Cooking is Hard

I think when people say cooking is too hard they are just lazy or making excuses for eating healthy IMO.

Anyone can make some chicken and veggies, they just choose not to. I mean, you can just buy microwave steam veggies, just vent the bag and nuke it. Can't get any easier than that to make some fresh veggies.

I cook every night. Nope. Not lazy at all.

Some people are good at cooking different things. My boyfriend can grill a steak and it be absolutely delicious, but he can not cook anything that requires the use of a stove.

Cooking requires attention and knowledge of different spices and seasonings.

I am wondering how many of you that think cooking is so easy can swish a jump shot from the 3 point line with 60-70% accuracy? How many of you can correctly fill out a 1040 form for someone else, asking them all the right questions to ensure they get all the appropriate tax credits? How many of you can do a cartwheel at 200 pounds? How many of you can juggle a soccer ball for longer than 3 minutes - hell for longer than 10 seconds?

I am wondering how many of you that think cooking is so easy can swish a jump shot from the 3 point line with 60-70% accuracy? How many of you can correctly fill out a 1040 form for someone else, asking them all the right questions to ensure they get all the appropriate tax credits? How many of you can do a cartwheel at 200 pounds? How many of you can juggle a soccer ball for longer than 3 minutes - hell for longer than 10 seconds?

How about 2 out of 4? LOL I can totally do the tax return and the cartwheel eithout even blinking and I sure would be willing to try the other two and with enough practice I probably wouldn't do too bad..

I still hold to the cooking is easy belief. If you don't recognize and ingredient or a "method" the recipe is talking about, Google it! We live in a great society with all this information just seconds away. I have yet to find a recipe that I went "Man, this is too hard!" And another thing, you don't always have to follow the recipe verbatim *GASP*!!!! Sometimes I cheat and do multiple steps at once because I know it will turn out by stirring in all three of these ingredients at once instead of cooking 5 minutes in between each. And if every once in a while, it doesn't turn out. Whoop-de-do! Learn from you mistake, suck it up and move on. The only way you can fail is if you don't even try which is exactly what "it's too hard" people are doing.

Honestly, with the title of this thread, I originally thought this was going to be a thread of some tips on how to take the stress out of it. :ohwell:

Honestly, with the title of this thread, I originally thought this was going to be a thread of some tips on how to take the stress out of it. :ohwell:

There are a lot of ways to reduce the stress.

First is to stop thinking it's stressful when it's just a matter of following some directions. 90% of the meals I make are 5 ingredients or less, and they usually end up being quite flavorful and well-received by my family. It really is NOT that hard unless you're trying to make 5-star restaurant quality meals every night as a beginner cook.

Second is to prep meals before dinner. This is something we do a lot now. We setup our meals via crock pot or cook in advance and freeze. It takes a LOT of stress off.

Thirdly, you will screw up sometimes. Have a backup plan in place (noodles and canned pasta sauce or something really quick). It happens. The more you cook, the less often it happens and the less catastrophic it is, so my suggestion is to get in the kitchen a whole lot more.

I agree with you. I personally love to cook, but I have always thought that the saying "if you can read, you can cook" was a very true one. I get compliments on things that I make all the time, and people fequently ask me "where did you learn to cook?" I just tell them that I taught myself, that I am constantly teaching myself and trying different things, which suprises some people for some reason.

I *hate* that expression. It's not true at all. Cooking requires more than the ability to read.

EDIT: Cooking YUMMY food requires more than the ability to read.

Perhaps. I cook and bake at least 95% of the food that we eat. No take out and we tend to go out for dinner once per month.

Quite some time ago my husband asked me how all the food turned out so tasty and I jokingly said 'it's made with love' :-) Over time we've both come to believe this and we see it when we visit family for holiday meals. My MIL is a fantastic cook but in the last several years it's turned into a chore for her and so it's no longer 'made with love' (now it's made out of obligation) and you can tell. Heck when I'm 79 I doubt I'll feel much like feeding a crowd either! My mom is the same (she hasn't made a decent meal in a long time but then she's 90 and tired of standing in a kitchen.

When I was in my 20's I could bake and manage appetizers and basic meals. It wasn't until my 40's that I felt confident after many good and bad meals ;-). These days I make our bread, soups, casseroles, pizza and last weekend I made greek yogurt. Rome wasn't built in a day. And sometimes I still make things that are lousy but the good food outweighs the bad by about 25 to 1.

