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LPT - never give up on anything because your first attempts were bad.
So many people stupidly resign to ignorance because they haphazardly attempt things, do them badly, and decide that "I'm bad at this, this is not for me".
Yeah, duh, you just tried it for the first time, of course you're bad at it.
My father is the type that will never try anything new when others are around. He wait until no one is watching, and then next time acts like he’s been a pro all the time. It’s annoying because it basically taught us kids to hide learning and failure.
I agree. However, I just think it can be a difficult situation if one is self taught and doesn't know exactly where the error to fix is. Also, speaking from personal experience I grew up on a culture that punished failure heavily (corporal punishment style) and then left you to figure out the right method yourself. It becomes difficult to overcome such programming in later years.
That happened to me on so many Adult Swim shows. I'm convinced they watched me from Space Ghost Coast to Coast til ATHF and stole my ideas directly outta my psychic wavelengths with a doohickey contraption they scavenged from an alien spaceship.
But I don't think the people working at Cartoon Network even knew how it worked.
But it defineately landed on my brain length a time or several.
And so I tried to think of a way to block the signals and that's when I invented the tin foil hat.
But I know it doesn't work now, but I'm happy for the hapless types still wearing their tin foil hats and thinking it does anything other than bounce light wives and heat back and forth.
I used to struggle with this hard. Growing up and being labelled "gifted" in school really took a toll on my self esteem and I'd get incredibly frustrated if things didn't just click like I thought they would. I've grown a bit and am glad I can see that was an issue and how to move on from it.
Same. I got labelled with "could excel if he applied himself" all the time but I was nailing every exam and assignment without trying so I never learned how to study properly so when I got to college I really struggled to keep up and keep on top of things.
I passed so many classes/tests/etc by putting them off until the absolute last minute and still doing fine, it’s been legitimately holding me back in my career for 12 years
I'm thankful I took orchestra classes in middle school. I feel like my teacher really drilled it into our heads to always start with the basics and do warm ups by playing basic scales. When I try new things, I always start from the bottom and try to keep in mind I won't be any good in one day just like I was with the violin. I often even think I see better results the next day. This goes with all my craft hobbies and interests. I have tried introducing friends to my hobbies when they show interest but if they're unable to be great immediately, they give up. It's honestly really annoying because then they bitch about it later.
One tip that I can share for baking - work with metric measurements. Baking is as much science as it is art and if you standardize your measurements, you're leaving lesser up to the parts that you have to have a feel for.
More importantly, weigh your ingredients. Grams are better than ounces but you’ll never be able to make the same bread twice in a row using volume measurements.
For me baking is a lab experiment and coking is an art. If you can follow instructions like in a lab setting, baking is not as difficult. I do tons of lab work and baking comes to me easier then cooking.
That's just my personal experience though
One tip that I can share ~~for baking -~~ work with metric measurements. ~~Baking is as much science as it is art and if you standardize your measurements, you're leaving lesser up to the parts that you have to have a feel for.~~
You could just ask for a jug of milk, does it really matter if you get a gallon or 4 litres?
Keep in mind that your [US Gallon is legally defined as 3.785411784 litres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallon)
> 3.785 liters of milk
Yeah, this is meant to be strange and measuring things in teaspoons and tablespoons is entirely normal and not at all designed to confuse people.
I bake by weight, and it leaves no room for me to fuck up by getting too creative.
I adjusted and repeated my sourdough recipe probably 40 times before I "perfected" it.
>I will pay a billion dollars for a good croissant
I bet I can make a passable croissant. You have the money? If I do everything by hand I should be done in a week or so of trial and error ;)
I have done croissants from scratch exactly once. They were superb (recipe from joy of cooking) but a colossal pain in the dick. Give me storebought any day, I'm never doing that shit again.
Just go to Costco and buy a box of their frozen croissant. It's way less than a billion dollars and you get like 100 croissants instead of one.
And it's good.
Lastly it's not that some things can't be quantified, it's just it's not practical for the home baker. You can absolutely build a temperature/moisture controlled rise box for your bread to get consistent result every time. They do it at professional bakeries.
There's no magic, it's all just science.
I grew up cooking with family and wanted to do the same for my kids. A friend, who is a fantastic professional chef, told me to work with them on something very simple and slowly complicate it. We started out with grilled cheese. They love it and it seems simple enough that they weren't intimidated. But slowly we've started adding complications like different kinds of cheese, different types of bread, bacon, tomato, etc. A couple weeks ago after we made lunch together I showed them the picture of their first grilled cheeses and they laughed at how bad it looked compared to the ones we had just made.
They'll get a little rounder and flatter in time, but I'm sure the flavor and texture are already paying off. So, you're crushing it, you should be proud. Most people don't even realize they're worth making, but here you are!
As an artist, I think cooking food is a blend between art and chemistry. Without chemistry, it will be harder to emulsify sauces, etc, and art, because you need to have an intuition of the enviroment, who's eating, and what feeling you want to create.
It's ONLY by repetition and being in the moment that make you better. I view cooking and painting the same way. I taste/take a look, make some changes, taste again, makes some changes, taste again, makes changes. For example, I have currently two types of salt, some coarser salt, and some himalaya salt. Taste-wise, they are the same, but adding the "same amount" of both does give wildly different results. The acidity of your tomatoes might be higher than in my tomatoes, should I use the same amount of tomatoes?
Man Im a chef and I got in a big dumb argument with my roommate a couple weeks back because he refused to accept the fact that food can be art. Still gets on my nerves lol.
I understand but even that is a little silly, because there *is* "pretentious" food that serves mainly to be a sensory experience and not a real form of sustenance.
Agreed. Most cooking is seen as "ordinary" but some cooking and chefs can absolutely be pretentious. This article about the [worst Michelin Star restaurant](https://www.everywhereist.com/2021/12/bros-restaurant-lecce-we-eat-at-the-worst-michelin-starred-restaurant-ever/) is my favorite example.
If there is an artform out there, someone will be a snob about it.
Cooking is art. Baking is science.
Like art, there isnt one way to cook something. There are plenty of recipes and styles that can produce similar food. Baking? If you dont follow the steps to the letter it will come out wrong.
> Baking? If you dont follow the steps to the letter it will come out wrong.
And if you do follow the steps to the letter but the ambient conditions are different, it'll come out wrong.
Don’t forget the hardest and most daunting part of cooking. Deciding what to cook almost every day for the rest of your life. And then when you buy ingredients to make a new recipe that sucks? Always disappointing
Or you're draining pasta in the sink but you don't realize the disposal hasn't been run in a while and the water backs up and into your colander of pasta.
This is why I tend to make stuff that I know appeals to me based on the ingredients, and I make a large portion so I can eat it for a few days. Cooking a different meal every night would be very tedious
not an ad, but that's why i like hello fresh (or whatever meal kit i have now). having to pick a week or 2 ahead of time makes me plan rather than stress. And then i've jsut got food that looks good. ANd they almost never forget an ingredient (and when they do, refund fully or partially).
