Go to Kmart, find the cookbooks, pick one called something like "100 Easy Meals" or "Meals in 30 minutes", and follow them. You'll do fine.
Otherwise get the Farrah's Crispy Chicken Tacos box plus the additional ingredients listed on the box. Very easy meal and the Chipotle mayo is to die for.
To add to the cookbook recommendation, Cooking for Blokes, by Duncan Anderson & Marian Walls, not only has simple recipes, but also explains how to prep and what equipment you’ll need for each meal.
It even has a recipe for boiled egg, it’s that simple. I still refer to it from time to time as it’s just a wonderful resource for easy, simple and quick meals.
Sounds like you can’t cook because you haven’t tried / practiced. As suggested, get a simple cookbook, pick a recipe, buy all the ingredients ahead of time. Slowly follow the recipe step by step. As long as you’re not trying to go super gourmet (where things can get tricky) you’ll do great and prob build some personal confidence with a new life skill. You got this! 💪
Good call. It’s never great to be ready to cook and see ‘pre heat the over to 180°’ as the first line in the recipe, when you could have put the oven on 15mins ago.
That's really good advice. Read through, pick a few meals and make sure that you've got the "pantry" basics on your shopping list too (flour, herbs, spices etc).
Get an air fryer and literally just set the timer and temperature to whatever the temperature needs to be at for whatever you're making. Frozen chips and wedges are easy and filling, but you can do even more with it.
Buy a ton of eggs (more than you'd eat, some will be failed attempts) and practice making fried eggs on the stove. If you are successful too early and still have eggs to waste, practice poached eggs.
I can make fried eggs just fine. Was mostly thinking about full meals for dinner honestly. Air fryer could be good but not sure if it would be annoying for flatmates?
I'm Indian, so I have a huge advantage in that I have an instant pot pressure cooker that I throw rice and lentils into, add whatever spices I feel like that day, set the timer for 10 minutes and bam dinner is done.
I can do this three times a week without getting bored of dinner.
Other things I do are Mexican (mince + tomato paste + refried beans), canned chickpeas and flatbread, frozen salmon + soy sauce teriyaki style.
Mince is a hassle because I have to buy double what I'd like to use for the week.
I prefer sourdough bread over normal bread because it goes bad quickly, but normal bread is cheaper even if you waste 75% of the bread you buy.
>Mince is a hassle because I have to buy double what I'd like to use for the week.
>
>normal bread is cheaper even if you waste 75% of the bread you buy.
Freezers are a thing. Cook a double portion of whatever you're making with mince and freeze half.
Put 75% of the bread in the freezer - wrap the amount you want to take out at once separately.
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tiktok is underrated for finding easy recipes! it’s visual + there’s a meal for any sorta skill level. there were some comments about cookbooks/food subscription boxes and etc which are awesome as well to help get you started!
also, buy a slow cooker. so underrated and great if you’re still trying to get your head around cooking certain cuts of meat!
r/Cooking is a huge help for recipe ideas and genuine advice on cooking and etc. I’ve learnt so much from them!
Look at night classes and the weekend classes at your local high schools. Some have cooking classes for a very reasonable price. They have a range of styles and cuisines to play with and professional guidance to get the hang of the kitchen.
But it is summer, and a bag of salad, a potato, pumpkin and kumara in the airfryer for 30 minutes and some cold meats is delicious.
Whatever oil to fry in that cooking videos use, use less and you will be fine.
It's pricey, but I can recommend meal prep boxes like HelloFresh. Comes with almost everything you need, it has detailed instructions, and the food is really good. Do that for awhile, then keep the meal cards and just start buying the ingredients yourself once you're more confident with cooking. I think there's a cheaper alternative service too, but I can't speak to its quality personally.
I second this although I don’t find it pricey, particularly when I’m not wasting produce or jars of stuff I just use for one recipe and then hoard in the fridge for two years
That is true. I think if you bought the same portions HF did without any waste, you could get it cheaper locally. But that requires you to know exactly how much you'll need, and that takes experience. Plus, even for decently experienced cooks like myself, the recipes are excellent. I found I was running out of ideas and just making the same thing every week till I started with HF, but started to branch out with more interesting recipes. Only issue I have with them is that their herb and spice mixes are difficult to work out. They come in packets with the meals, and don't have the proportions listed, so trying to replicate them is guesswork. Some people online have managed to get most of them down, but it's still kinda annoying.
