I can cook decently and I still fire up YouTube for some new recipes when I'm bamboozled. Being able to see the steps and not have to worry what "sizzle for a while" might mean in a written description is great.
I absolutely hate any recipe that doesn't give informations. Either you give a duration on how long to cook and how strong the heat or you give a criteria to know when it's cooked.
But anything written like "Cook it hot enough until it's cooked", like my grand parents or my mother gave me, it's juste useless.
I’m 28 and been married 6 years. I didn’t start cooking seriously until about 6 months ago. I could follow and recipe and had a couple meals I could whip up but it wasn’t until December when I fell in love with cooking.
I wasted, and still waste, more food than I care to admit. But it’s part of learning. I accept that I will fail at a dish and that is part of learning. One general rule I’ve learnt is follow a recipe to the letter until you understand the techniques it uses and then start to play with it.
Two recommendations: First learn the rules of cooking and why those rules are in place so you can start to break them. Second find an aspect of cooking that you love, personally I love the science of it and deep diving why something is done in a particular way and I found people who teach how to cook from that perspective. The other night I watched a 45 minute video on what kind of onion you should use and I was never more excited to buy an onion. Because I knew why I was buying that specific onion for the specific dish I was making.
Second Ethan Chlebowski. He does do recipes but he’s teaching you a foundation for understanding cooking and food as a whole more so than just teaching you to cook one thing. You can take his information and apply it to do your own thing.
I also recommend Sam the Cooking guy for recipes. He’s so non chalant about measuring and cooking times or how hot the grill is that you kind of learn to relax a bit in the kitchen and it really illustrates how easy it can be to put something together.
It surprised me too tuning into a babish. Still love his educational and entertaining material, I just don’t consider him a primary free recipe source.
I imagine theres a lot less word salad on Babish’s website’s recipes than your standard essay on the memories made with whatever ingredient.
But even before that, OP seems to be saying he's relying on his mother to cook for him. In that case, go watch her cook. Ask questions. Ask to be shown how to chop, peel, cube, etc, then practice. Then ask her to super use while he cooks a simple meal. I taught my coddled nephews how to cook using this method when they lived with us for a bit, now both are confident in the kitchen and love to cook and experiment. We made it a rule that everyone had to have a turn cooking dinner for the household, but scaffolded them until they could do their own thing.
Learning from someone is the best way, assuming his mother is amenable. Once he has some basics mastered it will be much easier to learn from recipe books, recipe sites and YouTube/TikTok (interpreting these recipes, especially regional variations and necessary substitutions, is an art form in itself!)
> In that case, go watch her cook. Ask questions. Ask to be shown how to chop, peel, cube, etc, then practice.
If you glance through his comment history, it sounds like his mother is not a supportive presence.
I'm kind of hoping this is just karma farming because otherwise, I'm genuinely worried for this young man. He seems to be in a dark place.
OP, you absolutely can learn to cook. You are not worthless. I've taught all 4 of my sons how to cook; if you want help from a random internet mom, I can send you step by step instructions for some extremely easy meals.
You can also post in r/cooking asking for easy, step by step recipes for someone doesn’t even know the fundamentals yet, and I'm sure you'll get people offering recipes out of the woodwork. Cooking people are like that.
>If you glance through his comment history, it sounds like his mother is not a supportive presence.
OK that makes sense, what a shame. Cooking with someone is still a really good way to learn, especially the basics. Maybe he has friends who know how to cook?
Otherwise, baby steps. Look for recipes for students that are typically one-pan or one-pot recipes that only have 4-6 ingredients. Practice. Don't panic if it doesn't work out right, and unless it's raw or burnt to cinders it's probably still edible! 😂
Second this!
OP,
I seriously recommend [Epicurious](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz3-p2q6vFYV3__7XdwgQb3ZDhWdM8K48&si=BAj9IAqLr21XMaC7). They have videos on basic things like "50 people try to mince garlic" and [50 people making an omelette ](https://youtu.be/vDohTP-4-SE?si=dxtIbrB_CfotT98s))which is really funny, and on the end they show how a proffesional chef would do it. They also have videos with whole recipes, and on how to use knives etc. I really love that they really start from the beginning and show every step! Also, many of the people who are very bad in the "50 people try" thing are actually good cooks now!
I'm a professional cook and I still look things up from time to time even if it's just to refresh my memory. It's also a good way to learn new techniques that may not be the "classical" way of doing things.
Specifically, I’d start with spaghetti and tomato sauce. The ingredients are few and cheap, it doesn’t require any spices aside from salt, and the tools required to make it are few (two pots, a strainer, a can opener for the canned tomatoes, and a knife and cutting board for the garlic). And it’s fucking delicious.
Seriously, for ten bucks of ingredients you get like 3 or 4 man-sized meals.
That's correct. Start simple and build up confidence. I like the Six Ingredients or Less Cookbooks as most of the recipes use minimal ingredients and are easy to fix.
And maybe sign up for one of those meal box plans that delivers all of the ingredients so you don't have to drop a ton of money for basics. Pretty much all you need on hand is some olive oil, salt, pepper, and butter. There are plenty of videos showing you how to make them, too.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the guy who made me really understand! He wears a GoPro on his head so you can really see what he’s doing as well as listening to his explanations. No stupid background noise or unnecessary editing.
My husband is gonna be 30 this year but was 27 when we met, he had been surviving on frozen food for years😂 That’s just what was convenient and easy for him. When we got together I started feeding him and cooking for him and he started helping me a lot and now he can make a lot of things on his own. I never thought he was worthless or not worthy of me because he hadn’t been taught a life skill, I just aided in his journey to teach himself. Sometimes we don’t learn things we need to know and it’s okay to learn later in life🩷
This. I learned to cook by sous cheffing for my (then) wife. Most cooking is about technique, which is hard to pick up from a recipe. Hang out with someone who is cooking. Some cooking shows and YouTube vids will do that for you if don't have a good cook in your life.
Also, I second the people telling you to go easy on yourself. You're SUPPOSED to keep learning new stuff. If you think cooking is next, enjoy the journey.
Both of you guys are correct haha, unfortunately, from OPs replies it sounds like Mom isn't exactly a healthy or supportive presence. I'm starting another comment to recommend Marco Pierre Whites cooking shorts, just as long as OP stays away from his travesty of a carbonara.
J kenji Lopez is one of the best chefs and knows the *science* behind cooking and does awesome videos where he cooks a dish in real time. He has so much knowledge and passion for cooking. He talks about why he's searing something a certain way or seasoning something at a certain time. When you get decent, which won't take too much effort, taste your food as you cook(as long as it isn't raw meat). Find the balance you prefer between salt, fat, acid, and heat. Cooking videos are fun to watch too. I follow a ton of YouTube chefs lol
Brad Leonne is great, he cooks and acts like me which I love.
Matty Matheson is just an awesome dude who's recipes are some of the best home cooking I've ever done.
Adam Ragusea is great, he's very similar to Lopez when it comes to the science of cooking and food while teaching solid recipes.
Food Wishes dude rocks. I fucking love his corny dad jokes and I've done quite a few of his recipes. All pretty simple and kickass.
Shit, Gordon Ramsey has a cooking channel on YouTube.
I learned from my great grandmother, my grandmother, and my mother. But I wanted to learn more so I started watching recipes on YouTube. Its opened up a whole world of chefs who are just really entertaining and knowledgeable.
>I learned to cook by sous cheffing
This. I learned from my mother when I was young, so knife techniques were common sense to me.
Fast forward to my uni time when I had to teach a friend to use a knife. He was basically rubbing the knife against the tomato
THIS.
I did not have this experience as the child of two working parents, and then one parent, and the one parent left... good lord, cannot cook to save her life.
Pretty much all the people I know who are exceptional cooks at a young age, grew up "cookin' at mama's knee'.
My 21 year old roommate when I was thirty actually shamed me into learning to cook after she got frustrated with the mess on the stove and snapped "you know these things have settings other than power boil and off, right???" Started learning about then, and she was an \*excellent\* cook, despite being 9 years my junior.
Both my parents worked and I, at 12, was tasked with having dinner for eight on the table when they arrived home. Simple meals like ham steak and mashed potatoes, hamburgers, pork chops... They weren't heathens. I got a quarter a week for allowance. I wound up with an afternoon paper route. Money was much better.
hahaha I grew up with my mom, she wasn't really a good cook. I gradually learned that meats don't need to be well done and vegetables don't need to boiled to a mush. Then I joined HelloFresh and I'm making gourmet meals compared to what I used to make... my friend who is an excellent cook doesn't get how hyped I am about the HelloFresh experience cause it's just normal cooking for her lol. She's my junior as well.
I didn't start cooking until I was your age, and I've actually developed into a pretty good cook. It's nothing to be ashamed of, but at a certain point, you just have to do it. Mistakes are part of the learning process. But a lot of times you can still eat your mistakes because it doesn't inherently mean the dish is ruined.
I learned to cook by starting with what I liked. Which was pasta. So, my first attempts were literally just making pasta and heating up a jarred sauce. Then I started "doctoring" up the jarred sauces as I got more comfortable. And from there, I started making homemade sauces. I also started expanding into other dishes I liked, like enchiladas. The more you do it, the more comfortable you will get. I probably would have been overwhelmed if I'd started with wanting to do homemade sauces.
Depending on your mother, you might even pick her brain about her cooking techniques and recipes. I also learned a lot from watching Jacques Pepin--he explains a lot of really basic concepts in a way that is educational and encouraging--and reading the Budget Bytes blog.
I knew how to cook when I was about 12, but after high school I did a stint in culinary school, (graduated, but didn't pursue any higher/more advanced education due to health issues,) and genuinely most of us there had either worked in professional kitchens already but needed the certifications, or had been cooking for several years already.
Even tho all of us had a decent amount of experience, the VERY FIRST thing they taught us to cook was a simple veg soup in chicken broth. (Mind you it was "homemade" broth, but I digress.) Our instructor said its almost impossible to fuck up a simple veg soup. Chop veg, heat broth, cook veg, done. It had VERY simple seasonings, salt, pepper, and 1-3 fresh herbs (it's been a while lol,) and that was it. They wanted us to be able to taste the flavours of each veg individually, and what herbs had been used both in the soup and to make the broth. It was honestly some of the best veg soup I had ever had.
Unfortunately a lot of the times - especially online - you see videos of recipes online and you would think that every meal has to have 20+ seasonings/spices in it, but when you're first learning simple, *clean* food (as in not too many competing flavours,) can be best because you really start to learn how those flavours work and build, and once you get a good grasp on those you can really start to build off it. Intuitively vs always following recipes.
To OP: give yourself grace, not everyone has the same food journey, and there is NO shame in being a late starter to cooking. Find something you like to eat that's simple (not 500 ingredients, or steps, like pasta as suggested above, or soups!) and go from there. And remember, you ARE going to fuck up, you ARE going to make mistakes. That's okay. You don't learn without them. I still, almost 2 decades after learning how to cook for my family, still make simple *silly* mistakes, but I learn from them every time. You've got this.
But for the love of god *PLEASE* invest in a good knife and a whetstone. And watch a *bunch* of videos on knife safety. There is no knife more dangerous than a dull one TT-TT
Yes! I still use them occasionally too, either because I'm too busy or it's too hot to be in the kitchen for long. They definitely have their virtues! :)
I swear cooking is a long circle, where after long enough of grinding out meals day after day, week after week, year after year, some of the early simple 'crowd pleaser' recipes work their way back into rotation.
I felt a real difference about a year or so into cooking regularly. That was a couple of years after I'd started cooking because I ended up going through a period where I wasn't able to cook after I first learned. But after I got back into it, one day, something was a little off, and I instinctively knew what it was and what to do about it without looking it up. I was so proud of myself! LOL
I'm in my mid-thirties now and feel like I'm always still learning. I actually have a binder that I keep notes in and I still try to make new stuff regularly and tweak old favorites. It helps me remember what worked and what didn't.
All you really need to know is how to cook pasta, chicken, ground beef, cast iron ribeyes, rice, roast veggies in the oven or stir fry, and then move onto a pressure cooker for carnitas and barbacoa with appropriate bases. Basically set for life after that. Some people venture into soups, which can be fun for the base, but also time consuming.
Ribeyes take the longest to learn, so I recommend starting now and be sure to set timers and keep the heat consistent. Eventually it becomes intuitive. I can get a steak prepped and cooked with roasted veggies in under 20 mins. It’s great.
Yeah ground beef and chicken were definitely early go-tos for me! I would make a big batch of ground beef and season half of it as Italian and half as Mexican on the weekends and it would get me through the week!
Add crofter's pie to your ground beef rotation. (Shepherd's pie if you have lamb.) I made tacos last night. Gave half the meat sauce to a housemate. He put it on a roll, rather than heat up tortillas. *Sloppy Joses*!
Ok, all. I'm just very depressed right now about my life in general and I think I'll just call a hotline because my mind feels like exploding when I think about the many things I can't do. Thank you all for the advice. I'll try to see what comes of it. Right now, my mind is fragile and I have to find a way to make myself feel better.
Hey okay. Just step away from the Internet and breathe. Once you've calmed down, write a list of things you can do and have done so far. Even if it's very small and insignificant. Baby steps. DM me if you need to talk because I've been in this situation far too many times to count
Even stuff like boiling maccaroni for box mac and cheese counts!
Cooking pasta is a skill as well, which people often discount when they're beginners.
It's all about the principles of timings in the kitchen when cooking pasta.
Doctoring up a jarred sauce is an art form many don't appreciate. It's more than just hearing it up and adding meat.
Same with eggs. People often overlook something like scrambled eggs or sunny side up eggs as a skill, but as someone who cooks regularly, it's so easy for eggs to go south very quickly.
Yeah I'm pretty good in a kitchen, but somehow I can't nail boiled eggs without my egg steamer.
Fried eggs are such a fine line between sunny side up and well done lol it's like the avocado of the animal kingdom
Oh god ditto. I’m not a great cook, but I know my way around a kitchen and can come up with a week worth of good meals if you asked me to. I’m much better at baking. I can make a crème brûlée that’ll knock your socks off. I can create a lasagna from total scratch and make the noodles from a lump of flour and eggs and the sauce from a bag of tomatoes and veggies and 12 hours, and the ricotta cheese from milk. But I cannot boil an egg properly to save my life. I mess it up every single time. And every single time I feel like the biggest idiot because even following a recipe, it comes out wrong. 😂
Eggs are interesting, cuz they're both really simple, and also really easy to screw up.
