(no subject)

[nny]

I would like to learn to cook but it's kinda hard to do that without learning from someone or for someone.

Can you guys cook?

Comments

[ashen_key]

I can, as it happens :D It is very fun. Like alchemy, or witchcraft. Mum taught me - by which I learnt how to do a few things with her supervision, and then did them on my own, and now I just do things that I like the look of as I've got that basis. Start small, work your way up, etc.

[shaenie]

Alas, I cannot cook at all. =(

[jadesfire]

I love baking, but would say I've only recently learned to cook. Baking is a mixture of craft, chemistry and luck. My cooking is a bit more hit and miss, but I've had more hits lately.

I can go on (and on) about this sort of thing, but don't want to bore you unless you want to hear it! But the two pieces of advice I'd give are 1)Look for online recipes on blogs or similar, rather than recipe sites. They'll give you a more honest opinion. 2)Look at menus of restaurants where you like to eat and make those things. You're much more likely to stick with it, enjoy and explore if it's stuff you actually want to eat!

I've started to use my 'general' blog for tracking what we eat, here, if you're interested :) I'm more or less self-taught, so I'm better at some things than others, but I'm confident now to try most things. Once, anyway!

[uninvitedcat]

I can cook - my mum taught me by giving me tasks to help her out when she was cooking, and those tasks got bigger and bigger until I realised I knew how to cook several dishes!

I would strongly recommend Delia Smith's stuff - her Complete Cookery book or her How to Cook books are probably best for starting up. Mainly because she tells you what equipment you need, alternative names for ingredients, what it looks like when it's done, and she covers common issues and how to fix them (if you can). Quite a lot of her recipes are available for free on her website, but I can't say for sure how much of the additional material you get on there.

[soupytwist]

I was going to mention Delia! My gran gave me those as a You WIll Now Have To Feed Yourself OMFG gift, and they're great. I did know how to boil an egg when I first read them, but I didn't know a lot of the other stuff, and that sort of really beginner knowledge is fantastically necessary. (And it didn't make me feel stupid for not knowing how to make omlette or whatever at all.)

Otherwise, I mostly learned the bit of cooking I can do by giving up on recipes. Recipes seriously freaked me out, and it was a massive joy when I learned that actually, it usually doesn't matter if you cook your whatever at 110 degrees rather than 100, or whatever. I found I'd get so worried about buying the right seasoning or having the right kind of breadcrumbrs or whatever that I just wouldn't even try, whereas making it up as I went along on the basis of "does this taste nice?" worked for me a lot better. Basic concepts put together can end up a lot more complicated, and tasty, than I thought, and I only started doing that once I decided not to do recipes.

[uninvitedcat]

Delia FTW!

And yes, discovering that you will not Fail At Cooking because you don't have any tomato purée is very freeing - and the sudden realisation that you *do* have tomato ketchup so why not try substituting that May end up leading you to your very own version of a favourite dish....

[krait]

This is exactly the sort of thing I learnt from my mother, and that I often see other people get stuck on!

"Ack, I'm out of X, now I can't make this dish!" --> No! You can totally make it! Here is a list of stuff you might substitute for X, or that it's okay to leave out if it's X! *scribbles out a list*

Or even the idea that substitutions are possible -- because it's not that hard to Google "what can I cook with instead of buttermilk" or whatever, but you do have to have that first suspicion that there is a way around this rather than just stopping the whole process because you're short one ingredient.

[gonergone]

I've learned everything I know about cooking from the internet, which is not that hard! "How to cook" is a really broad topic - if you were thinking of learning, maybe start with some recipes you've always wanted to learn, and after you feel you have them down, start experimenting slightly?

[bliumchik]

the first thing i learned to cook was breakfast because it's much easier to make an omelette for one than a lasagne for one. also, there's a lot of recovery modes - try for an omelette, or for some fried eggs! fuck it up? no worries, it's a scramble now and we have always been at war with eurasia. it also involves the least vegetabley vegetables - mushrooms, tomatoes, potatoes... win!

[genarti]

I can.

I'd say I learned from my mother, and I kind of did, but I didn't really cook much at all until college, aside from baking brownies from a mix or the like. But I'd help when asked, and I observed a lot in the background, I guess. Then in college -- especially in Cairo, when our dining options were fairly limited and several of us had illicit hot plates in the dorm -- I'd learn from friends how to make this or that, and add it to my mental repertoire. I rarely measure unless I'm baking, which is what started getting me comfortable with making things up as I went along. I usually cook primarily for myself, but I've nearly always lived with people who are often willing to help eat what I make.

