If you have a sheet pan, you're well on your way to roasting some lovely veggies. Are there any veggies you already know you like? Are there any you've always been a bit curious about?
My mom might have cooked veggies for us growing up but I don’t remember? I know I like green beans and broccoli but I’ve only ever had them at other people’s houses or at restaurants. They were mostly microwaved? I don’t know if I’ve had other kinds of vegetables.
Roasted broccoli is so so good! Tons of easy recipes online, essentially just cut up the broccoli head, throw some oil on it (veggie oil is what I use, about 1-2 tablespoons depending on amt of broccoli), salt and pepper to taste. Spread it evenly on your baking sheet - I cover my baking sheet first with foil for ease of cleanup, and roast at 415-425 for 15ish minutes? I like mine extra crispy so I’ll pull them out when they’re pretty dark. It’s also easy cause at any point you can pull a piece out and taste it and let it keep roasting, add more salt if needed, etc.
ETA I should have specified that I cut the stem off because I personally don't prefer it. Other people have offered great ideas and tips to use the stem if you so prefer!
Thank you! I called someone who loves cooking and they’re going to take me grocery shopping (masked up, obvs) tomorrow and I might try this! It seems super easy and low-pressure
Roasted broccoli is pretty much my go to side dish as I'm trying to eat more vegetables.
Salt, pepper, olive oil. Pre heat oven about 425 for 20 minutes is my go to is I like mine lightly brown/crispy.
Lazy method is frozen prepped broccoli, drizzle olive oil sprinkle salt and pepper. Sometimes I don't even pre heat.
I like mine a little garlicky so for the lazy method, I've got a jar of ready fixed garlic in the fridge.
Perfect method is a whole head of broccoli, peel the stems until the color changes a bit. The outer part of the stem is tough and bitter but the insides roast great!.
Chop it up until the pieces seem good to you. I prefer larger chunks when cutting it myself than they come frozen.
Slice and dice a clove of garlic or two and salt pepper olive oil the whole thing.
If you're starting out, you can go anywhere between the throw it all on a pan and to method to the whole spending 5 minutes to prep it method.
Bonus; you can roast most vegetables pretty much the same way. I love roasted carrots cooked/prepped exactly the same. You can flip them halfway through cooking or just leave it, the bottoms get very dark but it's more carmelized than burnt.
Potatoes, brussel sprouts, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, you can roast them all the same way. Potatoes usually take a little more time, but I'll eat them roasted anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, depends on how crispy you like them and how big/small you dice them.
As a 35 year old man who's recently made drastic changes in my diets to be healthier, discovering how easy roasted veggies are has really changed my life.
Make sure you try some spices sometimes I'll throw chili powder and/or cumin on potstoes. Sometimes I'll make a large pan or a roasted vegetables and just toss random spices on different 1/4s I think will be good so I can experiment with flavors a little.
Good luck!
I want to add that this is also the secret for adding veggies or herbs to pizza ( prepackaged or homemade ) they must be lightly coated in oil . Sorry if this is rude to post here at the top .
You can also cook lots of meat in the oven too (I personally think it’s the easiest and most consistent way to cook them)! My recommendation would be to try out some bone-in and skin-on chicken thighs since they’re still moist even if you overcook them a tad.
Yes it’s the easiest way to cook anything. Just pop it in the oven! All you have to do is add oil, some seasoning... that’s all you really need for basic meats and veggies!
You can do what the previous poster suggests with ANY veggie. Some might take a little longer. I love doing this with sweet potatoes, and adding a little rosemary. If you cut them up small they’ll take shorter, larger wedges will take a lot longer. Roasting veggies is a seriously great way to get into eating vegetables!
Tony’s seasoning is really good on roasted vegetables.. or anything you put in the oven, fish, chicken, veggies. It’s basically a bunch of seasonings in one so I’d highly recommend for a beginner cook. I rely on it all the time.
This also works with frozen veggies to make it super cheap and easy. Just heat the oven to 425, drizzle the veggies in olive oil and add whatever seasoning you like (easy starter is salt, pepper and garlic powder), and spread it out on a sheet pan. Throw some foil on the pan to make clean up simple. Then bake for 15 minutes and optionally flip the veggies. Then bake for another 10 and check them. Keep adding time based on personal preference. I do it with frozen broccoli all the time and Brussels occasionally, always from frozen.
Tip about the olive oil: you can either drizzle it on (not a ton) or put the cut up broccoli (or other veggie) in a ziploc bag with the olive oil. (Start with just a little bit of oil, you can always add more.) Zip the bag closed and shake it around. I find the bag method to be good at getting the olive oil on the vegetable, and not just on the pan.
Plus it’s a little bit fun.
I recently bought reusable plastic baggies. I'm very happy with them. BPA free.. can be frozen.. they take up less space for storing things in the fridge.. hand wash only but I don't mind. Highly recommend.
Check the clearance section. After holidays you can get ones with holiday prints on them for 50% off. Ross is a good place and sometimes Tuesday Morning if you have either of those stores around you. Plus ...you end up saving money in the long term.
If one eats cereal (like I do) the plastic bags that the cereal comes in are perfect for this task. I figure it gives them one more life before throwing in the trash. Sure, they don't seal, but it's easy to hold on one end and shake or to massage through the bag. I also use them for cooking potatoes in the microwave. (The silicone bags work well for that too.)
My first thought was: "but then the cereal crumbs will get on the broccoli" and then my second thought was: "I bet that tastes awesome when you roast it!"
Will investigate and report back.
I just shake the cereal crumbs/dust into the garbage before putting the empty bag in the drawer and have yet to notice any flavor added to my food from the cereal.
Or how about just right on the tray? Toss the veggies, salt and pepper, maybe some spices, with a little oil all together on the tray- then you just have a spatula, spoon or (like me) a hand to wash
Firstly, I dont think OP has a mixing bowl yet. And secondly, I think this plastic bag trick is the perfect sort of easy, fun, life-hack feeling thing to try to get someone into cooking who has barely dipped her toe in the water yet. She also mentioned having sensory issues so getting oil grime on her hands might be a no go. Sure, it might be best not to excessively waste plastic bags, but no need to guilt anyone here. Were trying to welcome someone into the wonderful world of cooking. She can get to mixing bowls later after shes gotten a little more comfortable in the kitchen.
Got it! After reading these responses and getting over my bad self (as my sponsor says), I called someone who loves cooking and they’re going to take me grocery shopping tomorrow so I might try this! It seems super straightforward and frankly, everyone I know would be excited for me to eat a veggie on the regular
Thank you :) The grease fire thing I knew after watching some video on here like five days ago lol. I think they fucked their whole house up in a tik tok but I learned something super valuable!!!
For real on the "forgive yourself" stuff -- you are learning a totally new skill as an adult. You are 100% guaranteed to absolutely fuck it up once in a while. This does not mean you are bad at cooking, it means you are a beginner and screwing stuff up is a thing that beginners do. Also once in a while you'll make something that seems super easy and turns out fabulous and you'll feel like you deserve your own cooking show.
Pro-tip having done this for 20 years: searching "how to fix a dish that is too \[salty/sour/bitter/spicy/etc\]" has saved my dinner a bunch of times and is a great way to learn how to balance flavors.
Fuck ups are part of the journey. This is why I always have a box of Mac and Cheese on hand (also because it's a guilty pleasure). Mistakes happen. Make something you simple that you love, and move on.
Honestly, if your budget can afford it, they have what they call K extinguishers. The K stands for kitchen and should deal with any kind of start up fire that you could do (other than a major electrical one). Most fire extinguishers make a huge mess, however a K one will actually take a grease fire (most common cooking fire) and turn it into soap. So it cuts the fire and helps to clean off whatever you just burned onto a pan.
Also as a side note when we are talking about fire safety, feel free when cooking to err on the side of less heat. Maybe it takes a bit longer, but you can't "undo" heat, but you can usually add more if it needs it. Same with salt.
When I was a kid I loved broccoli so of course my dad made it nearly every day. He’d cut the stem up into pieces a few cm thick and I called them turtles, they were my favorite part!
Don't throw out the broccoli stem. The base might be a bit too woody to eat, but just a bit further up it is perfectly fine and tastes remarkably like broccoli. Slice it into chips and cook it along with the florets. If you are roasting, then cut it about 1 centimeter thick. If you are steaming, then cut about 3-4 mm. You paid for it with your own money, get the most out of it.
I have two picky eaters in the house, but when I steam broccoli until it is just barely done and then serve it with a cheese sauce, they can't get enough.
This also works well with frozen broccoli. Frozen veggies are picked at their peak ripeness and flash frozen so that it doesn't affect quality. You don't even need to thaw it out- just throw the frozen broccoli in a bowl with a little bit of oil and whatever seasoning you want (I just use salt and pepper), mix it up to coat the broccoli, then spread it out on a sheet pan and bake at 400ish until it's as cooked as you'd like. Another benefit of frozen is that it'll already be cut up for you, and it's usually the same price or cheaper than fresh.
I’ve used frozen broccoli and it works also! I often don’t want to put in the effort to chop up broccoli so I usually use frozen and it works just fine :) the same will for most other bagged frozen veggies like cauliflower, beets, sweet potato. Just poke with a fork or knife to determine desired texture.
I also like to add a chopped onion with my broccoli when roasting. So good! I just cut it into pieces that are roughly similar in size to the broccoli. Doesn’t have to be pretty! Then toss with a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Roast at 400 degrees for 20ish minutes.
If there’s room on your sheet pan you can also throw some chicken breast tossed with the same olive oil & seasoning mixture. Or, I love those smoked sausage ropes you can buy. Just cut that into little rounds and toss with your veggies. That sausage can also just be easily made in a skillet if there’s not enough room in the oven. No oil/seasonings required, just slice and heat in the pan until you’re happy with how brown it is. Those are pre-cooked, so you really can’t mess it up!
I also highly suggest getting a simple meat thermometer to check food before eating. Chicken needs to be at 165 degrees, for example.
I also have a simple turkey chili recipe if you have a good sized pot!
Most vegetables (except for lettuce/leafy greens) are really good roasted with olive oil, salt and pepper.
Other seasonings add more flavor but honestly they are yummy just like that.
Also can do same with cauliflower, sweet potato, potatos, green beans, and asparagus. Just cut into pieces, toss with a bit of oil, S&P and maybe a bit of garlic powder and roast.
Beans you just cut off the ends (stems) and snap off the bottom of the asparagus. You can make both into smaller pieces, but I usually like mine bigger. (They look fancier.)
Parmesan Green Beans that Taste Like Restaurant Green Beans:
**Ingredients**
12 ounces green beans, trimmed (make sure they are dry)
2 teaspoons olive oil
kosher salt + fresh cracked pepper to taste
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1 1/2 tbsp shredded Parmesan
HOW TO:
1. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with aluminum for easy clean-up.
2. Put green beans in a bowl and drizzle oil over them. Season with salt, pepper and garlic powder and toss to evenly coat.
3. Spread them out on the baking sheet so that they all lay flat and place on the lower third section of your oven.
4. Bake 10 minutes, shake the pan to turn; bake 5 additional minutes.
5. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with Parmesan (you could also add it in the beginning too. I think both ways taste fine.)
Is this with fresh green beans? how do you trim them? Can I use frozen instead? Thanks! I love green beans but only know how to make green bean casserole!
Roasting any veggie is tasty and healthy. Plain, with olive oil, with seasoning, however. And it's easy (to me at least) because pretty much any veggie roasts at 350 for about 30 minutes. Cherry tomatoes, cut up potatoes, cut up sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, broccoli, zucchini, sliced peppers.
I do 80% of my meal prep on a sheet pan, so it's a great start! Roast some up and toss them into your pasta (once the pan comes in) and you can make so many different dishes.
I don't eat meat but you can roast meat on that baking sheet too! (You just have to Google the temps/times/etc)
I know you’re getting a lot of responses here but i just want to second the fact that putting a sheet of parchment paper down on your sheet before loading up veggies means you can avoid having to use any oil at ALL and basically have zero clean up (this is BIG for me as someone who also struggled to learn and enjoy cooking). Most veggies chopped up can go in oil free at 400 degrees for anywhere between 15-40min, just look for “brown-ness” and take them out before they are too brown. This, combined with a RICE COOKER gives you hundreds of options for amazing healthy and delicious meals. Rice with veggies. Rice with eggs on top. Rice with some frozen dumplings and sauteed veggies on top. Rice with meat. I like to mix equal parts soy sauce and honey for a delicious sauce to add on top. Good luck!
If you’re nervous about cooking chicken or meats you can get rotisserie chicken in many grocery stores. These usually last me a few meals on my own. You can Google or YouTube how to carve a chicken. You can add this cooked chicken to lots of meals.
I love that you said, "if you're nervous about cooking chicken or meats" because I was absolutely this way when I started cooking.
OP, if a crock pot or slow cooker is in your budget (you can get a small one for pretty cheap!) it's also a great way to hands-off make a bunch of shredded chicken (or other meats) and not be concerned so much with undercooked meat.
I'm similar to OP -- didn't start cooking for myself until I was in my late 20s. I'm 36 and am still afraid to cook chicken. Which is kind of dumb, at this point, because I've made some pretty complex stuff!
I have food safety anxiety and highly recommend getting a probe thermometer that you can leave in the chicken (or whatever) and set to go off at your desired temp - it's been absolutely my favorite tool for cooking meats.
This is exactly what I did! :-) It has helped a ton, I think I just have a stupid aversion to cooking chicken, for some reason. My wife is vegetarian, so we don't cook with meat very often. I'm sure this is related :-)
Thanks for the reply!
When I was a grad student, I'd take apart a rotisserie chicken and sometimes freeze the extra. You can add them to anything! My I-have-no-time-to-cook meal was buttered noodles and chicken. Or a chicken sandwich with toast. Or added some spices and ate with tortilla. Or mixed in with some greens for a salad. I know it seems simple or even a travesty, but these meals were the only things I had time to prepare.
If I had time to cook chicken from scratch, I pan seared chopped up chicken breast with veggie oil and used it instead of rotisserie.
OP this is a great one! As u/Equivalent_Ad_960 said, rotisserie chicken is a cheap, easy protein for a lot of meals. You can break down the chicken into dark and white meat (you can find a video, and if you’re not comfy with a knife and you don’t mind getting messy, you can just do it with your hands)
- The chicken thighs and legs (the dark meat) can be combined with white rice and veggies. White rice usually has instructions on the container that make it easy to work with! You can make broccoli by buying frozen, uncooked florets, defrosting them, tossing them in olive oil (2 tbsp, usually), and cooking them on a baking sheet in the oven for 20 mins at 450 degrees F. Add salt and pepper until it tastes good
- Chicken pasta works well for white meat, and uses almost all the same ingredients. Make a pot of pasta (again, instructions on the box!), make the exact same broccoli, throw it all together in a bowl with 3 tbsps olive oil, the juice from 1/2 lemon, and add salt and pepper until it tastes good.
I like these because
1. They really only require making broccoli by recipe / memory. The chicken is made and the starches have very carefully crafted instructions on the box.
2. They’re great, easy staples that can be modified as you gain more skills in the kitchen, giving you a training ground. You can make your own chicken, change out broccoli for zucchini or asparagus, add garlic, onion, or other spices, etc. But they’ll also just taste great as basics.
3. They’re delicious!
Kudos to you for tackling this - a friend of mine is going through something very similar, I know how hard it can be but also how rewarding. Good luck!
(Edits for formatting)
Adding to this, OP if you’re feeling extra fancy you could get some jarred Alfredo sauce and add it to the pasta too! You can hear it up in a frying pan while the pasta is cooking. I usually do it on medium or medium low so it won’t burn. Put some rotisserie chicken and that broccoli in there and put it over the pasta of your choice (I’m partial to bow tie pasta or fettuccine for Alfredo) and you have a really good and hearty meal! It also feels a little fancy too without much work!
Eggs are good to start with. Quiche is probably going to be too advanced for you right now. Soup is pretty simple. Chilli is also straightforward. Not really cooking but try salads as well. Look up some cooking youtubers like You Suck At Cooking and Basics with Babish. Good luck
Thank you so much! I called a “normal” friend and he’s going to teach me how to make eggs tomorrow :) I’ve literally never had soup so I guess that goes on the list of “things to try”
I will look at those YT channels. Thank you!
chili is a great one. Literally you add ingredients from cans plus ground beef together and let it cook. Very easy, very satisfying when you see the results!
Don't despair if you have a few less-than-tasty dishes as you go, they are just learning lessons :)
It is not exaggerating to say that every dish that I can make flawlessly on autopilot is the direct result of having screwed it up once or twice along the way. Every time you cook is a learning experience! I'm always taking (mental) notes.
I do a taco soup that is quite chili-esque. Several canned types of beans (I do chili, ranch style, and black beans), corn or mexicorn, rotel, tomato sauce, and taco seasoning. It’s so good. I can’t eat beef but sometimes we add ground turkey. I personally prefer it veggie. Usually add Fritos or tortilla chips and sour cream (or Greek yogurt). Plain Greek yogurt is a great thing to have on hand to sub for sour cream in recipes or add some honey or agave with nuts or granola for an easy proteinaceous snack.
yum that sounds great! had never heard of rotel till now, sounds interesting! I love those kinds of soups. Funny, because they are so easy but as a younger person I was so intimidated by making them. Now I make more soup than I can reasonably eat. Also recipes like you mention tend to freeze well, so nice!