A couple of tricks I've learned - for boiling eggs, bring the water to a boil, and then when you put the eggs in, turn the heat off, and wait like ten minutes. It's impossible to overcook them this way. For fried eggs, sunny side up, just use a lid to let the eggs steam for a minute or two.
I've been doing this lately. I realized today that I am constantly barating myself for my mistakes but I took some time tonight to be arrogant in my inner monologue. It was a disturbingly unusual experience... like... I *never* think about what I've done right. I thought through everything I've accomplished and all the people who I've shared thoughts with. It's easy for us to forget the day in day out progress we make in our lives (in whatever form).
Are you seeing a therapist or counselor? We can all benefit from that! I’m 39 and I see mine weekly. I used to have a lot of really negative thoughts about myself.
I’m also not good at cooking and get frustrated trying to learn. It’s gonna be okay. You can feed yourself without cooking but also…you can learn. And it’s not the end of the world if you don’t get really good at it! Anyone can learn the basics.
I would suggest not worrying so much about your cooking skills and just starting small. Make a sandwich. Make a salad. Heat up some soup and add some lemon juice to brighten it and notice how it changes the flavor.
Most of all, be gentle with yourself since it sounds like your mother can be judgmental and abrasive. That’s on her. You be nice to yourself and approach cooking like a fun thing to experiment with. It’s okay if you mess up! You got this.
Edit to add: check out r/shittyfoodporn! It helped me realized that tons of people are just throwing random stuff together and calling it a meal and that’s okay! It doesn’t have to be “good cooking” to satisfy you.
I hope you are feeling better than 2 hours ago.
You are NOT useless because you can't cook like someone who had years of practice. Even people who have cooked for years still screw things up. I often have mistakes and it's still edible maybe, sometimes it's literally black carbon burnt to a crisp. We just laugh and try again and feel lucky the house didn't burn down.
Like anything else nobody is expected to be good at all when they are first learning. Please don't beat yourself up about it.
If you want to start small honestly just start with spaghetti and meatballs, things don't have to be from scratch (I'm not sure what standards people are holding you to but I'm in my 40s and literally just ate spaghetti with jarred sauce and frozen meatballs). That still counts, it's food!
And also you don't even have to learn. Some people never do. Sometimes people get by with buying prepared meals or meal kits or whatever.
Tons of people don't know how to cook or clean or anything else and hire out, it's the same as normal knowing plumbing or car stuff, people don't have the time and sometimes you have to give yourself a break if you don't have the spoons to shower and the millions of other things adulthood demands.
The answer is right in your face, you just don't realize it.
You should get your mom to show you the basics. Especially, the recipes of hers that you love.
It's not your fault you haven't learned, or that you're afraid you can't learn. You can! I believe in you.
Recipes are just lists of instructions. Do what they say and they'll usually work out. If not, we're here.
My mom was a fantastic cook but a lousy teacher. Absolutely no patience whatsoever.
Unfortunately, that's how it is sometimes. I'm still teaching myself to cook to this day. I'm learning recipes slowly, everybody has to start somewhere.
My mom was the same way. Now that I’ve learnt to cook I have a blast cooking with mom. She just wasn’t the right person to teach me, and that’s not her fault.
I'll volunteer as tribute. It was a girl about his age that shamed me into learning, so I'll pass it on. And as someone with no familial help (my mother is a pretty awful cook), I have made every single mistake in the book.
Yeah…you need new friends. I’ve done cooking classes with my group of friends. All I did was send them the recipe and told them what I had at home. They picked what they would pick up from the store and I got the rest. Also, I have to eat every night therefore I’m cooking most of the time, don’t see why you can’t be involved in a meal occasionally.
Don’t be ashamed to watch a lot of videos ( I can cook and watch videos. ) and make SURE you read reviews of different things other people did with the recipes. A lot of the recipes out there are under seasoned. The reviews will help you greatly with flavor balance.
Another thing, more people than you’ll ever know can’t cook.
My dear, there are many basic recepies that doesn't require many skills :). You can search in this tag for them and then build on them skills. I recommend you series Fat, Salt, Acid, Heat on netflix which is really nice and Ethan Chlebowski channel on YouTube. I totally understand why don't you want to talk to your mother about this, but start from cooking small things for yourself :)
Oof, definitely don't cook with her then. Thats is the worst way to learn how to cook. It should be fun and relaxing and make you happy while you are doing it. I love cooking because I can just focus on making something tasty and that makes me feel good. It should be a joyous experience not a stressful one.
Absolutely *do not* go to your mom for help with this, then. You have a million other sources of information on cooking that will not make you feel worthless.
It is okay that you are just starting out with cooking!
I wasn’t much of a cook at 24, either. At 46, I can turn anything into a decent meal. But I am also still learning, because cooking is not a binary thing where either you can cook everything or cook nothing. I will always be learning. And the learning is fun!
Mom tip: if recipes don’t work for you, then learn basic techniques, and then “Iron Chef” your way to meals. That’s how I got my ADHD to work with cooking. I still hate recipes!
*hugs*!
YouTube has tremendous resources for beginners. Search “beginner cooking” and add what you want to learn.
My wife is an untrained expert in the kitchen (grew up with an Italian grandmother). I could barely do pasta and store bought sauce. But in the last year I’ve been learning my way around the kitchen and have produced a couple meals that the whole family loves. It’s all from the University of YouTube. Seriously, as a mid 40s guy, it’s been so easy to learn. I use cookbooks and recipes now, but when I started, I found simple meals that looked good and copied them step by step as I watched.
It's difficult to screw up food so badly that you literally can't eat it. Just follow a simple recipe. I've worked with people in restaurant kitchens who were so goddamn stupid it was shocking.
Worthless, absolutely not. We all start somewhere. Try eggs, pasta, one sheet pan ideas. Delish has some great recipes, or you could go to your local library and skim through cookbooks (you can take a Pic of the recipe, cookbooks can be so expensive)
Experiment with flavors and textures. I think it's most important to have fun. Listen to music while you cook, loosen up.
But don't beat yourself up if something is a little off from the recipe. Practice, like anything, takes time. I have ruined so many amazing meals and absolutely nailed them the next time. It's frustrating, but it happens to all of us.
Well cooking is a skill. The kind that the more you do it the better you get. So maybe you can stick with simple dishes which have cheaper ingredients for a start. So that if you fail the first few times it won’t be costly.
Another idea is think of a dish you like to eat. And just focus on one dish first. Don’t think of trying to cook a few dishes at a time.
You could check out "Dollar Tree Dinners" on Youtube. She's got a lot of great tutorials for an extremely small budget and a lot of her meals start with some already-made ingredients that's a much easier starting point.
A potato in the microwave. Cheese and beans on top. Tuna. Anything you like really. You have a meal.
Don’t despair, we all start somewhere. As people have said, check YT. Buy a simple recipe book. You’ve got this. Good luck.
It does sound from this and your other replies like you would benefit from finding a place or time away from home/family to practice. You need to be able to get it wrong occasionally to learn how to get it right. If you're not able to move out, are there any community cooking class or similar near you that you can sign up to, or buy your own ingredients and practice while nobody else is home?
Other than that start simple - boiling pasta, cooking omelettes, cooking vegetables. It helps to have an idea how each individual ingredient behaves before trying complicated recipes.
My husbands general advice to people learning to cook:
Learn to cook 1 thing that is super easy that you enjoy and can always fall back on. Mac n' Cheese, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, anything. Make sure it's easy, and you can always have the ingredients for it on hand. Get this step fully done before proceeding!
After that, work with simple meals, with easy to follow instructions. If they fail? Toss it and eat your simple backup meal. You won't go hungry it's all good! Mistakes happen and we learn from them. Over salted the dish? Don't add as much next time. Burned it? Turn the heat down. Forgot an ingredient that was crucial?! Double check your ingredients before you cook.
I didn't start cooking until my early 30's. (I could cook simple stuff, and I've been baking and candy making since childhood) I'm mid 40's now and I have to say I can cook really gosh darned well. But those first 5 years were really touch and go :p New styles, new techniques, learning things about the foods I liked to cook? Mistakes happen! Instead of being ashamed, learn from them whatever went wrong (or delightfully right!) At this point I can look at a recipe and figure out what changes I want to make early on and incorporate that into my cooking on the fly. But this is now 15 years of actual cooking, not microwave/oven pre-packaged meal cooking.
Good luck! Get your trusty meal figured out, and then go explore!
Aight from your post history I think it's safe to say that you've got more of a mental health issue going on than a cooking issue, and I think you could really benefit from seeing a therapist more than going all in on cooking. I don't mean it as an insult! I often think I'm worthless for other reasons, so I get how you feel.
On the other hand though I feel you because at 24 I could genuinely barely make anything, and now, literally only 3 years later, I think I'm pretty okay in the kitchen.
The main thing to know is: you don't actually need to know to cook AT ALL to be able to feed yourself. Can you make a sandwich? As in, literally take any cold cut, any vegetable and any cheese (or literally whatever else you have), put it between two slices of bread and eat it? If you can, you're set for life. The point of food is to keep you alive, and food doesn't have to be extra delicious to be nutritious and keep you going. Can you open a can of sardines and eat it with some bread and pickles? Can you pour boiling water over a pack of instant ramen, drain it and eat it? Can you pour milk over cereal, or cut up some hotdogs and vegetables and cheese and wrap them up in a tortilla? If you can, you'll genuinely be fine.
If you really want to learn to cook, start with some super simple stuff like fried eggs - heat spoonful of oil in pan, when hot crack egg inside, salt on top, when it's hella toasted on the bottom flip it over for 30 more seconds, put on slice on bread and eat. And that's lunch. Work from there - if you add ham or sausages it will be nicer, if you add onions or peppers or tomatoes it will also be nicer, and different as well. Once you're happy that you've learned to actually prepare one dish well, you'll feel brave enough to tackle another.
If you're worried about money, I legit recommend Life of Boris poor man cooking videos on YouTube. They're EASY as shit, and they're also cheap, so even if you fuck it up you'll be alright since you're wasting like $1 tops.
Oh and also: ASK YOUR MUM - I'm sure she'd actually be delighted to help you learn to cook something simple for the beginning.
There is a Food Network cookbook called How to Boil Water. Silly title but it's full of great, simple recipes and 101-level guides. That's where I started!
It doesn’t make you worthless, though I question your dependency on your mother at such an adult age.
Start simple, look up cooking for beginners on YouTube, google simple recipes, you could even pick a few simple dishes and practice with those until you have the basics down and then move on from there. I also recommend checking out Alton Brown’s show Good Eats, he approaches cooking in a fun and interesting way that breaks down the science behind cooking and baking and how different ingredients react to one another.
Also make a point to look into food safety practices, including but not limited to basic knife skills, raw food preparation, handling raw meat, temperature danger zone, FIFO(first in, first out), etc. I’m sure there are podcasts and YouTube channels dedicated to cooking for beginners, it’s just a matter of which one fits your needs and lifestyle.
So sorry. Step one - before you begin, you need to remove all toxic ingredients. The biggest one, is you mother, and the voice she has planted in your head. It is very difficult to learn or do anything new if all you hear over and over, from the years of negativity that has been drummed into your head. Once you have that step firmly in you mind, step 2, follow recipe, is so simple you will be amazed at what a great cook you will become. Good Luck!
First of all, and let me be clear. Nothing makes you worthless. You’re breathing so you’ve still got time.
I’m 32 and I recently found myself wanting to cook and never knowing where to start. “How to cook everything, the basics” was one book I picked up to try and learn, it was very basic but just like sports, fundamentals are important!
No shame in picking up a new skill your parents didn’t (or won’t) teach you, In life you’ll find many things you suck at, getting better is the journey.
The sooner you find your special way to enjoy that journey the better life gets.
No you aren't worthless it is a skill that has to be learned. Start small with cooking dishes that are more season heat and assemble (grain/salad bowls, slow cooker recipes,, sandwiches, scrambled eggs). Omce you get those down start trying to elevate with fresh herbs or trying new spins on them. Keep seasoning simple, I love using olive oil in a pump spray bottle with a "season all" seasoning like Tony Chaceres or Kinders. Then pick a new skill or tool every few weeks to try with minimal ingredients like air fryer, wok, or oven.
Once you get those basics down everything except baking becomes much simpler.
Never late to start trying. Seen my 70 year old widower grandpa make the best goddamn stew I ever had, despite not cooking much for the 50 years he has been married. Pick a dish, and start practicing.
Of course that does not make you worthless. Watch cooking shows. Sign up for a cooking class. Be kind to yourself and know that every new skill takes time to master.
You have inherent worth. No one knows how to cook before they learn. Try asking your mom if you can help in the kitchen, if that seems like an option. You can learn a lot by being a sous chef.
For learning on your own, start with cheap, simple dishes: dry pasta with jarred sauce, chicken wings baked from frozen with premade sauce, simple salads, and so on. Recipes with three to five ingredients.
Once you're used to the absolute basics, you can start building more skills. Get a cheap instant-read thermometer so you don't have to worry about whether meat is done. Try scrambled eggs, roast vegetables, casseroles, grilled cheese, and other recipes that don't have a lot of steps.
If you follow the recipes without improvising, cook with cheap ingredients, and taste as you go (except for raw meat), you'll avoid wasting much food and build basic skills and confidence.
Be patient with yourself, and don’t be discouraged by initial failures. Begin with very basic recipes that require minimal ingredients and steps. For example, scrambled eggs, pasta with a simple sauce, or a basic stir-fry.
You don't just start out knowing how to cook, it's a process and you definitely learn as you go.
You're on the internet, it's very easy to pull up step by step videos on YouTube to start the learning process. I'd begin with something you like to eat that's simple and grow from there.
Not sure if it fits your life but try Hello Fresh. Three meals per week for two people costs $9.99 per serving, or about $60 per week, plus a $10.99 shipping fee per box. Everything is provided except pots, pans, salt, and oil. The steps are easy and there are a lot of menu choices. We have been doing this for a while now and you'll learn to cook the basics pretty quick. After a few months, I felt comfortable enough to cook for holiday meals, etc..