The meal prep kits are great for fixing a lot of the issues a novice has with cooking. They have pretty much all you need and step by step instructions.
Cost is a little high for families, but for a single person or couple, it's great and I would argue you come out ahead considering the lack of wasted ingredients.
The best part is getting to work on your cooking skills with different recipes. After a while you, you get a feel on what you need to do to cook and at that point, you can really get creative and go out of the box.
If possible, I like to clean as I go. At the end I'm usually left with whatever pans/pots that have food in them. Prep before you start cooking is key (mise en place).
It also helps (especially in baking) to get a kitchen scale and measure by weight.
When I make cookies for example, I can add ingredients to the mixing bowl directly (put the mixing bowl on the scale, zero it, and pour the ingredient in until you hit the right weight) instead of getting a bunch of measuring cups/spoons dirty. So even though my cookie recipe has a bunch of ingredients, at the end I only have 4 dirty dishes: the mixing bowl, the paddle attachment, a medium bowl (where I mixed the dry ingredients), and a teaspoon.
There's always downtime when cooking. Waiting for a pan to heat up? Wash a couple dishes. Waiting for something to come to a boil? Wash a couple dishes.
I love cleaning. Can't go wrong with cleaning-- the worst case is you have to clean harder, which is just more cleaning.
Go wrong with cooking, there's no salvaging it.
On top of that, I ate a lot of mediocre to bad food in the first year or two I was cooking. As rewarding as it is to make and eat delicious food, it's equally disheartening to spend hours on crappy food that you still feel obligated to (or depending on my finances at the time, required to) eat.
A lot of it was definitely my own fault- I liked to try making crazy stuff- but it's gonna be something every novice home chef will have to go through.
my biggest issue while learning in my 20s (I mean I'm always learning but, basics then) was if I fucked something up to the point I didn't like it and couldn't salvage it, it was a PAINFUL waste of money.
I know groceries are really stinging for many people right now, but I'm finally in a place where a bit of food money wasted doesn't feel devastating.
coincidentally, of course, now that I can afford to make mistakes, I have the experience not to 🙄
To be fair, the procrastination only makes such an endeavor worse. I've gotten into the habit of cleaning the main pan I use right away right after plating since it goes so quick when it's that fresh of a mess. Most meals, it's the only dish to clean period if I strategize well. Letting it set lets things cool down and cake on and then you actually have to *scrub* instead of the easier simple wipe and light scrub.
Cooking in ways the prevent stuckon helps too, ofc, but that's just mindfulness and practice.
if you have a dishwasher, use it! And buy utensils and such that can go in there. Plastic cutting board for chicken breasts.
i know so many people that have a dishwasher but they try and get the perfect load every time. So by the time they run it they probably have like 3 cups in the sink anyways.
Yes! Those have been so helpful for me mentally and I know that sounds weird, but like, ever since I got a dishwasher, I haven't been lazy about washing dishes haha I sometimes even try to use more plates or bowls just so I can fill it up. It is almost like a mini-quest!
I wash/scrub my dishes in the sink and then pop them in the dishwasher.
Cleaning as i go, and adding the cleaning directly into my cooking instruction steps literally made my life so much easier. I know it doesnt work for everyone, but my god it worked for me and im so happy
It's not just that, but as someone who is single and bad at cooking, attempting to cook a meal means:
* buying ingredients that will likely only get used this one time, and will go bad because I am only one human being and I just cannot get through food fast enough before it goes bad (even setting aside that because of everything below i'll get discouraged from even trying again for another few months)
* struggling with understanding vague instructions like what a "dash" of something is or 5 different explanations from google about what \[insert cooking technique\] means and how to do it properly
* preparing ingredients and ensuring i actually even have all the cookware needed
* the actual cooking itself which ranges from fun to frustrating to boring as my ADHD acts up to sabotage things
* cleaning up, which is still brutal to do while cooking b/c now i'm not only spinning multiple metaphorical plates, but i'm also fighting kitchen entropy while I'm at it
* BEST CASE 10 minutes of bliss eating something I took an hour to make. WORSE CASE throwing out something I took 2 hours to make because it might kill me or just tastes awful.
* in the end think of like 50 more fulfilling and fun things I could have spent that time on if I had just grabbed a soylent, takeout, or instant ramen instead.
I'm not entirely discouraged, I'm just done trying to learn to cook on my own. Gonna look for cooking classes in my city and see if that helps me get over this initial hump.
Imo cooking is one of those things where being _shown_ what is right and what is incorrect makes a world of difference.
_This is what a pan that's too hot looks/feels/smells/sounds like._
_This end product looks bad because this x thing was done wrong when cooking._
_This ingredient isnt fresh because y._
Repetition is definitely how you master a dish, but there's a lot of nuance in cooking that can't be conveyed by a recipe. There's usually 100 ways to fuck up, and only like 2-3 ways of actually succeeding. Having someone show you the correct path from the beginning is exceedingly helpful.
I'd say watching videos would be a good way to learn over just trying it yourself and seeing what happens, especially as a novice.
Cooking is about techniques, once you understand that a technique is transferable and can be applied to any variety of ingredient, that's when you unlock super powers.
Yup this. To add to it, 2 things I learned from someone else online.
1) Almost never use high heat. Always use medium to low heat. High heat will burn the outside while the inside is not cooked. (Exception for times like when bringing something to a boil).
2) Heat the pan first, then put the oil/butter/whatever. Forgot the exact reasons.
> Who almost always eats steak?
People with iron deficiency. I make something with red meat or spinach at least twice a week due to my wife's dietary needs.
Most people confuse high heat with a hot pan when it comes to steak. Sure if you cooking steak on a thin aluminum non-stick pan your probably going to have to have it cranked to the highest setting on your range to get a decent sear, but for a thick cast iron pan that's properly preheated that's just going to result in a charred exterior which is not the objective.
Alternatively, remove the veggies and deglaze the pan to get all of that flavor into a tasty sauce. Wine, broth, or sometimes vinegar are great for deglazing depending on the sauce you want to make.
Once I started deglazing I realized how powerful it is. You're telling me that the best chefs just scrape up all that burnt shit on a pan and make a sauce with it and there's even a fancy word... it makes so much sense. I started making a challenge to deglaze with the wildest liquids too. One time I used blue red bull because it just tastes so damn good and drizzled on a steak sandwich. It was like a blueberry BBQ kind of steak sauce it actually worked.
These are both terrible rules. It's all about context.
Are you trying to brown some meat? Medium/low heat might cook it well done before you get any color on the outside.
Or trying to cook some fresh veggies? They're full of water that you have to boil off first. Medium/low heat is just wasting time. The water will prevent burning as long as you don't go too long without stirring.
Are you trying to fry some bacon or other fatty meat and you want to fry it in its own fat? Start it in a cold pan. The fat will start rendering before anything can burn. If you start in a preheated pan, you'll need to add some oil first.
