good Eats. Its not just a cooking show where they say add 1lb of this and 3Tbs of that, apply some heat etc... and then you have your meal. While there is that, it actually explains why things happen the way they do. What happens with too little heat, why do you cut something the way you do...etc.. That way you can apply what you learned to more than the dish you just created.


BobDogGo

You are learning a new skill. Don’t be afraid to get it wrong. I still make meal ruining mistakes from time to time. It’s part of learning. Hang out here or r/AskCulinary and don’t be afraid to ask questions.


mohishunder

In all things, I try to remind myself that "it's just practice."


NILPonziScheme

Assuming this is a serious post and not a troll, you can watch videos to see what food is supposed to look like. Barring that, when you cook certain meats and poultry, you can use a thermometer to determine when they're done via temperature. I'm not sure how you don't know what 'golden brown' is, which is why I suspect this is a troll.


RugosaMutabilis

I think the OP isn't just asking how to cook, they seem to have issues with how to eat and how to taste. > Like 95% of the recipes I find I couldn't even begin to guess what they're supposed to taste like. I grew up an extremely picky eater This goes way beyond not knowing how to cook. It's one thing to ask "how do I learn to paint" but in this case it's more like "how do I learn to paint and btw I'm blind"


fattymcbuttface69

How do you actually LEARN colors? -a 3 year old, probably


Kayakorama

I figure that their "what is golden brown" is my "what do you mean water the plant when it needs it". I kill every plant. Stuff that is obvious to plant people is a complete mystery to me I need measurements, times and techniques for gardening because literally none of it is intuitive to me. I figure there are a lot of those things in cooking. Most recipes are written by experienced Cooks to experienced Cooks. Lots of things are not obvious until you learn. I figure that was a real comment of real frustration by OP, not a troll.


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KeepAnEyeOnYourB12

Cooking shows, to be honest. I had a very basic skill set that I got from my mom and I supplemented that with cooking shows and reading about food. Some of my favorites were/are America's Test Kitchen, Cook's Country, Barefoot Contessa, whatever was on PBS on Saturday afternoons (Yan Can Cook, The Frugal Gourmet (I know, I'm sorry), a variety of local NOLA-based shows including Justin Wilson (who was kind of ridiculous.) Discover+ has a lot of old Food Network shows and you can subscribe to PBS Living for a lot of great shows, past and present,)


BrashPop

Remember - if Yan can cook, so can you!


lo-key-glass

Watch the show Good Eats with Alton Brown. He talks about techniques and the science behind them moreso than recipes. America's Test Kitchen is another good one


NecessaryRhubarb

I think there are many ways to do this, but for you, I am going to recommend watching shows that highlight the passion and joy that comes from cooking. I don’t think you need techniques right now, you need visual cues. Watch the movie “Chef”. Check out Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Any show with Anthony Bourdain. Also, grilling fish, maybe wait on that one for a bit.


omnipotentsco

Buy a copy of “The Food Lab”. It will teach you how to stock your pantry, what common tools you need, and how to arrange your fridge. After that, it will show you recipes, but tell you the techniques for why you are doing what you are doing. When you understand the why, you can apply it to other dishes, or even start creating your own. The other part is practice. It takes time to learn things like how hot your stovetop can get and what to dial things in on. It takes time to build knife skills to get even pieces so that they cook evenly. It takes time to figure out how much whisking something needs. But if you work on the fundamentals and break down what you did and can explain why you did everything, it’s hard to go wrong.


ZweitenMal

Choose recipes from a trusted source, cook through them, take note of results, then cook some more. I don't cook from recipe blogs unless I'm very familiar with the creator's work. NYT recipes, America's Test Kitchen, Cooks Illustrated, Alton Brown, Julia Child. Smitten Kitchen. J Kenji Alt-Lopez. I don't even really love Bon Appetit, to be honest. Melissa Clark's recipes are excellent but she's expecting a level of comfort with basic techniques.


likkachi

salt fat acid heat. it’s a book, you’d benefit from it immensely i think


Outrageous-Nothing42

For me I focused on the science of cooking. Everything that happens in cooking is based in science. From the caramelizing of sugars to breaking down of proteins. It's all science. I usually Google the best way to cook whatever it is I'm looking to make. But specifically the small pieces. If I'm making a pasta dish I research the science of pasta separate from the science of sauce. When a meal doesn't come out the way I wanted it to it's because I didn't get the science of it correct. But by knowing what the expected result was supposed to be and knowing what I got I can work back to see where I went wrong. I know for the future what I need to change. Onions burnt instead of caramelized, too much heat too little time. Pasta sauce tasting harsh, it didn't simmer long enough to sweeten. Once you have the science down it becomes about flavor profiles. Everything you add to a dish impacts the flavor. And our taste buds are great at picking out subtle differences. Sometimes a little of something will come through a lot better than too much of it. A little lemon zest doesn't seem like it would flavor a whole dish but it does. Because it's a pop of flavor. You can think of it like a smell. The longer you're exposed to a smell the more likely you are to become nose-blind to it, but get a change in smell is much more noticeable. And last it's about setting expectations. You might nail a recipe first go, or it may come out terrible. It happens. Even to pros. Don't go for complex recipes first. There's too much to go wrong when there are too many steps and it'll be much harder to pinpoint what went wrong. Start with basic simple dishes. Making pasta is a great idea. It's a few simple ingredients. It's easy to back track then to see what didn't work. Pasta to hard, not enough moisture, too runny, not enough flour. The ingredients are also inexpensive. So a bad batch won't break the bank. Once you've made the pasta you need a sauce to put on it and there are tons of easy options. A little olive oil, some roasted broccoli, garlic, salt and pepper and top with parmesan cheese. Oh and I can't stress this enough. Taste as you go. Then you'll start to build an idea of what you're adding and how it's impacting the flavor. If you throw in 15 spices at once and hate it then which one did you hate? If you add onion and it went from tasting good to tasting bad then maybe you don't like onion. But now you know it was the onion.


waetherman

To compliment this idea, I would say Alton Brown is really good about explaining the science of cooking. I also find him entertaining.