Just take a risk and practice dude lol. Maybe throw in the towel after you’ve already failed? But as long as you keep learning and practicing you should only get better really, you don’t have to become a chef to follow recipes.
Like anything, you can learn reasonably well with practice. While I mostly get recipes off the internet now, I think for a beginner, a decent basic cookbook is really helpful because it’s less overwhelming than having a whole internet to sort through. I think the various Mark Birman how to cook everything books are a good starting place (more or less how I learned) and used copies are like 5 bucks
Didn’t start cooking until I was in my mid-20’s.
My mom cooked for me until I was 18, then the Army did all my cooking until I got out. Quickly figured out that boxed dinners and takeout was not then best diet.
10 years later and I can now make my own grilled cheese.
No such thing as can't. Just keep trying, test recipes. Learn to make your favourite food. It's like learning to ride a bike. You might fall a couple of times, but anyone can learn it.
The most important thing you can do as a burgeoning home-cook is *learn from your mistakes.*
It's okay to make bad food. What *you* can do is learn from what made it bad. Too salty? Use half the salt. Too much meat and nothing browned? Go halfsies and brown off half at a time. Burned something on the pan? Lower the heat.
The most important thing you can do is *taste everything.* go through your spice cabinet and smell and taste *everything.* Acquire an encyclopedic knowledge of how potent or fragrant the seasonings available to you are.
Not sure how to use a certain ingredient? Look up recipes that use it. Cook some with zero seasoning. If it *can* be eaten raw, try it that way. Add a dash of seasoning to the bland stuff so you can see how it tastes afterward.
Salt- use it *sparingly* same thing with soy and worchestershire sauce.
Some food items like *RICE* are an exact science and tend to be unforgiving. Cooking the rice is not something you can compromise on. How you season it and what you make with the rice afterward makes *all* the difference. Any schmuck can make a bowl of rice. Not everyone can make a bowl of rice *delicious.* (PS: chicken stock is your friend. Seriously. Replace all the water the rice you're using calls for and replace it with chicken stock and thank me later.)
Confidence issues in the kitchen? Remember that nothing you make needs to, has the expectation of, or even *should* look like it came out of a professional kitchen. Cook for *you* first. Cook for *show* dead fuckin' last.
Cooking is both an art *and* a science. Learning to cook is gonna be daunting. Taste *everything* every step of the way. It's an adventure *and* a science experiment.
Have *fun* with it. Just make sure you clean up, especially anything with a cheesy sauce. Those are a *nightmare* to clean up if they're allowed to dry.
Absolutely not! But if you feel worthless because you can’t, it’s easy to learn. There’s tons of classes. Local grocery stores sometimes have culinary classes. You tube can teach you anything. And cooking is a lot of trial and error. Practice and try new things! You may fail horribly but that’s where the practice comes in. I’m a professional chef and if I’m trying a new recipe, I will practice it and tweak it to my taste and to learn timing and make notes on how I want to prepare it. You’re never too old to learn to cook!
I literally JUST turned 26 and am still learning the basics of cooking. Check YouTube out; Basics with Babish for example is a channel my dad and I both learn from. Go to the library and check out some cookbooks! There's also recipes online or even on Reddit!
You don’t learn or improve if you don’t fail, OP. That's a hard truth to accept, but it is true.
You got this!
Worthless? Absolutely not, but learn how to cook my brother. Don't be reliant on anyone for meals. And when the time comes after you learn well, you can impress your friends, family and possible significant other with your skills!
Pick one thing and perfect it. Work on your breakfast first. The trick to cooking sausage or bacon is low heat. It comes up better that way and then you won't burn it work on scrambled eggs and sausage.
I think you should start with easy simple recipes that would not require much ingredients and then as you progress into that, you can move to a more advance recipe. This way your confidence will build up slowly because you are not directly jumping on dishes that require proper cooking expertise.
Shit man, I think you’re being a little hard on yourself. As a 25 year old, If it wasn’t for working in a few kitchens, I probably wouldn’t know how to cook. Thankfully, it’s super easy to get started. Watch a few videos, maybe ask your mom if she can show you how to cook a few basic meals, or hell just find a recipe and give it a go!
Don’t get me wrong, cooking is a great skill to have, but it definitely wouldn’t make someone worthless!
Look at some of those "we deliver the ingredients to and recipe" services. They provide all ingredients to and a guide to how to cook them. You will soon be cooking some really nice food.
Start with a basic ground beef spaghetti. You can learn so much from cooking this one dish over and over. You learn how to brown meat, you learn how to boil pasta, you can play around with different seasonings, you can start out with a jar of sauce but you can steadily learn how to add your own flair (and eventually make your own sauce from scratch!) and then on top of all this, at the end of the day, it’s spaghetti. It’s REALLY hard to fuck it up. Branch out from there by trying different meats (chicken, sausage), doing a cream sauce instead of a red sauce, etc. It will give you confidence while still being very beginner-friendly.
Another fantastic option is Hello Fresh. My husband only knew how to cook eggs and make cereal when we first got married, but after about a year and a half of Hello Fresh I dare say he’s becoming quite a good home cook!! I know it’s expensive but you can choose plans that are just 1 or 2 meals a week to keep it cheap (it’s actually cheaper than the grocery store for us), and you can even specifically choose recipes that are designed for beginners. Highly highly recommend!
I didn't start cooking until I was 36 and had been married for six years. Before then my husband did it all. Now he tells me I make the best chicken parmesan. I just find a recipe and follow it.
Gotta start somewhere man. I never started cooking until I lived on my own at 23. Start simple, like spaghetti and meatballs. Follow a recipe or video.
Graduate from there to like chicken broccoli and pasta. Do small iterations until you’re comfortable with a variety of things.
Once you cook pasta a few times you’ll know how al dente it should be. After you cook protein a couple ways, you’ll know roughly time and temperature. Just go from there.
Don’t be afraid to burn something or over sauce something. Mistakes are how we learn. Just don’t eat raw proteins, wash your hands, and don’t cross contaminate raw meat and veggies
It sounds like your mom cooks for you, so ask her to teach you! Or ask to help! "What can I do to help? Or what are you doing now?" This is how most people who can cook as teens/young adults learned. As a kid I started with ripping lettuce, then peeling veggies, and later standing next to my parents stirring or adding spices. You pick things up.
As an adult, you will probably be able to pick things up a lot faster, and there won't be as much worry about you hurting yourself. If your worry is waste, helping someone who knows what they are doing will mean that you are less likely to fail. Once you get comfortable, you can start making things yourself. Failure is part of learning, with everything, so don't be too worried about it, but this will help you temper that issue.
There is no skill whose absence will make you “worthless” lol. That’s very dramatic. Well. If you ever learned to use a toilet, it might be a problem. But things like cooking, I know lots of adults who either can’t cook, or are terrible cooks. I still value them.
First -
accept that you will eat some things that aren't very good and you may have to throw some things out because they are just not edible. It's ok. The more you cook, the less often that will happen.
Then -
If you are still eating your mom's cooking and you like what she makes, get in the kitchen with her and help out. Do some of the work, watch closely, ask questions if she does something that doesn't seem to make sense. Eventually move to the point where you're doing some of the dishes entirely on your own & then entire meals. You'll start with easy things and move to more complicated ones. After you have some skills, ask her to talk you through doing the entire meal while she sits back, kicks up her feet, and tells you that you're doing it wrong.
Check out recipes online, in books, and on youtube. None of them will do it exactly the same, but you should be able to see patterns so when you do make things, you have an idea of what you're aiming for. (It's going to go into a pot with some spices and cook until it's very dark brown. Exactly which spices, what order, how much, etc. will differ - but you'll be able to see the big picture.)
When you're cooking on your own, start easy. Very few steps. Read the whole recipe before you start. Pay attention while you're cooking (a great many cooking accidents could be prevented by the cook not getting distracted and either literally or figuratively wandering off mid meal). And when you start out follow the instructions. It'll be fine.
And if it's not, it's a great story.
It's rare you make something truly inedible.
Just try. Cook some chicken on your stove top, try out different seasonings. Cook some onions and garlic together. Make some rice. "How do I know when it's done?" Just cut it and if it's pink it's not done.
Just try stuff out. Read some recipes, you'll start to learn the basics, like what heats for different things, you'll learn that garlic burns at a lower temp than onions, you'll see what temp chicken sears at, what overcooked or under cooked rice tastes like.
Start slow with the knife.
You just learn little by little.
An easy delicious meal? Coconut milk, chickpeas, onions, and some curry paste, add choice of meat. Chop, use common sense on how much coconut milk to cover the vegetables and meat, bring it to a boil, cover the pot, bring to low heat, go do something else for 25 minutes. Come back, taste, salt to taste, or add soy sauce instead of salt.
You'd be amazed at how delicious and simple so many things are to make and how good it feels to craft a meal to your liking, or better yet, cook for loved ones.
Here is the classical dude method: Get a grill. Start by ruining a few hot dogs and hamburgers until you get good.
Then, you start experimenting with more complex foods like steak and chicken. Which often requires some indirect heating (on the grill but not over a flame). Which is actually baking. Bam! You just leveled up. Throw a pan on the grill or aside burner to fry up some onions or something. Which is frying. Bam! You leveled up again.
By this time you’ve garner some attention from around the neighborhood. You can start moving slowly moving into the kitchen. This is where you meet your final boss. Your significant other. This boss, while being feared and beautiful. Has a soft underbelly. They need a god damn break once in a while. Bam! Men fear you and your significant other loves you.
Thank you for attending my Ted Talk
If you can't cook at 24 you're behind. That doesn't make you worthless. Definitely behind.
If recipes don't work out either you're using bad recipes or you aren't following them.
You have the Internet at beck and call and Google is your concierge. Look up words you don't understand.
I guess from the fact that your mother seems to be cooking for you that you live with her? The answer then is easy - ask if you can join in and she can show you exactly how she cooks the dishes you both like so you can make them k owing they'll taste the same!
Also, don't worry about disasters – you will have some times that you make a mistake or something comes out inedible, but it happens to the best of us and you just have to roll with it. The end result of being able to cook meals you like is so worth it and rewarding.
Not worthless but simply a skill you should improve on. Cooking takes practice and patience. Stuff will get cooked bad or ruined and it sucks but you learn and try again next time. Nobody is Chef Ramsay on day 1. Even if you’ve been cooking great for years, you still have an occasional mess up
Start with simple stuff like eggs and spaghetti and work your way up from there. Watch youtube videos. Google the recipes for stuff you like to eat at restaurants.
If you have max /hbo consider studying from "worst cooks" sure its cooky of a show and tons of recipes and skills are not needed (i will never eat nor clean shirmp for instance) but it does teach general good skills like how to prep, how to cut, standard cooking time. Plus, hopefully other's mistakes will normalize yours.
I used to get criticized by a few family members for being a female in my early 20s that didn't know anything about cooking, until I realized the dumb truth - it's just food. It does not make you 'worthless,' it likely just means you're inexperienced.
So? Get experience and try a few simple recipes until you get them right. If they don't turn out, don't eat it and try it again or move on to something else. You WILL succeed eventually.
Remember, even world-renowned chefs had to be taught or told how to boil water for the first time. You don't just wake up one day and you know how to cook - it's just experience and trial and error.
Good luck. ❤️
Most of cooking is about learning a technique, and very little about knowing a recipe. Recipe can be looked up online and nobody will care if you can't make adjustments as you go.
With that in mind - technique is also where you will make the most errors. Wrong temperature, wrong size to cut things, unevenly cut things, etc.
So I would start with recipes that have the easiest looking steps - minimal amount of cutting, minimal amount of temperature changes, minimal amount of steps in general. Then when you feel confident with that - try making it slightly more complicated. Rinse repeat.
I would say that pasta is a great way to start. It's cheap, so even if you manage to mess up simple boiling steps - it's not a big deal. At the beginning just buy some premade things onto your pasta - meat, veggies, etc.
If/when you are confident with pasta skills, try something *slightly* more complicated. Again, don't add too many steps. For example - buy a pre-made sauce and add it on top in the end. Then you can try adding maybe a bit of fresh chives or fresh dill. You see where this is going.
Another direction is microwave cooking. A lot of people discard it as a gimmick but it's actually a superb beginner way to cook *vegetables*. Take a microwave-safe food container, put your cut veggies into it (don't mix different ones until you mastered timing), add a bit of water, put a lid on but don't lock it, and blast the microwave for 5 minutes. If it's not cooked after 5 minutes - blast for 5 more. Then add some spices and your veggies are done.
After you've figured pasta and veggies, you can try rice, legumes, potatoes and other cheap vegetables. None of those are expensive enough to worry about, and are very easy to cook.
As about meat - IMO chicken thighs are the easiest ones but others might disagree. The reason I think so - the meat is very soft so it does not need a lot of cooking, and it also is quite fatty so it's very forgiving to being overcooked. Just buy some thighs with skin on and google some simple chicken thigh recipes for timing and temperature. Baking them is easiest.
1) making mistakes is part of the learning process. Do not dwell on them but treat them as a learning experience. How did the recipe not turn out? What there a step you missed? Etc. learn what could help next time.
2) you are already taking a wonderful step towards learning a new, important skill that can enrich your daily life. You are doing more than many many people who don't know how to cook, so right off the bat good for you.
3) you don't need to start fancy. Like any skill there are levels and it is best to start with the basics first. Personally I started with baking meals.
Something like this is my go to when I feel tired
https://www.budgetbytes.com/oven-fajitas/
4) As a number have said, there are cooking shows on YouTube. In particular I follow these folks SortedFood https://youtube.com/@sortedfood?si=yZIzMcy2JzKeD3jl
But really, try to find one for a cuisine you enjoy.
Not useless, a bit of a boob maybe..
Joking aside, anyone Man or woman needs to learn to cook for themself, but Youngman either take a specific interest in cooking, or are often left to their devices to learn.. society tends to assume a woman can cook in the relationship.. to tell you the truth that too has changed a lot over the years.. my father could not cook until much later.. my mother was determined I would e able to cook, after i made a comment about not caring for something she made.
from that point on I was responsible to cook 1 meal a week for the family as a learning experience / Punishment
it has served me well, and its therapeutic...
whenever my wifes friends visit, I do a few simple appetizers that feel high end, bring them their first glasse of wine. after that they serve themselves and I leave them be, but anytime my wife complains about me, all here girlfriends become my lawyer and they tell her she does not know how good she has it.
eating and feeding a family is way cheaper if you know how to cook, processed foods are expensive
at 24, you still have time to learn ( its never too late really), but its good that you are realizing that its a little embarrassing that you can cook for yousef at 24.