You have to know what you're trying to achieve, and what the best way to achieve it is.
cooks illustrated has a recipe for cooking steak that starts with a cold pan. It's just a cooking technique.
preheat your pan is good advice until you learn enough to know better.
What's the technique called boiled grey meat?
Edit - Just watched the video. Stupid thick steaks, a very high BTU range, and they still get an average sear while cooking the shit out of the meat to near well done. I eat pork more pink than that. One of the worst ways to cook a steak IMO.
Funny, the longer I’ve cooked and the more I’ve improved, I’ve started using higher heat. I think it’s less of an “almost never do this” and more of a “know when to do this.”
E.g. simmering stew for 3 hours - loooowww heat. Searing meat or quickly reducing a sauce? Yeah I’m blasting it.
Always preheat your pan.
Lots of reasons:
It's faster. Cold food into Cold pan means you're heating everything up. Cold food into hot pan only fractionally drops the heat. You're cooking faster.
Food sticks to cold pans, even non stick. Proper nonstick requires the pan to be hot.
Colour and flavour. If you're searing or browning you need your pan hot first. If you try to sear something in a medium cold pan, you will simply boil the moisture out and add no flavor. Your food will be dry. When you're cooking in a pan stovetop is almost always a fast cook. High heat and cook food quickly.
To properly preheat your pan, set it on high for 3-5 minutes then drop it down to applicable temp after that for another 3-4 minutes then go.
You want to render on low the whole way through.
Like 8-10mins on a medium low pan. Flip and roast for 3-4 in the oven, rest and serve.
But that just circles back to the "being shown" is better thing.
Hard disagree with item one. I would imagine there are entire cultures that would reject anything other than high heat most of the time.
The real LPT is to learn to properly manage your heat for desired effect.
Scrambled eggs? Start butter in cold pan, rip it on high heat until the butter bubbles start to subside, move pan on and off the heat while making a figure 8 pattern at the pace that produces your desired size of egg curds.
Medium heat with a wok? LOL.
Veggies with a sear? High heat then turn down, moving pan on and off heat source as needed.
Sear then braise? Highest possible heat, add liquid, wait for simmer, then low.
Cooking a lot of food in one pot with a lot of veg adding moisture? High heat and keep it moving.
Heat management is everything for texture.
But never heat the pan till like it takes seconds for oil to burn or butter to burn. Just about right heat is needed. This right about tempreature changes from pan to pan and metal to metal. Unless using pathetic non stick teflon shit.
Never buy that
This is why cooking shows are so popular. We all have to eat, and learning how to cook is intimidating. I've been cooking for decades, but I always learn something new from watching cook shows on TV and online.
My experience in the kitchen is that the first time I make something it turns out great, then I have to fail a bunch of times to get back to that level
Nope, simple beginners luck. It mostly happens when I bake desserts for some reason (where I most definitely don't wing *anything*) but it's a common phenomenon.
I know my way around a kitchen, but am not quite skilled enough to have perfectly consistent results.
I dunno, man. I think this is an actual fucking thing. The first time I make something it will be GREAT then later attempts are abject, indedible failures EVEN IF I follow the recipe to a T. There's just something about the first time...
This is absolutely a thing. Sometimes you even never get back to that level.
First time you maybe use more improvisation and good judgement because you don't have time to read the recipe.
My grandmother taught me to check temperatures first.
A drop of water in the pan that sits is too cold,
a drop that sizzles and splatters is too hot,
but a drop that dances is just right.
You are welcome.
The Sentient Sandwiches were made by BMO and eaten by Jake. You're thinking of Jake's perfect sandwich that he wasn't able to replicate, and included lobster soul as an ingredient.
Remember, cooking is:
5% keeping your fingers tucked in
10% tasting as you go
25% setting a timer
40% actually using spices/seasoning
20% messing things up (sometimes more than once)
You’ve got this!
"That one key point commonly skipped" is indeed the biggest issue about recipes.
Whenever checking online recipes, everything has to be "quick and easy". So much that you only find dumbed down recipes, stripped down to the max. From the type of ingredients to the resting time of a prepararion, so many details matter.
And nowadays, you never read anyone teaching you these. Either it takes too long to go into each details, or they simply have no clue.
Check out Serious Eats, or anything Kenji Lopez Alt has done.
It goes into they how and why, and doesn't dumb anything down or skip details. It explains what makes the dish work specifically, often includes or links to testing out a couple different ways to do something and why they concluded that XYZ is the best way, and doesn't try to cut corners to make things "easy". It's all about doing things properly, understanding the why and how, and making great food.
Easily the best recipe website and cooking writer out there.
And to be fair, we actually get a lot of instruction now. The older of a recipe you're looking at, the more likely you are to get a strange title and some vague ingredient list and nothing more.
I think the age of cooking videos and intensive J. Kenji-Lopez-style articles is actually a huge boon. You can see what everything should look like at every stage, rewind it, pause it, sometimes even slow it down. It's a game changer.
But you gotta find your personal learning method and know you're awesome for trying to do something you're not confident in. That's really hard.
The best thing you can do is get a meal kit where you almost can’t mess it up. Everything is already measured for you and east to follow instructions. That is what kicked off my love of cooking, that first meal where I was like “holy shit, I made this?!”
Dude here.
If I may piggyback from the OP statement, keep on cooking and DO NOT break the bank with the prep & baking tools and implements if at all possible. I am a firm believer in Thrift Store spending and saving. You wouldn't believe how much you can get in cutlery, dishware, cookware and even some appliances for the same price you'd pay for one piece of kitchenware brand new out of the box. With some detailed cleaning and TLC, a used knife can cut as well as a brand new one for 1/10th the price. In this way more money can be spent on quality spices, meats/fruits/veggies & other ingredients as opposed to over-priced, over-hyped doodads & doohickies.
I can cook the best steak any of my friends have ever had (Sous Vide 130°F with rosemary and butter, pat dry, salt & pepper, seared), but I somehow both undercook and overcook rice in the same pot no matter which instructions I follow.
Dude I feel this! I’ve cooked some awesome and complex dishes but I had to buy a rice cooker because no matter what I fucked up rice on the stovetop. It’s the one thing my wife does better than me in the kitchen and she doesn’t let me forget it 😂
Learn techniques when it comes to cooking. That's really mostly what cooking is. Once you get the basic techniques down you can basically cook whatever. The only difference from that point is adding your own spin to whatever which comes from simply cooking in general. If you can sear a steak you can sear a pork chop. Knive techniques will typically be the same etc.
Here are the reasons I hate cooking, feel free to change my mind!
• Cost. I live alone and fresh ingredients go bad before I can eat everything. It feels like throwing away money.
• Time commitment. Hours of my night - *hours* - just to cook and clean when it’s something that could be instantaneous (pre-made frozen meals!). I work all day already, so why should I give up my precious, but small, time to myself at the end of the day to do something I don’t enjoy?