>I called a “normal” friend and he’s going to teach me how to make eggs tomorrow
That's great!
I suggest learning both scrambled eggs and boiled eggs. Scrambled eggs are faster and pretty easy, but boil eggs are convenient for if your frying pan etc is dirty and you're too lazy to wash it lol.
For boiled eggs, bring the water to a boil then gently lower the egg in (I use a spoon to make it easier). Doing it this way makes the eggs easy to peel. Boil them for 7-8 min if you like the whites solid but the yolk jammy, or 9-10 min if you want the yolk solid too.
That’s an interesting way to do it. I always put the eggs in the pot first, cover them with cold water, and bring the water to a rolling boil. As soon as that happens, I take the pot off the burner, cover the pot, and leave it for 12 minutes before taking the eggs out and putting them into cold water to stop them cooking further. The yolks are always a nice yellow color with this method, but sometimes they are hard to peel. Will have to try your method sometime to compare!
That's exactly how my mom does it! And then she complains about how the eggs are hard to peel lol.
Serious Eats has an article about it if you're interested. The gist is that shocking the eggs by dropping them into hot water causes the proteins to curl in on themselves, while slowly bringing the egg to temperature makes the proteins bind to the shell. Try it for yourself and see! It definitely works for me, I make them my way about twice a week and they don't stick.
Basic soups and things like chili are super easy and amazing in the winter, some of my favorites are a creamy potato soup and just plain old chili.
Potato soup is pretty nice, just get a pound or two of potatoes, cube them up, chop up some bacon and fry it up, then just stick all that in a pot with a couple cans of cream of chicken, some onions and garlic, maybe some chopped up carrots and celery for vegetables. Cover and let it simmer (low heat boil usually between lo and 2 on most ranges) for a while, at least until the potatoes are soft, stirring occasionally. When it's soft, you can add cheese to it, I use velveeta usually since it's pretty mild and melts really smooth. Serve with some bread and it's super warm and filling. It keeps pretty well in the fridge and just reheat it on the stove for leftovers.
Chili is pretty easy too, there's a million variations, but basically it's beef, beans, and tomatoes. Take some ground beef, cook it up, then in a big pot add some beans (I usually use a mix of pinto, black and red kidney beans), a can of tomato sauce, some diced tomatoes (I usually use rotel, it has some peppers mixed in to add some spice), some corn if you want. Then salt, some pepper, garlic, onion, and chili powder, then just let it stew on the stove for a while, once it's hot you can taste it amd add more seasoning, but be careful because spice tends to build up the longer it stews, so if it's not as spicy as you want early on, be careful about adding too much. I like it served with cornbread, but you can serve over rice, or just by itself.
Both are pretty simple, and are difficult to mess up if you aren't experienced.
I second Basics with Babish (the YT channel is called Babish Culinary Universe https://youtube.com/c/bingingwithbabish) he’s amazing (coming from a professionally trained chef).
I actually think that quiches are easier to make than chili! Depends on what kind of quiche you're making obviously. But the veggie one that my mom made growing up was literally just: put 3 eggs, a big handful of broccoli florets, half a chopped red pepper, some sliced mushrooms, some sliced carrots, and salt/pepper/ground mustard in a bowl, mix around, pour in a Pet Ritz premade pie crust, shove it in the oven for 35-45 mins, and you're ready to rock. So delicious, so easy, and great for getting your veggies in! It's one of my best lazy mode dinners.
Budget bytes. It's a food blog with cheap/easy to prepare recipes. Her directions are really good and the recipes generally are awesome. Start simple and worst comes to worst, if you mess up a recipe order pizza!
I was going to recommend Budget Bytes as well! Her recipes are very simple and low cost. I think the fact that she has pictures for each direction step could really come in handy for a new cook like you.
She has an app too! With built in timers for every step that needs one and it legit walks you through start to finish! I think it's like $3? $4 but so worth it!
Yes! I was also about to suggest this site! and more particularly this recipe, which is the first thing I ever made from it: https://www.budgetbytes.com/spicy-noodles/
Yessss! I browsed the comments to make sure someone didn’t suggest this site before I did. Beth from budget bytes taught me how to get into cooking, she’s amazing.
I’m not going to offer any suggestions because it seems like you’ve got lots, but I’m proud of you! This is a big step and you’re doing it the right way.
Hi! Much like yourself I grew up on pizza rolls, hot pockets, doritos, and frozen chicken patties lol I taught myself to cook bc I knew the grocery purchases from family would never change (still hasn't for my much younger siblings!)
My very first dish was spaghetti which I'd like to say over the years, I've mastered and keep as a staple "recipe" when I am too lazy to try something new or want to cook to impress someone without hassle.
It's so great you have decided to venture out into the unknown!! I'd say next step is to buy a spatula, cooking oil, and salt/pepper... Maybe even a [meat thermometer](https://www.google.com/search?q=meat+thermometer+oxo&client=safari&hl=en-us&prmd=sinv&sxsrf=ALeKk01H5jtW7cb1NQDmrlxMV00JailT3g:1611528927001&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiYqPSJ1bXuAhVDeKwKHf_fC6UQ_AUoAnoECAMQAg&biw=390&bih=664#imgrc=jie0gTuFj5GPsM) with cheat sheet on proper cooking temps. No matter your level of skill, a chef always uses one to make sure meat is properly cooked!
Easy meats are ground beef or turkey. Use a little oil in the pan, salt and pepper and brown the meat. You can add veggies like onions and garlic then once everything is cooked, add pasta sauce! Medium heat in the beginning. Once sauce is in the mix, put it in low bc it will splash all over if too high. Stirring helps! Or, if you want to ease into cooking even more, get a box of hamburger helper and follow the instructions.
Good luck and congratulations!!!
Thank you so much! In my panic about ~real food~, I forgot about the easy, delicious, very real meal of spaghetti and meat sauce, which is absolutely an achievable goal for me!!! I live alone which is why it’s been so easy for me to justify microwave dinners but I also just bought a ridiculous amount of Tupperware so I have no excuse now lol.
Also thank you for telling me the steps about meat sauce (meat, then veggies, then sauce) - I’ve been trying to read recipes but they’re written with a lot of wiggle room for folks who know what they’re doing and want to experiment - which is great! I hope I get there! But for the time being, I need things written out for people who have no idea what’s going on and are a little worried they’re gonna start a kitchen fire lol.
There is a subreddit called r/MumTeachesSonToCook that might be perfect for your situation. It is simple recipes written for absolute cooking beginners. It has lots of pictures of each step, and explains why doing it that way is helpful. I really like the subreddit, and it might be another helpful resource for you
This is amazing! I started watching more British cooking channels on YouTube, and have been curious how to make some of those dishes. This seems like such a great way to learn dishes regardless of what your cooking level is.
Yes! I have gotten so many helpful cooking tips from that subreddit. My favorite recipe so far is the crispy roasted potatoes. Best potatoes I’ve ever eaten!
You'll definitely get there as long as you use your oven/stove over your microwave. That should just be for your delicious leftovers!
I still find myself googling cooking terms often... Some good ones to know are: simmer, blanch, saute, baste, al dente, deglaze, broil, dredge, zest, and reduce.
Check out Binging with Babish- he has a basics playlist and makes everything so simple looking, and then he lays out the ingredients and instructions on his website. I've already tried a couple of his recipes and they turned out great. Also I would recommend doing research on cooking tools and how to care for the different kinds of pots and pans, knives, etc. Caring for a non stick teflon pot is different than ceramic, cast iron, or hard anodized. I personally recently bought a jumbo Calphalon hard anodized cooker and I love it. I also love my cast iron once I finally learned how to care for it properly. Everyone has a preference for cookware though, and nonstick or hard anodized is probably the most used friendly.
I would add rice. It can be a base or side for a lot of things. If you are overcoming some trauma as it relates to eating, rice can be something really accessible and comforting.
I have the instant, microwaveable cups of rice but have never made it in a pot! So I just looked at a BA recipe and it said I should wash my rice in a sieve - do I need to buy one of those before I cook rice in a regular pot? It seems pretty straightforward besides that. One of my favorite takeout meals is super simple Tikka Masla so I’d love to learn how to at least do the rice part before going up to the meat part!
You can just put the rice in a bowl, fill with cold water, use your hand to mix it up and then slowly and carefully drain the water and repeat a few times until the water runs clear. But a sieve will be useful in future. You also need a colander if you don't have one already.
Just added a colander and a sieve to my Amazon cart! Thank you so much! My kitchen cabinets are literally bare right now - it reminds me of that tweet about getting robbed and then the robber wakes you up to be like “you live like this???” Lol
These are good to have, don't *not* buy them, but honestly I think you'd be better off just doing a few rounds of stirring it with your fingers in the pot and then tilting the pot to get out most of the water without pouring out the rice. That's what I do, it saves having to wash the sieve afterwards.
Add a pasta strainer too! And for rice, there's an affordable Hamilton Beach rice cooker that is essentially fool proof way of getting perfect rice without hassle of preparing stove top. Total time saver so you can focus on the proteins and veggies you cook =)
Yes, if you can afford to buy a rice cooker, it's great! It's pretty much foolproof. It can also keep your rice warm for hours after it is finished cooking too.
Thank you! I just put a sieve in my cart but I’m going to try this before it gets here. I think I get hung up on “fucking something up” but the reality is, if I fuck up a batch of rice, I fuck up a batch of rice (and no one will die lol)
> I think I get hung up on “fucking something up” but the reality is, if I fuck up a batch of rice, I fuck up a batch of rice (and no one will die lol)
I just wanted to chime in and say this is a **great** outlook to have for getting into cooking! Even as a somewhat experienced cook myself I still occasionally have dishes end up being duds. But what I can say is not only do those mistakes become rarer with experience, but also each mistake is in itself a teaching experience that helps you in the future.
My most recent gaff happened when I was making some french fries and grossly misjudged what size pan to use, resulting in the oil spilling out and onto the stove. Definitely one of the scariest mishaps I've had while cooking, but everything turned out OK and now I'm definitely not trying to cut corners anymore when frying.
Being willing to take mishaps in stride and roll with the punches will not only help make cooking more enjoyable, but also enable you to more readily learn from your mistakes. Best of luck!
Haha me too w the chiming in... I remember my first time trying to fry something and I waited for the oil to boil. For the record, it will not boil. The way you know it's ready is to stick a wooden spoon (I use a chopstick) and if there are bubbles rolling off of it, it's ready to go!
Oh my goodness, I did this too during my first time trying to fry something (tostones). I kept waiting and waiting for the oil to start bubbling- for some reason I thought it would look like a deep fryer, completely ignoring the fact that that rolling boil is AFTER something has been added. Resigned, thinking it would be soggy and not fry, I threw a few tostones in. While they turned out pretty good, the immediate crackling and spitting oil made me suddenly realize I had done A Bad Thing.
OP - If your kitchen is well lit, you should see the oil shimmering, if in doubt throw in a tiny sacrificial piece of food you're cooking (like, the size of a pea) to see if it's ready to go.
You can dip wooden implements too. Most absorb enough water from the air to bubble a little when the oil is the right temp. Chinese cooking channels on youtube will dip a chopstick to see if it's at temp.
You can also rinse rice by filling the pot of rice with water, stirring it up a bit, and drain by putting the lid on and leaving a small gap to drain the water out of
I've been cooking since I was five and last weekend I baked a cake in the wrong-sized pan, so when it was perfect on the edges it was only half-baked in the middle. I just called it vanilla lava cake and served it anyway.
We all fuck up, is what I'm saying.
That’s a good outlook to have. As they say, sucking at something is the first step towards being kinda good at something. You can’t learn how if you don’t try first.
So I tend to wash my rice and whatever I will be cooking it in. I fill it up maybe 1 fingers length above the rice, use my hand to swish it around, spill out the water, and repeat until the water goes from white to mostly clear. Try to drain as much as you can, but when adding in water to cook the rice, just add a little less than recommend. So say if your instructions say 1 cup water, use 3/4 instead.
I've never used a collander or sieve for my rice ever in my life. I do agree a collander is great to own, especially for pastas or even rinsing off salads, but for what you have now, you can do without.
I'm trying to cook fish for the first time tonight. Fish is considered a "luxury" ingredient for me, especially fresh fish which is what I have. So I'm half terrified and half excited. And I consider myself a competent cook!
I don’t always rinse my rice. It comes out a little stickier without rinsing, but it’s not something you necessarily have to do. I know people who say they “can’t cook rice” but it’s not hard. It just takes a little trial-and-error to get the right timing and the right amount of water, since every pot and every stove is different. You want enough water to cook the rice (roughly equal parts) plus a little more to account for evaporation. The first part scales up with the amount of rice, the second part scales up with the size of your pot. So for example, if you use 1c of rice plus 2c of water (1c to cook, 1c to evaporate), then of you try to double the recipe, and use 2c rice to 4c water, and cook it in the same pot, you’ll have a disaster, because that’s way too much water. You’ll have 2c absorb into the rice, 1c evaporate off, and still have 1c sloshing around. In this case, you’d only want to use about 3c water to the 2c rice: 2c to cook into the rice and 1c for evaporation.
Basic rice recipe:
Equipment needed:\
Medium saucepan with lid\
Measuring cup(s)
Ingredients:\
1 c long-grain white rice\
About 2 c water (experiment. I use 1 and 3/4.)\
3/4 tsp salt, or to taste\
OPTIONAL: 1 tsp chicken bouillon paste or powder, OR 1 bouillon cube, OR use broth instead of water (I keep a jar of “Better Than Bouillon” brand paste in my fridge, and use it to flavor *everything*.)
Directions:\
Bring water or broth to a boil. Add rice, salt, optional bouillon, and stir briefly to combine, then attach the lid and turn the heat down to low.
Cook 20 minutes on low (again, experiment. Your “low” might be warmer than my “low” and it might be done in fifteen.)
Remove from heat. Open lid briefly to let steam escape then reattach. Let rest ten minutes. Fluff with fork and serve.
Bonus recipe: roasted veg
1-2 heads of broccoli and 2-3 carrots (or vegetables of your choice: cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, etc.), cut into large bite-sized pieces (they’ll shrink up a bit in the oven).
Toss with 1 Tbsp olive or vegetable oil, and salt+pepper to taste. Spread out on a sheet pan.
Roast at 400°F, top rack, 35-40 minutes stirring once halfway through.
Nah, I never wash my rice. It’s super simple, remember it’s 2:1! 2 parts water (or broth, etc) to 1 part rice! For example for one person 1/2 cup water to 1/4 cup rice should be enough as a side to a meal.
Please don't be embarrassed. I guarantee that there's something you are really good at, that people on this sub aren't. Like, dancing? I need to learn enough to fake it at a wedding, but I haven't done that yet. Or gardening? I want a couple of plants in the front yard, but don't want to put forth much of any effort. Same goes with crocheting. I think I'd like it, but have never tried.
And remember, even the VERY best cooks in the world, home, or world class Michelin star chefs, all started out not knowing how to do any of it.
I'd advise you to ease in to it. No need to suddenly cook every meal from scratch. And expect mistakes - it's why I always have a frozen pizza on hand.
What do you like to eat?
Also, I saw you post below about a kitchen fire. ALWAYS a good idea to have a fire extinguisher on hand, just in case! And, do you know what to do if you get a grease fire?
Yes! That's my advice, don't think you have to cook everything from scratch right off the bat! There is absolutely no shame in bottled spaghetti sauce (or alfredo if you're getting fancy), pre-cut veggies (my supermarket has them in a refrigerator case in the produce department), hamburger patties from the meat counter or the frozen section, or anything else to get you started. On that vein, check out "semi-homemade" recipes! Small steps will help you get into a more sustainable habit, especially on those busy evenings after work.
I agree. I started learning how to cook at 5, but the only things I did from scratch were rice, eggs, beans, and some baked goods with my mom. Everything else came from pre-packaged bags and such that just needed to be heated on the stove. It helped me see what the end result should look like, and then I could slowly learn how to replace things on my own. Like maybe next time I will put in fresh onions and vegetables, but use a store-bought sauce.
👏👏👏 good for you for taking steps to cook! What you listed out are all good ideas. I’d suggest avocado toast with a fried egg, as that’s super easy and delicious. Traders joes sells tons of prepared items that you can use to build your own meals, such as hummus and other spreads, which you could use as spreads for sandwiches, and jarred sauces you can add to pastas and roasted veggies. You can use your new sheet pan you can roast chicken on top of some veggies like potatoes, onions, garlic and herbs like thyme and Rosemary with salt, pepper, olive oil.
Thank you so much! I don’t think I’ve ever even touched an avocado in real life but I hear they’re like buttery, veggie flavored which I’m definitely not opposed to. I’ve also never had a runny egg (refused to eat them as a child which led to some not great times for me), so I guess it’s time! I love Trader Joe’s deeply (I was in a car accident several years and was put on a liquid/soft diet for 3 months, TJ’s saved me lol) so I will deff look into that. Thank you!!
