Cooking: where to start?

[666NASTYFUCKINGFREAK666]

Just got around to the age where I have to cook for myself, haven't really had to do it because the military does it for you. I've been pretty oblivious to what everything tastes like (and im pretty sure my sense of taste is fucked due to COVID, im more of a sauce guy than a season guy unless its really noticable like cajun) so I'm not too sure where to start, as the most advanced thing I've cooked has been spaghetti.

Does anyone have any tips/course/cookbook/cooking equipment recommendations?

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

the most advanced thing I've cooked has been spaghetti.

If you can cook spaghetti, you already have the basic fundamentals to cook just about anything. Just find recipes online, buy the ingredients, and follow the directions.

Cooking is not rocket science.

 

[¨¨¨]

Start off by familiarizing yourself with the/your kitchen and whatever tools and utensils you'll encounter there,and then master them and the basics of cooking (things like preparing/cooking unadorned pasta/meat/vegetables) before trying any actual fancy recipes.

Since you mentioned cooking in the US armed forces you may want to to be interested in what army cooks know:

 

[MrTroll]

Turn on the stove.

 

[Chongqing]

I find that people become less clueless once they discover the staple of rice.

Get an instant pot.

Get lots of rice. Long grain basmati is my favorite. Medium grain is used in Chinese cooking while short grain is used in Japanese. It doesn't matter, just find what you like.

Cook rice in the instant pot first by rinsing it, and then combine equal parts rice and water. So if it's one cup of rice, use one cup of water or broth.

Pressure cook this for five minutes. When the timer goes off, let it warm for another 10 minutes. The rice will continue to steam during this time.

Now, if you put in one cup of rice, you now have four cooked cups of rice.

Add chili oil to a bowl of rice and you have not a bad breakfast.

Cut up some meat and pan fry it with some garlic. Add that to rice. Not a bad lunch. You can also add eggs or whatever.

Half of your plate should be fruit, vegetables, or salad.

The most important advice is to never give up. Always try to get better.

Also, "seasoning" is a scam pushed by black people.

 

[Robert Cummings]

One of the most important things you can know is that oven mitts are optional.

 

[Tablet County]

Boil an egg

 

[Valstrax]

Prepare a recipe, you should start with something easy to understand and not fuck up unless you were trying. You could try something simple to ease yourself in, it'll probably be messy at first but you'll get used to it!

 

[LowlyPheasent]

Depends on what you intend to make, for me the things I get the most out of (in order of most used to least used) are:

Spoiler: Pots/Pans:

Skillet/Frying Pan
Pots
Mixing Bowls
Baking Sheets

Spoiler: Utensils for cooking:

Measuring Spoons/Cups
Spatulas
Tongs
Large Spoons/Ladle
Whisks

Spoiler: Appliances:

Stove
Grill
Toaster
Oven
Microwave
Pressure Cooker/Slow Cooker/Instant Pot (I actually reccomend these highly there's a lot you can do with them and they cook for you while you can do something else)
Toaster Oven/Air Frier

Spoiler: Common Spices:

Salt
Pepper
Garlic Powder
Onion Powder
Paprika
Chilipowder
Parsley
Oregano
Dill
Basil

Spoiler: Oils

Olive Oil
Butter
Fat From Cooked Meat

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

Find something you like. Hopefully something simple and try to make it.

I started out making soups. I’d boil down a turkey carcass every Thanksgiving and I’d also eventually get Shanghai’d into peeling potatoes around Christmas. This was when I was ten btw.

From then on I decided to undermine my mother by reading the cookbook and then going online to try to find a video when I thought she was doing something wrong. Then I’d make something better than her (honestly she might’ve done this on purpose).

Also @AnOminous might have some good tips.

 

[Peanut Butter in Peril]

If you can boil spaghetti try your hand at browning meat and seasoning it with taco seasoning. It's easy enough to do and a good starter for other, if Mexican themed, food.

 

[Sparkletor 2.0]

Cooking: where to start?

The kitchen?

 

[AnOminous]

Also @AnOminous might have some good tips.

These days YouTube videos are great. Just find something you want to make and watch how they do it.

Gordon Ramsay has an excellent series of short videos called Gordon Ramsay's Ultimate Cookery Course.

Here's an example, just how to do a steak.

You'll notice it's only two and a half minutes but if you do exactly what he does you'll have a great steak. There's really no excuse for not being able to do a steak properly.

I'd also say get a slow cooker or a multicooker like an Instant Pot and then just do some recipes made for it. Most of these can do everything from searing the meat for a pot roast to deglazing it to pressure cooking or slow cooking it. Pot roast is a great starter dish if you don't cook at all, and you can do it in a ridiculous number of ways.

You don't have to get really fancy. Almost everything I make is something I think literally anyone could make.

Once you pick up maybe half a dozen or so basic skills you can easily read a recipe and have some idea what to do.

Also buy one good knife.

I am not a master chef by any stretch of the imagination but I can cook things that I and other people like.