My advice would be pick something that you want to learn to make (soup for example or stir-fries) and master it by practicing once per week. Little by little as your confidence grows you may find that you're enjoying yourself.

Cooking *is* hard. I've been doing it for nearly 20 years. There are some things that I have perfected in that time, but there are still some things (like meatloaf or Alfredo sauce) that I can't get to taste as good as it should.

Some things can be hard to get right, this is true. Cooking in general is not 'hard' though. People think it is hard to toss a chicken breast in the oven with some spices. In this age of fast and convenient we seem to have lost the desire to even try and cook. It is no wonder at all that obesity is a problem (yes, in me too. I am not pointing fingers). We have been trained to not cook for ourselves. Then the food companies do everything they can to make their foods addictive so we keep buying and eating more. Corporations do NOT have your best interest at heart, they only care that you buy more of their products.

If we have more people cooking their own food we would see a change in the direction of obesity.

Throwing a chicken breast in the oven is hardly good cooking, imo.

Disagree. "Access to..." and "ability to..." do NOT equal LIKE to...If someone doesn't LIKE to cook and chooses to use that as an excuse to NOT eat healthy, then they are making a decision. There are lots of things I don't LIKE to do, but I do them anyway, for my benefit.

I understand how it's hard for some people to cook, even if they are following a recipe. It's hard to just follow steps without any context. Sometimes understanding a technique can help you cook more intuitively. If you understand the principals behind some basic cooking methods (broiling, braising, frying), a few base recipes (i.e. how to make a roux), and basic knowledge of which flavors tend to pair well together (pork with apples, fish with lemon, cilantro with everything (haha! j/k)) you'll have some fundamentals to build on. I learned all these things mostly by reading cookbooks. Julia Child, Thomas Keller, and Nigella Lawson all have wonderfully narrative cookbooks that can help build this knowledge base. Then just try something! You may fail, but if you do, try to figure out where it went wrong and learn from it. Cooking can be a really fun, creative process and will improve your life AND your health.

I'm a pretty damned good cook if I do say so myself, but I've come to learn a few things by watching (and eating food cooked by) people who "can't cook". Disclaimer: My ex-wife and her family are the main inspiration for these tidbits.

1) They are afraid to improvise or even eyeball ingredients.

One of the things I make that her family liked the most was a simple meatloaf. There is nothing magical about meatloaf and there are no hard set rules. Type of meat? Your choice. Hell, mix 2 or 3 for all I care. Seasonings? Whatever you have on hand. My ex's sister asked me for my recipe once, I told her that I couldn't give it to her. At first she was a little huffy and made a crack about it being a "family secret" or something. I told her no, it wasn't a secret, it just didn't exist. She couldn't grasp the idea that it is possible to cook without following a recipe to the letter.

2) They are afraid to try anything new.

As pointed out here already, cooking takes practice. You fell off that bicycle a few times before you learned how to ride, you're going to burn a few dishes or have recipes that simply don't work for you. It happens, it's no big deal. Well, unless the fire department shows up. *Then* it's a big deal. My example here is salmon. Again, my ex's family loved the way I made salmon and despite the fact that I showed everyone involved several times how to cook it, I always ended up being the one to prepare dinner. My "recipe"? Lightly dust with flour (and I do mean lightly), pan over medium heat with 1T real butter and 1T olive oil, salmon goes in skin side up for 2 minutes, flip, and into a 350-ish oven for 4-5 more minutes. Again, no magic.

3) They tend to eat their food without actually tasting it, and/or have an aversion to the idea that some spices need to be added *during* the cooking process.

Especially salt. I understand that you don't want to go overboard on salt if you have certain medical conditions, but salt is absolutely crucial in most recipes. I'm not Alton Brown, so I won't go into the in's and out's of why, but that bland chicken that seems to be on the table at every potluck/holiday dinner/family reunion? I can almost guarantee you that the person responsible for it either doesn't eat their own cooking or has gotten used to cooking for someone on a restricted diet and went way overboard.

But it's not just that. The first time you cook a new recipe, take some extra time eating it. You and you alone know what you like. If it needs more or less of something already listed, make a note. If you're eating it and suddenly think "I bet some cheddar cheese would make this even better" by all means, add it the next time! As you add new spices to your collection and get to know what they do, go back and revisit some old standbys and see about jazzing them up a little.

Cooking is an art. Approaching it as a cold, sterile scientific process will get you edible food, but nothing else. Color outside of the lines, sing off key, make up your own rules. But for goodness sake, just have fun with it. In the immortal words of Nadia G., "It ain't rocket surgery."