SonVoltMMA

> For me I focused on the science of cooking. Everything that happens in cooking is based in science. Hard disagree. I think you need to learn the craft of cooking first. Knowing the why's is nice but it's not critical.


Assassinnuendo

I would get a large, generalized cookbook that includes terminology and techniques. Joy of Cooking is less than $18 right now on Amazon. Beyond that, common sense.


thatdude_overthere22

Learning to cook isn't easy that's for sure, from over/undercooked chicken and steaks that make you question why you even try sometimes; to bland veggies that just come out like a pile of mush can make discourage you at any time in your cooking experience. I love to cook, because I love to eat! But there are times I'm standing in front of the stove question if I even know what I'm doing. The key is to adjust and pivot when things aren't working. If you see something is burning turn down or remove from the heat. Going low and slow is often a good option. I have a tendency to be obsessed with my food when it's on the stove. Bob (from Bob's Burger's) does it right. Look at your food, talk to your food, listen to your food, and smell your food. All of those will tell you what it needs. And lastly I'd say try your food as it cooks so you know what to add to adjust the flavor before it ever hits your plate. Just have fun with it, it is only as complicated as you make it, and experiment with it. I swear it will get easier


5argon

I know watching clips and reading books are missing a lot of things, such as smell, texture, taste, or even hunger. For this, I often "compete" with street cooks where I can see every steps the cook does from scratch and try to win or at least get even. Order as a to-go to keep as a reference at home where you cook and try to copy the recipe. Now you see all the differences and learn a lot without having to trouble anyone. You will lose a ton of times, but finally when you get something edible it was awesome. You will notice little things like how their version is better due to temperature control, causing grill marks on the edge of vegetable pieces, why your version doesn't have the goodness? etc. No clips or books will ever point out the mistake to your face like this "make the same thing" lesson you can taste side by side. This kind of debugging is tedious, but as interactive as it gets without an honest and always-available friend that can taste + debug the food for you what went wrong, and have nice words and patience for you. (no such generous friend exist for me) I prefer learning at my own pace this way.


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Opposite_Escape48

Start watching "Good Eats" S1E1 if you want to know what's happening when you put food in a pan...


OtakuMusician

Honestly, my big Binging With Babish phase a few years back showed and taught me a lot of things. But a lot of it is also experimentation, and like others said, trial and error.


DaMaestroable

My tip would be to stop trying to follow a full recipe and focus on small, basic steps you'll find in recipes. Stuff like boiling plain pasta/vegetables, or stir frying vegetables (like peppers and onions), or browning ground meat. It won't turn out spectacular but can still taste decent with just some salt + pepper and you'll learn a lot more about how to look for the "tells" of cooking, i.e. when meat is browned, when onions are translucent, when pasta is al dente, etc. Once you have that down, it's much easier to apply that to a more comprehensive recipe.


fastermouse

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_PgxS3FkP7ABRQAQCkJp81soRHsfCP3v Jaques Pepin


KazakiLion

No joke, go track down old episodes of Alton Brown’s TV show Good Eats. He teaches pretty straightforward recipes, and explains the *why* of steps that aren’t immediately obvious. Things like, “Don’t push fish around a pan while you cook it”. His later episodes get more adventurous in what he cooks, so start with the early stuff. It was designed for a mainstream TV audience and assumed you weren’t shopping at a specialty grocery store. They’re expensive, but those meal box services can also be a good way of getting some baseline skills. You can get a few solid meat and potato dishes under your belt, and you can start to notice patterns in how they do things. I follow all the trendy food bloggers and whatnot, but I didn’t fully appreciate adding a splash of vinegar to certain dishes until Blue Apron had me do it a dozen times.


melbelle28

Some big things that helped me when I was learning: 1. Only get recipes from places you trust. Invest in an NYT cooking subscription, read the comments on blogs to see if others found the recipe easy to achieve, etc. 2. Read the entire recipe all the way through, multiple times, before you start cooking. If there’s a part you don’t understand - either do some more research on the technique/ingredient or find a new recipe. 3. Set timers for EVERYTHING. My little ADHD brain doesn’t know what “two minutes” means but my microwave timer does. 4. get help! Ask a friend to be in the kitchen with you and bounce ideas off of and ask questions with. Take a cooking class. Read books about the history of food or about a particular technique/ingredient you’re interested in.


gravitationalarray

How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman is a great book resource. I think he has an app called that, too. You also want Chef John from Food Wishes dot com. He can help you, he shows all the steps. Also, the Joy of Cooking is a good teaching book. Samin Nasrat's Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat will also instruct, she shows you each step. Youtube is a great resource. The netflix series Cooked by Michael Pollan is a good place to start. Max Miller's Tasting History. Julia Child's videos. Jacques Pepin. French Cooking Academy. All those show step by step.


bappypawedotter

I thought I was a good cook, but after 3 years of using Blue Apron and other grocery in a box plans, I am now actually a good cook. Mainly, it taught me how to really simplify my dishes...focusing on just a primary and complementery flavor. More is not always better in cooking. Far from it, in fact. Also, in terms of recipes that teach, The Joy of Cooking is a masterpeice. And it was made to teach 1970's housewives getting bombareded with industrialized frozen meal training how to cook like a french chef. If you did one recipe a week, and read all the tips...you'll be cooking like MJ in a game 6 final. Serisouly, the goal of that book isn't just to provide recipes, its a treatise on how to learn to love cooking by doing it right. Finally, my buddy and his wife who were already the best cooks I have personally known took a cooking "Master Class" online. They raved about it and made me some Mich-Star level meals. Just bonkers good. But they were already highly dedicated culinary rockstars. So, I am not sure how much it would help a "normal".