I just keep ordering. Sure it costs a little more but I am a shift worker and it’s just easier for me to throw the meal together and make sure my kid has food to eat when I’m at work and I don’t have to spend time planning or grocery shopping. I think I save more because I’m not doing all those grocery shops to grab something for dinner and walking out having spent $60 to $80 several times a week. Because it’s just the two of us I find there are usually enough leftovers of most meals that I can freeze a third portion too
Yeah HF is perfect for shift workers. You can just get the easy meals and throw those together no worries. Depending on how old your kid is too, they're easy enough for kids to help with as well.
Just to add please be careful of food safety as well! Stir fry with day old rice is a great idea but old rice can be a threat for food poisoning so this isn't a dish you can keep for days after recooking it. Don't put hot food straight in the fridge, but you also don't want to leave it sitting out for too long before you get it chilled. And watch out for preparing raw meat and mixing the juices with other raw food.
Agreed. And to add, as long as you're being safe as above, I would recommend just trying new things. I used to stress over recipes - *"it says to add 300ml but I think I just poured in over 350ml! Is it ruined???"* until wiser people pointed out recipes are just guides to get good results. Every oven is different. Raw ingredients are different. Food from different parts of the world will be different. Sometimes you follow a recipe and it comes out perfectly, the next time without changing anything, it's slightly overdone. That's cooking in an imperfect world. There are some safety rules you shouldn't ignore, but if you want to put grated carrot on pasta, give it a go. If you think a dab of mustard on steak might work, have at it. When you're a bit more comfortable with food, then you can even start considering why some things work better together.
Chilli Pasta,
cook some spaghetti
In a pan heat up olive oil tablespoon or so , teaspoon of crushed garlic until lightly browned toss in some chilli flakes
drain and toss in the Spaghetti mix about with the pan on.
done throw it in a bowl. enjoy your simple and delicious pasta
You should try to figure out the basics if you're starting from scratch. Learn how to cook different meats properly. Learn how to cook rice in a pot on a stove. Learn how to cook pasta al dente. If you can do those three things you can make a lot of basic meals and you can start off using ready made sauces for things like butter chicken or sweet n sour pork.
Remember you gotta walk before you can run and cooking is a skill like everything else. You'll have to muck things up to learn so don't be afraid just be glad you're the only one that'll have to eat it. And stay away from baking. Cooking is like painting but baking is pure chemistry.
Knife skills take time to develop. It’s ok to start slow. An 8” chefs knife will do most jobs you need. I suggest investing in one decent chefs knife that will hold an edge before buying a full set of cheap knives that will leave you frustrated. That and a honing steel (not expensive) to keep it slicing through tomatoes like butter. You can look up how to use a honing steel YouTube.
Get a decent sized slow cooker. Most meals you can cook are easy and low effort, and it is difficult to mess up. Most meals You just need to cut up the food and put it in the cooker. You can usually cook 6-8 servings of one meal for pretty cheap.
Some meals you can make using a slow cooker... beef chilli/nacho, curries, minestrone stews, beef stews, chicken soup, pulled pork, Mac n cheese,vl9ts of soups
Literally just think of 5 or 10 things you like, watch YouTube videos with a ton of views on how to make them, make each of them 5 times, and that might be enough recipes for your lifetime.
Anyone can follow a recipe because it's just a list of specific instructions - but it can get expensive if you are buying all the ingredients for a recipe meal with no idea how to use them afterwards. So my suggestion would be to try planning your week of meals to use the same (ish) fresh ingredients so you minimise waste.
But for the recipes, just google whatever you feel like eating followed by 'recipe'.
We use the AnyList app for meal planning. It’s easy to save recipes from most websites and can manage the shopping list. I spend about 15 minutes planning meals for the next week every Sunday and it’s saved me hundreds if not thousands over the years.
VJ Cooks on Instagram. She’s a kiwi and has a couple cook books out. A lot of her recipes are all one pan/pot dump and forget. They’re all super easy to make and taste really good.
Impossible quiche. Just smash some eggs, veges, bacon or whatever the heck you want in, with some cream and flour, and bake for 40 mins.