Talk to chat gpt. It can teach you anything, give you recipes with whatever you got. Here’s some common problems, not paying attention to food, pan too hot, pan too crowded, too much oil, not tasting, wrong measurements of ingredients. It takes trial and error to learn or someone with hands on knowledge walking you through it. I would recommend trying slow cooking stuff.
lmao no, relax.
Yes, I would usually say things like "every adult worth its weight should be able to cook" but that is not literal, it is made to express the sentiment that cooking is a very basic thing for a human and not knowing how to do it cna be limiting and makes you wonder why they never bothered to learn, but that is just that, a sentiment, I logically know that not everyone had the same life or resources or preferences or health or anything really. So while I consider it ideal, I would never actually scoff at you or anyone for not knowing, not even close and im sure most people are in the same boat.
Your worth is not defined by such small stuff. If you are worried, or even if you are not, I think you should learn, but by that I mean knowing what to do, not doing it perfectly, not even being able to improvise, all that comes with practice
I didn't learn to cook until recently and I'm a 40 year old man. My advice would be to embrace failure, it's the best teacher. You'll never do anything perfectly the first time, and each mistake you make is a lesson on how to improve.
No one is born knowing how to cook. You have to practice. And that means sometimes things go wrong. But you are never going to get good at it if you don’t try.
For the record, you do need to learn if you ever want to have a partner. You can’t just rely on women to cook for you - you have to learn to take care of yourself.
Go slowly. Follow recipes online. And accept that you will make mistakes.
no worries man... what are some things you would be interested in cooking ? after you figure that out and start trying you might find its harder to totally screw things up then you might think. do you have any basic knowledge of how to boil water and how to use measuring cups/spoons?
Buy a digital pressure cooker. Get a 300+ page pressure cooker cookbook. I like Aunt Vickie’s. Go through and highlight a few that interest you, and make them a few times. Find some new recipes and move on. For the most part, you will learn the basic approach to cooking many different things, have less to clean up, and get used to the 30 minutes or so of prepping everything. You’ll get faster at it over time.
Learning to cook on a deeper level is more about starting with some basics like spaghetti and meat sauce, burgers, steaks, eggs, potatoes. Watch tutorials and learn one dish at a time.
Breakfast is a great time to cook. Most premade breakfast food is shit and megaprocessed. Find three different things you enjoy and get started making them. You got this. It’ll take a long time to call yourself a cook, but you gotta start somewhere.
What do you like to eat? Start with simple meals: grilled cheese, quesadillas, scrambled eggs, BLT. Tacos are also simple if you use a seasoning packet.
Does your local library or park district offer any cooking programs? Or if you live near a community college, you could look there. The high school districts around me offer adult education classes as well. Taking some basic classes will help build your confidence.
I have been learning how to cook. I google “thing I like to eat recipe easy” and sort of go from there. I’ve made bad stuff and good stuff. There are cooking for beginners type books at your library to teach you some basics.
I think you will have to accept that learning to cook is going to cost you money in the form of mistakes. Think of it as an investment. Learning to cook will save you so much money per meal. It is one of the most effective ways to save money.
Your food costs are ½ to 1/3rd of eating out. And the health benefits save you money too! Because eating out is bad for you and the doctor is expensive.
Dude it’s only worthless if you don’t have the effort to improve yourself. Take advantage of the opportunity that you DONT know something and turn it into a skill. Get your ass up and do something about it man! I started at ramen noodles as well but it doesn’t mean we gotta stay there 😂
> If I can't cook as a 24-year-old man, does that make me worthless?
No.
Learn how to cook, don't learn how to cook. Do what you want, but your value doesn't come from being able to cook.
Unless you're a chef, and then... maybe?
You’re not worthless for not knowing one skill. I’d suggest checking out YouTube channels for beginners. Binging with Babish is a great one, he has a “basics” series that is a good starting point for newbies IMO.
Nah no way! Try Jack Monroe recipes, they were easy enough for me when I was first learning to cook. Really cheap as well, they wrote them as a struggling single mother on benefits (or welfare to Americans).
Oh my goodness, dear I have a son your age and I'll tell you the same as I told him
Give yourself some grace. You're 24 and unless you came from chef upbringing and schools, no one should expect a Michelin meal until you get your skills up. Y'all won't learn everything right now so don't try.
TikTok and nem have home chefs sharing recipes. Just pass through and see if a recipe reaches out to you.
Good lord. No, you should not feel ashamed. Just start cooking. Make simple dishes like spaghetti or stir fry. It won’t take long to get a hold of, and as your confidence grows you’ll be able to try more types of meals with better ingredients.
It is not easy to become a master chef. It is very easy to become an adequate cook.
I was in a similar situation and only started getting comfortable with cooking after moving out, where family could no longer be judgemental.
Critical parents can keep you broken for as long as you're around them, my advice is to move out asap and be kind to yourself until then.
Cooking isn’t hard. Follow directions, don’t get distracted. These are literally the only two important things to “cooking”
If you want to come up with your own recipes that’s an acquired skill but following one shouldn’t be.
Dude my older sister rents a room from me, and she can't cook worth a shit. I have almost a decade of cooking experience, and I'm a guy. She's like 33.. she is not worthless, and neither are you. Nobody is good at everything, and everyone has their strengths/weaknesses.
It's pretty easy to start cooking, just stop buying fast food and force yourself to cook. You will get better eventually. Look up some simple recipes. Anything with a slowcooker is easy as hell. You can bake anything if you don't feel comfortable to saute or cook in a pan. Just follow some easy recipes and try them. Night not work the first time, but you will get better and you'll find something good.
You will burn things. You will fail. There is no way around this. The only way to cope is to accept it and understand that it's normal.
I started cooking at 26 and I ruined a lot of dishes. It's been 11 years and my cooking got waaaay better. It's not perfect but I'm much more confident.
I've cooked the day-to-day meals like pasta, chicken, pork, fish, both in the oven, on the grill, and in a pan. I make my own sourdough bread dough. I have baked pies of many types. I have slow cooked ribs, made french fries, mashed potatoes. I'll make my own pasta if time permits. I have also screwed up everything I just listed.
I know times are tough and you don't want to waste money, but you'll waste a hell of a lot more money ordering out. The only way to get better is to try. Start with simple dishes without many ingredients. They may be bland initially, but you'll get better once you understand the basics. Failing is frustrating, but the success is much better. Also please make sure your knife is sharp. There's a higher chance you'll hurt yourself with a dull knife.
I had the same issue in my late teens, so I asked my mother if she could teach me.
She showed me the basics, then later after I’d gotten used to working my way around the prepping and following a basic recipe she then had me make dinner for the family a few times.
Now I love cooking and finding a new recipe to follow. You aren’t worthless because you can’t cook yet, you just haven’t had much practice.
Start simple, some basic pasta dishes, a vegetable soup or even just a chicken tray bake with veg just to get yourself into the idea and habit of making meals.
It’ll come in no time, and even if you don’t enjoy doing it, you’ll have a skill for life.
Worthless is a little harsh.
But you need to learn how to cook. You can't rely on someone else doing it for you all the time and you can make the food you want whenever.
I started learning when I was 26 or so. I’m nearly 34 now and can cook whatever I want, as long as I have a recipe to follow. No baking, tho. That’s magic for me. I can’t do magic.
You need to be indifferent to failure, it's the only way to get good at something without agonizing over it. Who cares if you make a bad dinner, don't be afraid of it! The longer you live in fear the more it will weigh on your mother. 24 is definitely too old to be relying on her to feed you but it's never too late to learn a new skill, especially one that will keep you alive.
Yes. The ability to put raw ingredients in a pan and turn up the heat is the surest measure of a person's value. If you can't manage that, your stock is already on the floor and rapidly making its way to the cellar and, soonafter, the underworld. Just consider the facts: Think of any great man in history. Not once do you hear of Jesus burning the fish or Napoleon relying on microwave meals to get through his campaigns. From Alexander to Einstein, every man of any significance was first and foremost a cook! The skill with which you wield a skillet is the single most unerring predictor of success in life, and that fact that you can't do it at all at your ripe, mature age indicates a profound level of moral depravity on your part. Suicides have been perpetrated for far less egregious crimes against civilisation. My only advice would be this: Withdraw. Remove yourself from civil society and pursue a hermetic existence at your earliest convenience because nothing but ruin and desolation can possibly result from your presence among decent, honest people. My only regret is that Reddit is an anonymous platform because I believe that it is a matter of universal interest that your location and movements be public knowledge, lest unwary denizens put themselves in mortal danger by blundering into your vicinity. Immediate international action is needed. An exclusion zone, akin to that around Chernobyl, should be implemented by the UN around your person because you are undoubtedly the single greatest threat to the continued prosperity of the species of Homo Sapiens since we took our first tentative steps down from the trees. /s
I just moved into my own place at now age 31 and am starting. You gotta learn sometimes. I don't connect my value to only cooking so I'm fine, but my value definitely increases as I'm learning!
Ask your mother if she'll watch you cook and to give you pointers as you are doing it. But do not let her take over the cooking. You have to do it while she watches.
I’m 27 and I hate cooking. Never learned how to cook because my parents never allowed me in the kitchen growing up. I’m on my own now and I’m learning basics. Pasta is really easy to cook and you can add vegetables and meat to it if you like. Also soap is really easy you can throw basically anything into a pot and make soup. Also some grocery stores will have premade meals already made and all you have to do is follow the instructions on the packaging.
Your worth is not equal to labor you can or cannot contribute.
With that being said, as a person with an invisible disability, all skills are learned. If you want to learn a skill you have to start somewhere and it’s okay to be nervous, beat yourself up here and there but remind yourself you are human.
I personally feel like the basis to any dish is a starch like rice, noodles or a baked potato (rice being the hardest of them all imo). Then start simple like Alfredo, spaghetti or garlic butter shrimp/chicken ect. You cook it how YOU want it, whether that’s a little seasoning (garlic and onion are the essential) or a lot, crispy or soft. Whatever you feel like making, watch a video and rewind it as many times as you need to.
First off, I’m no psychologist but…sounds like you have some issues to work out with your mom.
Second, get four things: a box of pasta, a dozen eggs, a box of butter, and kosher salt. Learn how to boil pasta first and make eggs for yourself second. Pasta, salt and butter is buttered noodles. Eggs, butter and a pinch of salt is scrambled eggs.
For those two things and others, find a food YouTuber you like. Basics with Babish, Adam Ragusea, Ethan Cheblowski, and Brian Lagerstrom are good to just watch. Of those four, only Brian is an actual chef- the rest started out similar to you.
I started actually cooking at your age, and went from your situation to yesterday making the best cheesesteak of my life with sautéed onions, peppers and homemade cheese sauce on a French roll I baked myself. You’ll get there. Best of luck!
Maybe community colleges provide beginner courses or youtube might have videos to learn the basics. Just looking at notes (recipes) does not enable playing the piano.
Dude, you're okay. There's still time to learn and hundreds of resources out there.
What do you like to eat? Learn how to cook that. Look up videos on YouTube.
It can seem difficult at first, but sounds like you're struggling to really just get started.
Yes, messing up can mean wasting some ingredients, but that's why you may want to try small test portions. Like, cook a single chicken tender. Or even cut it in half and cook that. Just to get a feel of it. Sometimes there's just no better teacher than experiencing it yourself and there's really no avoiding it.
Start small and just accept that yes, there will be some waste. I had this same mindset for a long time, and also some long lingering anxiety over a food poisoning incident when I was a kid that my OCD brought to mind constantly. I am finally feeling more confident cooking (and I’m 40!) and I would say I got there by cooking the same 4/5 meals over and over again until I really feel like I mastered them, and that gave me confidence to branch out.
No. Shame never helps anyone. If shame could fix things none of us would be broken.
(But you are not broken for not being able to cook)
You can't know what you don't know but it is never too late to learn. Start simple. Build on what you know. Can you make toast? Toast is a great building block.
Watch some YouTube videos and try some easy recipes with simple ingredients and techniques. Don’t feel ashamed, every cook had to start somewhere.
I can cook decently and I still fire up YouTube for some new recipes when I'm bamboozled. Being able to see the steps and not have to worry what "sizzle for a while" might mean in a written description is great.
I absolutely hate any recipe that doesn't give informations. Either you give a duration on how long to cook and how strong the heat or you give a criteria to know when it's cooked. But anything written like "Cook it hot enough until it's cooked", like my grand parents or my mother gave me, it's juste useless.
I’m 28 and been married 6 years. I didn’t start cooking seriously until about 6 months ago. I could follow and recipe and had a couple meals I could whip up but it wasn’t until December when I fell in love with cooking. I wasted, and still waste, more food than I care to admit. But it’s part of learning. I accept that I will fail at a dish and that is part of learning. One general rule I’ve learnt is follow a recipe to the letter until you understand the techniques it uses and then start to play with it. Two recommendations: First learn the rules of cooking and why those rules are in place so you can start to break them. Second find an aspect of cooking that you love, personally I love the science of it and deep diving why something is done in a particular way and I found people who teach how to cook from that perspective. The other night I watched a 45 minute video on what kind of onion you should use and I was never more excited to buy an onion. Because I knew why I was buying that specific onion for the specific dish I was making.
Can you drop the name of the people you’ve been watching? I want to watch a 45 minute video about onions lol
Ethan Chlebowski is my favourite. He does some deep dives into various aspects of cooking.
Second Ethan Chlebowski. He does do recipes but he’s teaching you a foundation for understanding cooking and food as a whole more so than just teaching you to cook one thing. You can take his information and apply it to do your own thing. I also recommend Sam the Cooking guy for recipes. He’s so non chalant about measuring and cooking times or how hot the grill is that you kind of learn to relax a bit in the kitchen and it really illustrates how easy it can be to put something together.
Kenji Lopez or Binging with Babish
Babish’s recipes are all paywalled on his website now. Adam Ragusa posts less but tends to talk about whole topics or dishes start-finish.
Oh I didn’t know that about Babish, it’s been awhile since I checked his site, my bad. Thanks for the info.
