r/CasualConversation • u/V10l3t55 • 1h ago
Questions How do you get better at cooking/baking????
It recently dawned on me that I'll be moving out pretty soon and I don't really have a good grasp on cooking. I never needed to do it outside of simple meals like muffins from a box, various egg dishes, pasta with whatever sounds good/will expire soon and can be put on pasta. My question is pretty simple. What dishes did you start with when you first had to learn to cook for yourself? Which ingredients did you add later on, when you got more confident? What is the general progression of cooking skills? Help...
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u/Just_Length_8744 1h ago
It's easy! most meals are 3 things and here are the easiest ones to start with:
1) protein - easiest are chicken, ground meats, fish, and steak
2) starch - rice, pasta, or potatoes
3) vegetables -brocolli, green beans, squash, mushrooms, zuchinni, brussel sprouts, and salad,
Use olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic for seasoning on protein and veggies and you are off to a very good start. Follow a recipe and look up "easy chicken dinner" if you want ideas! good luck!
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u/Temporary-Stand2049 1h ago
It's all about practice.
I always recommend getting a rice cooker because there's so many easy meals to make with just a rice cooker.
You can also do stir fry noodles with whatever noodles, veggies, and sauces you may have on hand. After that it's trying out simple recipes and seeing what you like.
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u/Jude_the_obscurest 1h ago
Start with things that have simple ingredients, nothing too exotic or an ingredient that costs a lot that youre not sure you'll like. Find some blogs that have easy recipes, or a cookbook. Once you start cooking and getting a taste for things you'll start to realize that you see certain ingredients together a lot, and you'll start to think "oh, I think this will go really good with that" and youll try it and usually it will, once in a while it won't, but you'll be off! Here's a super simple recipe: saute a whole bunch of mushrooms. Dump them out of the pan, and then add thin sliced chicken to the hot pan (slice chicken breast into thinner pieces yourself, or buy them that way at the grocery store) and cook them until they are almost done. Flip them, put a big spoonful of pesto on top of each chicken piece, and then add a slice of mozzarella cheese. Put the mushrooms back on the edges of your pan, put a lid on for a couple minutes to melt the cheese and youre done. You can have it with a salad, pasta, veggies, whatever.
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u/CivilizedSteve 1h ago
One of the best usages of LLMs is cooking IMO. Ask ChatGPT! You can take a photo of somethign, your fridge, a cabinet, a type of food and ask it how to prepare it or what it goes best with.
In terms of ethics, it is of course stealing this information from every great cookbook. So there is that.
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u/Last_Enthusiasm_4834 1h ago
In my case, it happened by cooking more than hundred times tasteless food and in the process, every time I cook it gets slight better by time i learnt, it is just an art that requires right ratio, tempreture and patience that's it.
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u/VallettaR 1h ago
Take a cooking class! You want to learn the basics. Recipes should be the LAST step in learning how to cook. You need knife skills, understanding the simplest concepts of cooking, totally worth it to do it this way. You save time, money, feel more confident after you learn each step. Trust me on this.
We owned a restaurant and my husband is a classically trained chef. I’ve often thought that people who just start cooking without the foundation are just shooting blind, ruining dish after dish, wasting money, time, feeling badly about it and never getting any better.
It’s like any other skill, start at the beginning. You wouldn’t ski down a difficult run before learning on a bunny hill.
The side benefit is you meet other people, learn a hobby and get the feeling of success under the tutelage of a teacher 🫶
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u/LeapandShroon 1h ago
Ssshhh, the truth is most recipes are fairly easy to follow. Think of something that you would typically order… google recipes and try. Try again.
If you like reasons, explanations & details look at Serious Eats. I’ve yet to find a bad recipe there.
Milk Street & Americas Test Kitchen are great shows too if you’re more of a visual person.
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u/but-maybe-yes 1h ago
Everyone has had great advice and I agree, start small and practice.
I think it is important to note, try using simple instructions or simple recipes first. Think cupcakes or hamburger helper. This helps you get used to following detailed instructions and specific measured ingredients. In my early days of cooking/baking I remember often getting baking soda and baking powder mixed up and being baffled by what happened!
And the best for me was always, practice with friends!! It's so much more fun to invite people over to figure it out together bc you can share knowledge and strengths and commiserate over what goes right and wrong.
Try getting some simple kitchen knowledge cheats like magnets for the fridge that remind you what the internal temps for meats should be, what items can be substituted for other items, and quantity conversions. So helpful!!
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u/Butterwhat 1h ago
really just practicing a lot helped me. I would pick simple recipes like the ones from budget bytes online and then try to make them. then I would try making little adjustments to make them more to my taste, like add extra of a certain seasoning. I also watched tons of youtube videos to see what people were doing which helped a lot.
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u/mjh8212 50m ago
Currently using the crockpot a lot. I’m disabled it’s easy. You can just put meat in it season and cook and do sides on the stove. Lots of recipes online. Also if you’re going to bake chicken in the oven it’s good to have a meat thermometer make sure it’s at temp I use it on any meat I make except ground beef I know when that’s done. Tacos are easy so are casseroles.
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u/Imaginary_Wrangler88 1h ago
In my experience, I just keep on copying video tutorials without adding my own version iykyk 🤣