Ask Lemmy

Trial and error. Lot's of meals that I just... forced down. Learned what I did wrong and changed it. But well, I don't really cook specific recipes, mostly I just boil things and know when to add stuff and what spices might go good with it, if any.

I'm happy other people had their parents to teach them but my parents mostly made stuff from boxes like hamburger helper and kraft dinner. Then they had all that free time to themselves to watch tv and get drunk.

I learned to cook the same way I learned to have sex. Trial and error, usually by myself, sometimes with a partner, and I read some publications about it that had plenty of pictures.

I learned cooking from observing my father, but he never really taught me to cook. He loved cooking and I always remember himself saying, "the hardest part about cooking is figuring out what you want to cook." Cooking is easy when you're not afraid of making mistakes.

My mom allowed me to watch, so I understood the basics. But she also was a terrible cook, so I didn't really git gud until I started watching Good Eats. The inclusion of the science was a huge help, since I am one of those people that benefits a lot from knowing why I am doing something and not just knowing that I need to do X. So I can follow recipes, but also can concoct my own things knowing what will work as a substitute and why, or what flavors go well together and such.

Have kids to feed. Have random things to cook. No time. Get creative. Fail. Try again next time. Succeed. Repeat. Fail. Succeed. Fail. Succeed. Start to plan ahead. Continue to fail or succeed. Try to teach kids so they fail less than me. Hope kids teach their kids. Break cycle of family not knowing how to cook. Family line succeed. Humanity saved.

I learned in chapters.

1. Teen/young adult years I just got the basics down, how to cut meat and veggies depending on their application and making meals I grew up with and knew well. 
2. Twenties, mostly cooking in restaurants learning new recipes and commiting the "correct way" to memory while learning foods from other cultures 
3. Thirties, breaking out of my comfort zone and just making food that sounds like it'd work together instead of making what middle-of-the-road restaurants taught me. Lots of YouTube videos absorbing general concepts.

The biggest things I've learned is that food needs twice as much fat/oil as I think it does and three times as much salt. When I have bits of veggies I'm not gonna cook, I freeze them in a bag until I have enough to make a stock—it's free flavor. Also, spice and season everything; I used to season my main ingredients and then just plop unseasoned ingredients on top thinking it's fine (for example, an egg scramble needs salt and pepper added to both the eggs and the sautéed veggies) 

I learned most of it during my youth, from my mother and my grandmother. Nothing beats the specific instructions like "stir it faster", "this is enough oil", "when it looks like that, then it is ready" etc.

And then lots of trying out ofc when I was older.

My wife and her mother taught me. I love to cook now, but my mother doesn't like to cook and was too tired as a single mother to cook a lot, so when I lived alone I was totally incapable to cook.

There is a book called "cooking for geeks" which instead of just giving you recipes explains why stuff is cooked a certain way. What actually happens, chemically, when you cook something. After reading that, I could just improvise dishes and they would usually come out pretty well.

Back in 2009 our youngest was born and I had lost my job due to the economic downturn. My wife was the cook at the time, but was also the sole bread winner as well.

I had some basic skills in the kitchen, but really could not say I could cook. My wife was a great cook. However, it did not make any sense for her to work a 12 hour day and come home to cook. When I had been home with the baby and our older son all day.

So I had her teach me what she knew. Mainly it involved in how to read recipes. Learning the difference between a TSP and Tbsp and those types of things. While I would not say I have a talent for cooking, I did have a penchant for it. That lead me to cooking almost every day and discovering that a lot of getting good at cooking is practicing cooking techniques.

Fast forward to today and I've been a hobbyist cook for 17 years. I can confidently open any cookbook to any page and at least competently make that recipe, if not put restaurant quality meal on the table.

Am I as good as professional cook or chef? Oh hell no. I'm a home cook... A great home cook, but still a home cook. I'd probably be lost in a professional kitchen.

I learnt at cooking school, because i was a chef at one stage. That was 2 decades ago, and I've lost most of those skills now.

My dad did most of the cooking, it is serviceable food some great some just okay, but he'd have a thing where he introduced me and my sister to cooking by starting with asking us to taste food during cooking and going "do you think it needs any salt? Any pepper?" type questions

This progressed on to "can you make the mash whilst I make the sausages? Can you slice that vegetable whilst I...?" - easy tasks that are out of the way of the main bulk of the meal

Then on to eventually "wanna try making the Sunday Breakfast today?"

A steady progression of increasing responsibility, in a way that disguises that's what's happening

A really great way to teach, tbh

By cooking.