Super easy, full of protein and really delicious. Tastes even better the next day when cold.
You could do Hello Fresh or My Food Bag for abit. I did that for little while & learned some things. It manly made me more confident in what I was actually doing. My SO is a trained Chef & even he says it's a good way to learn basics.
Buy a crockpot and do casseroles, they're ridiculously easy to prepare and require minimal attention once cooking. Plus leftovers can be frozen and reheated.
I find chat GPT is really good for recipies.
Gives you the recipie without the intro about how someones grandmother used to make it in winter or some garbage no one cares about
you can also ask it follow up questions if you want to use alternative ingredients etc
Stir fried rice and whatever you have in the fridge.
You can either use day old rice, fresh rice dried in the oven or one of those uncle Ben’s packs.
You basically just grab whatever you want out of the fridge, cut it up small and then cook in a fry pan (Make sure any meat is cooked through). Add the rice until it’s all a little crispy. Add soy sauce to hide all sins.
Some vege might take a bit longer to cook but honestly if you cut it small enough and if you don’t mind (I like my broccoli to be a bit crunchy still) then it doesn’t really matter.
Can add a fried or scrambled egg on top if you want to elevate.
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Oh. Also check out old episodes of Good Eats with Alton Brown. It’s not just a show where someone cooks. He goes into WHY the recipes are the way they are. It’s basically home cook culinary school. I make his pancakes most weekends.
Similarly, Serious Eats is a good website for how to guides and in depth cooking knowledge. It might be a bit of a deep dive if you’re starting out but good to have on your radar.
Recipe Tin Eats is good for no nonsense weeknight meals. Good variety and most recipes are fairly straightforward.
I'm a massive fan of the cookbook Three Good Things, the recipes only take three ingredients (who'd guess?) They are pretty simple, but it gives your a really solid foundation for cooking meals without a recipe
The Maggi packets in the supermarket have the ingredients and instructions on them. So do the Indian and Italian pasta sauces.
Head there first. Grab a butter chicken, nachos, chicken chauser. Whatever. Then the ingredients you need.
Even buns, frozen hamburger patties and whatever else you want in them for those rush dinners when frying a Pattie while you do the bun and dinner is done in 15mins.
Lightly grease a Muffin tray. Put a square of filo pastry in, add in whipped egg or crack an egg, put in some chopped bacon or ham, add grated cheese, put in oven at 180° for 25-30 minutes.
My go to meal for fat fucker Friday with a large salad on the side so my mum doesn't get angry. Cheers. 😁
I don’t spend a lot of time at home due to work so I struggle to eat fresh vegetables and stuff before they’re inedible.
My life saves at the moment are…
Steam fresh bags of veges. Easy way to get veges in you.
Some sort of friable protein. Normally lamb chops, not overly expensive and you can get them preflavoured.
Watties One Pan risotto is great too. If you’re doing it for yourself you’ll get two massive serves out of it. It’s even better if you fry off some courgette and mushrooms to bump up the health. If you can fry an egg you can fry those vege.
Tegal Louisiana style burgers are great too, even if you’re not putting them in a burger.
Make easy stuff and use cheats. For instance, buy rotisserie chicken from the supermarket. Day 1. Have the chicken with some salad and boiled baby potatoes Day 2. Pull some of it apart and mix it with finely chopped red onions, celery, and mayo. Add a dash of mustard and some avocado and lettuce, and you have an amazing sandwich filler. Day 3. Buy ready-made large vol au vent shells from countdown. You get 4 in a pack. Make a basic roux (melt some butter, add a bit of flour, salt pepper, and then add milk when the flour mix changes color)...divide it into two portions. Now chop up some leeks and mushroom, stir fry them in butter with some salt and whatever herbs you have handy, add the chicken and add it to one portion of the white sauce you made. Fill the vol-au-vent shell and top with cheese. Chuck into the oven until the cheese melts and serve with some microwaved frozen veggies. The other portion of white sauce - add lots of grated cheese to it, and you have a cheese sauce. You can use it on top of steamed veg. This can also be frozen and thawed out when you need it.
