How many of you can cook?
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I'm an awesome cook - and I learned by making a lot of mistakes and still come out with duds 25 years later. You can start with simple recipes from a cookbook that'll have basics such as how to boil a potato. Then you'll have an idea of what temperature and how long to cook things. I started with steaks, then cooking chicken with bbq sauce, then ventured out by watching others and asking questions. One cousin pan cooked her chicken breasts and then added Italian dressing, sliced tomatoes, fresh basil leaves, then mozzarella. Delicious!0
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I cook! I was taught as a child and grew up loving all sorts of food. I met my husband when I was 19 years old and was already very comfortable in the kitchen. As I got older I started looking for more knowledge in the kitchen. I read cookbooks like novels and watch cooking video's all the time to learn new techniques. The best advice I can give you is to believe that you are a cook. You've got to love what you are preparing. Try something new like a brightly colored vegetable (red cabbage) or make a salad using fruit and a homemade dressing. Good luck to you!0
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As opposed to simply 'preparing'.
I'm a master 'preparer'. I can throw a few ingredients together and make large, calorific, protein filled meals perfect for my goals in 20 minutes, tops. In fact, I don't think I've ever spent longer than that making my food.
BUT
I would like to break into actual cooking. I'd be nice to make a wider range of meals, more ingredients, more flavour and still hit my goals for each meal.
So my question, can you cook (well, not well)? Or do you just prepare food?
If you can cook, how did you pick it up, is it simply a matter of doing it over and over?
My mum's a chef so it'd a bit ridiculous that I fail at everything I make and it seems to take me AGES. Also I have no multi tasking skills so while the tomatoes are burning, I'm trying to flip a steak.
I'm a chef, classically trained in French. I come by it honestly through my grandmother from staying on their farm in the summers until my teens feeding my uncles. I did everything from curn cream into butter, make farmers cheese, gather eggs at 5:30 in the morning, pluck chickens and ducks, milk the cows.....plant vegetables, and everything was organic back then, even though it wasn't called that lol.
Cooking is pretty easy as soon as you understand the various cooking methods and the ingredient you want to use. If I could give any advice it would be to understand cooking method.....pick one, then do that over and over with various ingredients and soon, hopefully it will make more sense.0 -
I am a cook. I am a damn good cook. I started cooking for my family when I was 11 years old, after my mother left the family. I definitely wasn't good then. My sister and I took turns cooking (we lived on a farm so duties rotated once a week). When it was my brother's turn we lived on Kraft Mac n Cheese, tuna fish, and hotdogs...we kicked him out of the kitchen after 6 months.
Anyway, cooking is an art. Everyone can learn how. However, it takes some people longer to learn than it does others. I would suggest looking at skinnygirl.com and also taste of home. Foodnetwork is another good suggestion. Follow the recipes as they are written until you feel comfortable to put your touch on them. Also, many herbs, spices, etc. can be frozen so you can buy, store and use when needed. There have been many times when I have "dreamed" up a meal. Sometimes it is good and other times, not so much. Don't be afraid to fail. Without failure, how can you measure success?
Good luck with your cooking. Above all, make it fun and enjoyable and before you know it, you too, will be a master of the kitchen!0 -
I can make everything from scratch, from bread to pizza dough to granola to ice cream. I don't, but I can.
In my opinion, the best meals are the simple ones with wholesome/healthy ingredients.
Last night, for example, I made my 6yr old daughter homemade chicken nuggets (chicken breast cut into bite sized peices, rolled in bread crumbs, and sauteed in pam with garlic and lemon), fresh steamed broccoli, sliced cucumber with homemade ranch dressing to dip it into and a cup of grapes.
A frittata is a healthy meal, egg whites+ 1 whole egg with feta cheese, black olives, onion, garlic - cooked until firm, with a side of Ezekial raisin toast. Simple, fast, and so very tasty!
I make pizza dough double recipe and freeze it in individual portion sizes. I freeze juice for dessert for my kids. I only buy processed foods when the product is as healthy as mine and to do it myself would take too long.
I love to cook and try new recipes. I usually adapt them to make them easier and to fit my dietary requirements at the time.0 -
I am a cook. I love to cook, (most nights
) and I enjoy planning meals. That is the key to being a cook...planning. I really like watchign Alton Brown tutorials on Food Network and reading up on his Cook books. I could spend hours reading through his cook books. He formats everthing as "tools, ingredients, procedure" and gives some facts about why things work the way they do. (Like why eggs help to either "lift" or "bind" depending on what you put them in. I would start by reading some of hs cook books and try the recipies. The key for me being a cook is picking one new recipe a week to try. On the nights I try something new, I always pair it with something I know. For Example, if I am cooking a new chicken recipie, I will pair it with an easy salad or side dish I am familiar with. It helps to prevent the "tomatoes from burning while you are flipping a steak" so to speak.