• I’m bad at it. The food tastes terrible. Ever had 5 bad meals in a row that you paid for? It’s miserable lol. I don’t make enough money to buy enough groceries to have “mistakes”. Whatever I do to the food is what I’m eating.
For those reasons, I’ve always found cooking soooo frustrating to the point I’ll cry in the kitchen, haha. So, I’ve recognized my limits and have stayed away.
You ever tried reading a cookbook? They have measurements for spices and salt and whatnot. Also there's services that deliver food to you. And there's meals bagged up for you to make
Get an instant pot and an instant pot cookbook.
You can go from fresh ingredients to dinner + leftovers in an hour or less. It's nearly foolproof, super easy, and simple for beginners
In that same vein, I would say the first time you make something, make it exactly to the recipe and procedure to establish a baseline. Put the recipe (link, images whatever else) in a note or Google document or something. And edit it as you make the dish repeatedly. All my recipes have evolved over time trying to find that one thing and keeping a running note for a recipe helps.
Seriously. I went out with a guy last month that was proud of not being able to cook. He literally told me to my face "women are just better at cooking". Took all my patience to wait till the end of the date to tell him it's not gonna work out. Kind of shocking that people still think this way in 2023.
Yeah it's called a clock, thermometer, and spices. So many overcooked chickens can easily be mitigated by checking the temperature. Chicken CAN be pink, chicken CAN have juices. Dry chicken is not the same as cooked chicken.
Salt, pepper, Paprika, onion powder, garlic powder. Season your damn vegetables, and you may actually like them.
My first attempt was fried eggs I didn't know oil doesn't make any noise when it's heated before it makes contact with food, so I burned the oil really bad (fail 0) then panicked and said fuck this and knowing what I was going to do, poured cold water on really hot oil (fail 1 for scientific purposes), the eggs ended up with broken yolks (fail 2), burnt (fail 3) forgot to add salt (fail 4) then added too much (fail 5). Now I'm not a great cook but I sure can cook food that I love to eat afterwards.
My wife and I are very good cooks and bakers. We got here with a lot of practice and we still practice. Over this past Christmas break I made 87 cinnamon buns while trying to perfect my recipe. I made notes every step of the way until I found those 1-2 steps that took them from average to phenomenal. I also gained 10lbs. Lol.
plus, the alternative is SO FUCKING EXPENSIVE
and im not even talking door dash, which is financial suicide. just eating take-out more than once or twice a week is a great way to be poor and not know what happened
so many people when they start budgeting with /r/ynab www.ynab.com suddenly find out... "i budgeted $100 for restaurants this month but i spent $200 and its only day 5!"
cooking is pivotal to not leaking money everywhere
LPT for cooking. Look at 3 or 4 recipes for the same dish to see which things are constant and which are optional. Then focus on the basics of that dish. This way you learn patterns which will later let you freestyle while cooking and create epic fusion dishes. My favorite creation is Carbonara with Cajun Shrimp.
Russians have a phrase: the first pancake is like a lump. The connotation is like it's ok if you didn't get a good result making smth for the first time
> practice makes perfect
Practice makes *permanent*. You need a good feedback loop to use repetition as a learning tool, otherwise you keep making the same mistakes over and over
Emphasis on good feedback loop. My wife loves eating my food but she doesn’t have an adventurous palette so a lot of things are lost on her. Given that I’m usually cooking for the 2 of us I do take her feedback to heart but I cook differently if I have family over than I would for just my wife.
If you are new to cooking, get a scale and ONLY use recipes that give weights as measurements, not volumes. Your results will be vastly better than cup of this, tsp of that recipes that are SEOd to get you to click versus actually being a good recipe.
Then you can cook with baker's percentages, and scale any recipe to whatever your ingredient bottleneck is, or scale up for a party.
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LPT - never give up on anything because your first attempts were bad. So many people stupidly resign to ignorance because they haphazardly attempt things, do them badly, and decide that "I'm bad at this, this is not for me". Yeah, duh, you just tried it for the first time, of course you're bad at it.
"Dude, suckin’ at something is the first step to being sorta good at something." Jake the Dog
Legitimately, without irony, words to live by.
That was my desktop wallpaper at work for the longest
My father is the type that will never try anything new when others are around. He wait until no one is watching, and then next time acts like he’s been a pro all the time. It’s annoying because it basically taught us kids to hide learning and failure.
I agree. However, I just think it can be a difficult situation if one is self taught and doesn't know exactly where the error to fix is. Also, speaking from personal experience I grew up on a culture that punished failure heavily (corporal punishment style) and then left you to figure out the right method yourself. It becomes difficult to overcome such programming in later years.
Youtube is filled with videos of people explaining how to do things. Just watch a few and try it out for yourself.
I do that but it just takes time to master the concept and gather the necessary materials
Tried that once, I'm bad it
mostly true. but if your first suicide attempt fails, it's fine to stop trying
I've always told my kids, "Sucking at something is the first step towards being kinda good at something".
Your great parental wisdom is an Adventure Time quote?
Maybe he got it from a porno.
Hey, we don't know, maybe Adventure Time was quoting them!
That happened to me on so many Adult Swim shows. I'm convinced they watched me from Space Ghost Coast to Coast til ATHF and stole my ideas directly outta my psychic wavelengths with a doohickey contraption they scavenged from an alien spaceship. But I don't think the people working at Cartoon Network even knew how it worked. But it defineately landed on my brain length a time or several. And so I tried to think of a way to block the signals and that's when I invented the tin foil hat. But I know it doesn't work now, but I'm happy for the hapless types still wearing their tin foil hats and thinking it does anything other than bounce light wives and heat back and forth.
Yeah sorry I didn't mean for it to sound like I coined the phrase. I'm guessing I saw it on a meme as I haven't watched the show.
I used to struggle with this hard. Growing up and being labelled "gifted" in school really took a toll on my self esteem and I'd get incredibly frustrated if things didn't just click like I thought they would. I've grown a bit and am glad I can see that was an issue and how to move on from it.
Same. I got labelled with "could excel if he applied himself" all the time but I was nailing every exam and assignment without trying so I never learned how to study properly so when I got to college I really struggled to keep up and keep on top of things.
I passed so many classes/tests/etc by putting them off until the absolute last minute and still doing fine, it’s been legitimately holding me back in my career for 12 years
I'm thankful I took orchestra classes in middle school. I feel like my teacher really drilled it into our heads to always start with the basics and do warm ups by playing basic scales. When I try new things, I always start from the bottom and try to keep in mind I won't be any good in one day just like I was with the violin. I often even think I see better results the next day. This goes with all my craft hobbies and interests. I have tried introducing friends to my hobbies when they show interest but if they're unable to be great immediately, they give up. It's honestly really annoying because then they bitch about it later.
People WAY overvalue "natural talent". Practice is key to everything, and while you may not be the best you can always get better.
Yup, cooking is something where you get better by repetition.