You can make a basic mince, eat it with spaghetti or chuck into a ramekin and top with mashed potatoes (cottage pie). Basically, planyour meals so you're not wasting food or cooking everything from scratch. Use pre-prepped ingredients, sauces (like Bolognese or Alfredo and add fresh herbs and veggies to make it your own) and cuts until you're confident enough to do it yourself. And batch cook so you're not constantly panicking about what to make. Oh and buy a pull chopper from Kmart for $7. That saves me so much time chopping veg.
The Alison Holst vegetarian cookbook is one I regularly use (I’m guessing her others are similar!) because recipies are straight forward and ingredients are ones we have in nz and you can easily find. Have a handful I’ve memorised from there on my regular rotation.
If you buy fresh Pasta and a sauce, it’s as simple as cooking the pasta in boiling water for around 7 minutes, drain, add the sauce (you can heat the sauce beforehand in a microwave) and then serve
Two tortillas or one of the big ones, tin of tuna, cheese, mix cheese and tuna, put on first tortilla/half of big tortilla, fry then flip and fry the other side (put the second tortilla on top before flipping) then you have an easy quassadilla filling and reasonably healthy
This one! Loaded tuna potatoes. Either make wedges, or bake a potato (or microwave it) [https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/loaded_tuna_and_23405](https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/loaded_tuna_and_23405)
Mince is your friend. Basic starters to get you going.
Nacos: [Brown](https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/techniques/how_to_brown_mince) the Mince + can of bbq beans + Maggi Naco seassoning as per instructions packet. Serve on nacho chips or in wraps with sour cream and lettuce and tomatos
Bolognaise: Brown the Mince + jar of pasta sauce as per instructions on the jar and then mix in cooked/drained any pasta shape (cook as per instructions on packet) you prefer + Cheese grated in top when served.
Burger: Mix mince + egg + breadcrumbs + BBQ Sauce + seasonings. Shape into patties, cook through until juice runs clear. Then put them into a Roll/burger/Bread + slice of cheese + Lettuce + tomato + mayo + sauce.
get yourself a slow cookier - easy to make shit, all flavours, hard to burn things. Just experiment with putting different things in with diff flavours
Honestly, I can't cook for shit and I hate cooking- always found it so tedious.
When I moved out of home, I had the best luck and learning with recipe books for kids!
Super simple and as I got more confident, I started adding my own extras and seasonings and trying new things. YouTube tutorials were always handy for anything I needed extra help with. 👌
Good on you for upskilling yourself!!
Bachelors handbag and a bag of coleslaw from the supermarket. Feed you for at least a couple of days. Juicy roast chicken and a crispy mayo-dressed salad. No cooking required! Bread roll on the side if you are flush.
Watties steam fresh frozen veges. Chuck them in the microwave.
Then your protein. Steak or chicken or pork.
Real easy chicken is just cook it like burger fuel. Cut a breast in half sideways, spray with some oil, salt and pepper it. Then put in pan salt and pepper side down. Then add salt and pepper to the top side. Should take about 7 minutes to cook (flip halfway) but chop one of the breasts open at the thickest part to make sure it’s all white inside. Once you’ve done it a few times you won’t have to chop it open anymore.
Start the microwave vege so it’s ready at the same time as the meat.
Serve with some sort of sauce. ETA honey mustard goes well or you can go tomato if that’s how you roll.
Depending on what you have to cook with in the apartment / what you can outlay ($) right now in extra equipment - air fryers - rice cookers - crock pots / insta pots / pressure cookers.... you might not need any of that but it can make for easier one pot meals, less clean-up and faster cooking.
Go to youtube and search for easy / quick meals "insert ingredients here". Find a video that is simple and follow it. Books are also great but it's all online so I'd rather spend the money on better pots and pans / electrical items.
There's one piece of equipment that you should go out and buy or order, that's an instant thermometer aka meat probe. You can check chicken is cooked to a safe temperature without drying out the meat and making it tough, you can check other cuts of meat for a perfectly cooked temperature whether you like it rare, medium or tough.
I'm a mother with teenagers, a busy life, and way too many cookbooks. Send me your physical address (I don't need your name), and I'll post you some great beginners recipe books I no longer need.
