What makes a 'good' cook?

I think the ability to follow recipes and apply what you learn over the years of cooking is what puts someone on the good cook scale. Bonus points if you don't have to reference a recipe every time you cook something and it comes out tasting great. What puts someone on the bad end of the scale? Inexperience combined with not actually reading through the recipe. "Winging it" when you definitely should not be winging it, such as trying a new technique you've never done before, or creating something you have little experience with. (This is how we get those great "Nailed it" Pinterest posts) Learning from these experiences and failures is what brings your cooking skills up into the good or great category though.

Practice and experience and making failures and learning from them. I started cooking at age 9 (I'm 53 now). I cook 5/6 days a week and my wife and I are dairy/gluten free, mostly whole food, plant based. I've had to change my cooking style several times over the years. My wife used to get embarrassed when we'd go to a dinner and I'd make something and all the women would be asking me for recipes, now she laughs and takes pride in it! I love to cook for her! I won her heart in the kitchen, so why not continue that?

It's just practice, knowing flavors, cutting/prepping fast and confidence after a long time. I still have a flop occasionally but rarely (oh, and my wife is brutally honest so when it's really good or really bad, there's no guessing). Many of the things I make are just winging it.

Once you learn flavor profiles, cook with lots of different ingredients and learn basic techniques, it's really not that hard. My wife says all the time "it's a gift" but I just really enjoy it and do it to relax and unwind after work. I'm lucky in that I run a business from home and can walk downstairs and cook a meal in the time that most are driving to get home from work.

My progress from my 30's to now as a cook is light years ahead. It's just being open to new flavors and constantly refining your knife skills and timing is SO important in cooking. Having an idea of how long everything takes to cook takes years of experience.

For the record, I’m admitting, I’m a bad cook.
I know this deep down but, I will try to mimic a Bobby Flay recipe in a heartbeat. I usually end up spending most of my time Googling measurements and “What in the hell is aioli?” See I know that BECAUSE of Bobby Flay...and yet, don’t have ANY of the ingredients to make it. So, I think a good cook is one that thinks ahead, looks at the recipe, then gets the stuff from the store, turns on a YouTube video to watch how to make it (and has to take pauses) makes it, and serves it with a hope that no one has food poisoning.
I think a GREAT cook already knows all that stuff (and with a full spice rack) but comes to the table confident and knowing the dish will taste good.
I think that some of the delivery services definitely give meals that suit you because you always have to take a short quiz. They know you can’t boil water given your answers. So, I think they’re good in a way because they can give some people a push to start cooking for themselves or others at home or bad, because they make people think they can cook really great because they followed a 3 ingredient recipe.
I hope I didn’t offend anyone.

I will add to this conversation that, like most things, being a good cook takes lots of practice. Very few people (dare I say no one) is born a good cook. Based on what others have described as a "decent" cook and a good cook, the difference is experience levels. I started cooking in high school and I am self-taught. I spent many years relying heavily on recipes and googling basic kitchen skills such as proper knife technique before I felt comfortable enough to start moving away from established recipes and started developing my own. I'm now known among my friends as the good cook and feel very comfortable making something delicious without a recipe.

I firmly believe that almost anybody who wants to put in the time and effort can eventually become a good home cook, provided they're not an under-taster, unadventurous, nor easily frustrated/dissuaded by failure. Becoming a professional is a whole other level, but that's mostly mastering speed/organization, which imho is not really that important to actually producing great-tasting food at home.

Cooking is applied chemistry. While anyone (almost anyone) can simply follow directions and produce an end product, skill and experience are going to show the difference between a new aspiring cook and an award winning Chef.

Ever just dump in ingredients and go off recipe? Try it sometime in a small batch and taste the result - there's a reason to the order of ingredients and the reaction to compounds interacting with one another produces wild differences.

I think back to learning to bake bread with my Grandma and while I was working off the same recipe card it is difficult to put into words "desired consistency", but decades of experience and knowing how her oven performs, her pans heat up, the muscle memory of what well kneaded dough feels like.... These things you have to learn through doing.

"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence." - Vince Lombardi

You sound like a good cook to me. I'm a "get the job done" type cook. I'll fill your belly, but if you're looking for something other than the basics you better go out to eat. I have to follow a recipe to the letter, I don't know what spices and flavours go together and would never dream of making my own recipe! I was told once that it's because I'm such a fussy eater I don't know what flavours do go together, not sure if that's the reason or not, but I'll take it.

I love to cook. Everything about it. From designing a meal or special event. Planning it. Shopping. Prepping. Preparing it. I consider myself a good cook. Those that I cook for, love my cooking. That's why I do it. To show the people important to me that I care for them. It's one of the few ways I can be creative.

CSARdiver wrote: »

Cooking is applied chemistry. While anyone (almost anyone) can simply follow directions and produce an end product, skill and experience are going to show the difference between a new aspiring cook and an award winning Chef.

Ever just dump in ingredients and go off recipe? Try it sometime in a small batch and taste the result - there's a reason to the order of ingredients and the reaction to compounds interacting with one another produces wild differences.

I think back to learning to bake bread with my Grandma and while I was working off the same recipe card it is difficult to put into words "desired consistency", but decades of experience and knowing how her oven performs, her pans heat up, the muscle memory of what well kneaded dough feels like.... These things you have to learn through doing.