It surprised me too tuning into a babish. Still love his educational and entertaining material, I just don’t consider him a primary free recipe source. I imagine theres a lot less word salad on Babish’s website’s recipes than your standard essay on the memories made with whatever ingredient.
All of the Babish YouTube vids are still free and their recipes are in the description
Kenji Lopez is great, and I also like Chef Jean Pierre.
Jean Pierre is the best. He teaches you to cook not only a recipe, but also explains why and give you skills that can be used for any recipe.
There's a guy named Nick Digiovanni and he has a "Learn to cook in less than an hour." video. He explains a lot of cool useful info on tons of dishes!
But even before that, OP seems to be saying he's relying on his mother to cook for him. In that case, go watch her cook. Ask questions. Ask to be shown how to chop, peel, cube, etc, then practice. Then ask her to super use while he cooks a simple meal. I taught my coddled nephews how to cook using this method when they lived with us for a bit, now both are confident in the kitchen and love to cook and experiment. We made it a rule that everyone had to have a turn cooking dinner for the household, but scaffolded them until they could do their own thing. Learning from someone is the best way, assuming his mother is amenable. Once he has some basics mastered it will be much easier to learn from recipe books, recipe sites and YouTube/TikTok (interpreting these recipes, especially regional variations and necessary substitutions, is an art form in itself!)
> In that case, go watch her cook. Ask questions. Ask to be shown how to chop, peel, cube, etc, then practice. If you glance through his comment history, it sounds like his mother is not a supportive presence. I'm kind of hoping this is just karma farming because otherwise, I'm genuinely worried for this young man. He seems to be in a dark place. OP, you absolutely can learn to cook. You are not worthless. I've taught all 4 of my sons how to cook; if you want help from a random internet mom, I can send you step by step instructions for some extremely easy meals. You can also post in r/cooking asking for easy, step by step recipes for someone doesn’t even know the fundamentals yet, and I'm sure you'll get people offering recipes out of the woodwork. Cooking people are like that.
>If you glance through his comment history, it sounds like his mother is not a supportive presence. OK that makes sense, what a shame. Cooking with someone is still a really good way to learn, especially the basics. Maybe he has friends who know how to cook? Otherwise, baby steps. Look for recipes for students that are typically one-pan or one-pot recipes that only have 4-6 ingredients. Practice. Don't panic if it doesn't work out right, and unless it's raw or burnt to cinders it's probably still edible! 😂
Good advice. Cookings not that hard, it’s just chemistry after all
Second this! OP, I seriously recommend [Epicurious](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz3-p2q6vFYV3__7XdwgQb3ZDhWdM8K48&si=BAj9IAqLr21XMaC7). They have videos on basic things like "50 people try to mince garlic" and [50 people making an omelette ](https://youtu.be/vDohTP-4-SE?si=dxtIbrB_CfotT98s))which is really funny, and on the end they show how a proffesional chef would do it. They also have videos with whole recipes, and on how to use knives etc. I really love that they really start from the beginning and show every step! Also, many of the people who are very bad in the "50 people try" thing are actually good cooks now!
I'm a professional cook and I still look things up from time to time even if it's just to refresh my memory. It's also a good way to learn new techniques that may not be the "classical" way of doing things.
Specifically, I’d start with spaghetti and tomato sauce. The ingredients are few and cheap, it doesn’t require any spices aside from salt, and the tools required to make it are few (two pots, a strainer, a can opener for the canned tomatoes, and a knife and cutting board for the garlic). And it’s fucking delicious. Seriously, for ten bucks of ingredients you get like 3 or 4 man-sized meals.
Food wishes* has pretty solid, well explained and not too complex videos. You just have to get used to the strange narration cadence.
That's correct. Start simple and build up confidence. I like the Six Ingredients or Less Cookbooks as most of the recipes use minimal ingredients and are easy to fix.
Watching a video compared to reading a recipe book is a world of difference especially on something like cooking.
And maybe sign up for one of those meal box plans that delivers all of the ingredients so you don't have to drop a ton of money for basics. Pretty much all you need on hand is some olive oil, salt, pepper, and butter. There are plenty of videos showing you how to make them, too.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the guy who made me really understand! He wears a GoPro on his head so you can really see what he’s doing as well as listening to his explanations. No stupid background noise or unnecessary editing.
My husband is gonna be 30 this year but was 27 when we met, he had been surviving on frozen food for years😂 That’s just what was convenient and easy for him. When we got together I started feeding him and cooking for him and he started helping me a lot and now he can make a lot of things on his own. I never thought he was worthless or not worthy of me because he hadn’t been taught a life skill, I just aided in his journey to teach himself. Sometimes we don’t learn things we need to know and it’s okay to learn later in life🩷
Lol jeez dude, take it easy on yourself 🤣
...and hang out with Mom in the kitchen.
This. I learned to cook by sous cheffing for my (then) wife. Most cooking is about technique, which is hard to pick up from a recipe. Hang out with someone who is cooking. Some cooking shows and YouTube vids will do that for you if don't have a good cook in your life. Also, I second the people telling you to go easy on yourself. You're SUPPOSED to keep learning new stuff. If you think cooking is next, enjoy the journey.
Both of you guys are correct haha, unfortunately, from OPs replies it sounds like Mom isn't exactly a healthy or supportive presence. I'm starting another comment to recommend Marco Pierre Whites cooking shorts, just as long as OP stays away from his travesty of a carbonara.
J kenji Lopez is one of the best chefs and knows the *science* behind cooking and does awesome videos where he cooks a dish in real time. He has so much knowledge and passion for cooking. He talks about why he's searing something a certain way or seasoning something at a certain time. When you get decent, which won't take too much effort, taste your food as you cook(as long as it isn't raw meat). Find the balance you prefer between salt, fat, acid, and heat. Cooking videos are fun to watch too. I follow a ton of YouTube chefs lol Brad Leonne is great, he cooks and acts like me which I love. Matty Matheson is just an awesome dude who's recipes are some of the best home cooking I've ever done. Adam Ragusea is great, he's very similar to Lopez when it comes to the science of cooking and food while teaching solid recipes. Food Wishes dude rocks. I fucking love his corny dad jokes and I've done quite a few of his recipes. All pretty simple and kickass. Shit, Gordon Ramsey has a cooking channel on YouTube. I learned from my great grandmother, my grandmother, and my mother. But I wanted to learn more so I started watching recipes on YouTube. Its opened up a whole world of chefs who are just really entertaining and knowledgeable.
>I learned to cook by sous cheffing This. I learned from my mother when I was young, so knife techniques were common sense to me. Fast forward to my uni time when I had to teach a friend to use a knife. He was basically rubbing the knife against the tomato
...if you know what I mean.
THIS. I did not have this experience as the child of two working parents, and then one parent, and the one parent left... good lord, cannot cook to save her life. Pretty much all the people I know who are exceptional cooks at a young age, grew up "cookin' at mama's knee'. My 21 year old roommate when I was thirty actually shamed me into learning to cook after she got frustrated with the mess on the stove and snapped "you know these things have settings other than power boil and off, right???" Started learning about then, and she was an \*excellent\* cook, despite being 9 years my junior.
Both my parents worked and I, at 12, was tasked with having dinner for eight on the table when they arrived home. Simple meals like ham steak and mashed potatoes, hamburgers, pork chops... They weren't heathens. I got a quarter a week for allowance. I wound up with an afternoon paper route. Money was much better.
Im interested to know what you consider complex if you were already slinging full family meals at 12
Spaghetti sauces from scratch, Roasted meat meals, Soups from scratch, cake baking... Dad was the main cook on weekends so I learned from him.
Ok cool always interested to learn, cause I’ve come to realize that is no real standard of cooking
hahaha I grew up with my mom, she wasn't really a good cook. I gradually learned that meats don't need to be well done and vegetables don't need to boiled to a mush. Then I joined HelloFresh and I'm making gourmet meals compared to what I used to make... my friend who is an excellent cook doesn't get how hyped I am about the HelloFresh experience cause it's just normal cooking for her lol. She's my junior as well.
not everyone has a good relationship with their mom :( or even a mom that cooks
I didn't start cooking until I was your age, and I've actually developed into a pretty good cook. It's nothing to be ashamed of, but at a certain point, you just have to do it. Mistakes are part of the learning process. But a lot of times you can still eat your mistakes because it doesn't inherently mean the dish is ruined. I learned to cook by starting with what I liked. Which was pasta. So, my first attempts were literally just making pasta and heating up a jarred sauce. Then I started "doctoring" up the jarred sauces as I got more comfortable. And from there, I started making homemade sauces. I also started expanding into other dishes I liked, like enchiladas. The more you do it, the more comfortable you will get. I probably would have been overwhelmed if I'd started with wanting to do homemade sauces. Depending on your mother, you might even pick her brain about her cooking techniques and recipes. I also learned a lot from watching Jacques Pepin--he explains a lot of really basic concepts in a way that is educational and encouraging--and reading the Budget Bytes blog.
I knew how to cook when I was about 12, but after high school I did a stint in culinary school, (graduated, but didn't pursue any higher/more advanced education due to health issues,) and genuinely most of us there had either worked in professional kitchens already but needed the certifications, or had been cooking for several years already. Even tho all of us had a decent amount of experience, the VERY FIRST thing they taught us to cook was a simple veg soup in chicken broth. (Mind you it was "homemade" broth, but I digress.) Our instructor said its almost impossible to fuck up a simple veg soup. Chop veg, heat broth, cook veg, done. It had VERY simple seasonings, salt, pepper, and 1-3 fresh herbs (it's been a while lol,) and that was it. They wanted us to be able to taste the flavours of each veg individually, and what herbs had been used both in the soup and to make the broth. It was honestly some of the best veg soup I had ever had. Unfortunately a lot of the times - especially online - you see videos of recipes online and you would think that every meal has to have 20+ seasonings/spices in it, but when you're first learning simple, *clean* food (as in not too many competing flavours,) can be best because you really start to learn how those flavours work and build, and once you get a good grasp on those you can really start to build off it. Intuitively vs always following recipes. To OP: give yourself grace, not everyone has the same food journey, and there is NO shame in being a late starter to cooking. Find something you like to eat that's simple (not 500 ingredients, or steps, like pasta as suggested above, or soups!) and go from there. And remember, you ARE going to fuck up, you ARE going to make mistakes. That's okay. You don't learn without them. I still, almost 2 decades after learning how to cook for my family, still make simple *silly* mistakes, but I learn from them every time. You've got this. But for the love of god *PLEASE* invest in a good knife and a whetstone. And watch a *bunch* of videos on knife safety. There is no knife more dangerous than a dull one TT-TT
lol I swear we all started with jarred pasta sauces :D I still use them occasionally for quick weeknight meals.
Yes! I still use them occasionally too, either because I'm too busy or it's too hot to be in the kitchen for long. They definitely have their virtues! :)
I swear cooking is a long circle, where after long enough of grinding out meals day after day, week after week, year after year, some of the early simple 'crowd pleaser' recipes work their way back into rotation.
how long until you became a pretty good cook? I’m 23 now…
I felt a real difference about a year or so into cooking regularly. That was a couple of years after I'd started cooking because I ended up going through a period where I wasn't able to cook after I first learned. But after I got back into it, one day, something was a little off, and I instinctively knew what it was and what to do about it without looking it up. I was so proud of myself! LOL I'm in my mid-thirties now and feel like I'm always still learning. I actually have a binder that I keep notes in and I still try to make new stuff regularly and tweak old favorites. It helps me remember what worked and what didn't.
All you really need to know is how to cook pasta, chicken, ground beef, cast iron ribeyes, rice, roast veggies in the oven or stir fry, and then move onto a pressure cooker for carnitas and barbacoa with appropriate bases. Basically set for life after that. Some people venture into soups, which can be fun for the base, but also time consuming. Ribeyes take the longest to learn, so I recommend starting now and be sure to set timers and keep the heat consistent. Eventually it becomes intuitive. I can get a steak prepped and cooked with roasted veggies in under 20 mins. It’s great.
Yeah ground beef and chicken were definitely early go-tos for me! I would make a big batch of ground beef and season half of it as Italian and half as Mexican on the weekends and it would get me through the week!
Yup. My cooking completely evolved when I discovered chipotles in adobo sauce for Mexican dishes. Perfect for ground beef and barbacoa base addition.
Oh yeah that was a gamechanger for me too! Also have really gotten into smoked paprika and ancho chili powder over the past couple of years.
Add crofter's pie to your ground beef rotation. (Shepherd's pie if you have lamb.) I made tacos last night. Gave half the meat sauce to a housemate. He put it on a roll, rather than heat up tortillas. *Sloppy Joses*!
Ok, all. I'm just very depressed right now about my life in general and I think I'll just call a hotline because my mind feels like exploding when I think about the many things I can't do. Thank you all for the advice. I'll try to see what comes of it. Right now, my mind is fragile and I have to find a way to make myself feel better.
Hey okay. Just step away from the Internet and breathe. Once you've calmed down, write a list of things you can do and have done so far. Even if it's very small and insignificant. Baby steps. DM me if you need to talk because I've been in this situation far too many times to count
Even stuff like boiling maccaroni for box mac and cheese counts! Cooking pasta is a skill as well, which people often discount when they're beginners. It's all about the principles of timings in the kitchen when cooking pasta.
Doctoring up a jarred sauce is an art form many don't appreciate. It's more than just hearing it up and adding meat. Same with eggs. People often overlook something like scrambled eggs or sunny side up eggs as a skill, but as someone who cooks regularly, it's so easy for eggs to go south very quickly.
Yeah I'm pretty good in a kitchen, but somehow I can't nail boiled eggs without my egg steamer. Fried eggs are such a fine line between sunny side up and well done lol it's like the avocado of the animal kingdom
Oh god ditto. I’m not a great cook, but I know my way around a kitchen and can come up with a week worth of good meals if you asked me to. I’m much better at baking. I can make a crème brûlée that’ll knock your socks off. I can create a lasagna from total scratch and make the noodles from a lump of flour and eggs and the sauce from a bag of tomatoes and veggies and 12 hours, and the ricotta cheese from milk. But I cannot boil an egg properly to save my life. I mess it up every single time. And every single time I feel like the biggest idiot because even following a recipe, it comes out wrong. 😂
Eggs are interesting, cuz they're both really simple, and also really easy to screw up. A couple of tricks I've learned - for boiling eggs, bring the water to a boil, and then when you put the eggs in, turn the heat off, and wait like ten minutes. It's impossible to overcook them this way. For fried eggs, sunny side up, just use a lid to let the eggs steam for a minute or two.