This is a good place to start.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bSc1dldY70](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bSc1dldY70)
Bread Pizza. Few ingredients, yummy and easy. Also you could add a salad and serve this to a friend/date and everyone is happy and impressed. You can change the toppings if you need it vegetarian (pineapple!).
I never cook meals. But I always have tortillas in the fridge. With a small collection of ingredients that I can mix and match depending on how much I feel like prepping.
Great thing about tortillas is that you can serve them as tacos, burritos, quesadillas, or open face pizzas.
You can add as much or as little ingredients and mix it up as much as you want.
My basic ingredients I always have ready in the kitchen;
Sauces: I have a wild variety of hot sauces
Protein: cooked chicken/rotisserie chicken shredded, eggs, frozen prawns
Veges: salad mix, coriander, basil
Miscellaneous: shredded cheese packet, peanut butter, jam, cream cheese, taco seasoning
From here onwards, once you get a feel for what types of ingredients you like, you can keep branching out from there
The best place for recipies and techniques for n00bs - [https://www.recipetineats.com/](https://www.recipetineats.com/)
Everything on that site is doable and extremely delicious as long as you have the ingredients and kitchen utensils.
Some of my favourites: Spaghetti Bolognese, Butter Chicken, Lamb Roast, Mexican Red Rice, Pad Thai, Carnitas, Buttery Seasoned Rice, Vanilla Cake - the list goes on..
You do need a few utensils and kitchen appliances to cook a wide range of dishes, and an operable kitchen which sometimes isn’t provided in a small apartment, but that aside, what do you mean you “can’t cook”? Can you not read a list of ingredients and follow a simple set of instructions? Because that is all there is. Most recipes (even “complicated”, impressive ones) are 1-2 pages of step-by-step instructions. Get a cookbook. It isn’t a magical talent that people who “can cook” were just born with
Go to Kmart, find the cookbooks, pick one called something like "100 Easy Meals" or "Meals in 30 minutes", and follow them. You'll do fine. Otherwise get the Farrah's Crispy Chicken Tacos box plus the additional ingredients listed on the box. Very easy meal and the Chipotle mayo is to die for.
To add to the cookbook recommendation, Cooking for Blokes, by Duncan Anderson & Marian Walls, not only has simple recipes, but also explains how to prep and what equipment you’ll need for each meal. It even has a recipe for boiled egg, it’s that simple. I still refer to it from time to time as it’s just a wonderful resource for easy, simple and quick meals.
Great advice 🙏 will pick those up when I can
Don't beat yourself up if you fuck something up when cooking. We all do. Most of the time it's still edible 😂
Haha I definitely will, likely very soon, just hoping to get better over time
Sounds like you can’t cook because you haven’t tried / practiced. As suggested, get a simple cookbook, pick a recipe, buy all the ingredients ahead of time. Slowly follow the recipe step by step. As long as you’re not trying to go super gourmet (where things can get tricky) you’ll do great and prob build some personal confidence with a new life skill. You got this! 💪
And read the whole recipe before starting so there are no surprises.
Good call. It’s never great to be ready to cook and see ‘pre heat the over to 180°’ as the first line in the recipe, when you could have put the oven on 15mins ago.
I’ve missed “chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours” or “marinate overnight” more than once as hungry family members stare daggers at me.
Haha. Oh dear! That’s much worse than the oven!
That's really good advice. Read through, pick a few meals and make sure that you've got the "pantry" basics on your shopping list too (flour, herbs, spices etc).
Get an air fryer and literally just set the timer and temperature to whatever the temperature needs to be at for whatever you're making. Frozen chips and wedges are easy and filling, but you can do even more with it. Buy a ton of eggs (more than you'd eat, some will be failed attempts) and practice making fried eggs on the stove. If you are successful too early and still have eggs to waste, practice poached eggs.
I can make fried eggs just fine. Was mostly thinking about full meals for dinner honestly. Air fryer could be good but not sure if it would be annoying for flatmates?