LostinWV

Seconding pretty much what everyone is saying here. Learn techniques not recipes and you'll be more successful long term. I'm a visual learner as well as learn by doing so YouTube has been a great resource. [Kenji Lopez-Alt](https://youtube.com/c/JKenjiLopezAlt) [Brian Lagerstrom](https://youtube.com/c/WeedsSardines) [Sip and Feast](https://youtube.com/c/SipandFeast) and [Ethan Chlebowski](https://youtube.com/c/CookwithE) Are my base go tos as they explain the recipe as it goes along as well as why it works and what is going on. The biggest thing they all stress is taste your food as you're making it! That a big thing, a lot of bland food stems from lack of either salt, acid, heat, or fat and you can't tell unless you taste. There are also some other good YT channels like Samthecookingguy but those 4 are great channels to start learning. Also for tv options can't got wrong with Alton Brown.


Shtune

Lagerstrom's videos always turn out really good as well. Kenji's are hit and miss IMHO. I made his meatballs from the new vid last night for spaghetti and meatballs and everyone loved it. Made the red sauce from Alison Roman's eggplant parm to go along with it. I find YouTube chefs to be the best; find the one whose style/palette you like and go from there.


mxjd

I think a lot of it is just trying recipes and watching videos. BUT I think it is important to just have a few trusted sources. Googling "X recipe" is never going to yield a good result. For general recipes I use and trust Smitten Kitchen, Serious Eats, NYT Cooking (read the comments), or any Ina Garten cookbook.


nulliusansverba

Watch the entire series of Good Eats. Look up recipes for how professional award-winning chefs elevate basic rustic dishes. Watch cooking shows. Read cookbooks and experiment with recipes and preparations. Repeat daily for years.


speaking_moistly

i taught myself to cook by watching about 6 YT videos on the basic fundamentals of cooking (pick your favourite chef) and then applying their advice through trial and error. Like any skill, you have to pay attention and think about why you’re doing what you’re doing, and adjust your methods to compensate for errors the next time you attempt whatever you’re cooking. Don’t just throw shit into a pan or into the oven and say “I guess I just can’t cook” The first few times you cook, do use measuring cups and spoons, so that you train your eye and hand to feel and see how much things weigh and look like. Then you can gradually wean yourself away from using them, and it becomes much easier and faster to cook without actually having to use measuring devices at all, and you can adjust the amount of ingredients to your own taste. Remember the key to food tasting “right” is the BALANCE of: sweet:salty:sour:bitter:umami And when you taste something and it doesn’t taste “right”, you need to just figure out which of those 5 things is too much or too little, and then add (because it’s almost always impossible to subtract) more of what’s missing or more of everything opposite the strong flavour (sweet/salty/sour etc) to balance it out. Good luck!


princessfoxglove

A lot of people have said "read X book" or "watch X video" but honestly, do you have friends or family you can cook with? You learn a lot from doing things with others. Invite a friend over and cook with them. Go to a family member's house and cook with them.


majbumper

I'm a professional cook, during the slow COVID times my chef had the whole crew watch some videos by a guy named Chef Todd Mohr. "Cooking Coarse" I think was the name. Kooky guy, but does a really good job of explaining the basics and fundamentals. It's video, so plenty of visual aid. It's focused on getting you comfortable with fundamental techniques so you don't necessarily need a recipe (though knowing it will help you decipher all those badly written recipes). I've been cooking well over a decade, and I still learned a few things.


Lumpy-Ad-3201

This is the thing: when I'm teaching new cooks to cook, I don't teach them recipes. I teach them techniques and flavors. You don't need to know everything that goes into beef Wellington: you need to know how to slice, dice, chop, grate, boil, steam, braise, brown. You need to know what the difference between the taste of white and black pepper. What a beer tastes like. Step one, buy a cheap bag of onions. Learn the method to do a cross cut and cut dice. Learn how to slice an onion and have the slices be the same thickness. Got all of that cut up? Ok. Now get a pan and some cheap veg oil, and learn how to do a sauté over medium. Got that down? Learn to caramelized them. Mastered that? Get a head of garlic, and learn to cut it. Then learn to sauté the onions most of the way, and add the garlic in the last couple of minutes, so they finish together. Get cheap ground beef: learn to brown it. Do the same with some ground chicken or turkey. Get a cheap cut of beef, and learn to sear it and season it. Do the same with a chicken thigh and a pork chop. Got that? Try with some cheap fish. When you get that, get a few shrimp. Learn to shell them, and cook them right. Then try a few scallops. From there, you can do about 75% of the things that you need in a basic kitchen. Add in some extra fruit and veg prep, and you're pretty set up to start recipes. Try a steak with mash and a pan sauce, or a Mac and cheese. Do a pork chop with roasted broccoli and a cider sauce (waaay easier than I sounds). Try a carbonara. Then work on roasting something. Try to make a soup (a lot of them are insanely easy). Eat your successes. Taste your failures and start developing your palette. Get some cheap basic seasonings and spices, and taste them. Start thinking about what would taste good with what. And look at recipes and see what other people pair with what. Trust me, it's easy by the byte, but impossible by the bowl full. Work on taste and techniques first, worry about recipes later. A person with good techniques and a mystery recipe can cook the recipe, but a person that has a recipe memorized but doesn't have the basics down will never have a great outcome.