"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence." - Vince Lombardi

I think of chemistry as baking. I'm a very, very good home cook. Baker?? Not so much! Too exacting for me. My wife is a terrible cook but excellent baker if given a recipe! She'll do things like use a knife to level off flour!! Me, no thank you! Hate that exacting stuff.

I think you'll find a lot of good home cooks that don't have the patience for baking and a lot of bakers that aren't necessarily great cooks.

MikePfirrman wrote: »

CSARdiver wrote: »

Cooking is applied chemistry. While anyone (almost anyone) can simply follow directions and produce an end product, skill and experience are going to show the difference between a new aspiring cook and an award winning Chef.

Ever just dump in ingredients and go off recipe? Try it sometime in a small batch and taste the result - there's a reason to the order of ingredients and the reaction to compounds interacting with one another produces wild differences.

I think back to learning to bake bread with my Grandma and while I was working off the same recipe card it is difficult to put into words "desired consistency", but decades of experience and knowing how her oven performs, her pans heat up, the muscle memory of what well kneaded dough feels like.... These things you have to learn through doing.

"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence." - Vince Lombardi

I think of chemistry as baking. I'm a very, very good home cook. Baker?? Not so much! Too exacting for me. My wife is a terrible cook but excellent baker if given a recipe! She'll do things like use a knife to level off flour!! Me, no thank you! Hate that exacting stuff.

I think you'll find a lot of good home cooks that don't have the patience for baking and a lot of bakers that aren't necessarily great cooks.

Yeah, this rings true to me. I like the idea of baking, and used to bake bread sometimes and tried to perfect my pie crust, but I only very rarely enjoy it. My preference is grab some ingredients, wing it, and enjoy the ability to be much more loosey-goosey that you get with cooking. (As stated upthread, I dislike following recipes, sucks the fun out of cooking for me, so this makes sense.)

It worked out pretty well, since I didn't feel sad at all when I basically quit baking when I started MFP. I'll still make a dessert for a major holiday if people are coming over, but if someone else offers to make dessert (and people seem to want to make that course), I don't complain. I don't want to lose my pie making skills, but beyond that I don't care. I like the British Baking Show, but never has it inspired me to want to pick up baking again -- I just think, jeez, what a pain. ;-)

And I HATE trying to decorate. One reason I immensely prefer pie to cake, although it's also just a taste preference.

I do keep thinking I might do bread again -- I do make pizza crust sometimes, and I enjoy kneading (and fresh bread).

People always tell me I'm a good baker, which is not true. Baking is following a recipe with very precise measurements. It's easy as long as you follow the directions. What I'm good at is finding delicious recipes.

I can't follow a recipe... I have had a go at it. I will look at the ingredients. Study the techniques but I go off on my own tangent every time. Probably because I look at the ratios, and then I substitute e.g different flours, sugars or fats or we mightn't have crucial ingredients e.g bicarb or baking powder. It helps if you know your pantry.

My mum's family consensus is that when making bread dough, if your bowl was clean and didn't need to be washed, you are a good baker. If there was plenty of flour and bits still in it - you need more practice. I need more practice.

My dad believes that if you have to follow the instructions for the same recipe every time you make it, you are not a good cook. I don't know if that's a valid measure of a good/decent cook considering he also thinks that's why men are better cooks - 'most women cook like they're repressed and it's because they cook for others, men on the other hand, they're ballsy. They cook for themselves what they want and how they want.'
Yes my dad wanted me to cook like a man. I don't yet know if that makes me a good cook or a decent cook.

Dani9585 wrote: »

I'm probably a "decent cook" in that I can follow a recipe and people typically like my food enough to eat it without complaints LOL!

I'd consider you a "good" cook if you can do this consistently.

A "decent" cook to me would be someone who can "usually" get it right but still has failures. This is your typical home cook.

An "experienced" cook is someone who is a "good" cook who can make things from scratch w/o consulting a recipe. This is someone who could work the line in a restaurant.

A "creative" cook would be a "chef" who is an experienced cook who can make up entirely new and innovative dishes using different foods, spices and techniques on the fly, like you see on cooking shows like Iron Chef. This is someone who could run the kitchen in a restaurant.

I vary between being a decent
to experienced cook. I can cook well from a recipe but still mess up sometimes but I can also make certain things from scratch w/o messing up.

My father was a sous chef in restaurants and hotels. He was an experienced cook who supervised the line cooks in the preparation of dishes as set forth by the chefs. He could have become a chef but didn't have the drive or ambition to do so.

mortuseon_ wrote: »

Do you think that regularly reading and trying different recipes helps to add to the skillsets of a 'good' cook?

Of course.

The more often you cook and the greater the variety in your cooking, the better and more experienced a cook you will become.

The same applies to any other skill, trade or profession.

A lot of the descriptions above sound like really good cooks, a step above what I consider "just" a good cook. I am in the category of "just" good. I follow recipes very well and can usually come up with something that people will like from what's on hand, but it will usually be fairly basic. I have to meal plan and cook for the family a lot. If I take on something fancy/difficult, I don't always get it right the first time.