I had a mom who was able to pass the basics of cooking down as well as home ec. classes. We've done a major disservice to the younger folks by not offering such classes honestly. Learning how to read recipes, basics of cooking, knowing when food is good to eat, etc. is a highly useful skill even now.

YouTube

• Food Wishes, Chef John M

• Chef Jean-pierre, god bless the man. He taught me everything I need to know about Onyo

I didn't. Though you can figure out the basics with some common sense and trail-and-error. But I really don't care for it.

Growing up, there was a calendar in the Kitchen that was called The Shit Day. My three siblings and I and my mom would each get a shit day, where we had to do all the cooking and cleaning.

So I learned to cook by doing it.

Opened cookie book. Followed directions. Suddenly had delicious cookies. Realized that I could do this with other things.

Trial and error. You need to know what you did wrong to do it right to get better and better. Salt and pepper is your friend. Recipes are nice (not your ad driven life story) but get 2 or 3 of the same dish and see how they differ. There’s so many ways to do one thing, and they all may be right but for YOU, you need to find what’s CORRECT for YOU. Also grab some music or blast the TV, this is your time, to take your time, to time the food right, because this will feel right in the end. Enjoy.

It started from sloth and gluttony, actually. I remember wanting a cookie, but not having the motivation to go out into the world to buy cookies. So I looked around the kitchen, looked up a couple of recipes, and tried to make some simple sugar cookies with what I had on hand. I didn't have the right kind of flour, and ended up using whole wheat flour, so I had these odd looking brown-ish sugar cookies.

They were so good. I couldn't believe I'd made them. So I started picking up the spices and other ingredients that cookie recipes commonly asked for, and I started making cookies every weekend. Then I started collecting cookbooks. Eventually I changed the way I bought groceries, I don't buy finished food anymore for the most part, I buy ingredients. I have an impressive spice collection built up at this point, some of which was grown by my wife. I have all the cool stuff like cooking sherry and at least three different kinds of vinegar.

And now, a decade after making those first ugly cookies, I can create an amazing meal at the drop of a hat using only the stuff in my house. And then I can make cookies that melt in your mouth and are so tasty they would make a medieval peasant cry.

Tl;dr: Man is too lazy to drive to town, changes his life and eating habits over a decade instead.

Small steps. Some cookbooks talk through the basics. Lock in some staples and built from there. Eggs 3 ways, pasta sauce, simple desserts. I was surprised how simple and impressive a gelatine-based panna cotta is. Once i got some under my belt, i tried something more intricate - Lemon sabayon pine nut tart with honeyed mascarpone cream from the french laundry.

Funny how desserts are formulaic, so follow the recipe. Daily cooking is usually by 'feel'.

Oh and always ask that amazing lady for advice.

My mom taught me to cook from a pretty young age. Not that it's exactly cooking, but the first thing she taught me to make myself was just a bologna and cheese sandwich, which obviously left an impression on me lol.

Start by watching YouTube videos about cooking - specifically single skills like how to chop with a Chef's knife, how to get a good sear on cast iron, how to sauté, fry, etc.

Then try some recipes that incorporate these skills.

Then once you can follow recipes alright then move on to experimenting and tweaking recipes. Try your spices. Identify what goes together. You'll get the hang of balancing acid, heat, sweet, salty, etc. You'll fail sometimes but you'll learn.

Eventually start making your own combinations and you won't need recipes (which doesn't mean you'll never use them).

At first my dad showed me how to grill a chicken in our oven and how to make mashed potatoes from powder and open a can of sauerkraut. Our mom was in the hospital for several months and our dad had to work shift so he sometimes wasn't at home and at about 13 it was ut to me to Make lunch for me and My 11 years old sister when we came home from school.

After mastering that I did a lot of trail and error. I still for the love of god can't cook a rabbit, it't always terrible dry and chewie.

But other things like beef, vegetable soup, chicken, barszcz etc. I am now cooking consistently as they should taste.

But the most fun I have cooking with stuff which randomly is in the refrigerator, sometimes it's a miss, but most of the time I have a feeling what will work well together.

I watched a lot of PBS and YouTube videos to better under what I should look for when cooking. After that it's really just get in there and try it. Flavor is subjective so that videos kind of stop being helpful at some point. ATK and Babish do a pretty good job of explaining what is happening and what to look for to know that something is done cooking.