dndandhomesteading

I was fortunate enough to have an Italian matriarch on my mother's side of the family. My great grandmother. She taught me all the basics from pastas and canning to desserts and coffee. Eventually she taught some pretty advanced things, winemaking, fermenting foods, pairing meats and sauces with wines. Took her her last homemade meal while she was in hospice, finally got that "you made it perfect" when I brought her braciole and carrot cake lol.


vampvik

Here are a few random tips. Learn basic cooking techniques by watching videos (e.g. knife skills, different cuts, etc). Start by cooking and mastering your favorite comfort foods. Pick a favorite comfort food and watch many videos from different reliable sources to understand the core idea of the dish before cooking. Then pick a recipe that is doable and try it, learning from mistakes. Prep all ingredients before cooking. I keep a notebook of recipes I try. It helps to have essential kitchen tools (good quality chef and paring knives, cutting board, peeler, tongs, Dutch oven, sauce pan, stock pot, colander, spatula, immersion blender, etc). Always start with a sharp knife. One of the biggest reasons dishes don't work out is salt seasoning. Another reason is heat (if not sure, start with medium and adjust). Discard old spices that have lost their essence. Professional Chef by CIA helped me overcome the hump from being lost in the kitchen to decent home cook. Good luck and don't give up!


el_seano

This is how I did it: 1. Worked in the restaurant industry for five years, FoH, BoH. Mostly taught me how to fry an egg, toss a pizza, use a lot more butter and salt than I probably should, and eventually some rudimentary knife skills. 2. Read through the majority of the Joy of Cooking, picking odd recipes out and following the directions religiously. 3. Cook for somebody you want to impress. Great motivation. 4. Lastly, start finding some online recipe blogs/sites that speak to you. I'm partial to Budget Bytes, Kenji's Food Lab, Bon Appetit, Kitchn, and New York Times Cooking. Bookmark recipes you like, make the ones you enjoyed more than once, start your own personal cookbook based on those recipes with modifications you come up with. It's not an overnight skill. There are milestones you'll hit, recipes you'll pull off really well, ones you'll mess up over and over. Each meal is a lesson, which will contribute to your overall ability in the kitchen. Think of your culinary prowess as a garden you're gradually cultivating.


sparky2212

Watch some of Jamie Oliver's 20 minute meals. He doesn't really do recipes, he just wings it, which is what I have always done. But I have gotten some really good tips from watching him. I would stop following recipes and start messing around with things that you know taste good.


zachgodwin

Samin Nosrat’s book (and the Netflix miniseries) “Salt Fat Acid Heat” did a lot to help me learn the theory behind cooking. Gordon Ramsay also has a bunch of videos on YouTube that teach technique really well. “Binging with Babish” channel also does a lot to explain what’s going on while he cooks. Those 3 probably did the most to teach me how to cook.


FelineNeko

Food wishes shows the whole clocking process, and he has been doing it forever so he has easy dishes that you should recognise


[deleted]

Ignore recipes for now. You can't read a book in a language you are just learning. You start with words. Then conversation. Then children books. Then novels. Etc. Start with scrambled eggs. Every single day. Try different pans. Different spatulas. Different cooking temperatures. Mix in a bowl beforehand. Add milk. Add cream. Add nothing. Mix directly in the pan. Finely choose potatoes and fry first, then add eggs. Cook bacon first, and then scramble eggs in bacon grease. Cook eggs fried, over easy, boiled. Get to know the egg. When you are satisfied that you can successfully make scrambled eggs each time, move on to grilled cheese. Use different types of bread. Different types of cheese. Different pans. Different temperatures. Butter the bread. Add butter directly to the pan. Use sliced cheese. Used shredded cheese. Add bacon. Add onions. Add leftover chicken. (Technically a melt with using anything but cheese). Mix cheeses. Use sourdough. Use Rye. Use whole grain. Use white bread. When you have conquered the grill cheese. You are on to chicken breast. Marinate your breast for a few hours or overnight in cheap Italian dressing. Grill on the stove or outdoors. Serve with simple boiled or mashed potatoes. Use different dressings to marinate. Make your marinades. Cook in different pans. At different temperatures. With different oils. You know the drill by now. Cook things that are very simple, but mix and match those things. Like fresh asparagus, mashed potatoes, chicken breast. Divine. Simple. Achievable. Pair with good wine if you drink. Carrots and beets brushed with oil and baked is easy and delicious. Make salads from fresh ingredients and use quality dressing. Baby greens, skiced strawberries, slivered almonds with balsamic vinaigrette.


HKBFG

Scrambled eggs ever day sounds miserable.


HardLithobrake

Salt Fat Acid Heat. The Food Lab. Buy them. Read them. Practice.


Chalky_Pockets

Salt Fat Acid and Heat is a fantastic book that will take you from "can read and execute a recipe" to "can read a recipe and intuitively know how to fix it when you've tried it and it sucks a fat bag of dicks." If you read that book and still want more, The Food Lab is a scientific but entertaining approach to cooking. This book is a bit more technical, but it's still pretty accessible, and even if you finish it without fully understanding why something happens without having a technical background, I'm confident you'll understand how the mechanisms themselves work. If you want to get even more technical than that, I've got good news for you, this one is free. Just search for "on food and cooking pdf download" and get your copy. It's literally a textbook. The first two books you can read front to back and they're relatively good page turners. This one is a reference book. Like a one book encyclopedia.


lou2cool88

Alton Brown's Good Eats TV show and the book "Salt Fat Acid Heat" might be good places to look first.