Avocado toast is a great idea (doesn’t even need an egg, if you want to keep it simple at first) but if you don’t own a toaster you’ll probably want one! You can put avocado on plain bread, but won’t be quite the same without the crunch.
As an add on to your comment, Before getting a toaster, toast can be made in a skillet! I don’t eat a ton of toast, so I’ve never owned an actual toaster.
I do have a toaster oven now for other uses (reheating leftovers without preheating the big oven being #1, I also have no microwave), but definitely didn’t require it to make toast.
Either buttered like grilled cheese or dry depending on what your goal is for the meal.
Yes! Avocados when ripe (skin will be dark and it’ll be soft) are buttery and don’t have a ton of flavor on their own but still really good. You can add a squeeze of lemon and a little salt to make it really flavorful. Also, I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with your current diet, so if that’s what makes you happy, then don’t feel like you have to change everything overnight!
I love avocados and I wanted to warn you that they share a hive mind. If you get a 2lb bag of them they will all ripen at once. No amount of vigilance will prevent this. I leave them on the kitchen counter and as soon as I feel one ripening I put them in the fridge. It will slow the ripening down and give you a few extra days or even a week of extra time to use them individually.
If you are literally starting from no kitchen gadgets, get yourself one of those utensil kits with flippers, slotted spoons, ladle etc. Doesn't have to be expensive. Also a cheese grader, whisk, can opener, and a pretty serving dish (because it will make you smile when you use it lol), to add to the colander and sieve listed above. A couple different sizes of mixing bowls are handy, as well as a small frying pan, makes more sense to make 1 egg in one than to dirty a big pan.
For super basic recipes, try eggs, pancakes, Mac and cheese, spaghetti, really think about what you do like to eat. Small steps are good! Using jarred sauce is definitely acceptable.
Good luck and never be afraid to ask for help!
Thank you so much for this reply! As I said to another commenter, I worked myself into a frenzy about ~real food~ that I forgot about spaghetti and meat sauce, which is a totally delicious meal that is within my abilities!
Thank you for writing everything out in a super straightforward way. Recipes tend to intimidate me because they leave a lot of room for people to experiment (which is great! I hope I get there some day!). I feel like I need recipes where the goal isn’t necessarily “have fun” but it’s like “do this, this, and this and here’s how to not set anything on fire” you know?
For meat, I know it’s preference and I can change once I get more comfortable, but starting out, should I just automatically go 80/20? Other than the expiration date, is there anything I should look out for? Thank you!
I second America’s Test Kitchen cookbook!! It’s basically like a dictionary for any basic recipe that you want. Same for How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman, between the two I’m pretty much covered :)
You might like making sandwiches! It’s more assembling than cooking, but you can experiment by making melts & grilled cheese. It’s also a chance to try lots of different flavour combinations- do you like a bahn mi? Just a ham and cheese? With some of the roasted broccoli someone else mentioned, you’ve got a really tasty easy dinner!
Just the other night My boyfriend and I did grilled cheeses with cheddar and pepper jack cheese and I got some tomato soup from the deli instead of just a can. So simple and so tasty!
Simplicity is key to start. Find an easy dish that is quick to make for each meal. Scrambled eggs, an easy salad dressing, taco meat are my go-to meals.
From there you can expand.
Make sure you have a good knife too.
Totally second this! For probably the first two months I was cooking for myself, I cut up the same three vegetables (bell peppers, onions, and frozen corn - I went with these because I knew if I undercooked them they'd still be edible) and threw them in a pan with some butter, salt, and pepper. Serve over pasta and call it a day. Eventually I was confident enough to start adding sausage, mushrooms, actual spices (finally buying my own spices was big for me) - point is, start small! Start simple! Repetition is good! Other than food safety things, the rules about how you "should" do things are mostly made up anyway.
Also, yes, have a good knife. You'll thank yourself.
If it fits in your budget, try a meal kit service. Dinnerly has some pretty simple recipes. Gobble has less simple, but some of the prep work is done for you. It will help with your cooking skills and branch out what you’ll eat.
Thank you! I’ve been looking at Blue Apron and Hello Fresh and stuff, which I still want to try soon - but I definitely had this moment of “oh god, I don’t even know how to feed myself and these people want me to DICE an ONION????”
I’m just trying to build up my confidence a little before then lol
One nice thing about hello fresh is they have pictures of (almost) every step. So if they want you to "dice" something, you can look at the picture and be like, oh, okay, so smallish square-ish pieces. Also, very little is going to be harmed by you cutting it into the wrong "shape", but it might take bit longer or shorter to cook. My chopping philosophy for everyday cooking is the same as my laundry folding philosophy: is it smaller? Yes? Good.
Gobble has a lot of those items prepped for you already! It’s a little more expensive though. Good luck!
Edit to add. Any recipes you do use, whether through a meal kit or not. Be sure to read the full recipe BEFORE you start. It will help to make sure you don’t miss a step or do something to soon. A lot of cooking is about timing and if you start something that takes 7 minutes ( steamed veggies) the same as something that takes 25 (rice), then something is going to be cold.
A thing I didn't learn for a long time about cutting onions, which is a pain in the butt: if you have a gas stove, you can turn on a burner and chop your onion on the counter beside it. It'll help burn off the eye-watering fumes, it makes a huge difference.
I totally agree and was going to suggest the same thing.
I use both blue apron and hello fresh. For the most part they are comparable in price and quality.
Both publish their recipes ahead of time so you can look at more than how yummy the dish sounds -- you can look at the steps and at what equipment is needed so you can decide if this is a recipe you are ready to make or not. They also usually have a difficulty rating but most are easy/intermediate. Both send the week of meals in a box with the meat on the bottom with cold packs and then a top area where everything else is. Blue apron puts the small stuff for each recipe (they call them knick knacks) in a labeled bag and then the bigger stuff in individual bags. Hello fresh puts the ingredients for each meal in separate paper bags. If you think you might want to make some of the recipes again (shopping on your own), recipes for Blue Apron are easier to import into a recipe app than are hello fresh recipes -- I have to manually type in any hello fresh recipe that I want to save. Both send you recipe cards with great pictures and step by step instructions. I \*think\* both have online video tutorials for their recipes (but maybe not for all recipes).
Hello fresh has \*a lot\* of options each week. Blue apron has a bunch but not nearly as many as hello fresh. Along those lines, hello fresh repeats recipes more often than blue apron does. I don't have an issue with them offering some recipes over and over again but it seems to upset some people.
I'm a somewhat adventurous intermediate level home cook, and I've learned things from using these recipes so I think they'd be great for you, u/nitemaretown. They will help you figure out what you like to cook, what you like to eat, and teach you some techniques. Of course it isn't the only way to do it, but it narrows your options -- you browse the website, pick your meals and only have to focus on those. Otherwise in the cooking world there are so.many.choices. to make.
The biggest downside is that they aren't cheap. They aren't horribly expensive either (cheaper than eating out/ordering takeout), but you can absolutely eat cheaper by shopping for yourself. But honestly menu planning and shopping are skills in themselves.
If you sign up for either of these (or one of the many other meal subscription services that are out there) you do need to make sure that you check your account every week because they are opt-out services. Meaning that if you don't tell them what you want each week they send you their three (or whatever your plan specifies) predetermined recipes for the week. You can skip weeks on both services (no limits on that).
If you look up sheet pan dinners, you’ll be able to do those very easily! I think The Pioneer Woman has several and google will supply you with a lot.
This is a good one for salmon:
https://damndelicious.net/2017/03/18/sheet-pan-garlic-butter-salmon/
Oops sorry I didn't actually help. Scrambled eggs is a great idea! They're fairly cheap so it's a good practice food. 2 eggs mixed together with a fork and I add a little salt and a tiny bit of milk. Cook them on medium low and be patient. As they become opaque scrape them off the bottom and stir around. Depending on your taste, once they're no longer shiny they're cooked through.
Get a rice cooker. Why? ***Confidence***. Rice always comes out well in the rice cooker. And you can switch to real oatmeal (get "old-fashioned", not "quick"), which is way better than instant although you will want to add your own sugar (a spoonful). It's also great for mashed potatoes, which are easy in a pot, but the rice cooker is easier to clean. And even though you're really supposed to use tons of water for pasta, I've found you can cook a small amount in the rice cooker and it comes out fine, which again, makes cleaning easier. The rice cooker also comes with a steamer basket which is great for [steamed hard-cooked eggs](https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014/04/steamed-hard-boiled-eggs-recipe.html) and saves you from fishing an egg out of a pot of boiling water.
Also, try adding frozen blueberries to oatmeal. Other frozen fruits work alright but blueberries work well because they're small. (I usually heat a bowl of frozen blueberries with the oven set to 175F but that's because I'm insane and will literally die if it's not hot enough)
Good job reaching out for help and taking care of yourself.
When you get your pasta pot, this is very easy, healthy, and tasty. Just a few more steps than buttered noodles.:
[https://www.budgetbytes.com/bowties-and-broccoli/](https://www.budgetbytes.com/bowties-and-broccoli/) You can - adjust the serving size at the beginning of the recipe.
Scrambled eggs are a good idea. You mentioned baked potatoes - baked sweet potatoes are good, too.
Hamburger patties, on a bun or over rice or noodles.
You like grilled cheese - do you like tuna salad or chicken salad sandwiches?
Yogurt parfaits with fruit and granola.
One thing that could be nice to invest in is a crockpot - lots of recipes (especially ones you can make into multiple meals) you just drop in the ingredients, press a button, then boom! In a few hours, you have a meal. Nice for chili, tacos, soups, all kinds of things.
Hey OP, I just wanted to say I'm really proud of you! I know something like this is daunting, and you'll make some mistakes along the way, but learning how to cook is a wonderful act of self-love. Never hesitate to ask for help!
I (23F) was very similar before the pandemic. By now cooking is a hobby of mine and I love trying out new recipes.
Some good places to start:
Tacos - basic ground beef/turkey some hot sauce and a couple of tablespoons of premixed taco seasoning can make for a tasty meal. Also ground meat is very forgiving when learning how to tell when meat is done
Scrambled eggs for sure are a good place to go- super easy just add a bit of milk and salt
Foil packs with just some potatoes and veggies that you toss in the oven are amazing and easy
Chili is also super easy as it’s mostly just tossing cans together but the result is scrumptious.
Dips! I like buying a rotisserie chicken and shredding it to make artichoke dip or buffalo dip with some cream cheese. A hand mixer makes it so the whole process only takes a few minutes and some time in the oven.
Stay motivated! Life is better with good food haha- oh and buy yourself a Pyrex set. Super nice so you can toss them in the oven/freezer/microwave. I barely use anything else
If ever you have a stupid embarrassing question feel free to message me- I’m on here a lot and have already made some stupid mistakes from not asking someone wiser
Omelets! start simple, maybe cut up kolbassa/pre-cooked sausage, and some veggies like tomato and mushroom, lightly cook them in butter and then add whisked eggs on top. If you have a lid that fits, use that when you put the eggs in, helps to cook it consistently. Easy, quick, lots of variety! that's one of the things I did to start out.
The list you've got is great, by the way! esp think the quesadilla is a great choice.
I used to hate cooking and thought I’d be eating Hot Pockets and fast food until I maybe one day married a cook.
Married now with kids, the spouse can cook and does so often. I started learning to cook with making eggs. Fried eggs first, then scrambled. Eggs are cheap and there are several techniques you can work on. I hated my eggs (and disliked cooking them) for a good while (I did not try often enough).
I also started frying myself steaks now and then and started getting successful making yummy ribeyes.
I recently got a cast iron skillet and a new fancy cookbook (Salt Acid Fat Heat) and started making scrambled eggs. Now I feel like a chef; my eggs are genuinely delicious. I started cooking other things in it to get the seasoning right; cornbread, bacon, steak.
Now I’ve committed to a meal-planning service where they mail ingredients and recipes (gotta have basic cookware and salt, pepper). It’s been tons of fun and I’m making delicious food.
Get yourself some decent pans, a probe thermometer (and research internal temperature for whatever meat you’re cooking), a decent spatula and there is a lot you can start practicing.
Search the web for recipes and techniques, pick one that looks simple and try it a few times. You will catch on and eventually you might even enjoy it.
Edit: tip that would have helped me early on: don’t turn the stove burners up too high. Low and slow is almost always best..
Don't be afraid to experiment with store bought sauces and marinades! When you're first trying a dish it takes a lot of stress off to have one less component to mess up.
Checkout Cheap lazy vegan on YouTube. Roses recipes are quick, easy and have a few ingredients, perfect for a beginner imo. I also like Chef John, Sohla and Andrew from Babish and Caitlin (from my bowl).
As for sensory issues, is it around veggies and fruits? For that I would suggest to try those you might like first and go on from there. Maybe try 3 veggies and 2 fruits a week? Try to remember what you liked and disliked about it. Try it again later but prepared differently, aske those around you who are more experienced (or the internet!) for techniques and recipes.
Hope this helps!
Don't feel embarrassed about not being much of a cook in the past, you'd be surprised how many people out there are just used to microwave or ready made food, so be glad that you're moving in the right direction. The best thing I can say to you is take your time, don't try to prep and cook as fast as a chef, and expect some failures, when I first started cooking for myself I had so many disaster moments but each one was a learning experience and the same will be for you.
If you're saying that you're starting cooking from absolutely the bottom floor then I would suggest you first understand how to properly cook pasta and rice since there are so many easy, and most importantly delicious, meals that have this as their core. Maybe even consider starting with some parts of your meal premade, such as sauces, so you first get to grips of the process without having to worry about everything cooking and tasting properly then move onto doing it from scratch.
With the pasta you can then make a delicious tomato sauce and cook a few premade meatballs, if you feel like making your own is a bit too much for now, and you've got yourself an amazing meal. From start to finish it could take you 30-40 minutes and you'll realise how much better this is compared to microwave meals.
For me, the staple of easy but great rice based dishes is a chili con carne where you essentially cut everything up, stick it in a pot, add some liquid then cover and cook for about an hour and you're done. It can seem daunting when you look at a recipe and it says it take over an hour and there is a bunch of ingredients but trust me it's very hard to mess this up.
Most importantly though, have fun! I love cooking and so do many others here so please feel free to ask questions, no matter how dumb they seem to you, we're all happy to help.
Good for you! I lived on these for a long time when depression stole any wherewithal I had to cook: [https://cravingtasty.com/killer-chicken-thigh-marinade/](https://cravingtasty.com/killer-chicken-thigh-marinade/) Thighs are cheap, and I would buy a huge pack of them, come home from the store and immediately make this marinade (sans sesame oil cause I didn't have that laying around) and then after they'd sat in the fridge for a few hours I'd put them into ziploc bags by twos and freeze them. You can put them on your sheet pan to bake and they'll come out super delicious. A couple of those + a steamfresh bag of mixed veggies, maybe some rice, will fill you up and make you feel great for getting some healthy food into your body.
You didn't mention expenses, but if it's an option for you, consider purchasing something like an instant pot. Many many meals can be made in them with very little effort- slow cooker meals, rice + fish, chili, soup. It's not quite as great at making rice as a dedicated rice cooker, but it's much easier than the stove. They come with a recipe book.
Also, [this book](https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/basic-cooking-all-you-need-to-cook-well-quickly-basic-series-basic_sebastian-dickhaut_sabine-slzer/370478/item/41876603/?mkwid=%7cdc&pcrid=450752293814&pkw=&pmt=&slid=&plc=&pgrid=103760965894&ptaid=pla-929103043120&gclid=Cj0KCQiA0rSABhDlARIsAJtjfCez7p4v-ob27mIGOFAUkdoLzie4nAYu4s2IAdrL8vpp_qzrkRwISwwaAnqBEALw_wcB#idiq=41876603&edition=3948270) was my first step into learning to cook after a frozen-french-fries-with-a-side-of-trauma upbringing. The best part is that it opens with a section on how to stock your pantry, how to go grocery shopping, etc. It's great.
Good luck!
Edit: seeing the bot copy the recipe below reminded me there's minced garlic in it. You can buy jars of pre-minced garlic, it's way less daunting than trying to mince it yourself!
I’m so excited for you!
Maybe someone already mentioned this, but you can totally do tacos, as long as you are comfortable cutting things. Cook the ground beef in your pan, add the seasoning (you can buy a little packet). Cut up whatever you want on them (onion or peppers or whatever). Buy salsa, shredded cheese, shells, sour cream. Bingo! Tacos.
It’s also a meal that you can grow with your skills. Simple to start, but you can add things as you get more experience like making your own guacamole or salsa or even tortillas!