 

[DEAD BIRD]

If you're "just at the age where I have to cook for myself" you might be retarded, you should know how to cook from a fairly young age

Your parents failed you, nigga. NGMI bro.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

cook more
cooking is like a lot of things, you have to fuck up to get good

lots of cooking is lots of different things
if you're autistic (not as a slight) start taking a slug of vodka before you step into a kitchen, there's a lot of "well, if it's like that maybe but you know" that will drive you fucking insane if you want real hard sperg facts

the main problem with cooking is it's all NFT

that chicken breast in front of you is marginally different than the last one enough you'll need to cope
even if it's pre-processed frozen burger patties you'll need to keep on your toes

don't do baking for a while, or go balls-deep into it immediately
it's a big fucking chemistry hassle and a shitload of cleanup

 

[666NASTYFUCKINGFREAK666]

Start off by familiarizing yourself with the/your kitchen and whatever tools and utensils you'll encounter there,and then master them and the basics of cooking (things like preparing/cooking unadorned pasta/meat/vegetables) before trying any actual fancy recipes.

Since you mentioned cooking in the US armed forces you may want to to be interested in what army cooks know:

I ctrl Fed powdered eggs and didnt see anything, so these must be fakes

I find that people become less clueless once they discover the staple of rice.

Get an instant pot.

Get lots of rice. Long grain basmati is my favorite. Medium grain is used in Chinese cooking while short grain is used in Japanese. It doesn't matter, just find what you like.

Cook rice in the instant pot first by rinsing it, and then combine equal parts rice and water. So if it's one cup of rice, use one cup of water or broth.

Pressure cook this for five minutes. When the timer goes off, let it warm for another 10 minutes. The rice will continue to steam during this time.

Now, if you put in one cup of rice, you now have four cooked cups of rice.

Add chili oil to a bowl of rice and you have not a bad breakfast.

Cut up some meat and pan fry it with some garlic. Add that to rice. Not a bad lunch. You can also add eggs or whatever.

Half of your plate should be fruit, vegetables, or salad.

The most important advice is to never give up. Always try to get better.

Also, "seasoning" is a scam pushed by black people.

I definitely need to get a rice cooker.
I just tried seasoning salt and it was pretty good so thats nice.

 

[PositiveMonk]

I decided to start learning to cook earlier this year. I've tried cooking before by just "following recipes" and never really felt I was getting anywhere. This time I came across this post:

Joy of Cooking, Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, Bon Appetit by Barbara Fairchild. If you want to get really into cooking there are french cookbooks from the greats but they are very expensive these days.
zlibrary has some of them. Knowing the basics of cooking is far better than just learning recipes.

And grabbed all those cookbooks. I've been working through joy since the start of the year and focusing on fundamental cooking skills rather than particular recipes. When I started I was focused on very simple sautéing to grasp basic shit like direct and indirect heat, the differences between pans, and how oils differ. I then found I was struggling to cut things properly so I focused on anything that had cuts I wanted to learn or simply included mirepoix where it didn't really matter how it was cut so I could experiment. A lot of it has also been focusing on learning specific flavors and how they interact with other flavors, making dishes that focus on something I think I'll like so I can get an idea of what goes well with it. Most recently I've been working on reductions/sauces any way I can. A lot of it is cooking the same dish and experimenting, taking notes.

I highly suggest reading Joy of Cooking from start to finish, but if you're not really into reading there's loads of video series you can check out. Whenever I finish cooking I watch an episode or two of Alton Brown's Good Eats. It's really comfy because I'm old and I remember it airing when, plus he focuses on a single ingredient/concept each episode which works for my tism. One of the great things about Joy is that it's so old and such a fundamental part of home cooking, you really won't struggle to find videos for the recipes in it. You can search pretty much any recipe from Joy on youtube and find someone made a video for it.

I'm at the point where I can confidently put things together on the fly and it feels a hell of a lot better than just following recipes all the time. I know which flavors I prefer and what I can substitute without stressing about getting everything exactly right, which was my goal.

Oh and the advice from the What Have You Cooked Recently? thread has been very helpful.

As a note about tools and things you'll need. You can really make do with very little. I keep meaning to buy a steamer insert but I just keep using a disposable pie pan I poked some holes into when I first started. Works just fine for steaming peppers. I thought I'd need loads of different knives and shit, but the chef's knife I bought a decade ago that's a bit bent has been doing just fine.

 

[Not Really Here]

Buy crockpot.
Put things you like in crockpot.
Add water, or stock to crockpot.
Set crockpot to cook in the morning on low for 10 hours.
Eat food.

 

[Boingboingboingboi]

These days YouTube videos are great. Just find something you want to make and watch how they do it.

Gordon Ramsay has an excellent series of short videos called Gordon Ramsay's Ultimate Cookery Course.

Here's an example, just how to do a steak.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=AmC9SmCBUj4

I second learning how to cook from YouTube. You'll learn recipes, and then general techiques will emerge. For me, probably the most useful cooking "course" i used was Julia Child's "The Way to Cook". Not all the recipes are bangers, but you'll end up learning the "anatomy" of many dishes and some extremely useful techniques that will get you off the ground and give you confidence in the kitchen.

here's the vegetables video, but there's a playlist with all 5 videos on YouTube.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

Buy crockpot.
Put things you like in crockpot.
Add water, or stock to crockpot.
Set crockpot to cook in the morning on low for 10 hours.
Eat food.

crockpot doesn't count as cooking, that's more like distilling lol