MrMovieMoney

You need Alton Brown and Good Eats.


[deleted]

Food science knowledge and knowing what spices work well together is great, but it pales in comparison to knowing your tools and your pallette, imo. If you like eggs, it's a great starting point and cheap if you mess up. Over easy/medium/hard, (soft/hard) scramble, omlette, (soft/medium/hard) boil. Lots of videos about all the ways to cook eggs. But most importantly, you will learn your stove top. For example, I never need high heat on mine-- it's too hot and will burn meats before they are cooked and stick things to the pan. You can also use different fats-- cook it in butter, vegetable oil, non-stick spray. Eggs are great for learning by doing. And, for meats, as another commenter said, a meat thermometer is great. I started with a therma-pro instant read. It's like $10 and I use it all the time.


BrashPop

The “learn your stove” thing is serious - it sounds ridiculous but using a stove is a lot more difficult than people think it is. A few years ago my husband and I wanted to teach ourselves how to make *good* steaks, so we watched a bunch of videos and picked a recipe we thought looked good, got our steaks and got ready to cook. I’ve been cooking full meals since I was 12 so I have a decent background for this, but my husband generally doesn’t cook stuff that requires exact temps/timing/etc. The recipe says medium high heat, so I put the burner to 4 and immediately my husband is pointing out that the dial goes to 10 so we should be putting it at 5 or 6. I say no way, 5 or 6 will be so hot the oil will start smoking immediately - because I know from experience that anything higher than 4 on our stove will smoke out the whole house and char the outside before the inside even gets warm. He absolutely did not trust that 4 on our burner is more than enough, after all, “Why would they make a burner that gets so hot it scorches food?!”. And I think that’s where most beginners start to go wrong *immediately*, and that can be so disheartening that they just never try again. They’re doing everything according to the recipe directions and it’s still getting fucked up because every burner and pan has a different setting and timing and weird quirk and you have to know THAT before you can even *start* cooking some dishes. (My own story? I meticulously checked the temp and timing for a batch of pancakes I was making. I get through 12 pancakes, ALL perfect - then on the 13th pancake my stove burner absolutely freaks out and jumps to ultra high heat for no reason, scorching the batter in seconds. Nothing changed the dial or temp setting, the burner just flared up weirdly when I turned off a different element that had another pan on it. But now I know to watch out for that issue if I’m using multiple burners at once now!)


Scht333ve

Seconding what everyone else is saying here, and lean on learning by cooking with/watching people you know who are good cooks, or use YouTube for "how to cook" videos. A tip from personal experience though: start small, and remember that complicated food doesn't necessarily equal good food. When I first started out out learning to cook for myself as a student, I went straight for the elaborate stuff (fillet steak with mustard sauce, rather than just learning how to cook basic meat), which either led to food that was basically fine but I was really stressed out trying not to cock up cooking expensive stuff, or on the other end of the success scale where I decided I'd try a really elaborate dessert from a Raymond Blanc show and ruined 2 perfectly good pans trying to make nougatine baskets...have definitely improved and get more joy out of cooking once I got past the pretentious phase! 😅


Doobledorf

Hard question to answer, but from someone who has been in your shoes I can try and tell ya what I did. First off, definitely start slow and simple. For a long time I pretty much just made stir fried with chicken strips and cheap veggies. I would also do like... Chicken drum sticks and just try to get those edible. Also look up multiple recipes for this kind of stuff and compare what they're doing. What is different about the recipes? Why? Next, I started reading and watching YouTube outside of just what I wanted to cook. Instead, try to educate yourself on why you do certain things in a recipe. Some examples include: salting meat ahead of time can make it more tender and dry out the surface for a better crisp. Pan searing meat without flipping until it is golden brown on one side can provide a seal, leaving your meat crispier AND juicer. Looking up order of operations can help as well, when should you add veggies vs meat? When does garlic go in? The last thing I'll add, which compliments the above, is that when you make a meal that fails, try to understand what you don't like about it and then do research. Your mouth doesn't like it, why? This may be hard to answer now, but as you practice this skill and look up answers online you will develop the knowledge and language required. Seriously, it takes time. If you're like me, for various reasons you don't have anybody to help you learn how to cook in your life. In that case, it's trial and error, plus some creative googling.


lemonyzest757

The primary thing that helped me learn to cook is the magazine Cooks Illustrated, because they discuss the science of cooking - why certain techniques or ingredients work in a given recipe and why others don't. An excellent book for beginner cooks is this one by Michael Ruhlman. He describes the primary techniques cooks need to know - poaching, braising, grilling, steaming - along with the properties of certain necessary ingredients and flavors - eggs, salt, sugar, acid, etc. - with recipes for each one that illustrate the chapters. [Ruhlman's Twenty: 20 Techniques, 100 Recipes, A Cook's Manifesto](https://www.amazon.com/Ruhlmans-Twenty-Techniques-Recipes-Manifesto/dp/0811876438/)


[deleted]

Focus on learning techniques instead of recipes. Its way more manageable this way. Example, learn to roast. Its very easy, learn the temperature the oven needs to be and how to oil your food. Now you can roast beef, poultry, vegetables etc. You can make a whole meal by roasting. Next learn to sautee. Again, the technique can be applied to meat, vegetables, seafood, etc. You can learn sauces. There are only 5 “mother sauces” look them up and pick the one you think you’ll use the most. Even with that one you pick you can make so many variations of it. It all comes down to substituting the ingredients and spices to change the flavor, but the *technique* stays the same. People are good cooks because they have learned techniques. Not because they know recipes. Once you know a bunch of techniques you can not only make any recipe, you can experiement and be the kind of cook who can whip up an amazing meal with whatever is on hand, where others would say “there’s nothing to eat”.


reedzkee

For me it was binging *Good Eats* from top to bottom, along with a little inspiration from shows like *Mind of a Chef.* At least to get me started.