My mother cooks a lot more from recipes than I do. She'll find a recipe she likes the sound of, and maybe do a bit of substitution or add more of this spice or that but generally stick to the recipe. I'm a lot more likely to read a few recipes for something, internalize the gist of the process, and then make up my own version based on the highly scientific principle of "Enh, that looks about right." But that kind of freewheeling is not at all required to be a good cook (and in fact makes it hard to pass on recipes to other people) -- as I say, my mother is an excellent cook and taught me most of the basics I know, and she likes having the directions to follow in front of her.

In my experience, at least -- and YMMV -- it's useful to find a couple of staples that you can make and feel pleased with, and then you can branch out from there. In college, mine were red lentil daal, pasta with cheese and veggies and herbs, and (European-style) lentil-orzo soup. I started with a set version, and then I started varying the veggies and herbs in the latter two, and then I started changing things up so that my lentil soup was really "some kind of lentil or bean, some kind of starch, some veggies" soup. To me, that was how I got comfortable with basic cooking procedure stuff. A lot of it really is just practice.

[in_the_blue]

It's easy! It's fun. I'm self-taught. I like Smitten Kitchen for recipes and the comments on recipes for customization ideas, but that's just a starting point.

I look at cooking this way. The worst that can happen is something won't turn out the way I thought. It's like playing with play-doh, only it's actually edible. The more you do it, the more experimentation you find you're willing to do. I mean, you know me, I can't even leave an internet meme alone, so that goes double for most recipes. I always have to tweak them and add something to them. If they work, great! If not, I'll know what not to do next time.

Start out with things that look delicious to you and if there are terms you don't know, look them up. Trial and error is the best way to learn. You can do it! ♥

[naye]

For various reasons I could not cook at all when I moved out at ninteen. Then I learned how to follow a couple of recipes, but I really would't have said I could cook. I didn't start experimenting until I moved to Japan and was really poor and only had a one-hob stove and a rice cooker... then I started experimenting with frying things (like sprouts, because they were cheap) to put on rice.

Turns out very basic cooking is really, really easy - like I said. Sprouts on rice! With a bit of egg, or maybe meat, seasoned with soy sauce. But I didn't really start getting a real feeling for cooking until moving in with Skuld. Having someone to cook for is inspiring and rewarding (they can do the dishes!). But it also helped to write down all recipes that turned out nicely in an actual book, and making a list of dishes we'd made, and now when we don't know what to make for dinner we refer to the book - it's quite useful to have a record of things you know you can make and also directions for how to make them.

I also found that once I'd learned how to cook a couple of different dishes it became much easier to try new things - knowing how to make one sort of oven chicken means the next time I wanted to try something involving chicken in the oven I had an idea of how long it might take, and how much effort might be involved.

Which is another thing - you can do a lot of very delicious cooking with minimal effort! Before I started cooking, I always thought it HAD to involve a lot of time and complicated maneuvers and mysterious alchemy... turns out there's plenty of extremely tasty food that just wants to be spiced and shoved in the frying pan or oven. Veggies need peeling and often a bit of cutting, but turn out fantastically well roasted in the oven, steamed in the microwave (you can do this in a normal bowl), or boiled and mashed together. (For example, one of our favorite veggie sides is potato, parsnip & onion mash. About 1/3 of each peeled, cut and boiled until soft, then mashed with a bit of butter and possibly a pinch of salt.)

So in my experience, what took me from not cooking to making delicious food every day my partner doesn't cook is to start with something easily manageable and then getting confident enough to branch out. Oh, and there are SO many good recipe sites on the internet, but my favorite way of finding new things to try is to do an image search for the dish I want. XD That way I can immediately tell if the result is too fancy for me to want to bother with, or if it uses weird ingredients or cooking methods (like deep frying instead of oven baking). I tend to click on what looks yummy and also doable, and have had a lot of luck finding tasty new dishes that way.

[batyatoon]

I can cook lots! I have never tried teaching anyone to cook, but I can offer tips if you're trying to learn to cook anything specific.

[krait]

Yes, I can cook. I learnt basics from my mother all through my growing-up, and that has stood me in good stead! It takes a certain base level of knowledge to work from non-questionable (as in, you can't ask it a question) sources like the internet or a book, so my background knowledge picked up during childhood has stood me in good stead.

I'm not a fancy cook, but that's mostly due to my own inherent laziness -- I'm happy to accept "simple" and "sometimes mediocre" in exchange for not having to clean half a dozen pots/utensils or meticulously work out the timing of things. :D (I do have a fancy side, though; I really like to make food look decorative if I'm serving it to someone who isn't me!)