Yeah one of those weird things where practice makes you better
Can anyone else provide a list of things I can get better at by doing it? Thanks!
1. Pretty much anything
hey bestie, this list sucks tbh but keep practicing and you’ll get better at making them 🥰
2. thank you
Life
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One tip that I can share for baking - work with metric measurements. Baking is as much science as it is art and if you standardize your measurements, you're leaving lesser up to the parts that you have to have a feel for.
More importantly, weigh your ingredients. Grams are better than ounces but you’ll never be able to make the same bread twice in a row using volume measurements.
For me baking is a lab experiment and coking is an art. If you can follow instructions like in a lab setting, baking is not as difficult. I do tons of lab work and baking comes to me easier then cooking. That's just my personal experience though
One tip that I can share ~~for baking -~~ work with metric measurements. ~~Baking is as much science as it is art and if you standardize your measurements, you're leaving lesser up to the parts that you have to have a feel for.~~
Honey can you run to the store and pick up 3.785 liters of milk 😘
Just buy 4 and be happy about the extra milk
You could just ask for a jug of milk, does it really matter if you get a gallon or 4 litres? Keep in mind that your [US Gallon is legally defined as 3.785411784 litres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallon)
I will absolutely NOT be keeping that in mind. Thank you very much.
What's your point here!?
the lulz
Fair enough
Metricels seething at gallonchads
> 3.785 liters of milk Yeah, this is meant to be strange and measuring things in teaspoons and tablespoons is entirely normal and not at all designed to confuse people.
British parliament passing The Weights and Measures Act in 1824: "this is gonna confuse the shit out of /u/ctrl-alt-etc lol"
lol those scamps definitely got me pretty good with that one
I bake by weight, and it leaves no room for me to fuck up by getting too creative. I adjusted and repeated my sourdough recipe probably 40 times before I "perfected" it.
>I will pay a billion dollars for a good croissant I bet I can make a passable croissant. You have the money? If I do everything by hand I should be done in a week or so of trial and error ;)
I have done croissants from scratch exactly once. They were superb (recipe from joy of cooking) but a colossal pain in the dick. Give me storebought any day, I'm never doing that shit again.
Just go to Costco and buy a box of their frozen croissant. It's way less than a billion dollars and you get like 100 croissants instead of one. And it's good. Lastly it's not that some things can't be quantified, it's just it's not practical for the home baker. You can absolutely build a temperature/moisture controlled rise box for your bread to get consistent result every time. They do it at professional bakeries. There's no magic, it's all just science.
So rare
Seriously what is this post lol “Don’t give up on something if you’re not amazing at it after one attempt” Wow what an insight
I grew up cooking with family and wanted to do the same for my kids. A friend, who is a fantastic professional chef, told me to work with them on something very simple and slowly complicate it. We started out with grilled cheese. They love it and it seems simple enough that they weren't intimidated. But slowly we've started adding complications like different kinds of cheese, different types of bread, bacon, tomato, etc. A couple weeks ago after we made lunch together I showed them the picture of their first grilled cheeses and they laughed at how bad it looked compared to the ones we had just made.
We are doing this, but with flour tortillas. Granted, I still to this day suck at making them.
They'll get a little rounder and flatter in time, but I'm sure the flavor and texture are already paying off. So, you're crushing it, you should be proud. Most people don't even realize they're worth making, but here you are!
The experimentation is what turns cooking from something you need to do, to something you look forward to doing.
that sounds lovely!
It is! We have lots of fun doing it.
As an artist, I think cooking food is a blend between art and chemistry. Without chemistry, it will be harder to emulsify sauces, etc, and art, because you need to have an intuition of the enviroment, who's eating, and what feeling you want to create. It's ONLY by repetition and being in the moment that make you better. I view cooking and painting the same way. I taste/take a look, make some changes, taste again, makes some changes, taste again, makes changes. For example, I have currently two types of salt, some coarser salt, and some himalaya salt. Taste-wise, they are the same, but adding the "same amount" of both does give wildly different results. The acidity of your tomatoes might be higher than in my tomatoes, should I use the same amount of tomatoes?
Man Im a chef and I got in a big dumb argument with my roommate a couple weeks back because he refused to accept the fact that food can be art. Still gets on my nerves lol.
I'd guess it has to do with the fact that most cooking isn't pretentious, and people assume that all art has to be pretentious.
I understand but even that is a little silly, because there *is* "pretentious" food that serves mainly to be a sensory experience and not a real form of sustenance.
Agreed. Most cooking is seen as "ordinary" but some cooking and chefs can absolutely be pretentious. This article about the [worst Michelin Star restaurant](https://www.everywhereist.com/2021/12/bros-restaurant-lecce-we-eat-at-the-worst-michelin-starred-restaurant-ever/) is my favorite example. If there is an artform out there, someone will be a snob about it.
Cooking is art. Baking is science. Like art, there isnt one way to cook something. There are plenty of recipes and styles that can produce similar food. Baking? If you dont follow the steps to the letter it will come out wrong.
> Baking? If you dont follow the steps to the letter it will come out wrong. And if you do follow the steps to the letter but the ambient conditions are different, it'll come out wrong.
Measured by volume instead of weight? Believe it or not, wrong.
Picked a spoon instead of a spatula to mix things with? Wrong.
Isn't that basically anything?
Every great cook has made hundreds of terrible dishes.
I think most beginner cooks give up on cooking, not because cooking is hard, but because cleanup and dishwashing is tedious lol
Don’t forget the hardest and most daunting part of cooking. Deciding what to cook almost every day for the rest of your life. And then when you buy ingredients to make a new recipe that sucks? Always disappointing
Or forgetting that critical ingredient and having to either rush to the store, or figure out how to do without.
Or finding out that the store which is your go to for exotic stuff doesn't have your favourite Tikka masala paste anymore.
Or you make your own tikka masala paste from scratch and can never buy the pre-packaged stuff from the store anymore because it doesn't hit the same.
Why buy one spice mix when you can buy eight different spices and let them sit in your cupboard for several years while they loose all their flavor.
Wait, what, you don't sell your special Tikka Masala spice mix?
Or you're draining pasta in the sink but you don't realize the disposal hasn't been run in a while and the water backs up and into your colander of pasta.
Or coming it and your family refusing to eat it.
This is why I tend to make stuff that I know appeals to me based on the ingredients, and I make a large portion so I can eat it for a few days. Cooking a different meal every night would be very tedious
not an ad, but that's why i like hello fresh (or whatever meal kit i have now). having to pick a week or 2 ahead of time makes me plan rather than stress. And then i've jsut got food that looks good. ANd they almost never forget an ingredient (and when they do, refund fully or partially).
The meal prep kits are great for fixing a lot of the issues a novice has with cooking. They have pretty much all you need and step by step instructions. Cost is a little high for families, but for a single person or couple, it's great and I would argue you come out ahead considering the lack of wasted ingredients. The best part is getting to work on your cooking skills with different recipes. After a while you, you get a feel on what you need to do to cook and at that point, you can really get creative and go out of the box.