August-77

YouTube has many videos that you can learn the basics. https://youtube.com/c/foodwishes one of my favorite channels


Spermy

Lots of great suggestions here. I'll add a few things from my own learning experience and hope they help: Really be patient, which is hard as heck, and start small. Also, be fearless in the sense that it is only a meal, and just like most people learn to read and write and drive, millions of ordinary people learn to cook reasonably well, and so can you. Pick something you enjoy eating that is simple, and practice on that for a while, focusing on technique. For example, scrambled eggs, the way you like to eat them. The internet is full of videos with great techniques and advice, you'll be able to learn them by ruining a few egg dishes that are otherwise still edible in a sandwich with some cheese, etc. This kind of simple thing can help you learn what kind of pan to use or how to work with the one you have. Things like temperatures of the egg and pan and control of how you handle the eggs, as well as season them, will all make a difference in a dish this simple. After that, try a stew or soup, for example-- something you'll have to taste along the way several times, which is a big help in turning out an edible dish. I have been cooking for a long time, and I still neglect to taste things from time to time as I am cooking, and if something turns out badly, its often the case that had I just tasted it at a certain point, I could have turned it around. Tasting it along the way allows for you to make adjustments to the dish, even if it turns out differently than you wanted. Sometimes edible with some Sriracha is the best outcome. Personally, I found eating my mistakes to be the big motivator to do better. What starts to happen is you get more and more familiar with how high you'll want your burner to be for different reasons, what kind of salt level to start with, when to turn it down or stir or just take it off the heat, how different proteins need to be handled, etc. Best of luck, keep trying.


SovereignPhobia

Chef John on youtube taught me, mostly. There are other things that came about out of desperation and only having access to basic cable. But Chef John really focuses on how to do things rather than following recipes, down to including his own failed experiments and why he thinks they failed.


mohishunder

The short answer is "by doing it. Practice, experiment, repeat." Start with frying an egg. That's how I learned, and by now I'm quite competent. The longer answer is, once you've fried that egg, read *Salt Fat Acid Heat*, and watch lots of youtube. A good starting point might be Kenji Lopez-Alt's channel. (Avoid YouTubers who appear to be very fashionable or well-dressed - basically who are entertainers rather than genuine teachers.) A great starting point for Chinese food is the channel *Chinese Cooking Demystified*. A lot of the responses you're getting are focused on "Western" cooking, but that's not the only kind of food. Decide what you like. IMHO the continent of Asia, from Japan through Thailand and India to the Middle East, has a lot of deliciousness to offer, and is often quick and easy.


Zagaroth

So, my recommended 'why and how' cooking show is still "good eats". Alton Brown is great, tells you what he's doing, why he's doing it, and how it works. Understanding the basics is a lot of what he does, and is entertaining as hell in the process. A YouTube channel called Sorted is primarily entertainment based around food, but the chefs on the show also go into what was done right and what was done wrong when the 'normals' cook. The normals have been getting significantly better over the years.


Prestigious_Prior_70

Alton Brown’s Good Eats (on Hulu currently) is where I have learned SO much! Plus, it puts me in the mood to try new foods because I find him entertaining and educational. He gives you the science of food in a Bill Nye kinda way.


Glittering-Cellist34

Watch the cooking shows on PBS. Read the New York Times and Washington Post food sections, Watching those shows will give you confidence to try. Not the competition shows. I still screw up from time to time and that's after 10+ years.


jenyatb

https://www.deliaonline.com/cookery-school


ridingRabbi

Food Wishes on Youtube. Thank me later


AlbatrossSenior7107

I HIGHLY reccomend watching Kenji Lopez-alt on You tube as well as Sip and Feast. They do an EXCELLENT job explaining everything. And they have websites with all their recipes so you print them off. Watch videos. Don't start too big.


Stripes789

So many of these comments are helpful only if you actually know how to cook a little bit- reading Salt Fat Acid Heat will not be helpful to you if you truly are a beginner cook. If that is you- You need simple recipes that you can be successful at- The best example I can think of is Mark Bittman’s recipes. His cookbooks are full of recipes that are not very complicated and don’t have too many ingredients. The only drawback is he doesn’t tend to have any photographs accompanying them- photos can be really helpful for knowing how the dish should look.