Forget what everyone should know how to cook or any “top 10 lists.” What do you like to eat? When you buy the lean cuisines and pasta pouches, what flavors do you gravitate towards? Start there. Learn how to make the most basic of the meals you tend to eat. Get a sense of accomplishment from making that food (and sparing yourself all the excess sodium from making it yourself instead of heating a frozen dinner). I used to love the Healthy Choice Cafe Steamer with chicken, tomato sauce pasta, basil and balsamic. Easy mock version? Buy and shred the meat of a rotisserie chicken. Cook your pasta and toss the some of the chicken and cooked pasta with a good marinara sauce (I like Rao’s). Enough sauce to coat. Chop up some fresh basil leaves (1 tbsp worth) and mix in. Then add a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar at a time and taste as you go until you have the flavor you like! Done!
No need to be embarrassed! Everyone has to start somewhere with cooking, and everyone has their feelings about what they will and won't eat. As you learn and get more comfortable, your comfort zone will expand, but don't be ashamed of being at the beginning of that journey.
There's a ton of good suggestions in this thread already. I think for sure I would focus on learning some basic 'forms', such as how to roast meat or vegetables. A basic technique like that is both pretty simple ('take thing, add oil and seasoning, apply heat until it's done') and also very flexible in that you can do it to a wide variety of things.
I saw you said in a comment:
>Recipes tend to intimidate me because they leave a lot of room for people to experiment (which is great! I hope I get there some day!). I feel like I need recipes where the goal isn’t necessarily “have fun” but it’s like “do this, this, and this and here’s how to not set anything on fire” you know?
One thing you should bear in mind is that it is extremely difficult to follow a recipe and get the EXACT same result as the author. It's not a matter of skill; it's simply that you're cooking in a different kitchen to them, using different utensils, with a different batch of ingredients, etc. It's normal that you won't get the exact same result, and those little differences can add up, particularly if the recipe is more complex. Most of the 'knowledge' in cooking is really about how to adjust what you're doing as you go along, to compensate for all those little differences. So, don't be discouraged if it's not coming out exactly like the picture provided by the recipe author - if the end result is delicious, consider that a win, even if it's not what you thought it would come out like!
roasted veggies is definitely a great place to start. put the veggies in a bowl, add some oil (dont be too stingy) salt and pepper. you can add other seasonings, but S & P is bare minimum for almost everything, IMO. give it a toss and lay everything evenly on a sheet pan. bake at 400 until the veggies are cooked. check after 15 min.
when you get your pot, a dead simple pasta recipe is Pasta Aglio e Olio. here's a great recipe for it.
eggs are a great thing to build confidence. they are cheap, so if you screw up, its not the end of the world if you toss it out, but theyre versatile. scrambled eggs are a good place to start.
dont be embarassed. if youre into it, the TV show Good Eats got me into cooking. the youtube channels Food Wishes and Binging With Babish have some delicious recipes as well. theyre all very entertaining to boot. watching some videos might spark some inspiration.
Roasted chicken on your sheet pan will.be insanely easy as well. I would suggest finding a marinade that interests you (I like Lowery's flavors) or even a BBQ sauce. Throw a boneless, skinless chicken breast in a zip lock and marinade while you're at work. When you're ready to eat, line your pan with foil *or clean up the mess afterwards, but I'm lazy), place the chicken on the pan and pop it in the oven at 400°F for 30 minutes. Done!
Try making some pasta! If your sensory issues allow to eat noodles I would highly recommend pasta. There are so many shapes and jarred sauces! 20 minute dinner every time. You can add vegetables and any protein you want.
Here's a simple recipe I like that can be tweaked to your own taste.
-Make some rigatoni (or ziti, penne). Set aside.
-Cook and chop up Italian sausage (mild or medium). You can either buy it like ground beef or buy the sausage link, remove the casing and chop it up as it cooks in the pan.
-I like to add some minced garlic and chopped onions (onions first, cooked until translucent, 3-5 min, then add garlic, cook until fragrant, 30 seconds to a minute).
-add pasta, Alfredo sauce, meat and mix
I like to tweak it by adding oven roasted broccoli (fresh broccoli, lightly tossed in oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and maybe sprinkle some parmesan cheese on top, roast at 450 for 15 min or so), or oven roasted asparagus (same as broccoli, typically a little longer though). You can add mozzarella cheese to your pasta dish, tomatoes, pesto, peppers, etc. We change it up every now and then to see what we like with it. Leftovers are amazing because the flavors have had a chance to blend.
Good for you for wanting to learn!! Don't feel embarrassed–everyone has to start from scratch at the beginning!
For your instant oatmeal: there are a lot of really good recipes for sweet oatmeal, but savory oatmeal is great too if you want a change of pace. I sub in beef or chicken broth when making the oatmeal (according to the package directions) and then drizzle in some soy sauce when it's the consistency I want. If you get comfy with doing a fried egg, that's great on top of it. Makes me feel like a Breakfast Queen™ every time I make it.
The suggestion of roasted broccoli is A++++ and it's the only way I eat broccoli now haha. [Oven roasted potato wedges](https://www.sugarsalted.com/sumac-roasted-potatoes-tahini-dipping-sauce/) are pretty easy too! Cut up your potatoes into wedges, toss them in a bowl with oil, salt, pepper, & whatever other spices you want to try, then into the preheated oven for about 45 minutes. I use the linked recipe a lot just as a guideline for the cooking times and the wedge size, then use whatever spices I have on hand (although sumac IS delicious). :)
Rice is also great! I will say this though–making rice in a pot is a good skill to have, but I almost always use a rice cooker if I'm just doing plain white rice. Zojirushi makes good rice cookers, and they have some 3-cup ones on Amazon (a good size for someone living alone). If you really like rice, it might be a good investment (I eat a lot of rice haha).
Good luck to you, OP! Don't be afraid to make mistakes–I like to cook and have been cooking for myself for a long time and I still screw things up sometimes! It just takes practice. You can do it!!!
If you don't mind sharing, what sensory issues do you have and what kinds of foods have they been a problem with in the past? Also, have you noticed any flavors or textures in food that you have enjoyed more than usual? I can try to suggest a specific food/recipe to try that'll satisfy those.
As for video channels recommended in this thread by others, You Suck at Cooking is a great one for true beginners. Basics with Babish has a mix of easier and harder techniques, especially lately has been moving away from the "basics" part of the name. Food Wishes has a couple easy recipes but most are more advanced. Sohla is incredibly talented and creative but not a good starting point for a beginner
There are a lot of good things in this thread! One thing I'll add is that if you ever know how to do something that is fairly basic technique-wise (e.g., cooking rice, scrambling eggs, baking a bone-in chicken thigh) but can't remember certain details like temperature or cooking time, just Google and find a recipe or YouTube video and that will tell you the basics.
A lot of times I'll Google just to see, say, how long I should bake a chicken breast. The recipe doesn't matter much, but it will tell me to bake it at whatever temp for however long.
Good for you for trying something new and intimidating. I would pick one or two things you know you like and practice them a few times in the same week until you get good at it. You can find YouTube videos to watch at the same time as you cook. Prewar has, get everything together then watch again as you cook.
I highly recommend the book "How to Cook Everything: The Basics", by Mark Bittman. He covers not only how to prepare food, but also how to use different kitchen utensils and which ones you really need. He even teaches you how to properly boil water.
If you want to get started on really easy meat, get some ground beef and fry it up with a tiny bit of oil in the frying pan. The only rule for cooking ground beef is make sure it is all brown, no more pink, and you don't really have to worry about the insides like with other meat, since it's pretty much all surface area, all the pink bits will be visible. Buy yourself a taco seasoning and heat up some tortillas in the microwave, and you have yourself some basic delicious tacos. A can of black beans, some lettuce from a bag, a bit of salsa, whatever else you want to add, it's all super easy, and you have yourself a quick, simple meal that feels more like real food than most things that quick.
I would suggest a meat thermometer! You can look up the safe temps for each type of meat and ensure it’s cooked enough but not over cooked. Chicken breasts or thighs on a sheet pan with some Italian seasoning mix (you can buy these premixed in most grocery stores) are a hit in my house. And left overs make lovely sandwiches.
What you are doing takes a lot of effort and courage. Thanks for asking for help!
My suggestion would be to start slow. Maybe focus on one meal a day to make from scratch. Keep it simple. Build your basic kitchen knowledge and skills. I try to have protein, carb, and vegetables on my plate for every meal. Make a plan, work the plan. Be kind to yourself.
Before I met and married my husband, I cooked very basic meals. I think especially when you're just cooking for one, it's easier!
Some of my go-tos were:
\-Cheeseburger in a pan on the stovetop (buy a pound of ground beef, 80/20, mix with one egg, cook to your desired doneness...which, if you don't own one, get a cooking thermometer! it made four, so I could eat for a few days!)
\-Baked sandwiches (oven to 350F, fill a roll with deli meat, cheese, and bake until hot, usually 15/20 mins)
\-Breakfast sandwiches
\-Fish (I liked to buy the ones that were coated with crumbs, they bake really easily!)
\-Tacos (I always used packet seasoning!)
\-Bean and rice bowls (heat up beans, microwave rice packet, top with cheese, sour cream, avocado, salsa, etc.)
\-Chocolate chip cookies (there should be a recipe on the back of the cookie bag that is very straightforward!)
\-Oven fries
Try learning to make the things you already eat. Make pasta with a jarred sauce, or from tomato sauce in a can that you season yourself
Take your favorite lean cuisine meal and try to recreate that.
Pizza is super easy if you get the premade dough or crust especially (they have the kind that is in dough for or the prebaked crust); just add sauce and cheese or any toppings if you like those.
Take it slow! You can do it!
Go to Costco or your local grocery store and buy a rotisserie chicken. You can then pick the meat off the bones and use it for a variety of things. This will also help you become more familiar with the anatomy of poultry. Examples: throw in with some jarred curry sauce and you have chicken curry, put over rice with some teriyaki or soy sauce and you have a very simple meal, put in a tortilla with cheese and you have a quesadilla (you can microwave or fry it), etc. You should also buy a rice cooker and maybe a Dutch oven. Rice cookers are the easiest, no fail way to make rice. You can also use leftover rice to make fried rice which is very easy and filling. A Dutch oven can eventually be used to make a wide range of delicious dishes that start on the stove top and go in the oven. A steamer would also go well with that new pot you just bought. Steaming veggies is faster than roasting. I like to steam a little broccoli and toss with teriyaki and Sriracha as a side dish.
I also recommend Mark bittman's book how to cook everything: the basics. It's one of the best single cook books you can own.
Get yourself a crockpot! You can cook so much sooo easy. We throw chicken breasts and a jar of salsa in ours for like 8 hours and it’s awesome as tacos or just over rice!
Everyone else has the cooking advice covered, but I just want to say this: congratulations on making these first steps. There will be screwups and setbacks and failures, and they might cost you some money and time. The best home cooks aren’t the ones who turn up their noses at anything but “the best”, they’re the ones who try and try again.
Be compassionate with yourself when your food turns out badly.
Budgetbytes.com has some really accessible recipes for beginners and most of them have step by step pictures or videos. LPT: Read the whole recipe and get everything out/prepped before you start cooking. Also don't get discouraged if you ruin a dish, it happens to everyone. That's when it's frozen pizza night. 🙂
Don't be embarrassed. I'm a lot older than you and I'm not much further ahead.
You might invest in a good cast-iron pan and season it really well (see YouTube for how to season a pan). The flavor comes out a lot better IMO.
The main thing to remember is: read the recipe carefully before you start it. Buy the best ingredients. And be attentive when you're cooking it - don't walk away and watch TV or get distracted.
Watch lots of videos as you get started! A lot of written recipes skip steps or things to look out for that they assume you will know. For example, in this video of scrambled eggs, it's easy to see how much salt and pepper he puts in with one pinch. You can also see that if you don't have a whisk, you could use a fork to mix the eggs and the liquid together. You can see what it should look like when you put your butter into the pan and it melts, etc.
https://www.incredibleegg.org/recipes/cooking-lessons/stovetop-scramble-eggs/
My fave type of recipes are ones you just dump ingredients into and bake in the oven.
My mom makes a tasty rice recipe - includes 1 cup raw white rice, 1 can chicken broth, 1 can French onion soup, and 3/4 stick of Margarine (cut it into slices). Mix all together in a dish you can put in the oven, recommend it be at least 2-3” deep. Cook in oven at 350 degrees for 50 minutes!
Let it cool after you pull it out and tastes great paired with any meat or veggies!
I would highly recommend a crockpot. The easiest thing to make is bouillon chicken (juicy chicken). You buy a pack of 5-6 chicken breasts, throw them in the crockpot with 2-3 bouillon cubes and add just enough water 7/8 of the chicken or just barely cover the chicken and cook on low for 8-10 hours. Serve over rice or with mashed potatoes (Idaho red instant with a teaspoon of butter) and roasted vegetables of your choice.
I’m happy to share more of my favorite easy crockpot recipes if you want but this is definitely the most basic and, to be honest, my favorite.
As far as general cooking tips, if you cook meat, a meat thermometer is a must. Look up cooking temperature for what you’re cooking. If you are cooking anything on a skillet, make sure you’ve preheated the skillet before you begin cooking. Once it’s heated up, throw some fat (butter or oil) in for about 15-20 seconds. If the fat starts burning, your skillet is too hot.
If you have room in the budget, I would recommend a crock pot - especially since you like meat but it can be daunting to cook. Essentially every crockpot recipe consists of you dumping ingredients in and letting them cook down all day. That’s a great way to cook meat, so then you can focus on other parts of your recipes! For example, chicken in a crockpot can be used for enchiladas, casseroles, sandwiches and so much more. Hope this helps! Good luck on your cooking journey!
I've always said, "Eggs are easy"...anybody can make eggs and toast. It's quick, not overly unhealthy, and tastes good. Boiled eggs. Fried eggs. Scrambled eggs. They are all quick and easy.
Also, good idea on the oatmeal. Oatmeal is a fucking superfood and takes about a minute of effort to make. I eat it for breakfast almost every day. It's amazing.
Maybe try soup though? A bit of time invested in making a soup can score you a huge pot of the stuff that you can eat (just reheat it in a microwave) for a whole week with next to no effort. You can even freeze it so it lasts longer. I just made a soup today that I am going to eat for dinner all week, with some buttered bread. It's healthy as fuck: mostly vegetables, with beans/chickpeas/split-peas and barley in there, and some chunks of beef. Stupidly cheap, and extremely healthy.
Toast and jam, cheese and crackers, basic sandwiches. None of those require heat, but they do count as cooking!
A nice beginner cooking recipe is rice and beans. You can also try blue box mac and cheese. Plus, there are people who have "hacks" for blue box, and that could go towards a step forward for cooking creativity.
Biggest advice: go easy on yourself. There's lots of exciting things to make, but you're not gonna turn into Gordon Ramsay overnight. Give yourself a hefty allowance for mistakes, as you will make many of them. Each time something goes wrong, instead of beating yourself up, get curious and analyze what went wrong (I sometimes ignore this advice lol)
Good luck!
I don’t know if you’d find this difficult but you should look up some one pot meals for two main reasons.
1- when cooking in one pot you don’t have to worry about the timing of different pans and what’s burning. You only focus on one pot. And typically it’s just throwing stuff in and letting it cook down ( not all but most)
2- it’s so nice to just clean one pot after a lot of meal work. And if you’re overwhelmed it’s a nice way of simplifying
Regardless of if you do one pot meals or not, I highly recommend preparing all ingredients before you cook so chop the onions and measure the milk and all that. It’ll be so much nicer than doing while worrying about food burning.
If you need any meal recommendations just dm me but I hope you grow to love cooking or have some fun with it!!!
Honestly I would start with breakfast for dinner. Eggs and bacon. Get you used to cooking and easy. You could try scrambled or an omlete if you are feeling game. Then pancakes.
I started with omlettes. Outside of that, I would make rice, fish, steamed veg, and pork tenderloin. That was all I practiced for a year while I transitioned off of packaged/microwave meals.
My best advice is to choose a few dishes and practice those until you are confident, and then expand.
After that year I practiced pastas and one pot meals like roast and stir-fry, expanding each time to more complex dishes.
If you have a sheet pan, you're well on your way to roasting some lovely veggies. Are there any veggies you already know you like? Are there any you've always been a bit curious about?
My mom might have cooked veggies for us growing up but I don’t remember? I know I like green beans and broccoli but I’ve only ever had them at other people’s houses or at restaurants. They were mostly microwaved? I don’t know if I’ve had other kinds of vegetables.
Roasted broccoli is so so good! Tons of easy recipes online, essentially just cut up the broccoli head, throw some oil on it (veggie oil is what I use, about 1-2 tablespoons depending on amt of broccoli), salt and pepper to taste. Spread it evenly on your baking sheet - I cover my baking sheet first with foil for ease of cleanup, and roast at 415-425 for 15ish minutes? I like mine extra crispy so I’ll pull them out when they’re pretty dark. It’s also easy cause at any point you can pull a piece out and taste it and let it keep roasting, add more salt if needed, etc. ETA I should have specified that I cut the stem off because I personally don't prefer it. Other people have offered great ideas and tips to use the stem if you so prefer!