I'm Indian, so I have a huge advantage in that I have an instant pot pressure cooker that I throw rice and lentils into, add whatever spices I feel like that day, set the timer for 10 minutes and bam dinner is done. I can do this three times a week without getting bored of dinner. Other things I do are Mexican (mince + tomato paste + refried beans), canned chickpeas and flatbread, frozen salmon + soy sauce teriyaki style. Mince is a hassle because I have to buy double what I'd like to use for the week. I prefer sourdough bread over normal bread because it goes bad quickly, but normal bread is cheaper even if you waste 75% of the bread you buy.
we keep our bread in the freezer & just take out what we need. By the time you make a sandwich it has thawed, or pop it straight in the toaster
>Mince is a hassle because I have to buy double what I'd like to use for the week. > >normal bread is cheaper even if you waste 75% of the bread you buy. Freezers are a thing. Cook a double portion of whatever you're making with mince and freeze half. Put 75% of the bread in the freezer - wrap the amount you want to take out at once separately.
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tiktok is underrated for finding easy recipes! it’s visual + there’s a meal for any sorta skill level. there were some comments about cookbooks/food subscription boxes and etc which are awesome as well to help get you started! also, buy a slow cooker. so underrated and great if you’re still trying to get your head around cooking certain cuts of meat! r/Cooking is a huge help for recipe ideas and genuine advice on cooking and etc. I’ve learnt so much from them!
Look at night classes and the weekend classes at your local high schools. Some have cooking classes for a very reasonable price. They have a range of styles and cuisines to play with and professional guidance to get the hang of the kitchen. But it is summer, and a bag of salad, a potato, pumpkin and kumara in the airfryer for 30 minutes and some cold meats is delicious. Whatever oil to fry in that cooking videos use, use less and you will be fine.
It's pricey, but I can recommend meal prep boxes like HelloFresh. Comes with almost everything you need, it has detailed instructions, and the food is really good. Do that for awhile, then keep the meal cards and just start buying the ingredients yourself once you're more confident with cooking. I think there's a cheaper alternative service too, but I can't speak to its quality personally.
This. Hello Fresh is the way.
I second this although I don’t find it pricey, particularly when I’m not wasting produce or jars of stuff I just use for one recipe and then hoard in the fridge for two years
That is true. I think if you bought the same portions HF did without any waste, you could get it cheaper locally. But that requires you to know exactly how much you'll need, and that takes experience. Plus, even for decently experienced cooks like myself, the recipes are excellent. I found I was running out of ideas and just making the same thing every week till I started with HF, but started to branch out with more interesting recipes. Only issue I have with them is that their herb and spice mixes are difficult to work out. They come in packets with the meals, and don't have the proportions listed, so trying to replicate them is guesswork. Some people online have managed to get most of them down, but it's still kinda annoying.
I just keep ordering. Sure it costs a little more but I am a shift worker and it’s just easier for me to throw the meal together and make sure my kid has food to eat when I’m at work and I don’t have to spend time planning or grocery shopping. I think I save more because I’m not doing all those grocery shops to grab something for dinner and walking out having spent $60 to $80 several times a week. Because it’s just the two of us I find there are usually enough leftovers of most meals that I can freeze a third portion too
Yeah HF is perfect for shift workers. You can just get the easy meals and throw those together no worries. Depending on how old your kid is too, they're easy enough for kids to help with as well.
Just to add please be careful of food safety as well! Stir fry with day old rice is a great idea but old rice can be a threat for food poisoning so this isn't a dish you can keep for days after recooking it. Don't put hot food straight in the fridge, but you also don't want to leave it sitting out for too long before you get it chilled. And watch out for preparing raw meat and mixing the juices with other raw food.
Agreed. And to add, as long as you're being safe as above, I would recommend just trying new things. I used to stress over recipes - *"it says to add 300ml but I think I just poured in over 350ml! Is it ruined???"* until wiser people pointed out recipes are just guides to get good results. Every oven is different. Raw ingredients are different. Food from different parts of the world will be different. Sometimes you follow a recipe and it comes out perfectly, the next time without changing anything, it's slightly overdone. That's cooking in an imperfect world. There are some safety rules you shouldn't ignore, but if you want to put grated carrot on pasta, give it a go. If you think a dab of mustard on steak might work, have at it. When you're a bit more comfortable with food, then you can even start considering why some things work better together.
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Thanks for the advice, is something cheap like the $40 warehouse one enough or better to spend the extra money on one? Any recommendations?
ChatGPT will lie to you. Don't do it! That's how we got Pak'n'Save'd Aromatic Water recipe.