Some from my parents, some from school, and some from trying shit :3

Overall the cooking classes I got in school were probably the biggest part of learning it lol

I was more or less forced to contribute at home. It was not just cooking, but the whole process of dinner. It started with me having to set the table, clear the table, do the dishes and when we got a dishwasher, load it. Then I also had to peel potatoes, cut vegetables. The older I got, the more responsibilities I got. At some point I had a dedicated day in the week where nobody would be able to cook for me and others would eat later than I would. These days were initially just me and my dad, so my dad showed me literally once how he made pasta bolognese. The next week, it was my turn. I was given feedback on my cooking and the next week I could try again. I kinda liked doing it so in due time, I also had to cook on another weekday. My mom would show me how she handled certain things and after a while, but the time I was 16, I could make a couple of dishes and did so at least twice a week. My sister was gearing up to be a professional athlete (sadly she never made it that far) so she rarely cooked but once she stopped her sport, she would also cook twice a week.

This is less the story of how I learned to cook and more the story of how my parents trained their servants to cook for them.

I got off the ground by taking cooking classes in grade school as one of my electives in both junior high and high school. My parents weren't great at teaching much of anything. I have no passion for it but I figured I should know, and I like to cook for people I love even when I won't bother to if it's just myself.

My biggest weakness is knowing what spice to use, so I have actual cheat sheets I printed out and pinned above my stove lmao.

Something my mom said, I am slightly paraphrasing: Cooking is simple, you just put things on heat source, don't let it burn i.e. add ingredients in the 'right' order, control the heat, stir and stir; balance the salt and pepper. Voila.

The updated version is: heat the pan, add little oil or butter, lightly fry chopped onions, add stuff to it, stir to prevent burning, sprinkle salt and pepper, Voila. When you're ready to start being fancy, experiment with spice mix, later you don't have to rely on spice mixes.

Twenty years ago I bought an Italian cookbook called The Silver Spoon and followed the instructions. Some time later I bought the book 1080 Recipes by Simone Ortega, of Spanish recipes. These two covered almost all my needs and taught me everything I know, that is not much but is enough to enjoy my meals and not be scared to try new recipes.

I use Youtube. I also learn from my grandma. She knows how to cook many dishes and I'm very impressed by her.

I started as a kid with simple things. Cooking and frying eggs, pimping an instant soup, etc.

Then they had a real chef in a weekday afternoon TV show. I started emulating his job, learned about using the "claw" to cut vegetables, how to make soups and sauces from scratch, and what spices to use.

When I was a teenager, I was visiting relatives, and a bunch of farmers wives were peeling and cutting onions en masse. They invited me to join, more for the fun of having a young man on the table. This was a time and culture where a male had no place in the kitchen, so imagine their surprise when I got a different knife out of the kitchen, sharpened it, and started cutting up onions way faster than they did...

I just started trying recipes on the internet. Did Hello ~~rotten~~ Fresh for a bit but quit that because of quality reasons. Now I have a collection of “signature” dishes, a few I’m refining, and a good sense of what to do with ingredients and how seasonings interact to make something without a recipe to guide me.

My mom was a chef, and she taught me some absolute basics like how to hold a knife and a couple of recipes. She also told me that when learning, if I mess up it’s okay, but try to eat everything you make to learn to taste what went wrong.

I got really good after I started watching “Good Eats”, though.

Other than the basic cooking lessons we had in school I did a lot of trial and error when I moved from home.

Mum and dad did cook and I sometimes helped in the kitchen but that only gives you confidence to try, you don't actually learn until you fuck up and bite into medium rare chicken.

It is an ongoing process.

Learned the basics from parents, friends, and others when young. Nothing fancy, just how to cut things and apply heat when needed.

As a young adult learned more from the internet, expanded what I could make a bit. Kept it simple because undiagnosed ADHD made complicated cooking tedious. Baking was fine because it is a regimented process with exact measurements and steps!

As an adult learned from my wife, Good Eats, Youtube, and more. Learned how to cut properly, what 'high, medium, and low' on the stove actually means. Learned how to adjust cooking for different pans and stoves and whatnot.

Still not great with remembering which spice adds what flavor and frequently still guess wrong on temps and whatnot because I don't cook often enough for it to stick, but still improving. Next month I will most likely be cooking almost daily and the increased frequency will be great practice that greatly improves my skills as well.

Combination of my parents teaching me and the necessity of learning when I was poor living on my own at 18. For the latter, lots of youtube videos, cooking shows and cheap 5 dollar cook books. Now I do well but still try to learn new cooking things as a fun hobby instead of survival need.

Honestly.. YouTube you can learn a bunch of things there if you want to.