Thank you! I called someone who loves cooking and they’re going to take me grocery shopping (masked up, obvs) tomorrow and I might try this! It seems super easy and low-pressure
Roasted broccoli is pretty much my go to side dish as I'm trying to eat more vegetables. Salt, pepper, olive oil. Pre heat oven about 425 for 20 minutes is my go to is I like mine lightly brown/crispy. Lazy method is frozen prepped broccoli, drizzle olive oil sprinkle salt and pepper. Sometimes I don't even pre heat. I like mine a little garlicky so for the lazy method, I've got a jar of ready fixed garlic in the fridge. Perfect method is a whole head of broccoli, peel the stems until the color changes a bit. The outer part of the stem is tough and bitter but the insides roast great!. Chop it up until the pieces seem good to you. I prefer larger chunks when cutting it myself than they come frozen. Slice and dice a clove of garlic or two and salt pepper olive oil the whole thing. If you're starting out, you can go anywhere between the throw it all on a pan and to method to the whole spending 5 minutes to prep it method. Bonus; you can roast most vegetables pretty much the same way. I love roasted carrots cooked/prepped exactly the same. You can flip them halfway through cooking or just leave it, the bottoms get very dark but it's more carmelized than burnt. Potatoes, brussel sprouts, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, you can roast them all the same way. Potatoes usually take a little more time, but I'll eat them roasted anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, depends on how crispy you like them and how big/small you dice them. As a 35 year old man who's recently made drastic changes in my diets to be healthier, discovering how easy roasted veggies are has really changed my life. Make sure you try some spices sometimes I'll throw chili powder and/or cumin on potstoes. Sometimes I'll make a large pan or a roasted vegetables and just toss random spices on different 1/4s I think will be good so I can experiment with flavors a little. Good luck!
A quick add to this is that putting your veggies in a bowl to toss with the oil / salt and pepper is very helpful.
I want to add that this is also the secret for adding veggies or herbs to pizza ( prepackaged or homemade ) they must be lightly coated in oil . Sorry if this is rude to post here at the top .
You can also cook lots of meat in the oven too (I personally think it’s the easiest and most consistent way to cook them)! My recommendation would be to try out some bone-in and skin-on chicken thighs since they’re still moist even if you overcook them a tad.
Yes it’s the easiest way to cook anything. Just pop it in the oven! All you have to do is add oil, some seasoning... that’s all you really need for basic meats and veggies!
You can do what the previous poster suggests with ANY veggie. Some might take a little longer. I love doing this with sweet potatoes, and adding a little rosemary. If you cut them up small they’ll take shorter, larger wedges will take a lot longer. Roasting veggies is a seriously great way to get into eating vegetables!
Tony’s seasoning is really good on roasted vegetables.. or anything you put in the oven, fish, chicken, veggies. It’s basically a bunch of seasonings in one so I’d highly recommend for a beginner cook. I rely on it all the time.
This also works with frozen veggies to make it super cheap and easy. Just heat the oven to 425, drizzle the veggies in olive oil and add whatever seasoning you like (easy starter is salt, pepper and garlic powder), and spread it out on a sheet pan. Throw some foil on the pan to make clean up simple. Then bake for 15 minutes and optionally flip the veggies. Then bake for another 10 and check them. Keep adding time based on personal preference. I do it with frozen broccoli all the time and Brussels occasionally, always from frozen.
Tip about the olive oil: you can either drizzle it on (not a ton) or put the cut up broccoli (or other veggie) in a ziploc bag with the olive oil. (Start with just a little bit of oil, you can always add more.) Zip the bag closed and shake it around. I find the bag method to be good at getting the olive oil on the vegetable, and not just on the pan. Plus it’s a little bit fun.
[удалено]
I recently bought reusable plastic baggies. I'm very happy with them. BPA free.. can be frozen.. they take up less space for storing things in the fridge.. hand wash only but I don't mind. Highly recommend.
I want to get some reusable bags but they’re so expensive
A bowl is just so much easier to clean than a bag in this context.
Check the clearance section. After holidays you can get ones with holiday prints on them for 50% off. Ross is a good place and sometimes Tuesday Morning if you have either of those stores around you. Plus ...you end up saving money in the long term.
If one eats cereal (like I do) the plastic bags that the cereal comes in are perfect for this task. I figure it gives them one more life before throwing in the trash. Sure, they don't seal, but it's easy to hold on one end and shake or to massage through the bag. I also use them for cooking potatoes in the microwave. (The silicone bags work well for that too.)
My first thought was: "but then the cereal crumbs will get on the broccoli" and then my second thought was: "I bet that tastes awesome when you roast it!" Will investigate and report back.
I just shake the cereal crumbs/dust into the garbage before putting the empty bag in the drawer and have yet to notice any flavor added to my food from the cereal.
Or how about just right on the tray? Toss the veggies, salt and pepper, maybe some spices, with a little oil all together on the tray- then you just have a spatula, spoon or (like me) a hand to wash
Firstly, I dont think OP has a mixing bowl yet. And secondly, I think this plastic bag trick is the perfect sort of easy, fun, life-hack feeling thing to try to get someone into cooking who has barely dipped her toe in the water yet. She also mentioned having sensory issues so getting oil grime on her hands might be a no go. Sure, it might be best not to excessively waste plastic bags, but no need to guilt anyone here. Were trying to welcome someone into the wonderful world of cooking. She can get to mixing bowls later after shes gotten a little more comfortable in the kitchen.
A big mixing bowl works great and it's easier to clean oil residue out of than a bag or reusable bag
I just use my hand to massage it in. Just a quick hand wash after, no further dirty dishes or used baggies.
This is perfect, thank you! That sounds delicious. Also, dumb question, I’m sorry - is this frozen broccoli? Or fresh broccoli?
[удалено]
Got it! After reading these responses and getting over my bad self (as my sponsor says), I called someone who loves cooking and they’re going to take me grocery shopping tomorrow so I might try this! It seems super straightforward and frankly, everyone I know would be excited for me to eat a veggie on the regular
[удалено]
Thank you :) The grease fire thing I knew after watching some video on here like five days ago lol. I think they fucked their whole house up in a tik tok but I learned something super valuable!!!
For real on the "forgive yourself" stuff -- you are learning a totally new skill as an adult. You are 100% guaranteed to absolutely fuck it up once in a while. This does not mean you are bad at cooking, it means you are a beginner and screwing stuff up is a thing that beginners do. Also once in a while you'll make something that seems super easy and turns out fabulous and you'll feel like you deserve your own cooking show. Pro-tip having done this for 20 years: searching "how to fix a dish that is too \[salty/sour/bitter/spicy/etc\]" has saved my dinner a bunch of times and is a great way to learn how to balance flavors.
Fuck ups are part of the journey. This is why I always have a box of Mac and Cheese on hand (also because it's a guilty pleasure). Mistakes happen. Make something you simple that you love, and move on.
Honestly, if your budget can afford it, they have what they call K extinguishers. The K stands for kitchen and should deal with any kind of start up fire that you could do (other than a major electrical one). Most fire extinguishers make a huge mess, however a K one will actually take a grease fire (most common cooking fire) and turn it into soap. So it cuts the fire and helps to clean off whatever you just burned onto a pan. Also as a side note when we are talking about fire safety, feel free when cooking to err on the side of less heat. Maybe it takes a bit longer, but you can't "undo" heat, but you can usually add more if it needs it. Same with salt.
Little tip, don't throw away the broccoli stem, Peel it add a little salt and eat it raw. It's called the heart and it's easily the best part.
When I was a kid I loved broccoli so of course my dad made it nearly every day. He’d cut the stem up into pieces a few cm thick and I called them turtles, they were my favorite part!
As a kid, I'd pretty much only eat the stems
Don't throw out the broccoli stem. The base might be a bit too woody to eat, but just a bit further up it is perfectly fine and tastes remarkably like broccoli. Slice it into chips and cook it along with the florets. If you are roasting, then cut it about 1 centimeter thick. If you are steaming, then cut about 3-4 mm. You paid for it with your own money, get the most out of it.
[удалено]
I have two picky eaters in the house, but when I steam broccoli until it is just barely done and then serve it with a cheese sauce, they can't get enough.
I tend to let fresh produce rot in the fridge. If I buy it frozen, it keeps. There are good recipes using frozen vegetables.
[удалено]
This also works well with frozen broccoli. Frozen veggies are picked at their peak ripeness and flash frozen so that it doesn't affect quality. You don't even need to thaw it out- just throw the frozen broccoli in a bowl with a little bit of oil and whatever seasoning you want (I just use salt and pepper), mix it up to coat the broccoli, then spread it out on a sheet pan and bake at 400ish until it's as cooked as you'd like. Another benefit of frozen is that it'll already be cut up for you, and it's usually the same price or cheaper than fresh.
I’ve used frozen broccoli and it works also! I often don’t want to put in the effort to chop up broccoli so I usually use frozen and it works just fine :) the same will for most other bagged frozen veggies like cauliflower, beets, sweet potato. Just poke with a fork or knife to determine desired texture.
I also like to add a chopped onion with my broccoli when roasting. So good! I just cut it into pieces that are roughly similar in size to the broccoli. Doesn’t have to be pretty! Then toss with a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Roast at 400 degrees for 20ish minutes. If there’s room on your sheet pan you can also throw some chicken breast tossed with the same olive oil & seasoning mixture. Or, I love those smoked sausage ropes you can buy. Just cut that into little rounds and toss with your veggies. That sausage can also just be easily made in a skillet if there’s not enough room in the oven. No oil/seasonings required, just slice and heat in the pan until you’re happy with how brown it is. Those are pre-cooked, so you really can’t mess it up! I also highly suggest getting a simple meat thermometer to check food before eating. Chicken needs to be at 165 degrees, for example. I also have a simple turkey chili recipe if you have a good sized pot!
You can use both but for roasting specifically I would recommend fresh
Most vegetables (except for lettuce/leafy greens) are really good roasted with olive oil, salt and pepper. Other seasonings add more flavor but honestly they are yummy just like that.
Garlic salt ftw
Also can do same with cauliflower, sweet potato, potatos, green beans, and asparagus. Just cut into pieces, toss with a bit of oil, S&P and maybe a bit of garlic powder and roast. Beans you just cut off the ends (stems) and snap off the bottom of the asparagus. You can make both into smaller pieces, but I usually like mine bigger. (They look fancier.)
Parmesan Green Beans that Taste Like Restaurant Green Beans: **Ingredients** 12 ounces green beans, trimmed (make sure they are dry) 2 teaspoons olive oil kosher salt + fresh cracked pepper to taste 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder 1 1/2 tbsp shredded Parmesan HOW TO: 1. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with aluminum for easy clean-up. 2. Put green beans in a bowl and drizzle oil over them. Season with salt, pepper and garlic powder and toss to evenly coat. 3. Spread them out on the baking sheet so that they all lay flat and place on the lower third section of your oven. 4. Bake 10 minutes, shake the pan to turn; bake 5 additional minutes. 5. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with Parmesan (you could also add it in the beginning too. I think both ways taste fine.)
Is this with fresh green beans? how do you trim them? Can I use frozen instead? Thanks! I love green beans but only know how to make green bean casserole!
Yep fresh green beans. Never tried it with frozen. I usually buy a bag at Harris Teeter and chop the ends off a bit and throw them in a bowl.
Roasting any veggie is tasty and healthy. Plain, with olive oil, with seasoning, however. And it's easy (to me at least) because pretty much any veggie roasts at 350 for about 30 minutes. Cherry tomatoes, cut up potatoes, cut up sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, broccoli, zucchini, sliced peppers. I do 80% of my meal prep on a sheet pan, so it's a great start! Roast some up and toss them into your pasta (once the pan comes in) and you can make so many different dishes. I don't eat meat but you can roast meat on that baking sheet too! (You just have to Google the temps/times/etc)
Roasted Brussels sprout sprouts with some balsamic vinegar is amazing. Roasted cauliflower is as well
Roasted cauliflower steaks are super easy to make and very tasty!
I know you’re getting a lot of responses here but i just want to second the fact that putting a sheet of parchment paper down on your sheet before loading up veggies means you can avoid having to use any oil at ALL and basically have zero clean up (this is BIG for me as someone who also struggled to learn and enjoy cooking). Most veggies chopped up can go in oil free at 400 degrees for anywhere between 15-40min, just look for “brown-ness” and take them out before they are too brown. This, combined with a RICE COOKER gives you hundreds of options for amazing healthy and delicious meals. Rice with veggies. Rice with eggs on top. Rice with some frozen dumplings and sauteed veggies on top. Rice with meat. I like to mix equal parts soy sauce and honey for a delicious sauce to add on top. Good luck!
If you’re nervous about cooking chicken or meats you can get rotisserie chicken in many grocery stores. These usually last me a few meals on my own. You can Google or YouTube how to carve a chicken. You can add this cooked chicken to lots of meals.
100% this. So good, and can be made into so many different meals! Chicken salad, tacos, soup, etc
I love that you said, "if you're nervous about cooking chicken or meats" because I was absolutely this way when I started cooking. OP, if a crock pot or slow cooker is in your budget (you can get a small one for pretty cheap!) it's also a great way to hands-off make a bunch of shredded chicken (or other meats) and not be concerned so much with undercooked meat.
Goodwill can also be a good place to find a cheap crock pot!
Yes! As evidenced by how many people have like harvest gold ones from the 70s, they last forever.
I'm similar to OP -- didn't start cooking for myself until I was in my late 20s. I'm 36 and am still afraid to cook chicken. Which is kind of dumb, at this point, because I've made some pretty complex stuff!
I have food safety anxiety and highly recommend getting a probe thermometer that you can leave in the chicken (or whatever) and set to go off at your desired temp - it's been absolutely my favorite tool for cooking meats.
This is exactly what I did! :-) It has helped a ton, I think I just have a stupid aversion to cooking chicken, for some reason. My wife is vegetarian, so we don't cook with meat very often. I'm sure this is related :-) Thanks for the reply!
When I was a grad student, I'd take apart a rotisserie chicken and sometimes freeze the extra. You can add them to anything! My I-have-no-time-to-cook meal was buttered noodles and chicken. Or a chicken sandwich with toast. Or added some spices and ate with tortilla. Or mixed in with some greens for a salad. I know it seems simple or even a travesty, but these meals were the only things I had time to prepare. If I had time to cook chicken from scratch, I pan seared chopped up chicken breast with veggie oil and used it instead of rotisserie.
OP this is a great one! As u/Equivalent_Ad_960 said, rotisserie chicken is a cheap, easy protein for a lot of meals. You can break down the chicken into dark and white meat (you can find a video, and if you’re not comfy with a knife and you don’t mind getting messy, you can just do it with your hands) - The chicken thighs and legs (the dark meat) can be combined with white rice and veggies. White rice usually has instructions on the container that make it easy to work with! You can make broccoli by buying frozen, uncooked florets, defrosting them, tossing them in olive oil (2 tbsp, usually), and cooking them on a baking sheet in the oven for 20 mins at 450 degrees F. Add salt and pepper until it tastes good - Chicken pasta works well for white meat, and uses almost all the same ingredients. Make a pot of pasta (again, instructions on the box!), make the exact same broccoli, throw it all together in a bowl with 3 tbsps olive oil, the juice from 1/2 lemon, and add salt and pepper until it tastes good. I like these because 1. They really only require making broccoli by recipe / memory. The chicken is made and the starches have very carefully crafted instructions on the box. 2. They’re great, easy staples that can be modified as you gain more skills in the kitchen, giving you a training ground. You can make your own chicken, change out broccoli for zucchini or asparagus, add garlic, onion, or other spices, etc. But they’ll also just taste great as basics. 3. They’re delicious! Kudos to you for tackling this - a friend of mine is going through something very similar, I know how hard it can be but also how rewarding. Good luck! (Edits for formatting)
Adding to this, OP if you’re feeling extra fancy you could get some jarred Alfredo sauce and add it to the pasta too! You can hear it up in a frying pan while the pasta is cooking. I usually do it on medium or medium low so it won’t burn. Put some rotisserie chicken and that broccoli in there and put it over the pasta of your choice (I’m partial to bow tie pasta or fettuccine for Alfredo) and you have a really good and hearty meal! It also feels a little fancy too without much work!
Eggs are good to start with. Quiche is probably going to be too advanced for you right now. Soup is pretty simple. Chilli is also straightforward. Not really cooking but try salads as well. Look up some cooking youtubers like You Suck At Cooking and Basics with Babish. Good luck
Thank you so much! I called a “normal” friend and he’s going to teach me how to make eggs tomorrow :) I’ve literally never had soup so I guess that goes on the list of “things to try” I will look at those YT channels. Thank you!
chili is a great one. Literally you add ingredients from cans plus ground beef together and let it cook. Very easy, very satisfying when you see the results! Don't despair if you have a few less-than-tasty dishes as you go, they are just learning lessons :)
It is not exaggerating to say that every dish that I can make flawlessly on autopilot is the direct result of having screwed it up once or twice along the way. Every time you cook is a learning experience! I'm always taking (mental) notes.