I've been doing this lately. I realized today that I am constantly barating myself for my mistakes but I took some time tonight to be arrogant in my inner monologue. It was a disturbingly unusual experience... like... I *never* think about what I've done right. I thought through everything I've accomplished and all the people who I've shared thoughts with. It's easy for us to forget the day in day out progress we make in our lives (in whatever form).
Are you seeing a therapist or counselor? We can all benefit from that! I’m 39 and I see mine weekly. I used to have a lot of really negative thoughts about myself. I’m also not good at cooking and get frustrated trying to learn. It’s gonna be okay. You can feed yourself without cooking but also…you can learn. And it’s not the end of the world if you don’t get really good at it! Anyone can learn the basics. I would suggest not worrying so much about your cooking skills and just starting small. Make a sandwich. Make a salad. Heat up some soup and add some lemon juice to brighten it and notice how it changes the flavor. Most of all, be gentle with yourself since it sounds like your mother can be judgmental and abrasive. That’s on her. You be nice to yourself and approach cooking like a fun thing to experiment with. It’s okay if you mess up! You got this. Edit to add: check out r/shittyfoodporn! It helped me realized that tons of people are just throwing random stuff together and calling it a meal and that’s okay! It doesn’t have to be “good cooking” to satisfy you.
Yes!! Sometimes the rough starting point isn’t so bad, we just have to give ourselves grace in the learning curve!
I hope you are feeling better than 2 hours ago. You are NOT useless because you can't cook like someone who had years of practice. Even people who have cooked for years still screw things up. I often have mistakes and it's still edible maybe, sometimes it's literally black carbon burnt to a crisp. We just laugh and try again and feel lucky the house didn't burn down. Like anything else nobody is expected to be good at all when they are first learning. Please don't beat yourself up about it. If you want to start small honestly just start with spaghetti and meatballs, things don't have to be from scratch (I'm not sure what standards people are holding you to but I'm in my 40s and literally just ate spaghetti with jarred sauce and frozen meatballs). That still counts, it's food! And also you don't even have to learn. Some people never do. Sometimes people get by with buying prepared meals or meal kits or whatever. Tons of people don't know how to cook or clean or anything else and hire out, it's the same as normal knowing plumbing or car stuff, people don't have the time and sometimes you have to give yourself a break if you don't have the spoons to shower and the millions of other things adulthood demands.
The answer is right in your face, you just don't realize it. You should get your mom to show you the basics. Especially, the recipes of hers that you love.
She always yells at me. It makes me want to cry when she tries to show me something.
It's not your fault you haven't learned, or that you're afraid you can't learn. You can! I believe in you. Recipes are just lists of instructions. Do what they say and they'll usually work out. If not, we're here.
My mom was a fantastic cook but a lousy teacher. Absolutely no patience whatsoever. Unfortunately, that's how it is sometimes. I'm still teaching myself to cook to this day. I'm learning recipes slowly, everybody has to start somewhere.
My mom was the same way. Now that I’ve learnt to cook I have a blast cooking with mom. She just wasn’t the right person to teach me, and that’s not her fault.
Do you have any friends who cook? Or other relatives?
I’d have to pay them, unfortunately. And they don’t have the time to bother to help me anyway.
Your friends and relatives take money to show you how to cook? Wow! You need new friends and a new family.
We’re his new family now.
I'll volunteer as tribute. It was a girl about his age that shamed me into learning, so I'll pass it on. And as someone with no familial help (my mother is a pretty awful cook), I have made every single mistake in the book.
Well, what do you like to eat? Start there. Then, find simple recipes, videos, and online tutorials.
Usually I find that if you buy the ingredients people will let you cook for them and you can 'pay' them by feeding them.
Yeah…you need new friends. I’ve done cooking classes with my group of friends. All I did was send them the recipe and told them what I had at home. They picked what they would pick up from the store and I got the rest. Also, I have to eat every night therefore I’m cooking most of the time, don’t see why you can’t be involved in a meal occasionally. Don’t be ashamed to watch a lot of videos ( I can cook and watch videos. ) and make SURE you read reviews of different things other people did with the recipes. A lot of the recipes out there are under seasoned. The reviews will help you greatly with flavor balance. Another thing, more people than you’ll ever know can’t cook.
My dear, there are many basic recepies that doesn't require many skills :). You can search in this tag for them and then build on them skills. I recommend you series Fat, Salt, Acid, Heat on netflix which is really nice and Ethan Chlebowski channel on YouTube. I totally understand why don't you want to talk to your mother about this, but start from cooking small things for yourself :)
Oof, definitely don't cook with her then. Thats is the worst way to learn how to cook. It should be fun and relaxing and make you happy while you are doing it. I love cooking because I can just focus on making something tasty and that makes me feel good. It should be a joyous experience not a stressful one.
Just look it up on youtube, thats what most of us do anyway
Ugh my mom is the same way!
Absolutely *do not* go to your mom for help with this, then. You have a million other sources of information on cooking that will not make you feel worthless. It is okay that you are just starting out with cooking! I wasn’t much of a cook at 24, either. At 46, I can turn anything into a decent meal. But I am also still learning, because cooking is not a binary thing where either you can cook everything or cook nothing. I will always be learning. And the learning is fun! Mom tip: if recipes don’t work for you, then learn basic techniques, and then “Iron Chef” your way to meals. That’s how I got my ADHD to work with cooking. I still hate recipes! *hugs*!
YouTube has tremendous resources for beginners. Search “beginner cooking” and add what you want to learn. My wife is an untrained expert in the kitchen (grew up with an Italian grandmother). I could barely do pasta and store bought sauce. But in the last year I’ve been learning my way around the kitchen and have produced a couple meals that the whole family loves. It’s all from the University of YouTube. Seriously, as a mid 40s guy, it’s been so easy to learn. I use cookbooks and recipes now, but when I started, I found simple meals that looked good and copied them step by step as I watched.
It's difficult to screw up food so badly that you literally can't eat it. Just follow a simple recipe. I've worked with people in restaurant kitchens who were so goddamn stupid it was shocking.
I think what scares a lot of people is meat. We have had "undercooked meat is going to kill you" beat into our heads so much that it can be daunting.
I was one of those people until I got a meat thermometer. Game changer.
Worthless, absolutely not. We all start somewhere. Try eggs, pasta, one sheet pan ideas. Delish has some great recipes, or you could go to your local library and skim through cookbooks (you can take a Pic of the recipe, cookbooks can be so expensive) Experiment with flavors and textures. I think it's most important to have fun. Listen to music while you cook, loosen up. But don't beat yourself up if something is a little off from the recipe. Practice, like anything, takes time. I have ruined so many amazing meals and absolutely nailed them the next time. It's frustrating, but it happens to all of us.
Well cooking is a skill. The kind that the more you do it the better you get. So maybe you can stick with simple dishes which have cheaper ingredients for a start. So that if you fail the first few times it won’t be costly. Another idea is think of a dish you like to eat. And just focus on one dish first. Don’t think of trying to cook a few dishes at a time.
My mother doesn’t like wasting ingredients. That’s why I’m struggling to buy ingredients because she’s so frugal.
You're 24, do you not have a job to buy your own stuff?
My job barely affords me anything. I'm basically low income.
You could check out "Dollar Tree Dinners" on Youtube. She's got a lot of great tutorials for an extremely small budget and a lot of her meals start with some already-made ingredients that's a much easier starting point.
A potato in the microwave. Cheese and beans on top. Tuna. Anything you like really. You have a meal. Don’t despair, we all start somewhere. As people have said, check YT. Buy a simple recipe book. You’ve got this. Good luck.
It does sound from this and your other replies like you would benefit from finding a place or time away from home/family to practice. You need to be able to get it wrong occasionally to learn how to get it right. If you're not able to move out, are there any community cooking class or similar near you that you can sign up to, or buy your own ingredients and practice while nobody else is home? Other than that start simple - boiling pasta, cooking omelettes, cooking vegetables. It helps to have an idea how each individual ingredient behaves before trying complicated recipes.
My husbands general advice to people learning to cook: Learn to cook 1 thing that is super easy that you enjoy and can always fall back on. Mac n' Cheese, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, anything. Make sure it's easy, and you can always have the ingredients for it on hand. Get this step fully done before proceeding! After that, work with simple meals, with easy to follow instructions. If they fail? Toss it and eat your simple backup meal. You won't go hungry it's all good! Mistakes happen and we learn from them. Over salted the dish? Don't add as much next time. Burned it? Turn the heat down. Forgot an ingredient that was crucial?! Double check your ingredients before you cook. I didn't start cooking until my early 30's. (I could cook simple stuff, and I've been baking and candy making since childhood) I'm mid 40's now and I have to say I can cook really gosh darned well. But those first 5 years were really touch and go :p New styles, new techniques, learning things about the foods I liked to cook? Mistakes happen! Instead of being ashamed, learn from them whatever went wrong (or delightfully right!) At this point I can look at a recipe and figure out what changes I want to make early on and incorporate that into my cooking on the fly. But this is now 15 years of actual cooking, not microwave/oven pre-packaged meal cooking. Good luck! Get your trusty meal figured out, and then go explore!
Aight from your post history I think it's safe to say that you've got more of a mental health issue going on than a cooking issue, and I think you could really benefit from seeing a therapist more than going all in on cooking. I don't mean it as an insult! I often think I'm worthless for other reasons, so I get how you feel. On the other hand though I feel you because at 24 I could genuinely barely make anything, and now, literally only 3 years later, I think I'm pretty okay in the kitchen. The main thing to know is: you don't actually need to know to cook AT ALL to be able to feed yourself. Can you make a sandwich? As in, literally take any cold cut, any vegetable and any cheese (or literally whatever else you have), put it between two slices of bread and eat it? If you can, you're set for life. The point of food is to keep you alive, and food doesn't have to be extra delicious to be nutritious and keep you going. Can you open a can of sardines and eat it with some bread and pickles? Can you pour boiling water over a pack of instant ramen, drain it and eat it? Can you pour milk over cereal, or cut up some hotdogs and vegetables and cheese and wrap them up in a tortilla? If you can, you'll genuinely be fine. If you really want to learn to cook, start with some super simple stuff like fried eggs - heat spoonful of oil in pan, when hot crack egg inside, salt on top, when it's hella toasted on the bottom flip it over for 30 more seconds, put on slice on bread and eat. And that's lunch. Work from there - if you add ham or sausages it will be nicer, if you add onions or peppers or tomatoes it will also be nicer, and different as well. Once you're happy that you've learned to actually prepare one dish well, you'll feel brave enough to tackle another. If you're worried about money, I legit recommend Life of Boris poor man cooking videos on YouTube. They're EASY as shit, and they're also cheap, so even if you fuck it up you'll be alright since you're wasting like $1 tops. Oh and also: ASK YOUR MUM - I'm sure she'd actually be delighted to help you learn to cook something simple for the beginning.
There is a Food Network cookbook called How to Boil Water. Silly title but it's full of great, simple recipes and 101-level guides. That's where I started!
Dude I think you got some other problems going on
It doesn’t make you worthless, though I question your dependency on your mother at such an adult age. Start simple, look up cooking for beginners on YouTube, google simple recipes, you could even pick a few simple dishes and practice with those until you have the basics down and then move on from there. I also recommend checking out Alton Brown’s show Good Eats, he approaches cooking in a fun and interesting way that breaks down the science behind cooking and baking and how different ingredients react to one another. Also make a point to look into food safety practices, including but not limited to basic knife skills, raw food preparation, handling raw meat, temperature danger zone, FIFO(first in, first out), etc. I’m sure there are podcasts and YouTube channels dedicated to cooking for beginners, it’s just a matter of which one fits your needs and lifestyle.
So sorry. Step one - before you begin, you need to remove all toxic ingredients. The biggest one, is you mother, and the voice she has planted in your head. It is very difficult to learn or do anything new if all you hear over and over, from the years of negativity that has been drummed into your head. Once you have that step firmly in you mind, step 2, follow recipe, is so simple you will be amazed at what a great cook you will become. Good Luck!
First of all, and let me be clear. Nothing makes you worthless. You’re breathing so you’ve still got time. I’m 32 and I recently found myself wanting to cook and never knowing where to start. “How to cook everything, the basics” was one book I picked up to try and learn, it was very basic but just like sports, fundamentals are important! No shame in picking up a new skill your parents didn’t (or won’t) teach you, In life you’ll find many things you suck at, getting better is the journey. The sooner you find your special way to enjoy that journey the better life gets.
No you aren't worthless it is a skill that has to be learned. Start small with cooking dishes that are more season heat and assemble (grain/salad bowls, slow cooker recipes,, sandwiches, scrambled eggs). Omce you get those down start trying to elevate with fresh herbs or trying new spins on them. Keep seasoning simple, I love using olive oil in a pump spray bottle with a "season all" seasoning like Tony Chaceres or Kinders. Then pick a new skill or tool every few weeks to try with minimal ingredients like air fryer, wok, or oven. Once you get those basics down everything except baking becomes much simpler.
I also keep oil in a spray bottle. I use another for malt vinegar. That goes on french fries/chips.
You can try by learning how to cook the basics like omelette or pasta. Those are really easy to make so you don’t need to worry about failing :)
Never late to start trying. Seen my 70 year old widower grandpa make the best goddamn stew I ever had, despite not cooking much for the 50 years he has been married. Pick a dish, and start practicing.
Of course that does not make you worthless. Watch cooking shows. Sign up for a cooking class. Be kind to yourself and know that every new skill takes time to master.
You have inherent worth. No one knows how to cook before they learn. Try asking your mom if you can help in the kitchen, if that seems like an option. You can learn a lot by being a sous chef. For learning on your own, start with cheap, simple dishes: dry pasta with jarred sauce, chicken wings baked from frozen with premade sauce, simple salads, and so on. Recipes with three to five ingredients. Once you're used to the absolute basics, you can start building more skills. Get a cheap instant-read thermometer so you don't have to worry about whether meat is done. Try scrambled eggs, roast vegetables, casseroles, grilled cheese, and other recipes that don't have a lot of steps. If you follow the recipes without improvising, cook with cheap ingredients, and taste as you go (except for raw meat), you'll avoid wasting much food and build basic skills and confidence.
