I have pretty severe ADD, no H though. I LOVE cooking, provided I am not cooking for just myself. The key I have found it prep. Make sure you have everything chopped and measured before you throw anything into the pan. Also PREHEAT your damn pans and ovens! If you are data driven the way I am, set a timer and figure out how long it takes to preheat the oven. Your pan shouldn’t take more than 30-45 seconds to preheat. Once everything is chopped and assembled, I turn on the heat, and start to dance.

The dance is a chaotic mix of tossing stuff into the pan, stirring or tossing stuff in the pan, and washing the dishes I have used. Past that, it is literally just practice. The more time you spend in a kitchen the more innate your sense of time will become. I barely need to set timers anymore. I still do, just in case I get absorbed in something else, but frequently I look up at my time with about 00:03 on the clock.

Buy a rice cooker and just throw in what you want to eat. If you’re willing to pay a higher cost, there’s precut stuff at the grocery store or you can get frozen veggie bags as well as seasoning bags. For example I made myself a stew, shaved beef with a potato and a carrot and a can of seasoned beans, and some beer for liquid. Took maybe a few minutes to throw everything in the rice cooker and I just press the slow cook option.

That depends. You have to identify what your particular hang up(s) are. Is it the actual cooking, not knowing what you’re doing, textures of things, prep, clean up, having multiple tasks going at once etc.?

Once you identify the hangup you can work with it. For me personally it’s mostly time and cleanup. I don’t enjoy cooking so it feels like I’m wasting time I could be using for anything else. Then I have to clean up after? Fuck that!

So I try to stick to easy, short, less dishes involved meals. The Instant pot is nice because it speeds a lot of things up, I can set it and walk away. Air fryer is great too. I line mine with tin foil so I have to clean it less.

I also work with my ADHD. I’ll buy frozen veggies and stuff because 90% of the time the extra step to prep/cut things is the step that prevents me from doing anything.

Learn how to make 2 meals. Make massive portions of said meals.

I do two setup foods. Two steps, food is done.

Simple slow cooker recipes are sweet because you just dump the ingredients into the slow cooker and turn it on. Same thing with the rice cooker and a steam basket, rice cooks underneath and then some veggies / protein above bam little meal right there. Marinate your proteins by just putting them in a Ziploc bag with some stuff the day before.

Nothing others haven’t said but if it works for you and your life, cooking once a week works might be much better than trying to cook every day.

I usually make a slop of some kind centred around beans/tofu/tvp and keep that in the fridge. That gets made in the instant pot so there is no waiting around. That’s what I hate most about cooking. I don’t want to have to keep an eye on the stove.

I use dry beans and soak them rather than cooking the beans first or cooking from dry in the final dish. It’s not technically one step but it’s less time sensitive or prone to burn/disgusting texture than the other options.

The slop gets eaten with rice which I do cook throughout the week in the rice cooker. This is more about the volume of rice we eat than anything else.

Frozen veggies or salads get added which helps add some customization and ensure I am getting enough fibre and variety of veggies.

I worked in a catering kitchen in uni and I can’t tell how much of my comfort with this comes from that experience or that it’s just not rocket science 😅

Do a weeks worth of meal planning and prep once a week. Do it while relaxed and listening to a good podcast or having your favourite movie running. Make it enjoyable (or at least as stress free as possible). For the rest of the week it’s just plop and cook, plop and cook with very little thought required. Good luck!

I love cooking and I was thinking about why the other day. Turns out it’s one of the few things that when I start I will actually finish. Whether it ends up good or not is another thing.

• “Mis en place”. Prep all of your ingredients in advance. You can even do it a couple days in advance and keep them in the fridge. Then when it comes to the actual cooking part, you’ll find it’s a lot less stressful and requires much less changing gears and switching tasks. There’s a reason pro kitchens do this, it makes cooking a lot easier and less error-prone.

• Cook a big pot of something and eat it over a few days. A big pot of chili or spaghetti sauce can be lunch and dinner for multiple days. A good rice cooker, like a Zojirushi or whatever, can keep rice warm and tasty for a couple days. Likewise, a slow cooker can do the same with a stew or curry. No need to cook every day!

• Get a roommate or family member to help you if possible. Cooking is hard work whether we enjoy it or not, so it helps to have someone to delegate tasks to. If other people are eating, they should be helping to cook and clean.

Might not be the most adhd compatible tip, but I try to clean up the kitchen after cooking. If I need to do it before cooking I find it drains a lot of energy

I made it more fun by using a nice sharp kitchen knife. Not that I cook more now, but I can! If my wife asks me in advance to cook

I have fatigue condition as well, so honestly I just gave up on “cooking”. Try to aim for “arrangements” instead. Much easier and takes less focus/time/energy.

• Toast with toppings
• Greek yoghurt fruit bowl
• Smoothie
• Canned bean burritos with cheese
• Other healthy snacks
• Etc

Obviously it depends highly on your dietary needs. I’m vegetarian with very complex health so I built my diet around that, but you might have more flexibility. Try not to buy “ready to eat” stuff every day though because they’re usually pretty bad health wise. Also the freezer is your friend; it will forgive you when you forget leftovers for 3 months.

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I love cooking but I don’t have the energy fo rmuch thanks to my health issues. I also do have severe ADHD.

For me, it’s looking for simpler recipes.

Look for shortcuts. Find things that are easy but are tasty. Don’t fall for the bullshit that you have to make everything from scratch.

A slow cooker and a rice pot probably would serve you well. It’s so very easy to get a pot of rice going. For my rice, I use:

• 2⅔ C rice (basmati or long grain)
• 3 C / 32oz tetra pack of stock (whichever makes sense with the meal)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon MSG
• stick of butter

(yes, that’s a whole stick! You should get more than 8 servings of rice out of it, and it’s just tastier. But you do you)

Beef stew like my mom made and I still make:

• Cut up a beef roast or just buy precut stew meat (should be around the same price and worth the saved effort)
• Cut up 2-3 large potatoees (after scrubbing). If you have the energy, peel them first, otherwise scrub REALLY well
• Peel (or scrub well) a pound of carrots (or maybe closer to 2 - I like carrots a lot) and cut into 1 inch chunks or so
• Peel a couple of onions and slice in half, the halves in halves, then each quarter in half - or slice each half in thirds
• Add it all into a slow cooker with a tetra pak of beef stock or broth. May have to add water to cover. Add a couple tablespoons of Better than Bouillon beef and stir it in, then cook for 2-4 hours, checking for doneness and tenderness of the beef

Serve stew over rice

If you get some dry roux, take a couple of pounds of stew meat, dust with a quarter cup of dry roux and a couple tablespoons of better than bouillon and mix in your slow cooker and cook until tender. The juices from the beef should be enough to make a gravy, but if you want to add a little beef stock or water if it needs it, go for it. Serve over rice.