Like I mentioned, Planning is key. Rather than setting out to cook a different chef style meal each night, cook one main course on Monday that can be reinvented two or three nights the same week. I might make a fabulous roast and roasted vegetables dish on Monday which I can piece the left overs out through out the week. So Tuesday Night I might make a Sauted Veggies and Noodles with left over roast dish, while on Wednesday I will use left over roasted vegetables to compliment my New Chicken recipe.
Planning like this helps to learn to cooking times and when to start your vegetables while your meat is cooking so you don't end up with over done vegetables and underdone meat.:smile0 -
I don't cook at all - it just seems too time consuming and I don't have a great enough appreciation for food to want to put forth the effort. I helped a friend prepare for a dinner party once and everyone raved about the food - which was very good - but all I could think was, "that's a whole day of my life I'll never get back." My mom is a pretty good cook, but it always seemed like a chore versus something she enjoyed doing, so I was never interested in learning. Me and the microwave are besties though. It's a close and sacred bond.0
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[/quote]This southern girl has never ever had a mason jar of any kind of grease in her house including my childhood home. Not all southerners eat like that.
quote: BTW, am I the only one who keeps a mason jar of bacon grease in my fridge? I'm a "southern girl" but I only use it for chex mix.
I'm guilty of having the jar of bacon grease in the fridge. It's necessary for a good batch of cornbread (you need something to grease the iron skillet, right?) :laugh:0 -
I can cook. I was only a "preparer" until about two years ago though. I wanted to become more of a cook, and basically just taught myself. Subscribed to cooking blogs, watched YouTube videos, hunted down recipes and tried them out on my family. My first couple months were horrible and now two years later, I'm pretty good if I do say so myself. I use a lot of fresh, whole ingredients and do a lot of my cooking from scratch.
ETA: I also do all meal planning. Every Sunday, I sit down and let my fiance and his daughter each pick a meal, and then I plan out the rest of the meals, make a grocery list, check what staples we're low on, and try to have meals that use the same ingredients in the same week. It's something you have to work at, but eventually becomes second-nature.0 -
I cook...and plan the meals and buy the ingredients.
I watched a huge amount of cooking shows (I prefer visual learning) to get ideas and then went for it. Coming from an Italian family on one side and German on the other I think I do have some of the good cooking genes!
The one thing that improved my cooking greatly is learning about spice and herb flavors. Once I got a good handle on that now I rarely use a recipe, although I do write down what I did only to figure out the nutritional info.
Because I don't like to follow recipes I'm a horrible baker (although in my 20s I worked in a bakery as a baker, before I developed a love of cooking).
Don't be afraid to experiment!!!0 -
I had very limited cooking abilities I decided to reduce processed foods. Very limited. Very very limited. Cooking shows, great recipe books, a father and husband who are both fantastic chefs, and the internet really enabled me to get this whole cooking thing. I realized I could actually cook when I looked a recipe calling for a jar of marinara and I proceeded to make my own in a flash without even thinking about it. I am not likely to be on Iron Chef anytime soon, but I like what I eat and people are actually eating my food now so I think that works.0
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I am happy to say that I can cook. And after reading your post I came up with a couple ideas that I hope help you out.
1) Take it slow to start. Rushing into a complex meal right from the get go will leave you with some burned food or undercooked food while you are trying to manage everything at once. Find a couple recipes that will not require you to watch too many things at one time.
2) Balance what you are cooking. When you say that you trying to cook tomatoes and at the same time not burn a steak, it sounds to me like you may want to hold back more on the cooking of the tomatoes until you are nearly finished with cooking the steak. When you are cooking something delicate it is usually best to cook it alternatively to something that is going to take a lot of heat and a longer time before it is finished. If your mom is a chef she'd be the first to tell you that she isn't the one watching both of those foods at the same time, she would be focusing on one while the sous chef would be attending to the other. Of course, being that most of us either a) don't have a sous chef to assist or b) have a kitchen big enough to allow 2 people to each handle part of the stove we gotta find a good balance.
Usually I will cook the steak until it is nearly ready, and then wrap it up in foil along with as much of the juices as I can capture to keep it moist and let the heat from the cooked meat keep it warm while handling the more delicate foods next. (If it looks like it will end up getting cold even in foil then I will put it back in the oven for a couple minutes in the foil and allow it just to heat up... (yeah you can use a microwave, but it usually doesn't do the food justice... watch a couple episodes of "Kitchen Nightmares" and you'll see that the best chefs can always identify when a food has been heated in an oven or in a microwave).
3) Find a couple meals that you really like and work at them until you feel that it is perfect. Do yourself a favor and get a bunch of different spices, and read up on them, find out what each one does and how it can affect a meal. I have a ton of spices in my house and as a rule I try to use what I can but I do my best not to go over 5 different spices for any one dish.... too much spice muddles the flavor, and too little will make it bland. Also taste everything as you are cooking, the more you work with it you'll find what spices compliment what you are making and you will be able to know how much to add to make it taste the way you want.