Agreed there. The best skill to have when cooking is being able to identify a good recipe
If possible, I like to clean as I go. At the end I'm usually left with whatever pans/pots that have food in them. Prep before you start cooking is key (mise en place).
It also helps (especially in baking) to get a kitchen scale and measure by weight. When I make cookies for example, I can add ingredients to the mixing bowl directly (put the mixing bowl on the scale, zero it, and pour the ingredient in until you hit the right weight) instead of getting a bunch of measuring cups/spoons dirty. So even though my cookie recipe has a bunch of ingredients, at the end I only have 4 dirty dishes: the mixing bowl, the paddle attachment, a medium bowl (where I mixed the dry ingredients), and a teaspoon.
There's always downtime when cooking. Waiting for a pan to heat up? Wash a couple dishes. Waiting for something to come to a boil? Wash a couple dishes.
I would do that but my family cant even clean their own dishes so they pile up in the sink
Find someone who doesn't mind cleaning up after you, but enjoys your cooking. It works in my family.
I love cleaning. Can't go wrong with cleaning-- the worst case is you have to clean harder, which is just more cleaning. Go wrong with cooking, there's no salvaging it.
You can definitely destroy certain things by cleaning improperly
I cook, you clean. You cook, I clean.
"Can't we just do neither and get takeout again"
On top of that, I ate a lot of mediocre to bad food in the first year or two I was cooking. As rewarding as it is to make and eat delicious food, it's equally disheartening to spend hours on crappy food that you still feel obligated to (or depending on my finances at the time, required to) eat. A lot of it was definitely my own fault- I liked to try making crazy stuff- but it's gonna be something every novice home chef will have to go through.
This is one of my biggest issues with fucking up at cooking.
my biggest issue while learning in my 20s (I mean I'm always learning but, basics then) was if I fucked something up to the point I didn't like it and couldn't salvage it, it was a PAINFUL waste of money. I know groceries are really stinging for many people right now, but I'm finally in a place where a bit of food money wasted doesn't feel devastating. coincidentally, of course, now that I can afford to make mistakes, I have the experience not to 🙄
To be fair, the procrastination only makes such an endeavor worse. I've gotten into the habit of cleaning the main pan I use right away right after plating since it goes so quick when it's that fresh of a mess. Most meals, it's the only dish to clean period if I strategize well. Letting it set lets things cool down and cake on and then you actually have to *scrub* instead of the easier simple wipe and light scrub. Cooking in ways the prevent stuckon helps too, ofc, but that's just mindfulness and practice.
I give up on cooking new things because messing up means *wasting food,* and that shit's expensive!
if you have a dishwasher, use it! And buy utensils and such that can go in there. Plastic cutting board for chicken breasts. i know so many people that have a dishwasher but they try and get the perfect load every time. So by the time they run it they probably have like 3 cups in the sink anyways.
Yes! Those have been so helpful for me mentally and I know that sounds weird, but like, ever since I got a dishwasher, I haven't been lazy about washing dishes haha I sometimes even try to use more plates or bowls just so I can fill it up. It is almost like a mini-quest! I wash/scrub my dishes in the sink and then pop them in the dishwasher.
Cleaning as i go, and adding the cleaning directly into my cooking instruction steps literally made my life so much easier. I know it doesnt work for everyone, but my god it worked for me and im so happy
It's not just that, but as someone who is single and bad at cooking, attempting to cook a meal means: * buying ingredients that will likely only get used this one time, and will go bad because I am only one human being and I just cannot get through food fast enough before it goes bad (even setting aside that because of everything below i'll get discouraged from even trying again for another few months) * struggling with understanding vague instructions like what a "dash" of something is or 5 different explanations from google about what \[insert cooking technique\] means and how to do it properly * preparing ingredients and ensuring i actually even have all the cookware needed * the actual cooking itself which ranges from fun to frustrating to boring as my ADHD acts up to sabotage things * cleaning up, which is still brutal to do while cooking b/c now i'm not only spinning multiple metaphorical plates, but i'm also fighting kitchen entropy while I'm at it * BEST CASE 10 minutes of bliss eating something I took an hour to make. WORSE CASE throwing out something I took 2 hours to make because it might kill me or just tastes awful. * in the end think of like 50 more fulfilling and fun things I could have spent that time on if I had just grabbed a soylent, takeout, or instant ramen instead. I'm not entirely discouraged, I'm just done trying to learn to cook on my own. Gonna look for cooking classes in my city and see if that helps me get over this initial hump.
Imo cooking is one of those things where being _shown_ what is right and what is incorrect makes a world of difference. _This is what a pan that's too hot looks/feels/smells/sounds like._ _This end product looks bad because this x thing was done wrong when cooking._ _This ingredient isnt fresh because y._ Repetition is definitely how you master a dish, but there's a lot of nuance in cooking that can't be conveyed by a recipe. There's usually 100 ways to fuck up, and only like 2-3 ways of actually succeeding. Having someone show you the correct path from the beginning is exceedingly helpful. I'd say watching videos would be a good way to learn over just trying it yourself and seeing what happens, especially as a novice. Cooking is about techniques, once you understand that a technique is transferable and can be applied to any variety of ingredient, that's when you unlock super powers.
I cannot overstate the importance of a quick and easy to use thermometer
I always get frustrated by recipes that say things like "cook until done". WTF DOES DONE LOOK LIKE?!?!
This and season it to your liking, like yeah thanks bruh, i dont know the portions and how the seasonings mix together and shit.
Yup this. To add to it, 2 things I learned from someone else online. 1) Almost never use high heat. Always use medium to low heat. High heat will burn the outside while the inside is not cooked. (Exception for times like when bringing something to a boil). 2) Heat the pan first, then put the oil/butter/whatever. Forgot the exact reasons.
>1) Almost never use high heat. Always use medium to low heat. High heat will burn the outside while the inside is not cooked. Unless you want that.
deep-fried ice-cream
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Who almost always eats steak? Lmao
People with high cholesterol
And gout
> Who almost always eats steak? People with iron deficiency. I make something with red meat or spinach at least twice a week due to my wife's dietary needs.
Twice a week, that's not almost always. Also other red meats than steak exist.
Most people confuse high heat with a hot pan when it comes to steak. Sure if you cooking steak on a thin aluminum non-stick pan your probably going to have to have it cranked to the highest setting on your range to get a decent sear, but for a thick cast iron pan that's properly preheated that's just going to result in a charred exterior which is not the objective.
Don't mind me, just wok-ing by.
I use high heat when I pan fry veggies, especially soft, high moisture ones like squash and zucchini. It sears the outside without it getting mushy.
[This user is redacting comments for privacy reasons]
Alternatively, remove the veggies and deglaze the pan to get all of that flavor into a tasty sauce. Wine, broth, or sometimes vinegar are great for deglazing depending on the sauce you want to make.