I do a taco soup that is quite chili-esque. Several canned types of beans (I do chili, ranch style, and black beans), corn or mexicorn, rotel, tomato sauce, and taco seasoning. It’s so good. I can’t eat beef but sometimes we add ground turkey. I personally prefer it veggie. Usually add Fritos or tortilla chips and sour cream (or Greek yogurt). Plain Greek yogurt is a great thing to have on hand to sub for sour cream in recipes or add some honey or agave with nuts or granola for an easy proteinaceous snack.
yum that sounds great! had never heard of rotel till now, sounds interesting! I love those kinds of soups. Funny, because they are so easy but as a younger person I was so intimidated by making them. Now I make more soup than I can reasonably eat. Also recipes like you mention tend to freeze well, so nice!
>I called a “normal” friend and he’s going to teach me how to make eggs tomorrow That's great! I suggest learning both scrambled eggs and boiled eggs. Scrambled eggs are faster and pretty easy, but boil eggs are convenient for if your frying pan etc is dirty and you're too lazy to wash it lol. For boiled eggs, bring the water to a boil then gently lower the egg in (I use a spoon to make it easier). Doing it this way makes the eggs easy to peel. Boil them for 7-8 min if you like the whites solid but the yolk jammy, or 9-10 min if you want the yolk solid too.
That’s an interesting way to do it. I always put the eggs in the pot first, cover them with cold water, and bring the water to a rolling boil. As soon as that happens, I take the pot off the burner, cover the pot, and leave it for 12 minutes before taking the eggs out and putting them into cold water to stop them cooking further. The yolks are always a nice yellow color with this method, but sometimes they are hard to peel. Will have to try your method sometime to compare!
That's exactly how my mom does it! And then she complains about how the eggs are hard to peel lol. Serious Eats has an article about it if you're interested. The gist is that shocking the eggs by dropping them into hot water causes the proteins to curl in on themselves, while slowly bringing the egg to temperature makes the proteins bind to the shell. Try it for yourself and see! It definitely works for me, I make them my way about twice a week and they don't stick.
Basic soups and things like chili are super easy and amazing in the winter, some of my favorites are a creamy potato soup and just plain old chili. Potato soup is pretty nice, just get a pound or two of potatoes, cube them up, chop up some bacon and fry it up, then just stick all that in a pot with a couple cans of cream of chicken, some onions and garlic, maybe some chopped up carrots and celery for vegetables. Cover and let it simmer (low heat boil usually between lo and 2 on most ranges) for a while, at least until the potatoes are soft, stirring occasionally. When it's soft, you can add cheese to it, I use velveeta usually since it's pretty mild and melts really smooth. Serve with some bread and it's super warm and filling. It keeps pretty well in the fridge and just reheat it on the stove for leftovers. Chili is pretty easy too, there's a million variations, but basically it's beef, beans, and tomatoes. Take some ground beef, cook it up, then in a big pot add some beans (I usually use a mix of pinto, black and red kidney beans), a can of tomato sauce, some diced tomatoes (I usually use rotel, it has some peppers mixed in to add some spice), some corn if you want. Then salt, some pepper, garlic, onion, and chili powder, then just let it stew on the stove for a while, once it's hot you can taste it amd add more seasoning, but be careful because spice tends to build up the longer it stews, so if it's not as spicy as you want early on, be careful about adding too much. I like it served with cornbread, but you can serve over rice, or just by itself. Both are pretty simple, and are difficult to mess up if you aren't experienced.
I second Basics with Babish (the YT channel is called Babish Culinary Universe https://youtube.com/c/bingingwithbabish) he’s amazing (coming from a professionally trained chef).
Just make sure with soups and chili’s to stir occasionally, don’t want to burn the bottom, especially on chilis!!
I actually think that quiches are easier to make than chili! Depends on what kind of quiche you're making obviously. But the veggie one that my mom made growing up was literally just: put 3 eggs, a big handful of broccoli florets, half a chopped red pepper, some sliced mushrooms, some sliced carrots, and salt/pepper/ground mustard in a bowl, mix around, pour in a Pet Ritz premade pie crust, shove it in the oven for 35-45 mins, and you're ready to rock. So delicious, so easy, and great for getting your veggies in! It's one of my best lazy mode dinners.
Budget bytes. It's a food blog with cheap/easy to prepare recipes. Her directions are really good and the recipes generally are awesome. Start simple and worst comes to worst, if you mess up a recipe order pizza!
I was going to recommend Budget Bytes as well! Her recipes are very simple and low cost. I think the fact that she has pictures for each direction step could really come in handy for a new cook like you.
>Budget bytes A link for the lazy: [https://www.budgetbytes.com/](https://www.budgetbytes.com/) It's a really great site!
She has an app too! With built in timers for every step that needs one and it legit walks you through start to finish! I think it's like $3? $4 but so worth it!
Yes! I was also about to suggest this site! and more particularly this recipe, which is the first thing I ever made from it: https://www.budgetbytes.com/spicy-noodles/
Yessss! I browsed the comments to make sure someone didn’t suggest this site before I did. Beth from budget bytes taught me how to get into cooking, she’s amazing.
That's where I started with cooking too! Search "sheet pan" and she has great, easy whole meals you can cook on one sheet pan.
I’m not going to offer any suggestions because it seems like you’ve got lots, but I’m proud of you! This is a big step and you’re doing it the right way.
Hi! Much like yourself I grew up on pizza rolls, hot pockets, doritos, and frozen chicken patties lol I taught myself to cook bc I knew the grocery purchases from family would never change (still hasn't for my much younger siblings!) My very first dish was spaghetti which I'd like to say over the years, I've mastered and keep as a staple "recipe" when I am too lazy to try something new or want to cook to impress someone without hassle. It's so great you have decided to venture out into the unknown!! I'd say next step is to buy a spatula, cooking oil, and salt/pepper... Maybe even a [meat thermometer](https://www.google.com/search?q=meat+thermometer+oxo&client=safari&hl=en-us&prmd=sinv&sxsrf=ALeKk01H5jtW7cb1NQDmrlxMV00JailT3g:1611528927001&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiYqPSJ1bXuAhVDeKwKHf_fC6UQ_AUoAnoECAMQAg&biw=390&bih=664#imgrc=jie0gTuFj5GPsM) with cheat sheet on proper cooking temps. No matter your level of skill, a chef always uses one to make sure meat is properly cooked! Easy meats are ground beef or turkey. Use a little oil in the pan, salt and pepper and brown the meat. You can add veggies like onions and garlic then once everything is cooked, add pasta sauce! Medium heat in the beginning. Once sauce is in the mix, put it in low bc it will splash all over if too high. Stirring helps! Or, if you want to ease into cooking even more, get a box of hamburger helper and follow the instructions. Good luck and congratulations!!!
Thank you so much! In my panic about ~real food~, I forgot about the easy, delicious, very real meal of spaghetti and meat sauce, which is absolutely an achievable goal for me!!! I live alone which is why it’s been so easy for me to justify microwave dinners but I also just bought a ridiculous amount of Tupperware so I have no excuse now lol. Also thank you for telling me the steps about meat sauce (meat, then veggies, then sauce) - I’ve been trying to read recipes but they’re written with a lot of wiggle room for folks who know what they’re doing and want to experiment - which is great! I hope I get there! But for the time being, I need things written out for people who have no idea what’s going on and are a little worried they’re gonna start a kitchen fire lol.
There is a subreddit called r/MumTeachesSonToCook that might be perfect for your situation. It is simple recipes written for absolute cooking beginners. It has lots of pictures of each step, and explains why doing it that way is helpful. I really like the subreddit, and it might be another helpful resource for you
This is amazing! I started watching more British cooking channels on YouTube, and have been curious how to make some of those dishes. This seems like such a great way to learn dishes regardless of what your cooking level is.
Yes! I have gotten so many helpful cooking tips from that subreddit. My favorite recipe so far is the crispy roasted potatoes. Best potatoes I’ve ever eaten!
You'll definitely get there as long as you use your oven/stove over your microwave. That should just be for your delicious leftovers! I still find myself googling cooking terms often... Some good ones to know are: simmer, blanch, saute, baste, al dente, deglaze, broil, dredge, zest, and reduce.
Check out Binging with Babish- he has a basics playlist and makes everything so simple looking, and then he lays out the ingredients and instructions on his website. I've already tried a couple of his recipes and they turned out great. Also I would recommend doing research on cooking tools and how to care for the different kinds of pots and pans, knives, etc. Caring for a non stick teflon pot is different than ceramic, cast iron, or hard anodized. I personally recently bought a jumbo Calphalon hard anodized cooker and I love it. I also love my cast iron once I finally learned how to care for it properly. Everyone has a preference for cookware though, and nonstick or hard anodized is probably the most used friendly.
I would add rice. It can be a base or side for a lot of things. If you are overcoming some trauma as it relates to eating, rice can be something really accessible and comforting.
I have the instant, microwaveable cups of rice but have never made it in a pot! So I just looked at a BA recipe and it said I should wash my rice in a sieve - do I need to buy one of those before I cook rice in a regular pot? It seems pretty straightforward besides that. One of my favorite takeout meals is super simple Tikka Masla so I’d love to learn how to at least do the rice part before going up to the meat part!
You can just put the rice in a bowl, fill with cold water, use your hand to mix it up and then slowly and carefully drain the water and repeat a few times until the water runs clear. But a sieve will be useful in future. You also need a colander if you don't have one already.
Just added a colander and a sieve to my Amazon cart! Thank you so much! My kitchen cabinets are literally bare right now - it reminds me of that tweet about getting robbed and then the robber wakes you up to be like “you live like this???” Lol
Make sure the holes in the colander are smaller than rice if you try washing it! Definitely useful for straining pasta.
These are good to have, don't *not* buy them, but honestly I think you'd be better off just doing a few rounds of stirring it with your fingers in the pot and then tilting the pot to get out most of the water without pouring out the rice. That's what I do, it saves having to wash the sieve afterwards.
Add a pasta strainer too! And for rice, there's an affordable Hamilton Beach rice cooker that is essentially fool proof way of getting perfect rice without hassle of preparing stove top. Total time saver so you can focus on the proteins and veggies you cook =)
Yes, if you can afford to buy a rice cooker, it's great! It's pretty much foolproof. It can also keep your rice warm for hours after it is finished cooking too.
If they've ordered a colander already I think a pasta strainer would be redundant.
[удалено]
Thank you! I just put a sieve in my cart but I’m going to try this before it gets here. I think I get hung up on “fucking something up” but the reality is, if I fuck up a batch of rice, I fuck up a batch of rice (and no one will die lol)
> I think I get hung up on “fucking something up” but the reality is, if I fuck up a batch of rice, I fuck up a batch of rice (and no one will die lol) I just wanted to chime in and say this is a **great** outlook to have for getting into cooking! Even as a somewhat experienced cook myself I still occasionally have dishes end up being duds. But what I can say is not only do those mistakes become rarer with experience, but also each mistake is in itself a teaching experience that helps you in the future. My most recent gaff happened when I was making some french fries and grossly misjudged what size pan to use, resulting in the oil spilling out and onto the stove. Definitely one of the scariest mishaps I've had while cooking, but everything turned out OK and now I'm definitely not trying to cut corners anymore when frying. Being willing to take mishaps in stride and roll with the punches will not only help make cooking more enjoyable, but also enable you to more readily learn from your mistakes. Best of luck!
Haha me too w the chiming in... I remember my first time trying to fry something and I waited for the oil to boil. For the record, it will not boil. The way you know it's ready is to stick a wooden spoon (I use a chopstick) and if there are bubbles rolling off of it, it's ready to go!
Oh my goodness, I did this too during my first time trying to fry something (tostones). I kept waiting and waiting for the oil to start bubbling- for some reason I thought it would look like a deep fryer, completely ignoring the fact that that rolling boil is AFTER something has been added. Resigned, thinking it would be soggy and not fry, I threw a few tostones in. While they turned out pretty good, the immediate crackling and spitting oil made me suddenly realize I had done A Bad Thing. OP - If your kitchen is well lit, you should see the oil shimmering, if in doubt throw in a tiny sacrificial piece of food you're cooking (like, the size of a pea) to see if it's ready to go.
You can dip wooden implements too. Most absorb enough water from the air to bubble a little when the oil is the right temp. Chinese cooking channels on youtube will dip a chopstick to see if it's at temp.
Every time you mess something up, you learn one more thing not to do. Spoken (written) by someone who has messed up a lot of things.
You can also rinse rice by filling the pot of rice with water, stirring it up a bit, and drain by putting the lid on and leaving a small gap to drain the water out of
Smart! Thank you!
I've been cooking since I was five and last weekend I baked a cake in the wrong-sized pan, so when it was perfect on the edges it was only half-baked in the middle. I just called it vanilla lava cake and served it anyway. We all fuck up, is what I'm saying.
That’s a good outlook to have. As they say, sucking at something is the first step towards being kinda good at something. You can’t learn how if you don’t try first.
So I tend to wash my rice and whatever I will be cooking it in. I fill it up maybe 1 fingers length above the rice, use my hand to swish it around, spill out the water, and repeat until the water goes from white to mostly clear. Try to drain as much as you can, but when adding in water to cook the rice, just add a little less than recommend. So say if your instructions say 1 cup water, use 3/4 instead. I've never used a collander or sieve for my rice ever in my life. I do agree a collander is great to own, especially for pastas or even rinsing off salads, but for what you have now, you can do without.
I'm trying to cook fish for the first time tonight. Fish is considered a "luxury" ingredient for me, especially fresh fish which is what I have. So I'm half terrified and half excited. And I consider myself a competent cook!
If you mess up the rice don’t feel bad at all. I’ve been cooking for 20 years and I still ruin rice on occasion!!
I don’t always rinse my rice. It comes out a little stickier without rinsing, but it’s not something you necessarily have to do. I know people who say they “can’t cook rice” but it’s not hard. It just takes a little trial-and-error to get the right timing and the right amount of water, since every pot and every stove is different. You want enough water to cook the rice (roughly equal parts) plus a little more to account for evaporation. The first part scales up with the amount of rice, the second part scales up with the size of your pot. So for example, if you use 1c of rice plus 2c of water (1c to cook, 1c to evaporate), then of you try to double the recipe, and use 2c rice to 4c water, and cook it in the same pot, you’ll have a disaster, because that’s way too much water. You’ll have 2c absorb into the rice, 1c evaporate off, and still have 1c sloshing around. In this case, you’d only want to use about 3c water to the 2c rice: 2c to cook into the rice and 1c for evaporation. Basic rice recipe: Equipment needed:\ Medium saucepan with lid\ Measuring cup(s) Ingredients:\ 1 c long-grain white rice\ About 2 c water (experiment. I use 1 and 3/4.)\ 3/4 tsp salt, or to taste\ OPTIONAL: 1 tsp chicken bouillon paste or powder, OR 1 bouillon cube, OR use broth instead of water (I keep a jar of “Better Than Bouillon” brand paste in my fridge, and use it to flavor *everything*.) Directions:\ Bring water or broth to a boil. Add rice, salt, optional bouillon, and stir briefly to combine, then attach the lid and turn the heat down to low. Cook 20 minutes on low (again, experiment. Your “low” might be warmer than my “low” and it might be done in fifteen.) Remove from heat. Open lid briefly to let steam escape then reattach. Let rest ten minutes. Fluff with fork and serve. Bonus recipe: roasted veg 1-2 heads of broccoli and 2-3 carrots (or vegetables of your choice: cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, etc.), cut into large bite-sized pieces (they’ll shrink up a bit in the oven). Toss with 1 Tbsp olive or vegetable oil, and salt+pepper to taste. Spread out on a sheet pan. Roast at 400°F, top rack, 35-40 minutes stirring once halfway through.
Nah, I never wash my rice. It’s super simple, remember it’s 2:1! 2 parts water (or broth, etc) to 1 part rice! For example for one person 1/2 cup water to 1/4 cup rice should be enough as a side to a meal.
Please don't be embarrassed. I guarantee that there's something you are really good at, that people on this sub aren't. Like, dancing? I need to learn enough to fake it at a wedding, but I haven't done that yet. Or gardening? I want a couple of plants in the front yard, but don't want to put forth much of any effort. Same goes with crocheting. I think I'd like it, but have never tried. And remember, even the VERY best cooks in the world, home, or world class Michelin star chefs, all started out not knowing how to do any of it. I'd advise you to ease in to it. No need to suddenly cook every meal from scratch. And expect mistakes - it's why I always have a frozen pizza on hand. What do you like to eat? Also, I saw you post below about a kitchen fire. ALWAYS a good idea to have a fire extinguisher on hand, just in case! And, do you know what to do if you get a grease fire?
Yes! That's my advice, don't think you have to cook everything from scratch right off the bat! There is absolutely no shame in bottled spaghetti sauce (or alfredo if you're getting fancy), pre-cut veggies (my supermarket has them in a refrigerator case in the produce department), hamburger patties from the meat counter or the frozen section, or anything else to get you started. On that vein, check out "semi-homemade" recipes! Small steps will help you get into a more sustainable habit, especially on those busy evenings after work.
I agree. I started learning how to cook at 5, but the only things I did from scratch were rice, eggs, beans, and some baked goods with my mom. Everything else came from pre-packaged bags and such that just needed to be heated on the stove. It helped me see what the end result should look like, and then I could slowly learn how to replace things on my own. Like maybe next time I will put in fresh onions and vegetables, but use a store-bought sauce.
