Okay maybe this isnt the best demographics here but like I mean as in if you know someone who’s Gen Z, do they have a “idk how to cook” issue?
(Please don’t be like “omg its easy, how could you not know” in the comments, be nice in the comments okay 🙈)
Yes, that’s called “growing up.” You have to teach yourself. It’s a frustrating process, because you don’t understand how to select recipes that suit your needs. 1/2 the recipes I found online usually resulted in a fail, because I couldn’t tell the difference between a good recipe and a bad one. I love the first cookbook I bought now, but at the time, what was I going to do with buckwheat blinis or tea-poached pears in chocolate sauce? I needed a basic pancake and chocolate cookies recipe. That book was basically useless for the first 5 years I owned it.
If I could go back, I would start with:
budgetbytes.com
noracooks.com
“I can cook vegan” by Isa Chandler
Chef John on youtube https://www.youtube.com/@foodwishes
Cooking is a skill. You learn it one meal at a time. What you want to start with is building a repertoire of simple, 15 minute meals that you love and that you can crank out with your eyes closed. Once you have like 3-5 of those, then you have a separation between “I need to eat” and “I want to learn to cook.” That separation is what lets you not feel frustrated and focus on your skills.
I’d add that the cooking community here on Lemmy is helpful, too. It’s active enough that you can constantly get ideas.
In my 20s I perfected my chili… It took a long time to get right, and I ate a lot of bad chili (but really, even the worst chili is still pretty good). I found the perfect ‘secret ingredients’ and techniques and then I got married to a wonderful woman, who is allergic to tomatoes and peppers, and doesn’t like beans. It’s been years since I’ve made chili.
Anyway, my point is just that you’re absolutely right… you learn to cook by doing it.
Haha. Yes, it’s important to get some basics down. Get a small amount of stuff from the store and be able to do many things with it.
The fancy recipes are great and all, but you end up with some items in the pantry you may never use again.
Plus one to Chef John. That’s how I learned how to cook, one recipe at a time.
I would recommend this one as a starting point because it’s easy, you learn a method that you use all the time (making a roux) and it’s delicious. I still make it all the time.
Chicken with Chipotle & Green Onion Gravy
Also a quick tip: you can roast most veggies (e.g. green beans, brussel sprouts, asparagus) with some olive oil and salt at 375° for a bit and they will come out tasty.
Wow, well put.
I’d also recommend America’s Test Kitchen (the older ones with Chris, because they focused on basics), and their cookbook (which is like $20) because it explains the “why” for a lot of recipes.
And Good Eats, because he was all about how things work from a food chemistry perspective.
Another great YouTube channel for learning to cook and bake is “Glen and Friends cooking”. He has years of videos and always aims his content toward those that are new to kitchens.
He does a Sunday morning old cookbook recipe every week as well that goes into food history. He also releases a regular recipe most weeks but his schedule is changing a bit. It is worth going back through his older videos because he does a lot of “what was on sale at the grocery store” recipes that are great for making cheap meals for your family.
Yes, it really is just having a few basic recipes that are adaptable.
Unfortunately, nobody generalizes their recipes, so you have to look up a lot of recipes before you see the pattern sometimes, and that makes it feel more challenging…
Someone needs to make a cookbook full of recipes like:
Cook on medium heat for 20-40 minutes, until everything is beginning to brown or something.
Insted, you get a 300 page cook book with all the possible combinations of spices and ingredients and it’s overwhelming.
I like this site for a “generalized recipe”
https://www.stew-recipe.com/
Ha, that’s like much every Lutheran hotdish recipe. Basically need a meat, spices, veg, and cream of mushroom soup. It’s pretty wild what some people come up with, but the tater tot and the green bean variants were staples when I was a kid.
https://www.ocweekly.com/five-great-minnesota-versions-of-hotdish-aka-casserole-6612337/
It’s awesome comfort food in the depths of winter, uses the leftovers, and is cheap to make. I don’t go to church anymore, but still love a good hotdish!
It’s kind of my dream to make a series of videos about taking care of your home (apt or house) and cooking for yourself. It’s kind of an ask your parents and grandparents kind of thing. There has to be something already out there, right?
Yeah, it’s called HowToBasic.
(In all seriousness)
How To Cook Without A Book by Pam Anderson describes the basics really well and each chapter goes over the general principles of a kind of dish (like seared meat or steamed veggies) with a general master recipie and then describes variations (like different pan sauces for the different seared meats).
I found a PDF of what looks like the whole book: https://cdn.bookey.app/files/pdf/book/en/how-to-cook-without-a-book.pdf