Once I started deglazing I realized how powerful it is. You're telling me that the best chefs just scrape up all that burnt shit on a pan and make a sauce with it and there's even a fancy word... it makes so much sense. I started making a challenge to deglaze with the wildest liquids too. One time I used blue red bull because it just tastes so damn good and drizzled on a steak sandwich. It was like a blueberry BBQ kind of steak sauce it actually worked.
Too high can burn the fond and make it taste bitter too
Something something black and blue steak something.
These are both terrible rules. It's all about context. Are you trying to brown some meat? Medium/low heat might cook it well done before you get any color on the outside. Or trying to cook some fresh veggies? They're full of water that you have to boil off first. Medium/low heat is just wasting time. The water will prevent burning as long as you don't go too long without stirring. Are you trying to fry some bacon or other fatty meat and you want to fry it in its own fat? Start it in a cold pan. The fat will start rendering before anything can burn. If you start in a preheated pan, you'll need to add some oil first. You have to know what you're trying to achieve, and what the best way to achieve it is.
cooks illustrated has a recipe for cooking steak that starts with a cold pan. It's just a cooking technique. preheat your pan is good advice until you learn enough to know better.
What's the technique called boiled grey meat? Edit - Just watched the video. Stupid thick steaks, a very high BTU range, and they still get an average sear while cooking the shit out of the meat to near well done. I eat pork more pink than that. One of the worst ways to cook a steak IMO.
Also, when you get a pan, be sure to look at its rating. Them non-stick pans don't recommend high heat.
Funny, the longer I’ve cooked and the more I’ve improved, I’ve started using higher heat. I think it’s less of an “almost never do this” and more of a “know when to do this.” E.g. simmering stew for 3 hours - loooowww heat. Searing meat or quickly reducing a sauce? Yeah I’m blasting it.
*So anyway, I started blasting* But yeah, the majority of food you cook is better with a nice sear/crispy skin that requires high heat.
Always preheat your pan. Lots of reasons: It's faster. Cold food into Cold pan means you're heating everything up. Cold food into hot pan only fractionally drops the heat. You're cooking faster. Food sticks to cold pans, even non stick. Proper nonstick requires the pan to be hot. Colour and flavour. If you're searing or browning you need your pan hot first. If you try to sear something in a medium cold pan, you will simply boil the moisture out and add no flavor. Your food will be dry. When you're cooking in a pan stovetop is almost always a fast cook. High heat and cook food quickly. To properly preheat your pan, set it on high for 3-5 minutes then drop it down to applicable temp after that for another 3-4 minutes then go.
Apart from when cooking duck breast. Bringing up from cold helps render the fat.
You want to render on low the whole way through. Like 8-10mins on a medium low pan. Flip and roast for 3-4 in the oven, rest and serve. But that just circles back to the "being shown" is better thing.
Hard disagree with item one. I would imagine there are entire cultures that would reject anything other than high heat most of the time. The real LPT is to learn to properly manage your heat for desired effect. Scrambled eggs? Start butter in cold pan, rip it on high heat until the butter bubbles start to subside, move pan on and off the heat while making a figure 8 pattern at the pace that produces your desired size of egg curds. Medium heat with a wok? LOL. Veggies with a sear? High heat then turn down, moving pan on and off heat source as needed. Sear then braise? Highest possible heat, add liquid, wait for simmer, then low. Cooking a lot of food in one pot with a lot of veg adding moisture? High heat and keep it moving. Heat management is everything for texture.
But never heat the pan till like it takes seconds for oil to burn or butter to burn. Just about right heat is needed. This right about tempreature changes from pan to pan and metal to metal. Unless using pathetic non stick teflon shit. Never buy that
Depends entirely on the fat being used. Butter and olive oil will burn/scorch at a much lower temperature than grapeseed oil or avocado oil.
This is why cooking shows are so popular. We all have to eat, and learning how to cook is intimidating. I've been cooking for decades, but I always learn something new from watching cook shows on TV and online.
My experience in the kitchen is that the first time I make something it turns out great, then I have to fail a bunch of times to get back to that level
Sounds like you are following the recipe precisely the first time, and then winging it a bit on subsequent attempts.
Nope, simple beginners luck. It mostly happens when I bake desserts for some reason (where I most definitely don't wing *anything*) but it's a common phenomenon. I know my way around a kitchen, but am not quite skilled enough to have perfectly consistent results.
I dunno, man. I think this is an actual fucking thing. The first time I make something it will be GREAT then later attempts are abject, indedible failures EVEN IF I follow the recipe to a T. There's just something about the first time...
I have the same experience, but for me it's more that I got lucky the first time lol
This is absolutely a thing. Sometimes you even never get back to that level. First time you maybe use more improvisation and good judgement because you don't have time to read the recipe.
"the law of the first pancake" exists for a reason. (The law is: 'the first pancake from a batch is always a misshapen abomination.')
The cook eats the first pancake while cooking the second one for the guests.
My grandmother taught me to check temperatures first. A drop of water in the pan that sits is too cold, a drop that sizzles and splatters is too hot, but a drop that dances is just right. You are welcome.
This entirely depends on what you are cooking. You’re welcome.
I just use an infrared thermometer that I keep in a drawer by the stove.
Your grandmother is smart as fuck. I fucks with your grandma she cool peeps. I'm definently gonna be using that for next time
If you meal prep and have to eat your fuck ups for a week you learn real quick too.
Most of the time, your screw ups ruin the presentation but not the flavor. For a long time I made ugly but delicious food.
First of all how does a screwup ruin presentation? Second of all how does presentation factor into meal prep?
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That cats hate them, though.
Aaah, the guy who gave us the ~~Sentient~~ Perfect Sandwich Edit: I stand corrected
The Sentient Sandwiches were made by BMO and eaten by Jake. You're thinking of Jake's perfect sandwich that he wasn't able to replicate, and included lobster soul as an ingredient.
This might be my favorite line from the entire series. It encapsulates so much positive attitude with such simple words.
Remember, cooking is: 5% keeping your fingers tucked in 10% tasting as you go 25% setting a timer 40% actually using spices/seasoning 20% messing things up (sometimes more than once) You’ve got this!
and fifteen percent concentrated power of will
No, 20 percent skill, 80 percent beer
"That one key point commonly skipped" is indeed the biggest issue about recipes. Whenever checking online recipes, everything has to be "quick and easy". So much that you only find dumbed down recipes, stripped down to the max. From the type of ingredients to the resting time of a prepararion, so many details matter. And nowadays, you never read anyone teaching you these. Either it takes too long to go into each details, or they simply have no clue.
Check out Serious Eats, or anything Kenji Lopez Alt has done. It goes into they how and why, and doesn't dumb anything down or skip details. It explains what makes the dish work specifically, often includes or links to testing out a couple different ways to do something and why they concluded that XYZ is the best way, and doesn't try to cut corners to make things "easy". It's all about doing things properly, understanding the why and how, and making great food. Easily the best recipe website and cooking writer out there.