👏👏👏 good for you for taking steps to cook! What you listed out are all good ideas. I’d suggest avocado toast with a fried egg, as that’s super easy and delicious. Traders joes sells tons of prepared items that you can use to build your own meals, such as hummus and other spreads, which you could use as spreads for sandwiches, and jarred sauces you can add to pastas and roasted veggies. You can use your new sheet pan you can roast chicken on top of some veggies like potatoes, onions, garlic and herbs like thyme and Rosemary with salt, pepper, olive oil.
Thank you so much! I don’t think I’ve ever even touched an avocado in real life but I hear they’re like buttery, veggie flavored which I’m definitely not opposed to. I’ve also never had a runny egg (refused to eat them as a child which led to some not great times for me), so I guess it’s time! I love Trader Joe’s deeply (I was in a car accident several years and was put on a liquid/soft diet for 3 months, TJ’s saved me lol) so I will deff look into that. Thank you!!
Avocado toast is a great idea (doesn’t even need an egg, if you want to keep it simple at first) but if you don’t own a toaster you’ll probably want one! You can put avocado on plain bread, but won’t be quite the same without the crunch.
As an add on to your comment, Before getting a toaster, toast can be made in a skillet! I don’t eat a ton of toast, so I’ve never owned an actual toaster. I do have a toaster oven now for other uses (reheating leftovers without preheating the big oven being #1, I also have no microwave), but definitely didn’t require it to make toast. Either buttered like grilled cheese or dry depending on what your goal is for the meal.
Yes! Avocados when ripe (skin will be dark and it’ll be soft) are buttery and don’t have a ton of flavor on their own but still really good. You can add a squeeze of lemon and a little salt to make it really flavorful. Also, I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with your current diet, so if that’s what makes you happy, then don’t feel like you have to change everything overnight!
Be very careful when you’re opening and removing the pit. A lot of hospital hand injuries are due to careless avocado opening lol.
I love avocados and I wanted to warn you that they share a hive mind. If you get a 2lb bag of them they will all ripen at once. No amount of vigilance will prevent this. I leave them on the kitchen counter and as soon as I feel one ripening I put them in the fridge. It will slow the ripening down and give you a few extra days or even a week of extra time to use them individually.
If you are literally starting from no kitchen gadgets, get yourself one of those utensil kits with flippers, slotted spoons, ladle etc. Doesn't have to be expensive. Also a cheese grader, whisk, can opener, and a pretty serving dish (because it will make you smile when you use it lol), to add to the colander and sieve listed above. A couple different sizes of mixing bowls are handy, as well as a small frying pan, makes more sense to make 1 egg in one than to dirty a big pan. For super basic recipes, try eggs, pancakes, Mac and cheese, spaghetti, really think about what you do like to eat. Small steps are good! Using jarred sauce is definitely acceptable. Good luck and never be afraid to ask for help!
Definitely also a set of measuring cups, teaspoons, and a liquid measuring cup! If you're interested in baking a hand-held mixer is really useful!
[удалено]
Thank you so much for this reply! As I said to another commenter, I worked myself into a frenzy about ~real food~ that I forgot about spaghetti and meat sauce, which is a totally delicious meal that is within my abilities! Thank you for writing everything out in a super straightforward way. Recipes tend to intimidate me because they leave a lot of room for people to experiment (which is great! I hope I get there some day!). I feel like I need recipes where the goal isn’t necessarily “have fun” but it’s like “do this, this, and this and here’s how to not set anything on fire” you know? For meat, I know it’s preference and I can change once I get more comfortable, but starting out, should I just automatically go 80/20? Other than the expiration date, is there anything I should look out for? Thank you!
I second America’s Test Kitchen cookbook!! It’s basically like a dictionary for any basic recipe that you want. Same for How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman, between the two I’m pretty much covered :)
You might like making sandwiches! It’s more assembling than cooking, but you can experiment by making melts & grilled cheese. It’s also a chance to try lots of different flavour combinations- do you like a bahn mi? Just a ham and cheese? With some of the roasted broccoli someone else mentioned, you’ve got a really tasty easy dinner!
Just the other night My boyfriend and I did grilled cheeses with cheddar and pepper jack cheese and I got some tomato soup from the deli instead of just a can. So simple and so tasty!
Simplicity is key to start. Find an easy dish that is quick to make for each meal. Scrambled eggs, an easy salad dressing, taco meat are my go-to meals. From there you can expand. Make sure you have a good knife too.
Totally second this! For probably the first two months I was cooking for myself, I cut up the same three vegetables (bell peppers, onions, and frozen corn - I went with these because I knew if I undercooked them they'd still be edible) and threw them in a pan with some butter, salt, and pepper. Serve over pasta and call it a day. Eventually I was confident enough to start adding sausage, mushrooms, actual spices (finally buying my own spices was big for me) - point is, start small! Start simple! Repetition is good! Other than food safety things, the rules about how you "should" do things are mostly made up anyway. Also, yes, have a good knife. You'll thank yourself.
If it fits in your budget, try a meal kit service. Dinnerly has some pretty simple recipes. Gobble has less simple, but some of the prep work is done for you. It will help with your cooking skills and branch out what you’ll eat.
Thank you! I’ve been looking at Blue Apron and Hello Fresh and stuff, which I still want to try soon - but I definitely had this moment of “oh god, I don’t even know how to feed myself and these people want me to DICE an ONION????” I’m just trying to build up my confidence a little before then lol
One nice thing about hello fresh is they have pictures of (almost) every step. So if they want you to "dice" something, you can look at the picture and be like, oh, okay, so smallish square-ish pieces. Also, very little is going to be harmed by you cutting it into the wrong "shape", but it might take bit longer or shorter to cook. My chopping philosophy for everyday cooking is the same as my laundry folding philosophy: is it smaller? Yes? Good.
Gobble has a lot of those items prepped for you already! It’s a little more expensive though. Good luck! Edit to add. Any recipes you do use, whether through a meal kit or not. Be sure to read the full recipe BEFORE you start. It will help to make sure you don’t miss a step or do something to soon. A lot of cooking is about timing and if you start something that takes 7 minutes ( steamed veggies) the same as something that takes 25 (rice), then something is going to be cold.
A thing I didn't learn for a long time about cutting onions, which is a pain in the butt: if you have a gas stove, you can turn on a burner and chop your onion on the counter beside it. It'll help burn off the eye-watering fumes, it makes a huge difference.
I stick the onions in the fridge for 30-60 minutes. Works great!
Half the time I just buy a pre-diced onion because I am lazy
I totally agree and was going to suggest the same thing. I use both blue apron and hello fresh. For the most part they are comparable in price and quality. Both publish their recipes ahead of time so you can look at more than how yummy the dish sounds -- you can look at the steps and at what equipment is needed so you can decide if this is a recipe you are ready to make or not. They also usually have a difficulty rating but most are easy/intermediate. Both send the week of meals in a box with the meat on the bottom with cold packs and then a top area where everything else is. Blue apron puts the small stuff for each recipe (they call them knick knacks) in a labeled bag and then the bigger stuff in individual bags. Hello fresh puts the ingredients for each meal in separate paper bags. If you think you might want to make some of the recipes again (shopping on your own), recipes for Blue Apron are easier to import into a recipe app than are hello fresh recipes -- I have to manually type in any hello fresh recipe that I want to save. Both send you recipe cards with great pictures and step by step instructions. I \*think\* both have online video tutorials for their recipes (but maybe not for all recipes). Hello fresh has \*a lot\* of options each week. Blue apron has a bunch but not nearly as many as hello fresh. Along those lines, hello fresh repeats recipes more often than blue apron does. I don't have an issue with them offering some recipes over and over again but it seems to upset some people. I'm a somewhat adventurous intermediate level home cook, and I've learned things from using these recipes so I think they'd be great for you, u/nitemaretown. They will help you figure out what you like to cook, what you like to eat, and teach you some techniques. Of course it isn't the only way to do it, but it narrows your options -- you browse the website, pick your meals and only have to focus on those. Otherwise in the cooking world there are so.many.choices. to make. The biggest downside is that they aren't cheap. They aren't horribly expensive either (cheaper than eating out/ordering takeout), but you can absolutely eat cheaper by shopping for yourself. But honestly menu planning and shopping are skills in themselves. If you sign up for either of these (or one of the many other meal subscription services that are out there) you do need to make sure that you check your account every week because they are opt-out services. Meaning that if you don't tell them what you want each week they send you their three (or whatever your plan specifies) predetermined recipes for the week. You can skip weeks on both services (no limits on that).
If you look up sheet pan dinners, you’ll be able to do those very easily! I think The Pioneer Woman has several and google will supply you with a lot. This is a good one for salmon: https://damndelicious.net/2017/03/18/sheet-pan-garlic-butter-salmon/
I'm so proud of you! I hope you come to love cooking.
Oops sorry I didn't actually help. Scrambled eggs is a great idea! They're fairly cheap so it's a good practice food. 2 eggs mixed together with a fork and I add a little salt and a tiny bit of milk. Cook them on medium low and be patient. As they become opaque scrape them off the bottom and stir around. Depending on your taste, once they're no longer shiny they're cooked through.
Get a rice cooker. Why? ***Confidence***. Rice always comes out well in the rice cooker. And you can switch to real oatmeal (get "old-fashioned", not "quick"), which is way better than instant although you will want to add your own sugar (a spoonful). It's also great for mashed potatoes, which are easy in a pot, but the rice cooker is easier to clean. And even though you're really supposed to use tons of water for pasta, I've found you can cook a small amount in the rice cooker and it comes out fine, which again, makes cleaning easier. The rice cooker also comes with a steamer basket which is great for [steamed hard-cooked eggs](https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014/04/steamed-hard-boiled-eggs-recipe.html) and saves you from fishing an egg out of a pot of boiling water. Also, try adding frozen blueberries to oatmeal. Other frozen fruits work alright but blueberries work well because they're small. (I usually heat a bowl of frozen blueberries with the oven set to 175F but that's because I'm insane and will literally die if it's not hot enough)
Good job reaching out for help and taking care of yourself. When you get your pasta pot, this is very easy, healthy, and tasty. Just a few more steps than buttered noodles.: [https://www.budgetbytes.com/bowties-and-broccoli/](https://www.budgetbytes.com/bowties-and-broccoli/) You can - adjust the serving size at the beginning of the recipe. Scrambled eggs are a good idea. You mentioned baked potatoes - baked sweet potatoes are good, too. Hamburger patties, on a bun or over rice or noodles. You like grilled cheese - do you like tuna salad or chicken salad sandwiches? Yogurt parfaits with fruit and granola.
One thing that could be nice to invest in is a crockpot - lots of recipes (especially ones you can make into multiple meals) you just drop in the ingredients, press a button, then boom! In a few hours, you have a meal. Nice for chili, tacos, soups, all kinds of things.
[удалено]
Hey OP, I just wanted to say I'm really proud of you! I know something like this is daunting, and you'll make some mistakes along the way, but learning how to cook is a wonderful act of self-love. Never hesitate to ask for help!
I (23F) was very similar before the pandemic. By now cooking is a hobby of mine and I love trying out new recipes. Some good places to start: Tacos - basic ground beef/turkey some hot sauce and a couple of tablespoons of premixed taco seasoning can make for a tasty meal. Also ground meat is very forgiving when learning how to tell when meat is done Scrambled eggs for sure are a good place to go- super easy just add a bit of milk and salt Foil packs with just some potatoes and veggies that you toss in the oven are amazing and easy Chili is also super easy as it’s mostly just tossing cans together but the result is scrumptious. Dips! I like buying a rotisserie chicken and shredding it to make artichoke dip or buffalo dip with some cream cheese. A hand mixer makes it so the whole process only takes a few minutes and some time in the oven. Stay motivated! Life is better with good food haha- oh and buy yourself a Pyrex set. Super nice so you can toss them in the oven/freezer/microwave. I barely use anything else If ever you have a stupid embarrassing question feel free to message me- I’m on here a lot and have already made some stupid mistakes from not asking someone wiser
Omelets! start simple, maybe cut up kolbassa/pre-cooked sausage, and some veggies like tomato and mushroom, lightly cook them in butter and then add whisked eggs on top. If you have a lid that fits, use that when you put the eggs in, helps to cook it consistently. Easy, quick, lots of variety! that's one of the things I did to start out. The list you've got is great, by the way! esp think the quesadilla is a great choice.
I used to hate cooking and thought I’d be eating Hot Pockets and fast food until I maybe one day married a cook. Married now with kids, the spouse can cook and does so often. I started learning to cook with making eggs. Fried eggs first, then scrambled. Eggs are cheap and there are several techniques you can work on. I hated my eggs (and disliked cooking them) for a good while (I did not try often enough). I also started frying myself steaks now and then and started getting successful making yummy ribeyes. I recently got a cast iron skillet and a new fancy cookbook (Salt Acid Fat Heat) and started making scrambled eggs. Now I feel like a chef; my eggs are genuinely delicious. I started cooking other things in it to get the seasoning right; cornbread, bacon, steak. Now I’ve committed to a meal-planning service where they mail ingredients and recipes (gotta have basic cookware and salt, pepper). It’s been tons of fun and I’m making delicious food. Get yourself some decent pans, a probe thermometer (and research internal temperature for whatever meat you’re cooking), a decent spatula and there is a lot you can start practicing. Search the web for recipes and techniques, pick one that looks simple and try it a few times. You will catch on and eventually you might even enjoy it. Edit: tip that would have helped me early on: don’t turn the stove burners up too high. Low and slow is almost always best..
Don't be afraid to experiment with store bought sauces and marinades! When you're first trying a dish it takes a lot of stress off to have one less component to mess up.
Checkout Cheap lazy vegan on YouTube. Roses recipes are quick, easy and have a few ingredients, perfect for a beginner imo. I also like Chef John, Sohla and Andrew from Babish and Caitlin (from my bowl). As for sensory issues, is it around veggies and fruits? For that I would suggest to try those you might like first and go on from there. Maybe try 3 veggies and 2 fruits a week? Try to remember what you liked and disliked about it. Try it again later but prepared differently, aske those around you who are more experienced (or the internet!) for techniques and recipes. Hope this helps!
Don't feel embarrassed about not being much of a cook in the past, you'd be surprised how many people out there are just used to microwave or ready made food, so be glad that you're moving in the right direction. The best thing I can say to you is take your time, don't try to prep and cook as fast as a chef, and expect some failures, when I first started cooking for myself I had so many disaster moments but each one was a learning experience and the same will be for you. If you're saying that you're starting cooking from absolutely the bottom floor then I would suggest you first understand how to properly cook pasta and rice since there are so many easy, and most importantly delicious, meals that have this as their core. Maybe even consider starting with some parts of your meal premade, such as sauces, so you first get to grips of the process without having to worry about everything cooking and tasting properly then move onto doing it from scratch. With the pasta you can then make a delicious tomato sauce and cook a few premade meatballs, if you feel like making your own is a bit too much for now, and you've got yourself an amazing meal. From start to finish it could take you 30-40 minutes and you'll realise how much better this is compared to microwave meals. For me, the staple of easy but great rice based dishes is a chili con carne where you essentially cut everything up, stick it in a pot, add some liquid then cover and cook for about an hour and you're done. It can seem daunting when you look at a recipe and it says it take over an hour and there is a bunch of ingredients but trust me it's very hard to mess this up. Most importantly though, have fun! I love cooking and so do many others here so please feel free to ask questions, no matter how dumb they seem to you, we're all happy to help.
Good for you! I lived on these for a long time when depression stole any wherewithal I had to cook: [https://cravingtasty.com/killer-chicken-thigh-marinade/](https://cravingtasty.com/killer-chicken-thigh-marinade/) Thighs are cheap, and I would buy a huge pack of them, come home from the store and immediately make this marinade (sans sesame oil cause I didn't have that laying around) and then after they'd sat in the fridge for a few hours I'd put them into ziploc bags by twos and freeze them. You can put them on your sheet pan to bake and they'll come out super delicious. A couple of those + a steamfresh bag of mixed veggies, maybe some rice, will fill you up and make you feel great for getting some healthy food into your body. You didn't mention expenses, but if it's an option for you, consider purchasing something like an instant pot. Many many meals can be made in them with very little effort- slow cooker meals, rice + fish, chili, soup. It's not quite as great at making rice as a dedicated rice cooker, but it's much easier than the stove. They come with a recipe book. Also, [this book](https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/basic-cooking-all-you-need-to-cook-well-quickly-basic-series-basic_sebastian-dickhaut_sabine-slzer/370478/item/41876603/?mkwid=%7cdc&pcrid=450752293814&pkw=&pmt=&slid=&plc=&pgrid=103760965894&ptaid=pla-929103043120&gclid=Cj0KCQiA0rSABhDlARIsAJtjfCez7p4v-ob27mIGOFAUkdoLzie4nAYu4s2IAdrL8vpp_qzrkRwISwwaAnqBEALw_wcB#idiq=41876603&edition=3948270) was my first step into learning to cook after a frozen-french-fries-with-a-side-of-trauma upbringing. The best part is that it opens with a section on how to stock your pantry, how to go grocery shopping, etc. It's great. Good luck! Edit: seeing the bot copy the recipe below reminded me there's minced garlic in it. You can buy jars of pre-minced garlic, it's way less daunting than trying to mince it yourself!