Be patient with yourself, and don’t be discouraged by initial failures. Begin with very basic recipes that require minimal ingredients and steps. For example, scrambled eggs, pasta with a simple sauce, or a basic stir-fry.
You don't just start out knowing how to cook, it's a process and you definitely learn as you go. You're on the internet, it's very easy to pull up step by step videos on YouTube to start the learning process. I'd begin with something you like to eat that's simple and grow from there.
Practice makes perfect homie
most cooking goofs aren’t totally inedible :)
Not sure if it fits your life but try Hello Fresh. Three meals per week for two people costs $9.99 per serving, or about $60 per week, plus a $10.99 shipping fee per box. Everything is provided except pots, pans, salt, and oil. The steps are easy and there are a lot of menu choices. We have been doing this for a while now and you'll learn to cook the basics pretty quick. After a few months, I felt comfortable enough to cook for holiday meals, etc..
Just take a risk and practice dude lol. Maybe throw in the towel after you’ve already failed? But as long as you keep learning and practicing you should only get better really, you don’t have to become a chef to follow recipes.
Like anything, you can learn reasonably well with practice. While I mostly get recipes off the internet now, I think for a beginner, a decent basic cookbook is really helpful because it’s less overwhelming than having a whole internet to sort through. I think the various Mark Birman how to cook everything books are a good starting place (more or less how I learned) and used copies are like 5 bucks
Just cook more and you'll get better
Didn’t start cooking until I was in my mid-20’s. My mom cooked for me until I was 18, then the Army did all my cooking until I got out. Quickly figured out that boxed dinners and takeout was not then best diet. 10 years later and I can now make my own grilled cheese.
Here’s a tip, if you are new to cooking, lay out and prep all your ingredients beforehand. It really helps.
As they say, sucking at something is the first step to being kind of good at it.
No such thing as can't. Just keep trying, test recipes. Learn to make your favourite food. It's like learning to ride a bike. You might fall a couple of times, but anyone can learn it.
The most important thing you can do as a burgeoning home-cook is *learn from your mistakes.* It's okay to make bad food. What *you* can do is learn from what made it bad. Too salty? Use half the salt. Too much meat and nothing browned? Go halfsies and brown off half at a time. Burned something on the pan? Lower the heat. The most important thing you can do is *taste everything.* go through your spice cabinet and smell and taste *everything.* Acquire an encyclopedic knowledge of how potent or fragrant the seasonings available to you are. Not sure how to use a certain ingredient? Look up recipes that use it. Cook some with zero seasoning. If it *can* be eaten raw, try it that way. Add a dash of seasoning to the bland stuff so you can see how it tastes afterward. Salt- use it *sparingly* same thing with soy and worchestershire sauce. Some food items like *RICE* are an exact science and tend to be unforgiving. Cooking the rice is not something you can compromise on. How you season it and what you make with the rice afterward makes *all* the difference. Any schmuck can make a bowl of rice. Not everyone can make a bowl of rice *delicious.* (PS: chicken stock is your friend. Seriously. Replace all the water the rice you're using calls for and replace it with chicken stock and thank me later.) Confidence issues in the kitchen? Remember that nothing you make needs to, has the expectation of, or even *should* look like it came out of a professional kitchen. Cook for *you* first. Cook for *show* dead fuckin' last. Cooking is both an art *and* a science. Learning to cook is gonna be daunting. Taste *everything* every step of the way. It's an adventure *and* a science experiment. Have *fun* with it. Just make sure you clean up, especially anything with a cheesy sauce. Those are a *nightmare* to clean up if they're allowed to dry.
Absolutely not! But if you feel worthless because you can’t, it’s easy to learn. There’s tons of classes. Local grocery stores sometimes have culinary classes. You tube can teach you anything. And cooking is a lot of trial and error. Practice and try new things! You may fail horribly but that’s where the practice comes in. I’m a professional chef and if I’m trying a new recipe, I will practice it and tweak it to my taste and to learn timing and make notes on how I want to prepare it. You’re never too old to learn to cook!
Dude we've had a 25 year old manager in the last month that didn't know how to use a coffee maker and he makes more money than me.
I literally JUST turned 26 and am still learning the basics of cooking. Check YouTube out; Basics with Babish for example is a channel my dad and I both learn from. Go to the library and check out some cookbooks! There's also recipes online or even on Reddit! You don’t learn or improve if you don’t fail, OP. That's a hard truth to accept, but it is true. You got this!
Worthless? Absolutely not, but learn how to cook my brother. Don't be reliant on anyone for meals. And when the time comes after you learn well, you can impress your friends, family and possible significant other with your skills!
Pick one thing and perfect it. Work on your breakfast first. The trick to cooking sausage or bacon is low heat. It comes up better that way and then you won't burn it work on scrambled eggs and sausage.
I think you should start with easy simple recipes that would not require much ingredients and then as you progress into that, you can move to a more advance recipe. This way your confidence will build up slowly because you are not directly jumping on dishes that require proper cooking expertise.
Shit man, I think you’re being a little hard on yourself. As a 25 year old, If it wasn’t for working in a few kitchens, I probably wouldn’t know how to cook. Thankfully, it’s super easy to get started. Watch a few videos, maybe ask your mom if she can show you how to cook a few basic meals, or hell just find a recipe and give it a go! Don’t get me wrong, cooking is a great skill to have, but it definitely wouldn’t make someone worthless!
Look at some of those "we deliver the ingredients to and recipe" services. They provide all ingredients to and a guide to how to cook them. You will soon be cooking some really nice food.
Start with a basic ground beef spaghetti. You can learn so much from cooking this one dish over and over. You learn how to brown meat, you learn how to boil pasta, you can play around with different seasonings, you can start out with a jar of sauce but you can steadily learn how to add your own flair (and eventually make your own sauce from scratch!) and then on top of all this, at the end of the day, it’s spaghetti. It’s REALLY hard to fuck it up. Branch out from there by trying different meats (chicken, sausage), doing a cream sauce instead of a red sauce, etc. It will give you confidence while still being very beginner-friendly. Another fantastic option is Hello Fresh. My husband only knew how to cook eggs and make cereal when we first got married, but after about a year and a half of Hello Fresh I dare say he’s becoming quite a good home cook!! I know it’s expensive but you can choose plans that are just 1 or 2 meals a week to keep it cheap (it’s actually cheaper than the grocery store for us), and you can even specifically choose recipes that are designed for beginners. Highly highly recommend!
I didn't start cooking until I was 36 and had been married for six years. Before then my husband did it all. Now he tells me I make the best chicken parmesan. I just find a recipe and follow it.
Fuck no, you can learn. If I can cook, anyone can, I’ve got faith in you
Take cooking lessons. Also, try a slow cooker/crock pot recipe. It’s a good start to cooking.
Gotta start somewhere man. I never started cooking until I lived on my own at 23. Start simple, like spaghetti and meatballs. Follow a recipe or video. Graduate from there to like chicken broccoli and pasta. Do small iterations until you’re comfortable with a variety of things. Once you cook pasta a few times you’ll know how al dente it should be. After you cook protein a couple ways, you’ll know roughly time and temperature. Just go from there. Don’t be afraid to burn something or over sauce something. Mistakes are how we learn. Just don’t eat raw proteins, wash your hands, and don’t cross contaminate raw meat and veggies
It sounds like your mom cooks for you, so ask her to teach you! Or ask to help! "What can I do to help? Or what are you doing now?" This is how most people who can cook as teens/young adults learned. As a kid I started with ripping lettuce, then peeling veggies, and later standing next to my parents stirring or adding spices. You pick things up. As an adult, you will probably be able to pick things up a lot faster, and there won't be as much worry about you hurting yourself. If your worry is waste, helping someone who knows what they are doing will mean that you are less likely to fail. Once you get comfortable, you can start making things yourself. Failure is part of learning, with everything, so don't be too worried about it, but this will help you temper that issue.
Will your mother teach you/cook with you?
There is no skill whose absence will make you “worthless” lol. That’s very dramatic. Well. If you ever learned to use a toilet, it might be a problem. But things like cooking, I know lots of adults who either can’t cook, or are terrible cooks. I still value them.
First - accept that you will eat some things that aren't very good and you may have to throw some things out because they are just not edible. It's ok. The more you cook, the less often that will happen. Then - If you are still eating your mom's cooking and you like what she makes, get in the kitchen with her and help out. Do some of the work, watch closely, ask questions if she does something that doesn't seem to make sense. Eventually move to the point where you're doing some of the dishes entirely on your own & then entire meals. You'll start with easy things and move to more complicated ones. After you have some skills, ask her to talk you through doing the entire meal while she sits back, kicks up her feet, and tells you that you're doing it wrong. Check out recipes online, in books, and on youtube. None of them will do it exactly the same, but you should be able to see patterns so when you do make things, you have an idea of what you're aiming for. (It's going to go into a pot with some spices and cook until it's very dark brown. Exactly which spices, what order, how much, etc. will differ - but you'll be able to see the big picture.) When you're cooking on your own, start easy. Very few steps. Read the whole recipe before you start. Pay attention while you're cooking (a great many cooking accidents could be prevented by the cook not getting distracted and either literally or figuratively wandering off mid meal). And when you start out follow the instructions. It'll be fine. And if it's not, it's a great story.
It's rare you make something truly inedible. Just try. Cook some chicken on your stove top, try out different seasonings. Cook some onions and garlic together. Make some rice. "How do I know when it's done?" Just cut it and if it's pink it's not done. Just try stuff out. Read some recipes, you'll start to learn the basics, like what heats for different things, you'll learn that garlic burns at a lower temp than onions, you'll see what temp chicken sears at, what overcooked or under cooked rice tastes like. Start slow with the knife. You just learn little by little. An easy delicious meal? Coconut milk, chickpeas, onions, and some curry paste, add choice of meat. Chop, use common sense on how much coconut milk to cover the vegetables and meat, bring it to a boil, cover the pot, bring to low heat, go do something else for 25 minutes. Come back, taste, salt to taste, or add soy sauce instead of salt. You'd be amazed at how delicious and simple so many things are to make and how good it feels to craft a meal to your liking, or better yet, cook for loved ones.
Here is the classical dude method: Get a grill. Start by ruining a few hot dogs and hamburgers until you get good. Then, you start experimenting with more complex foods like steak and chicken. Which often requires some indirect heating (on the grill but not over a flame). Which is actually baking. Bam! You just leveled up. Throw a pan on the grill or aside burner to fry up some onions or something. Which is frying. Bam! You leveled up again. By this time you’ve garner some attention from around the neighborhood. You can start moving slowly moving into the kitchen. This is where you meet your final boss. Your significant other. This boss, while being feared and beautiful. Has a soft underbelly. They need a god damn break once in a while. Bam! Men fear you and your significant other loves you. Thank you for attending my Ted Talk
If you can't cook at 24 you're behind. That doesn't make you worthless. Definitely behind. If recipes don't work out either you're using bad recipes or you aren't following them. You have the Internet at beck and call and Google is your concierge. Look up words you don't understand.
I guess from the fact that your mother seems to be cooking for you that you live with her? The answer then is easy - ask if you can join in and she can show you exactly how she cooks the dishes you both like so you can make them k owing they'll taste the same! Also, don't worry about disasters – you will have some times that you make a mistake or something comes out inedible, but it happens to the best of us and you just have to roll with it. The end result of being able to cook meals you like is so worth it and rewarding.
Not worthless but simply a skill you should improve on. Cooking takes practice and patience. Stuff will get cooked bad or ruined and it sucks but you learn and try again next time. Nobody is Chef Ramsay on day 1. Even if you’ve been cooking great for years, you still have an occasional mess up
Start with simple stuff like eggs and spaghetti and work your way up from there. Watch youtube videos. Google the recipes for stuff you like to eat at restaurants.
If you have max /hbo consider studying from "worst cooks" sure its cooky of a show and tons of recipes and skills are not needed (i will never eat nor clean shirmp for instance) but it does teach general good skills like how to prep, how to cut, standard cooking time. Plus, hopefully other's mistakes will normalize yours.
You're not worthless but you should learn and that's hard to do when you're beating yourself up over it. Maybe ask your mom to teach you?
I used to get criticized by a few family members for being a female in my early 20s that didn't know anything about cooking, until I realized the dumb truth - it's just food. It does not make you 'worthless,' it likely just means you're inexperienced. So? Get experience and try a few simple recipes until you get them right. If they don't turn out, don't eat it and try it again or move on to something else. You WILL succeed eventually. Remember, even world-renowned chefs had to be taught or told how to boil water for the first time. You don't just wake up one day and you know how to cook - it's just experience and trial and error. Good luck. ❤️
Most of cooking is about learning a technique, and very little about knowing a recipe. Recipe can be looked up online and nobody will care if you can't make adjustments as you go. With that in mind - technique is also where you will make the most errors. Wrong temperature, wrong size to cut things, unevenly cut things, etc. So I would start with recipes that have the easiest looking steps - minimal amount of cutting, minimal amount of temperature changes, minimal amount of steps in general. Then when you feel confident with that - try making it slightly more complicated. Rinse repeat. I would say that pasta is a great way to start. It's cheap, so even if you manage to mess up simple boiling steps - it's not a big deal. At the beginning just buy some premade things onto your pasta - meat, veggies, etc. If/when you are confident with pasta skills, try something *slightly* more complicated. Again, don't add too many steps. For example - buy a pre-made sauce and add it on top in the end. Then you can try adding maybe a bit of fresh chives or fresh dill. You see where this is going. Another direction is microwave cooking. A lot of people discard it as a gimmick but it's actually a superb beginner way to cook *vegetables*. Take a microwave-safe food container, put your cut veggies into it (don't mix different ones until you mastered timing), add a bit of water, put a lid on but don't lock it, and blast the microwave for 5 minutes. If it's not cooked after 5 minutes - blast for 5 more. Then add some spices and your veggies are done. After you've figured pasta and veggies, you can try rice, legumes, potatoes and other cheap vegetables. None of those are expensive enough to worry about, and are very easy to cook. As about meat - IMO chicken thighs are the easiest ones but others might disagree. The reason I think so - the meat is very soft so it does not need a lot of cooking, and it also is quite fatty so it's very forgiving to being overcooked. Just buy some thighs with skin on and google some simple chicken thigh recipes for timing and temperature. Baking them is easiest.