My final recommendation is that you should work at one meal at a time when buying food for cooking more elaborate meals. For example, I have a vegetarian lasagne that I cook without any noodles... it is layered veggies, sauce and cheeses. I will not buy the veggies until the day I am preparing the meal only because I want the freshest I can find, and it makes all the difference in the world. When I am making any kind of meat, steak, burgers, etc... again I only buy the same day I am plan to use it, freezing meat hurts the flavor, but when you get it fresh it always turns out much better.
Good luck with your progress!!0 -
Not sure I understand the difference between preparer & cook? A cook prepares food.
But yes I can cook. Mostly self taught. I like getting a general idea of what ingredients go into a recipe, then add/subtract to make it taste the way I want it to.
Sometimes I just look at what I have on hand and create my own by picking flavors/foods that go well or compliment each other.0 -
I can cook tonight it is grilled pork tenderloins with vegetable kabobs with a fruit smoothie. Tenderloins and vegetables loaded with spices. Should be good but would probably be better if I were drunk I seem to make some really good off the wall dishes after drinking all day0
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I learned to cook mostly by trial and error, asking my parents how they make my favorite items, reading cookbooks and trying to dissect tasty food I order at a restaurant.
I'm absolutely horrible at following recipes. I usually don't bother. I sub with what I have or just make up my own additions based on experience.
If you become a master at tastes and ingredients, you can improvise like a pro.
One tip, the best way to improvise a meal if you don't know what to do? Google the main ingredients you have and see what sort of recipes come up. Usually if it is a good combo, there will be a million results. If there aren't many results, pick 2 or 3 that look interesting and read their review. If everyone who reviewed improvised, then it is probably a bad recipe. I think you can find at least one person who has tried any combo on the internet.
Getting started:
1. read a few of the basic cookbooks. I love Mark Bittman's since his cooking style is like mine. Once you have mastered a technique, you can mix and match the components easily. His recipes are set up to teach you how to do one thing and then repeat with small variations. I also love to watch Nigella Express. Here show is a great way to learn how to improvise
2. taste individual ingredients. If you know what rosemary, olive oil, sesame oil, cumin, coriander, sumac.... taste like on their own, you can think about ways to add it to other dishes. The more things you taste, the more you can compare and contrast. A good place to start? Citrus juices. Get a few different types of oranges, a tangerine (more varieties), a lemon, and a lime. try individually, and then mix up 2 together.... keep playing around with other flavors in the same way.
3. Start by making your own salad dressing. The ingredients are cheap, you generally have all of them around, and if you mess up it is low commitment. You'll find the good combos in salad dressing, are also great for sauces.
4. Learn some of the basic techniques: make a roux, sear, roast, sautee, steam, poach, boil, chopping
5. Stock up your pantry. Find about 3-4 recipes you'd like to make in a week with a lot of crossover ingredients. That way you are only getting a few items that can be reused. If you have a whole foods, you can also find spices in the bulk section, so you can buy just enough for a recipe or two.
6. Learn about cuisines that have a lot of flavor crossover. For example, there are lots of common ingredients across thai, indian and mexican. greek, italian and north african cuisines also have quite a bit of crossover. You can look in cookbooks for those cuisines and find lots of recipes
7. Look globally for new twists on your old favorites. Everyone has a version of grilled or roasted chicken, find a new variation on a technique you know. Have you ever had chimichurri sauce? It's basically argentinean pesto. Piri piri sauce is another sibling (african and portuguese). Harissa = a cross between salsa and siracha for morrocans0 -
Oh but a little bit of bacon grease to use for sautee greens or beans is very tasty, and really not to bad for you.This southern girl has never ever had a mason jar of any kind of grease in her house including my childhood home. Not all southerners eat like that.
quote: BTW, am I the only one who keeps a mason jar of bacon grease in my fridge? I'm a "southern girl" but I only use it for chex mix.
Oh, I don't eat like that. I only make chex mix MAYBE twice a year, but bacon grease really is the way to go! It's the ONLY thing I use it for haha!0 -
I can cook. I'm an awesome cook. At least that's what everyone tells me.
For me, I started by tasting spices. I had chicken every night with a different type of spice until I knew how all of them tasted. Then I started experimenting with my spice-ology on veggies, salads, meats, everything!!!0 -
I love to cook but don't ask me for a recepie, things rarely taste exactly the same way twice in my house!
I think alot of it is trial and error, when I was younger I used to make different dishes that I found in magazines and cookbooks. Then after a while I started to get a bit more creative and subsituting or adding stuff in. Now I just throw stuff together without measuring or writing it down - which can be a drawback if you really liked something!!
Good luck!
we must be twins 0 -
I can cook. I learned from my mother who learned because her mother couldn't.
I now have a recipe blog for new creations... well... the ones that aren't flops (fortunately, few and far between)
You start by following recipes, then trial and error your way with substitutions, until eventually recipes are so much "substitution" that they're your own.
edit to add: When I started the recipe blog I actually had to start measuring stuff for the first time (outside of some recipes with critical proportions).0
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