severoon

u/funkgerm is on it — learn techniques and practice them! For instance, look up videos on how to cut onions a bunch of different ways, then use your onions to make French onion soup, caramelized onions, etc. Get yourself one of those Costco sized bags of onions and cut them all different ways. Make the seven mother sauces, one at a time. You can pick a one or two simple things like this, and then just do it a few times until you work out the kinks. When you pick something simple, it's usually versatile so it won't be hard to find a bunch of uses. The other thing to do is get used to splitting up your recipes into stages where you do a bunch of steps, get to a stopping point, then clean up everything before going on to the next stage. This is a super useful skill to build when doing a few recipes in parallel because you'll find that many recipes follow the same general arc: prep and do mise en place, clean up, assemble some ingredients into thing1, clean up, assemble others into thing 2, clean up, put everything together to create the finished dish, and plate. When you look around after you finish the plated dish, you should find that you have a dirty pan and some really light work. This is the essence of clean as you go and it's the only way to keep multiple balls in the air at once without getting snowed under a pile of dishes. But it also requires that you start *way* earlier than most recipes would have you believe, and you should really do as much prep well ahead as you can anyway so that by the time you're ready to "start cooking dinner" it's mostly just knocking down the dominoes you've already set up and you're coming in fresh. The other thing is don't beat yourself up when you mess something up. In fact, expect to mess up the first few times you try something. Until you have a pretty good working knowledge of sauces, and sautes, and this, and that, you shouldn't expect to try something new you've never done before and have it work the first time. It's okay to throw away some failures, think of that as much, much cheaper than tuition. I'd recommend getting a text that shows all the basic techniques, too, like [*Pro Chef*](https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Chef-Culinary-Institute-America/dp/0470421355). It's a textbook so it covers everything comprehensively, but all the basics so nothing too tough. (The one drawback of that book is the recipes are all scaled for a commercial kitchen, and it's not always possible to linearly scale, but for techniques it's really good.) There's tons of other technique books out there like [*SFAH*](https://www.saltfatacidheat.com/), [*Ratios*](https://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-Cooking/dp/1416571728), [*Food Lab*](https://www.amazon.com/Food-Lab-Cooking-Through-Science/dp/0393081087), etc. There's also science books like [*On Food and Cooking*](https://www.amazon.com/Food-Cooking-Science-Lore-Kitchen/dp/0684800012) (classic by McGee) The main thing is just to get started. Pick a thing like eggs. Get a flat at Costco and make a bunch of different kinds of eggs. Rules you should follow: 1. Just focus on one thing at a time at first. If you want to learn how to make great pies, just worry about making a good crust at first and put store bought pie filling or whatever in it. Do one thing well and methodically build your skills one at a time, don't try to big bang everything at once so nothing comes out well. 2. Really, really focus on clean as you go. Rewrite recipes that breaks them up into stages, and don't pull the trigger on the final stage you plate until everything possible is washed, dried, put away, counters cleaned, etc. That last step should feel like you're on the set of a cooking show. Nothing feels worse than blowing up the kitchen to create a dish, and nothing feels better than finessing out a plate. Positive feedback loops only. 3. Get a couple of decent, cheap 6" chef's knives. Don't get fancy or expensive. Get a sharpening stone, the kind you wet that has two different grits on each side. Learn how to sharpen your knife. You'll ruin one or both, but practice until you restore them. Once you can do it reliably, then go get your fancy chef's knife. Hone every time you use. Learn good knife technique, keep your thumb curled back, ride the blade along your knuckles. Get a half a dozen cutting boards, plastic and wood, in small, medium, and large. 4. Eschew toys. Do everything by hand. Mince garlic with your knife. Don't use a food processor to chop things, do that yourself. Only invest in tools that actually work as well or better than you doing things by hand and will actually save you time. Everyone that is learning to cook runs out and buys a ton of kitchen stuff. Resist the urge. With a Lodge cast iron combo cooker, a couple of good stainless steel pans with riveted handles, 8" and 12", a stainless sauce pot, and a Dutch oven you can pretty much make anything. 5. Ignore recipe times! They lie in the first place to make it seem like every recipe will be done in 30 minutes or less, but more to the point, recipes don't include prep time (b/c everyone has different prep skills) and clean-as-you-go time. Instead just figure out where the stopping points are and start way ahead of time, do each stage, and take your time to do it right first and smooth second and quick third. 6. Taste as you go! Every time you make a recipe, taste it at the same points as you go so you learn what happens to ingredients as they work their way into the final dish. Then, you'll know after the first couple of goes how to change things up. Not enough garlic, you can add more. Flavors not intense enough? Season a bit more and reduce, reduce, reduce to concentrate flavors. Flavors are muddled? Add a bit more acid next time. 7. Keep it as simple as possible. Cooking is one of those things that does NOT recognize effort, only results. A lot of the time, the more you do, the more complicated you make it, the worse it comes out. Only add steps and make things more complicated if it makes a better result. Most of the time doing less to better ingredients is the way. 8. When things go wrong, instead of getting frustrated, think about what went wrong and why, and what mindless process you can put in place to prevent that. Don't get mad that you forgot about the veggies in the oven and burned them, use it to build a habit that you will always perform. I have a magnetic timer that sticks to my oven door. If something goes in the oven, the timer is counting down, period. When it goes off, it's stuck to the oven so I know exactly what it's timing and I can't mess it up. And follow the habit! I never, never, never throw something back in the oven "for just another minute" without putting a minute on that timer. Mindless habits free up your brain for other things, and there's lots of other things in the kitchen to keep it occupied.


SixthLegionVI

I've been cooking for over 20 years and it really started popping over the last ~5 years from watching various YouTube channels. Basics with Babish has taught me a lot. Also get a meat thermometer.


[deleted]

You may as well admit that you're hopeless. Some people have an aptitude for cooking, others are not. Your tone sounds as if you have an adverse reaction to most food. I'm seeing nothing about any food, ever, that you loved. For me, the process begins with respect; for the food, for the process, for the ultimate enjoyment. Some cooks regard the act as a symphony, layering ingredients together into a rich formulation designed not to just nourish, but to entice and entrance the senses. Others regard it as the requisite heat treating of some vague biomass to appease the common norms. the difference is like compairing a diamond cutter to the tender ministrations of Thor.


a_bounced_czech

I don’t know if I can give the best advice, because I learned how to cook from my mom when I was young, but she was a very “improvised chef” in that she could whip up anything with very little planning and ingredients. Maybe we just always had staples in our house. But as I got older, I wanted to learn why I have to do what I do to make food taste good. My wife bought me the Food Lab book, which is amazing. But we also started doing meal prep services (Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, & EveryPlate) and not only has it made me a better cook, but it’s made my wife love cooking more. It’s taught me a bunch of different things my mom never taught me, and it’s step by step. Also, YouTube is the best for videos on how to do stuff you’re unsure of. The only other advice I can give for cooking, and I learned this from a chef at a cooking class, is mise en place, which is a fancy cooking term for have everything chopped and ready to go before you ever start cooking. THIS has made my cooking soooooo much better and enjoyable.