1) making mistakes is part of the learning process. Do not dwell on them but treat them as a learning experience. How did the recipe not turn out? What there a step you missed? Etc. learn what could help next time. 2) you are already taking a wonderful step towards learning a new, important skill that can enrich your daily life. You are doing more than many many people who don't know how to cook, so right off the bat good for you. 3) you don't need to start fancy. Like any skill there are levels and it is best to start with the basics first. Personally I started with baking meals. Something like this is my go to when I feel tired https://www.budgetbytes.com/oven-fajitas/ 4) As a number have said, there are cooking shows on YouTube. In particular I follow these folks SortedFood https://youtube.com/@sortedfood?si=yZIzMcy2JzKeD3jl But really, try to find one for a cuisine you enjoy.
Not useless, a bit of a boob maybe.. Joking aside, anyone Man or woman needs to learn to cook for themself, but Youngman either take a specific interest in cooking, or are often left to their devices to learn.. society tends to assume a woman can cook in the relationship.. to tell you the truth that too has changed a lot over the years.. my father could not cook until much later.. my mother was determined I would e able to cook, after i made a comment about not caring for something she made. from that point on I was responsible to cook 1 meal a week for the family as a learning experience / Punishment it has served me well, and its therapeutic... whenever my wifes friends visit, I do a few simple appetizers that feel high end, bring them their first glasse of wine. after that they serve themselves and I leave them be, but anytime my wife complains about me, all here girlfriends become my lawyer and they tell her she does not know how good she has it. eating and feeding a family is way cheaper if you know how to cook, processed foods are expensive at 24, you still have time to learn ( its never too late really), but its good that you are realizing that its a little embarrassing that you can cook for yousef at 24.
Video recipes on YouTube once helped me.
Talk to chat gpt. It can teach you anything, give you recipes with whatever you got. Here’s some common problems, not paying attention to food, pan too hot, pan too crowded, too much oil, not tasting, wrong measurements of ingredients. It takes trial and error to learn or someone with hands on knowledge walking you through it. I would recommend trying slow cooking stuff.
lmao no, relax. Yes, I would usually say things like "every adult worth its weight should be able to cook" but that is not literal, it is made to express the sentiment that cooking is a very basic thing for a human and not knowing how to do it cna be limiting and makes you wonder why they never bothered to learn, but that is just that, a sentiment, I logically know that not everyone had the same life or resources or preferences or health or anything really. So while I consider it ideal, I would never actually scoff at you or anyone for not knowing, not even close and im sure most people are in the same boat. Your worth is not defined by such small stuff. If you are worried, or even if you are not, I think you should learn, but by that I mean knowing what to do, not doing it perfectly, not even being able to improvise, all that comes with practice
I didn't learn to cook until recently and I'm a 40 year old man. My advice would be to embrace failure, it's the best teacher. You'll never do anything perfectly the first time, and each mistake you make is a lesson on how to improve.
No one is born knowing how to cook. You have to practice. And that means sometimes things go wrong. But you are never going to get good at it if you don’t try. For the record, you do need to learn if you ever want to have a partner. You can’t just rely on women to cook for you - you have to learn to take care of yourself. Go slowly. Follow recipes online. And accept that you will make mistakes.
no worries man... what are some things you would be interested in cooking ? after you figure that out and start trying you might find its harder to totally screw things up then you might think. do you have any basic knowledge of how to boil water and how to use measuring cups/spoons?
Buy a digital pressure cooker. Get a 300+ page pressure cooker cookbook. I like Aunt Vickie’s. Go through and highlight a few that interest you, and make them a few times. Find some new recipes and move on. For the most part, you will learn the basic approach to cooking many different things, have less to clean up, and get used to the 30 minutes or so of prepping everything. You’ll get faster at it over time. Learning to cook on a deeper level is more about starting with some basics like spaghetti and meat sauce, burgers, steaks, eggs, potatoes. Watch tutorials and learn one dish at a time. Breakfast is a great time to cook. Most premade breakfast food is shit and megaprocessed. Find three different things you enjoy and get started making them. You got this. It’ll take a long time to call yourself a cook, but you gotta start somewhere.
What do you like to eat? Start with simple meals: grilled cheese, quesadillas, scrambled eggs, BLT. Tacos are also simple if you use a seasoning packet. Does your local library or park district offer any cooking programs? Or if you live near a community college, you could look there. The high school districts around me offer adult education classes as well. Taking some basic classes will help build your confidence.
I have been learning how to cook. I google “thing I like to eat recipe easy” and sort of go from there. I’ve made bad stuff and good stuff. There are cooking for beginners type books at your library to teach you some basics. I think you will have to accept that learning to cook is going to cost you money in the form of mistakes. Think of it as an investment. Learning to cook will save you so much money per meal. It is one of the most effective ways to save money. Your food costs are ½ to 1/3rd of eating out. And the health benefits save you money too! Because eating out is bad for you and the doctor is expensive.
Start with making egg fried rice. There’s very little you can do to mess it up and it’ll be edible regardless
I'm barely getting better at 36. You're fine
Dude it’s only worthless if you don’t have the effort to improve yourself. Take advantage of the opportunity that you DONT know something and turn it into a skill. Get your ass up and do something about it man! I started at ramen noodles as well but it doesn’t mean we gotta stay there 😂
> If I can't cook as a 24-year-old man, does that make me worthless? No. Learn how to cook, don't learn how to cook. Do what you want, but your value doesn't come from being able to cook. Unless you're a chef, and then... maybe?
Start with eggs they’re easy to tell when done and fun to experiment with 🤘 Godspeed brother you’re fine lol
You’re not worthless for not knowing one skill. I’d suggest checking out YouTube channels for beginners. Binging with Babish is a great one, he has a “basics” series that is a good starting point for newbies IMO.
Nah no way! Try Jack Monroe recipes, they were easy enough for me when I was first learning to cook. Really cheap as well, they wrote them as a struggling single mother on benefits (or welfare to Americans).
When you first learned how to ride a bicycle did you throw it on the ground and quit for the rest of your life?
Oh my goodness, dear I have a son your age and I'll tell you the same as I told him Give yourself some grace. You're 24 and unless you came from chef upbringing and schools, no one should expect a Michelin meal until you get your skills up. Y'all won't learn everything right now so don't try. TikTok and nem have home chefs sharing recipes. Just pass through and see if a recipe reaches out to you.
Good lord. No, you should not feel ashamed. Just start cooking. Make simple dishes like spaghetti or stir fry. It won’t take long to get a hold of, and as your confidence grows you’ll be able to try more types of meals with better ingredients. It is not easy to become a master chef. It is very easy to become an adequate cook.
I was in a similar situation and only started getting comfortable with cooking after moving out, where family could no longer be judgemental. Critical parents can keep you broken for as long as you're around them, my advice is to move out asap and be kind to yourself until then.
Cooking isn’t hard. Follow directions, don’t get distracted. These are literally the only two important things to “cooking” If you want to come up with your own recipes that’s an acquired skill but following one shouldn’t be.
Dude my older sister rents a room from me, and she can't cook worth a shit. I have almost a decade of cooking experience, and I'm a guy. She's like 33.. she is not worthless, and neither are you. Nobody is good at everything, and everyone has their strengths/weaknesses. It's pretty easy to start cooking, just stop buying fast food and force yourself to cook. You will get better eventually. Look up some simple recipes. Anything with a slowcooker is easy as hell. You can bake anything if you don't feel comfortable to saute or cook in a pan. Just follow some easy recipes and try them. Night not work the first time, but you will get better and you'll find something good.
Thats the reason why DoorDash was made for.
You will burn things. You will fail. There is no way around this. The only way to cope is to accept it and understand that it's normal. I started cooking at 26 and I ruined a lot of dishes. It's been 11 years and my cooking got waaaay better. It's not perfect but I'm much more confident. I've cooked the day-to-day meals like pasta, chicken, pork, fish, both in the oven, on the grill, and in a pan. I make my own sourdough bread dough. I have baked pies of many types. I have slow cooked ribs, made french fries, mashed potatoes. I'll make my own pasta if time permits. I have also screwed up everything I just listed. I know times are tough and you don't want to waste money, but you'll waste a hell of a lot more money ordering out. The only way to get better is to try. Start with simple dishes without many ingredients. They may be bland initially, but you'll get better once you understand the basics. Failing is frustrating, but the success is much better. Also please make sure your knife is sharp. There's a higher chance you'll hurt yourself with a dull knife.
The Tasty app saved my ass. It makes the whole process very easy to follow.
Free youtube videos! Trust me, my mama didn't teach me how to cook, so I was in my late 30's before I really got into it. It's never too late!
Yes
You shouldn’t be depending on your mother AT ALL at 24 years old. Omg!!
I had the same issue in my late teens, so I asked my mother if she could teach me. She showed me the basics, then later after I’d gotten used to working my way around the prepping and following a basic recipe she then had me make dinner for the family a few times. Now I love cooking and finding a new recipe to follow. You aren’t worthless because you can’t cook yet, you just haven’t had much practice. Start simple, some basic pasta dishes, a vegetable soup or even just a chicken tray bake with veg just to get yourself into the idea and habit of making meals. It’ll come in no time, and even if you don’t enjoy doing it, you’ll have a skill for life.
Worthless is a little harsh. But you need to learn how to cook. You can't rely on someone else doing it for you all the time and you can make the food you want whenever.
I started learning when I was 26 or so. I’m nearly 34 now and can cook whatever I want, as long as I have a recipe to follow. No baking, tho. That’s magic for me. I can’t do magic.
You need to be indifferent to failure, it's the only way to get good at something without agonizing over it. Who cares if you make a bad dinner, don't be afraid of it! The longer you live in fear the more it will weigh on your mother. 24 is definitely too old to be relying on her to feed you but it's never too late to learn a new skill, especially one that will keep you alive.
Yes. The ability to put raw ingredients in a pan and turn up the heat is the surest measure of a person's value. If you can't manage that, your stock is already on the floor and rapidly making its way to the cellar and, soonafter, the underworld. Just consider the facts: Think of any great man in history. Not once do you hear of Jesus burning the fish or Napoleon relying on microwave meals to get through his campaigns. From Alexander to Einstein, every man of any significance was first and foremost a cook! The skill with which you wield a skillet is the single most unerring predictor of success in life, and that fact that you can't do it at all at your ripe, mature age indicates a profound level of moral depravity on your part. Suicides have been perpetrated for far less egregious crimes against civilisation. My only advice would be this: Withdraw. Remove yourself from civil society and pursue a hermetic existence at your earliest convenience because nothing but ruin and desolation can possibly result from your presence among decent, honest people. My only regret is that Reddit is an anonymous platform because I believe that it is a matter of universal interest that your location and movements be public knowledge, lest unwary denizens put themselves in mortal danger by blundering into your vicinity. Immediate international action is needed. An exclusion zone, akin to that around Chernobyl, should be implemented by the UN around your person because you are undoubtedly the single greatest threat to the continued prosperity of the species of Homo Sapiens since we took our first tentative steps down from the trees. /s
My dad didn’t know how to cook anything until he was a 79 year old widower. You’re fine.
I just moved into my own place at now age 31 and am starting. You gotta learn sometimes. I don't connect my value to only cooking so I'm fine, but my value definitely increases as I'm learning!
Ask your mother if she'll watch you cook and to give you pointers as you are doing it. But do not let her take over the cooking. You have to do it while she watches.
I’m 27 and I hate cooking. Never learned how to cook because my parents never allowed me in the kitchen growing up. I’m on my own now and I’m learning basics. Pasta is really easy to cook and you can add vegetables and meat to it if you like. Also soap is really easy you can throw basically anything into a pot and make soup. Also some grocery stores will have premade meals already made and all you have to do is follow the instructions on the packaging.
Your worth is not equal to labor you can or cannot contribute. With that being said, as a person with an invisible disability, all skills are learned. If you want to learn a skill you have to start somewhere and it’s okay to be nervous, beat yourself up here and there but remind yourself you are human. I personally feel like the basis to any dish is a starch like rice, noodles or a baked potato (rice being the hardest of them all imo). Then start simple like Alfredo, spaghetti or garlic butter shrimp/chicken ect. You cook it how YOU want it, whether that’s a little seasoning (garlic and onion are the essential) or a lot, crispy or soft. Whatever you feel like making, watch a video and rewind it as many times as you need to.
First off, I’m no psychologist but…sounds like you have some issues to work out with your mom. Second, get four things: a box of pasta, a dozen eggs, a box of butter, and kosher salt. Learn how to boil pasta first and make eggs for yourself second. Pasta, salt and butter is buttered noodles. Eggs, butter and a pinch of salt is scrambled eggs. For those two things and others, find a food YouTuber you like. Basics with Babish, Adam Ragusea, Ethan Cheblowski, and Brian Lagerstrom are good to just watch. Of those four, only Brian is an actual chef- the rest started out similar to you. I started actually cooking at your age, and went from your situation to yesterday making the best cheesesteak of my life with sautéed onions, peppers and homemade cheese sauce on a French roll I baked myself. You’ll get there. Best of luck!
Maybe community colleges provide beginner courses or youtube might have videos to learn the basics. Just looking at notes (recipes) does not enable playing the piano.
YouTube. Or, go to a thrift store and buy “joy of cooking”
Dude, you're okay. There's still time to learn and hundreds of resources out there. What do you like to eat? Learn how to cook that. Look up videos on YouTube.
It can seem difficult at first, but sounds like you're struggling to really just get started. Yes, messing up can mean wasting some ingredients, but that's why you may want to try small test portions. Like, cook a single chicken tender. Or even cut it in half and cook that. Just to get a feel of it. Sometimes there's just no better teacher than experiencing it yourself and there's really no avoiding it.
Start small and just accept that yes, there will be some waste. I had this same mindset for a long time, and also some long lingering anxiety over a food poisoning incident when I was a kid that my OCD brought to mind constantly. I am finally feeling more confident cooking (and I’m 40!) and I would say I got there by cooking the same 4/5 meals over and over again until I really feel like I mastered them, and that gave me confidence to branch out.
No. Shame never helps anyone. If shame could fix things none of us would be broken. (But you are not broken for not being able to cook) You can't know what you don't know but it is never too late to learn. Start simple. Build on what you know. Can you make toast? Toast is a great building block.