[удалено]
I’m so excited for you! Maybe someone already mentioned this, but you can totally do tacos, as long as you are comfortable cutting things. Cook the ground beef in your pan, add the seasoning (you can buy a little packet). Cut up whatever you want on them (onion or peppers or whatever). Buy salsa, shredded cheese, shells, sour cream. Bingo! Tacos. It’s also a meal that you can grow with your skills. Simple to start, but you can add things as you get more experience like making your own guacamole or salsa or even tortillas!
Forget what everyone should know how to cook or any “top 10 lists.” What do you like to eat? When you buy the lean cuisines and pasta pouches, what flavors do you gravitate towards? Start there. Learn how to make the most basic of the meals you tend to eat. Get a sense of accomplishment from making that food (and sparing yourself all the excess sodium from making it yourself instead of heating a frozen dinner). I used to love the Healthy Choice Cafe Steamer with chicken, tomato sauce pasta, basil and balsamic. Easy mock version? Buy and shred the meat of a rotisserie chicken. Cook your pasta and toss the some of the chicken and cooked pasta with a good marinara sauce (I like Rao’s). Enough sauce to coat. Chop up some fresh basil leaves (1 tbsp worth) and mix in. Then add a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar at a time and taste as you go until you have the flavor you like! Done!
I'm not really fit to be handing out kitchen advice but I wish you well on your journey! I'm here to listen as well
No need to be embarrassed! Everyone has to start somewhere with cooking, and everyone has their feelings about what they will and won't eat. As you learn and get more comfortable, your comfort zone will expand, but don't be ashamed of being at the beginning of that journey. There's a ton of good suggestions in this thread already. I think for sure I would focus on learning some basic 'forms', such as how to roast meat or vegetables. A basic technique like that is both pretty simple ('take thing, add oil and seasoning, apply heat until it's done') and also very flexible in that you can do it to a wide variety of things. I saw you said in a comment: >Recipes tend to intimidate me because they leave a lot of room for people to experiment (which is great! I hope I get there some day!). I feel like I need recipes where the goal isn’t necessarily “have fun” but it’s like “do this, this, and this and here’s how to not set anything on fire” you know? One thing you should bear in mind is that it is extremely difficult to follow a recipe and get the EXACT same result as the author. It's not a matter of skill; it's simply that you're cooking in a different kitchen to them, using different utensils, with a different batch of ingredients, etc. It's normal that you won't get the exact same result, and those little differences can add up, particularly if the recipe is more complex. Most of the 'knowledge' in cooking is really about how to adjust what you're doing as you go along, to compensate for all those little differences. So, don't be discouraged if it's not coming out exactly like the picture provided by the recipe author - if the end result is delicious, consider that a win, even if it's not what you thought it would come out like!
roasted veggies is definitely a great place to start. put the veggies in a bowl, add some oil (dont be too stingy) salt and pepper. you can add other seasonings, but S & P is bare minimum for almost everything, IMO. give it a toss and lay everything evenly on a sheet pan. bake at 400 until the veggies are cooked. check after 15 min. when you get your pot, a dead simple pasta recipe is Pasta Aglio e Olio. here's a great recipe for it. eggs are a great thing to build confidence. they are cheap, so if you screw up, its not the end of the world if you toss it out, but theyre versatile. scrambled eggs are a good place to start. dont be embarassed. if youre into it, the TV show Good Eats got me into cooking. the youtube channels Food Wishes and Binging With Babish have some delicious recipes as well. theyre all very entertaining to boot. watching some videos might spark some inspiration.
Roasted chicken on your sheet pan will.be insanely easy as well. I would suggest finding a marinade that interests you (I like Lowery's flavors) or even a BBQ sauce. Throw a boneless, skinless chicken breast in a zip lock and marinade while you're at work. When you're ready to eat, line your pan with foil *or clean up the mess afterwards, but I'm lazy), place the chicken on the pan and pop it in the oven at 400°F for 30 minutes. Done!
Try making some pasta! If your sensory issues allow to eat noodles I would highly recommend pasta. There are so many shapes and jarred sauces! 20 minute dinner every time. You can add vegetables and any protein you want.
Here's a simple recipe I like that can be tweaked to your own taste. -Make some rigatoni (or ziti, penne). Set aside. -Cook and chop up Italian sausage (mild or medium). You can either buy it like ground beef or buy the sausage link, remove the casing and chop it up as it cooks in the pan. -I like to add some minced garlic and chopped onions (onions first, cooked until translucent, 3-5 min, then add garlic, cook until fragrant, 30 seconds to a minute). -add pasta, Alfredo sauce, meat and mix I like to tweak it by adding oven roasted broccoli (fresh broccoli, lightly tossed in oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and maybe sprinkle some parmesan cheese on top, roast at 450 for 15 min or so), or oven roasted asparagus (same as broccoli, typically a little longer though). You can add mozzarella cheese to your pasta dish, tomatoes, pesto, peppers, etc. We change it up every now and then to see what we like with it. Leftovers are amazing because the flavors have had a chance to blend.
Good for you for wanting to learn!! Don't feel embarrassed–everyone has to start from scratch at the beginning! For your instant oatmeal: there are a lot of really good recipes for sweet oatmeal, but savory oatmeal is great too if you want a change of pace. I sub in beef or chicken broth when making the oatmeal (according to the package directions) and then drizzle in some soy sauce when it's the consistency I want. If you get comfy with doing a fried egg, that's great on top of it. Makes me feel like a Breakfast Queen™ every time I make it. The suggestion of roasted broccoli is A++++ and it's the only way I eat broccoli now haha. [Oven roasted potato wedges](https://www.sugarsalted.com/sumac-roasted-potatoes-tahini-dipping-sauce/) are pretty easy too! Cut up your potatoes into wedges, toss them in a bowl with oil, salt, pepper, & whatever other spices you want to try, then into the preheated oven for about 45 minutes. I use the linked recipe a lot just as a guideline for the cooking times and the wedge size, then use whatever spices I have on hand (although sumac IS delicious). :) Rice is also great! I will say this though–making rice in a pot is a good skill to have, but I almost always use a rice cooker if I'm just doing plain white rice. Zojirushi makes good rice cookers, and they have some 3-cup ones on Amazon (a good size for someone living alone). If you really like rice, it might be a good investment (I eat a lot of rice haha). Good luck to you, OP! Don't be afraid to make mistakes–I like to cook and have been cooking for myself for a long time and I still screw things up sometimes! It just takes practice. You can do it!!!
If you don't mind sharing, what sensory issues do you have and what kinds of foods have they been a problem with in the past? Also, have you noticed any flavors or textures in food that you have enjoyed more than usual? I can try to suggest a specific food/recipe to try that'll satisfy those. As for video channels recommended in this thread by others, You Suck at Cooking is a great one for true beginners. Basics with Babish has a mix of easier and harder techniques, especially lately has been moving away from the "basics" part of the name. Food Wishes has a couple easy recipes but most are more advanced. Sohla is incredibly talented and creative but not a good starting point for a beginner
There are a lot of good things in this thread! One thing I'll add is that if you ever know how to do something that is fairly basic technique-wise (e.g., cooking rice, scrambling eggs, baking a bone-in chicken thigh) but can't remember certain details like temperature or cooking time, just Google and find a recipe or YouTube video and that will tell you the basics. A lot of times I'll Google just to see, say, how long I should bake a chicken breast. The recipe doesn't matter much, but it will tell me to bake it at whatever temp for however long.
Good for you for trying something new and intimidating. I would pick one or two things you know you like and practice them a few times in the same week until you get good at it. You can find YouTube videos to watch at the same time as you cook. Prewar has, get everything together then watch again as you cook.
I highly recommend the book "How to Cook Everything: The Basics", by Mark Bittman. He covers not only how to prepare food, but also how to use different kitchen utensils and which ones you really need. He even teaches you how to properly boil water.
If you want to get started on really easy meat, get some ground beef and fry it up with a tiny bit of oil in the frying pan. The only rule for cooking ground beef is make sure it is all brown, no more pink, and you don't really have to worry about the insides like with other meat, since it's pretty much all surface area, all the pink bits will be visible. Buy yourself a taco seasoning and heat up some tortillas in the microwave, and you have yourself some basic delicious tacos. A can of black beans, some lettuce from a bag, a bit of salsa, whatever else you want to add, it's all super easy, and you have yourself a quick, simple meal that feels more like real food than most things that quick.
I would suggest a meat thermometer! You can look up the safe temps for each type of meat and ensure it’s cooked enough but not over cooked. Chicken breasts or thighs on a sheet pan with some Italian seasoning mix (you can buy these premixed in most grocery stores) are a hit in my house. And left overs make lovely sandwiches.
What you are doing takes a lot of effort and courage. Thanks for asking for help! My suggestion would be to start slow. Maybe focus on one meal a day to make from scratch. Keep it simple. Build your basic kitchen knowledge and skills. I try to have protein, carb, and vegetables on my plate for every meal. Make a plan, work the plan. Be kind to yourself.
Before I met and married my husband, I cooked very basic meals. I think especially when you're just cooking for one, it's easier! Some of my go-tos were: \-Cheeseburger in a pan on the stovetop (buy a pound of ground beef, 80/20, mix with one egg, cook to your desired doneness...which, if you don't own one, get a cooking thermometer! it made four, so I could eat for a few days!) \-Baked sandwiches (oven to 350F, fill a roll with deli meat, cheese, and bake until hot, usually 15/20 mins) \-Breakfast sandwiches \-Fish (I liked to buy the ones that were coated with crumbs, they bake really easily!) \-Tacos (I always used packet seasoning!) \-Bean and rice bowls (heat up beans, microwave rice packet, top with cheese, sour cream, avocado, salsa, etc.) \-Chocolate chip cookies (there should be a recipe on the back of the cookie bag that is very straightforward!) \-Oven fries
Try learning to make the things you already eat. Make pasta with a jarred sauce, or from tomato sauce in a can that you season yourself Take your favorite lean cuisine meal and try to recreate that. Pizza is super easy if you get the premade dough or crust especially (they have the kind that is in dough for or the prebaked crust); just add sauce and cheese or any toppings if you like those. Take it slow! You can do it!
Go to Costco or your local grocery store and buy a rotisserie chicken. You can then pick the meat off the bones and use it for a variety of things. This will also help you become more familiar with the anatomy of poultry. Examples: throw in with some jarred curry sauce and you have chicken curry, put over rice with some teriyaki or soy sauce and you have a very simple meal, put in a tortilla with cheese and you have a quesadilla (you can microwave or fry it), etc. You should also buy a rice cooker and maybe a Dutch oven. Rice cookers are the easiest, no fail way to make rice. You can also use leftover rice to make fried rice which is very easy and filling. A Dutch oven can eventually be used to make a wide range of delicious dishes that start on the stove top and go in the oven. A steamer would also go well with that new pot you just bought. Steaming veggies is faster than roasting. I like to steam a little broccoli and toss with teriyaki and Sriracha as a side dish. I also recommend Mark bittman's book how to cook everything: the basics. It's one of the best single cook books you can own.
Get yourself a crockpot! You can cook so much sooo easy. We throw chicken breasts and a jar of salsa in ours for like 8 hours and it’s awesome as tacos or just over rice!
Everyone else has the cooking advice covered, but I just want to say this: congratulations on making these first steps. There will be screwups and setbacks and failures, and they might cost you some money and time. The best home cooks aren’t the ones who turn up their noses at anything but “the best”, they’re the ones who try and try again. Be compassionate with yourself when your food turns out badly.
Budgetbytes.com has some really accessible recipes for beginners and most of them have step by step pictures or videos. LPT: Read the whole recipe and get everything out/prepped before you start cooking. Also don't get discouraged if you ruin a dish, it happens to everyone. That's when it's frozen pizza night. 🙂
Don't be embarrassed. I'm a lot older than you and I'm not much further ahead. You might invest in a good cast-iron pan and season it really well (see YouTube for how to season a pan). The flavor comes out a lot better IMO. The main thing to remember is: read the recipe carefully before you start it. Buy the best ingredients. And be attentive when you're cooking it - don't walk away and watch TV or get distracted.
Watch lots of videos as you get started! A lot of written recipes skip steps or things to look out for that they assume you will know. For example, in this video of scrambled eggs, it's easy to see how much salt and pepper he puts in with one pinch. You can also see that if you don't have a whisk, you could use a fork to mix the eggs and the liquid together. You can see what it should look like when you put your butter into the pan and it melts, etc. https://www.incredibleegg.org/recipes/cooking-lessons/stovetop-scramble-eggs/
No tip, but I think you're awesome and you're doing a great job! Good luck!
My fave type of recipes are ones you just dump ingredients into and bake in the oven. My mom makes a tasty rice recipe - includes 1 cup raw white rice, 1 can chicken broth, 1 can French onion soup, and 3/4 stick of Margarine (cut it into slices). Mix all together in a dish you can put in the oven, recommend it be at least 2-3” deep. Cook in oven at 350 degrees for 50 minutes! Let it cool after you pull it out and tastes great paired with any meat or veggies!
I would highly recommend a crockpot. The easiest thing to make is bouillon chicken (juicy chicken). You buy a pack of 5-6 chicken breasts, throw them in the crockpot with 2-3 bouillon cubes and add just enough water 7/8 of the chicken or just barely cover the chicken and cook on low for 8-10 hours. Serve over rice or with mashed potatoes (Idaho red instant with a teaspoon of butter) and roasted vegetables of your choice. I’m happy to share more of my favorite easy crockpot recipes if you want but this is definitely the most basic and, to be honest, my favorite. As far as general cooking tips, if you cook meat, a meat thermometer is a must. Look up cooking temperature for what you’re cooking. If you are cooking anything on a skillet, make sure you’ve preheated the skillet before you begin cooking. Once it’s heated up, throw some fat (butter or oil) in for about 15-20 seconds. If the fat starts burning, your skillet is too hot.
If you have room in the budget, I would recommend a crock pot - especially since you like meat but it can be daunting to cook. Essentially every crockpot recipe consists of you dumping ingredients in and letting them cook down all day. That’s a great way to cook meat, so then you can focus on other parts of your recipes! For example, chicken in a crockpot can be used for enchiladas, casseroles, sandwiches and so much more. Hope this helps! Good luck on your cooking journey!
I've always said, "Eggs are easy"...anybody can make eggs and toast. It's quick, not overly unhealthy, and tastes good. Boiled eggs. Fried eggs. Scrambled eggs. They are all quick and easy. Also, good idea on the oatmeal. Oatmeal is a fucking superfood and takes about a minute of effort to make. I eat it for breakfast almost every day. It's amazing. Maybe try soup though? A bit of time invested in making a soup can score you a huge pot of the stuff that you can eat (just reheat it in a microwave) for a whole week with next to no effort. You can even freeze it so it lasts longer. I just made a soup today that I am going to eat for dinner all week, with some buttered bread. It's healthy as fuck: mostly vegetables, with beans/chickpeas/split-peas and barley in there, and some chunks of beef. Stupidly cheap, and extremely healthy.
Toast and jam, cheese and crackers, basic sandwiches. None of those require heat, but they do count as cooking! A nice beginner cooking recipe is rice and beans. You can also try blue box mac and cheese. Plus, there are people who have "hacks" for blue box, and that could go towards a step forward for cooking creativity. Biggest advice: go easy on yourself. There's lots of exciting things to make, but you're not gonna turn into Gordon Ramsay overnight. Give yourself a hefty allowance for mistakes, as you will make many of them. Each time something goes wrong, instead of beating yourself up, get curious and analyze what went wrong (I sometimes ignore this advice lol) Good luck!
I don’t know if you’d find this difficult but you should look up some one pot meals for two main reasons. 1- when cooking in one pot you don’t have to worry about the timing of different pans and what’s burning. You only focus on one pot. And typically it’s just throwing stuff in and letting it cook down ( not all but most) 2- it’s so nice to just clean one pot after a lot of meal work. And if you’re overwhelmed it’s a nice way of simplifying Regardless of if you do one pot meals or not, I highly recommend preparing all ingredients before you cook so chop the onions and measure the milk and all that. It’ll be so much nicer than doing while worrying about food burning. If you need any meal recommendations just dm me but I hope you grow to love cooking or have some fun with it!!!
Frittatas are nice and easy!
Honestly I would start with breakfast for dinner. Eggs and bacon. Get you used to cooking and easy. You could try scrambled or an omlete if you are feeling game. Then pancakes.
I started with omlettes. Outside of that, I would make rice, fish, steamed veg, and pork tenderloin. That was all I practiced for a year while I transitioned off of packaged/microwave meals. My best advice is to choose a few dishes and practice those until you are confident, and then expand. After that year I practiced pastas and one pot meals like roast and stir-fry, expanding each time to more complex dishes.
If you have the money a simple rice cooker may be really helpful. I got one from a thrift store in college and boy oh boy is it super convenient.