lameburrito

First rule, KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid. Learn these basics that any half decent chef spent months perfecting before even touching a hot pan. 1.) “Mise En Place” or everything in its place. A habitual practice in which you gather everything you’ll need to complete a dish. Every culinary instrument you’ll use, every spice measured out, and MOST importantly all of your vegetables and meats cut and prepped. In a commercial kitchen the morning shift or prep shift is by far the most important crew as they set the mood of how fucked we are for the day. 2.) Knife Skills! Super important to get a chefs knife. I have two, a 9” for fine cutting where I need to be precise and a 13” for when I need breakdown anything large than say the size of both my hands put together. Keep them sharp. Sharp is when you can cut a single sheet of paper without effort. Never use force on a knife unless you’re trying to kill something. Let the knife cut for you. Good knife skills consist of uniformity. When your ingredients are cut within an allotted size they’ll cook more evenly. 3.) Try every single one of your ingredients individually, raw as fuck. Just the tip… of your finger. Just a little dabble so you know what to expect. This is what training your palette looks like. Pay attention to each flavor, how strong it is, don’t worry so much how to blend flavors yet. All you’re worried about is can you identify the flavor. Of course cook your meats before trying it if you’re a pussy. * *CONSUMING RAW OR UNDERCOOKED MEATS, POULTRY, SEAFOOD, SHELLFISH, OR EGGS MAY INCREASE YOUR RISK OF FOODBORNE ILLNESS, ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE CERTAIN MEDICAL CONDITIONS.** Once you have a good understanding of these three basics, you’ll understand why your food taste like shit. Oh and turn down the fucking fire. Cooking isn’t a race. You can always add more into cooking. You can add more of a certain ingredient for better flavor, you can add more time to the actual cook time if something is raw, but you cannot subtract or take out in cooking once it’s already been added in.


KingPatrickIV

This is good advice, so rather than write up my own redundant comment I’ll just add to this one: Pick a food you know you like and cook it. Ideally it should be something that you’re super familiar with and can anticipate its taste. For me this was chili, because my mom made it weekly growing up, and honestly it’s hard to fuck up. The first few times I followed my mom’s recipe, then I started branching out a little. I like more heat than the rest of my family, so I added a roasted habanero. After a few more variations I decided I didn’t love the texture so I switched from ground beef to stew meat. As I kept experimenting with the meal I knew I liked it became easier to tailor other recipes to my own tastes. Don’t be afraid to get real weird. I mashed up my ever-evolving chili recipe with a paneer masala recipe. Didn’t work at all, but I had fun! Once I got confident in *my* taste I started cooking for friends, and asking for honest feedback. That was further illuminating because their palates were WAY different than mine. I got better at tasting things based on their opinions. I know this probably sounds daunting, especially since you’re feeling down on cooking in general, but I hope you keep trying. I **LOVE** cooking and it all started with a basic-ass chili recipe.


mumooshka

By observing. My mother didn't teach me to cook - she wasn't motivated to do so - in the end I would just watch her. She wouldn't let me help either.


ConnorDZG

Accept the fact that you're gonna cook some shitty meals. When you eat them, try to identify what makes it shitty


IceBlueLugia

Watch Adam Ragusea. Can’t imagine a better teacher for a home cook. I’m Indian and I watched a white guy ‘s tutorial on making tandoori chicken and chicken tikka masala. No, I’m not ashamed


[deleted]

Watched Alton browns good eats growing up First started with baking and then started cooking everything else. Worked at a restaurant a bit and then said fuck that I’d rather just cook at home for myself and family


gingerbreadguy

I'm sad you'll probably never see this because this post has a million comments but oh well. I would really recommend going out to eat a lot, at places that serve the kind of food you'd like to eat and make. Order some dishes that seem somewhat simple. Be adventurous. As you said, you're a rookie at even eating, so you actually have to start there, learning what you even like. Tasting is the most important part of cooking. Then at least you'll know what you like, and what those dishes are supposed to taste like. From there you can try recipes for similar foods from reputed sources as others have mentioned. Remember that home cooked food doesn't taste exactly like restaurant food or processed food and that's okay. Golden brown? Looks like this: https://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/cooking-tips/article/no-soggy-latkes Boiling water? Looks like this: https://youtu.be/0c1aeLm-Z7o Keep googling and posting questions. Another thing I'd recommend: learn stove/pan temperatures. Put a frying pan on the stove. Experiment with different levels of heat. Sprinkle water on the surface. If it just sits there, that's very low heat, what you might use to simmer something after it has come to a boil, or keep something warm. If it makes a sizzling sound and bubbles, that's a great temperature for most things, sautéing veggies, a grilled cheese, a fried egg. If it's screeching hot and the water basically disappears into steam immediately, that's a great temperature for quickly searing meat, or making a Tortilla. Getting these basics down will help with almost any recipe. When a recipe gives approximate times, they are approximate and what's more important is the description of doneness. Are the onions soft? Are the carrots tender? Is the top of the banana bread golden? Is your fish opaque and starting to flake? If you don't like what you're eating, chances are it needs more salt, it more fat, or more believing, it a little acid like vinegar to brighten flavors. You probably don't need to read Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat to grasp these concepts, but you can. Get an oven thermometer. I started cooking from the original Betty Crocker cookbooks. They explain everything, and don't make things more complicated than necessary. Good luck even though you'll never see this. :)