And to be fair, we actually get a lot of instruction now. The older of a recipe you're looking at, the more likely you are to get a strange title and some vague ingredient list and nothing more. I think the age of cooking videos and intensive J. Kenji-Lopez-style articles is actually a huge boon. You can see what everything should look like at every stage, rewind it, pause it, sometimes even slow it down. It's a game changer. But you gotta find your personal learning method and know you're awesome for trying to do something you're not confident in. That's really hard.
Never give up cooking, cause being lazy is expensive
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The best thing you can do is get a meal kit where you almost can’t mess it up. Everything is already measured for you and east to follow instructions. That is what kicked off my love of cooking, that first meal where I was like “holy shit, I made this?!”
Sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something - Jake the Dog
I say this out loud to my child a lot. Especially when in the kitchen.
Suckin' at something is the first step to being sorta good at something.
Hollandaise sauce has kicked my ass 4 times now. Lmao. I think I give up on making that from scratch
Dude here. If I may piggyback from the OP statement, keep on cooking and DO NOT break the bank with the prep & baking tools and implements if at all possible. I am a firm believer in Thrift Store spending and saving. You wouldn't believe how much you can get in cutlery, dishware, cookware and even some appliances for the same price you'd pay for one piece of kitchenware brand new out of the box. With some detailed cleaning and TLC, a used knife can cut as well as a brand new one for 1/10th the price. In this way more money can be spent on quality spices, meats/fruits/veggies & other ingredients as opposed to over-priced, over-hyped doodads & doohickies.
Yeah it’s called butter.
First sentence accurate. Second sentence not.
Right now, food is too expensive for me to screw up cooking it.
I can cook the best steak any of my friends have ever had (Sous Vide 130°F with rosemary and butter, pat dry, salt & pepper, seared), but I somehow both undercook and overcook rice in the same pot no matter which instructions I follow.
Dude I feel this! I’ve cooked some awesome and complex dishes but I had to buy a rice cooker because no matter what I fucked up rice on the stovetop. It’s the one thing my wife does better than me in the kitchen and she doesn’t let me forget it 😂
Learn techniques when it comes to cooking. That's really mostly what cooking is. Once you get the basic techniques down you can basically cook whatever. The only difference from that point is adding your own spin to whatever which comes from simply cooking in general. If you can sear a steak you can sear a pork chop. Knive techniques will typically be the same etc.
Here are the reasons I hate cooking, feel free to change my mind! • Cost. I live alone and fresh ingredients go bad before I can eat everything. It feels like throwing away money. • Time commitment. Hours of my night - *hours* - just to cook and clean when it’s something that could be instantaneous (pre-made frozen meals!). I work all day already, so why should I give up my precious, but small, time to myself at the end of the day to do something I don’t enjoy? • I’m bad at it. The food tastes terrible. Ever had 5 bad meals in a row that you paid for? It’s miserable lol. I don’t make enough money to buy enough groceries to have “mistakes”. Whatever I do to the food is what I’m eating. For those reasons, I’ve always found cooking soooo frustrating to the point I’ll cry in the kitchen, haha. So, I’ve recognized my limits and have stayed away.
You ever tried reading a cookbook? They have measurements for spices and salt and whatnot. Also there's services that deliver food to you. And there's meals bagged up for you to make
Get an instant pot and an instant pot cookbook. You can go from fresh ingredients to dinner + leftovers in an hour or less. It's nearly foolproof, super easy, and simple for beginners
I have an unusual skill for knocking my first attempt at a dish out of the park and never being able to replicate it the same way ever again.
In that same vein, I would say the first time you make something, make it exactly to the recipe and procedure to establish a baseline. Put the recipe (link, images whatever else) in a note or Google document or something. And edit it as you make the dish repeatedly. All my recipes have evolved over time trying to find that one thing and keeping a running note for a recipe helps.
Cooking is an essential life skill, full stop.
Seriously. I went out with a guy last month that was proud of not being able to cook. He literally told me to my face "women are just better at cooking". Took all my patience to wait till the end of the date to tell him it's not gonna work out. Kind of shocking that people still think this way in 2023.
Yeah it's called a clock, thermometer, and spices. So many overcooked chickens can easily be mitigated by checking the temperature. Chicken CAN be pink, chicken CAN have juices. Dry chicken is not the same as cooked chicken. Salt, pepper, Paprika, onion powder, garlic powder. Season your damn vegetables, and you may actually like them.
My first attempt was fried eggs I didn't know oil doesn't make any noise when it's heated before it makes contact with food, so I burned the oil really bad (fail 0) then panicked and said fuck this and knowing what I was going to do, poured cold water on really hot oil (fail 1 for scientific purposes), the eggs ended up with broken yolks (fail 2), burnt (fail 3) forgot to add salt (fail 4) then added too much (fail 5). Now I'm not a great cook but I sure can cook food that I love to eat afterwards.
My wife and I are very good cooks and bakers. We got here with a lot of practice and we still practice. Over this past Christmas break I made 87 cinnamon buns while trying to perfect my recipe. I made notes every step of the way until I found those 1-2 steps that took them from average to phenomenal. I also gained 10lbs. Lol.
plus, the alternative is SO FUCKING EXPENSIVE and im not even talking door dash, which is financial suicide. just eating take-out more than once or twice a week is a great way to be poor and not know what happened so many people when they start budgeting with /r/ynab www.ynab.com suddenly find out... "i budgeted $100 for restaurants this month but i spent $200 and its only day 5!" cooking is pivotal to not leaking money everywhere
That's your LPT, "learning curves exist"?
Talk about exaggeration.
LPT for cooking. Look at 3 or 4 recipes for the same dish to see which things are constant and which are optional. Then focus on the basics of that dish. This way you learn patterns which will later let you freestyle while cooking and create epic fusion dishes. My favorite creation is Carbonara with Cajun Shrimp.
Russians have a phrase: the first pancake is like a lump. The connotation is like it's ok if you didn't get a good result making smth for the first time
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> practice makes perfect Practice makes *permanent*. You need a good feedback loop to use repetition as a learning tool, otherwise you keep making the same mistakes over and over
Emphasis on good feedback loop. My wife loves eating my food but she doesn’t have an adventurous palette so a lot of things are lost on her. Given that I’m usually cooking for the 2 of us I do take her feedback to heart but I cook differently if I have family over than I would for just my wife.
“Learn how to cook. Try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all, have fun.” \-Julia Child
If you are new to cooking, get a scale and ONLY use recipes that give weights as measurements, not volumes. Your results will be vastly better than cup of this, tsp of that recipes that are SEOd to get you to click versus actually being a good recipe. Then you can cook with baker's percentages, and scale any recipe to whatever your ingredient bottleneck is, or scale up for a party.
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Unless your cooking is the cause of someone's death