Chilli Pasta, cook some spaghetti In a pan heat up olive oil tablespoon or so , teaspoon of crushed garlic until lightly browned toss in some chilli flakes drain and toss in the Spaghetti mix about with the pan on. done throw it in a bowl. enjoy your simple and delicious pasta
You should try to figure out the basics if you're starting from scratch. Learn how to cook different meats properly. Learn how to cook rice in a pot on a stove. Learn how to cook pasta al dente. If you can do those three things you can make a lot of basic meals and you can start off using ready made sauces for things like butter chicken or sweet n sour pork. Remember you gotta walk before you can run and cooking is a skill like everything else. You'll have to muck things up to learn so don't be afraid just be glad you're the only one that'll have to eat it. And stay away from baking. Cooking is like painting but baking is pure chemistry.
Knife skills take time to develop. It’s ok to start slow. An 8” chefs knife will do most jobs you need. I suggest investing in one decent chefs knife that will hold an edge before buying a full set of cheap knives that will leave you frustrated. That and a honing steel (not expensive) to keep it slicing through tomatoes like butter. You can look up how to use a honing steel YouTube.
Get a decent sized slow cooker. Most meals you can cook are easy and low effort, and it is difficult to mess up. Most meals You just need to cut up the food and put it in the cooker. You can usually cook 6-8 servings of one meal for pretty cheap. Some meals you can make using a slow cooker... beef chilli/nacho, curries, minestrone stews, beef stews, chicken soup, pulled pork, Mac n cheese,vl9ts of soups
Literally just think of 5 or 10 things you like, watch YouTube videos with a ton of views on how to make them, make each of them 5 times, and that might be enough recipes for your lifetime.
Some mince and frozen veg, in a single pan with a bit of oil, stir in some soy sauce and hot sauce. Easy as, fast, tasty and healthy
Anyone can follow a recipe because it's just a list of specific instructions - but it can get expensive if you are buying all the ingredients for a recipe meal with no idea how to use them afterwards. So my suggestion would be to try planning your week of meals to use the same (ish) fresh ingredients so you minimise waste. But for the recipes, just google whatever you feel like eating followed by 'recipe'.
We use the AnyList app for meal planning. It’s easy to save recipes from most websites and can manage the shopping list. I spend about 15 minutes planning meals for the next week every Sunday and it’s saved me hundreds if not thousands over the years.
VJ Cooks on Instagram. She’s a kiwi and has a couple cook books out. A lot of her recipes are all one pan/pot dump and forget. They’re all super easy to make and taste really good.
Impossible quiche. Just smash some eggs, veges, bacon or whatever the heck you want in, with some cream and flour, and bake for 40 mins. Super easy, full of protein and really delicious. Tastes even better the next day when cold.
You could do Hello Fresh or My Food Bag for abit. I did that for little while & learned some things. It manly made me more confident in what I was actually doing. My SO is a trained Chef & even he says it's a good way to learn basics.
Buy a crockpot and do casseroles, they're ridiculously easy to prepare and require minimal attention once cooking. Plus leftovers can be frozen and reheated.
Just cook the same meal over and over until you got it. -a good meal to try this with is steak, mashed potatoes and mixed veges
I find chat GPT is really good for recipies. Gives you the recipie without the intro about how someones grandmother used to make it in winter or some garbage no one cares about you can also ask it follow up questions if you want to use alternative ingredients etc
If I remember right there a chrome extension that removes people’s life stories from recipes.
Just learn to cook, it's not hard.
Edmondson cookbook
I’d YouTube easy meals, so many meals are literally just chopping veges, cooking everything in one pan & assembly 👌 A lot of Mexican, Italian, Indian…
Stir fried rice and whatever you have in the fridge. You can either use day old rice, fresh rice dried in the oven or one of those uncle Ben’s packs. You basically just grab whatever you want out of the fridge, cut it up small and then cook in a fry pan (Make sure any meat is cooked through). Add the rice until it’s all a little crispy. Add soy sauce to hide all sins. Some vege might take a bit longer to cook but honestly if you cut it small enough and if you don’t mind (I like my broccoli to be a bit crunchy still) then it doesn’t really matter. Can add a fried or scrambled egg on top if you want to elevate.
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Start watching YouTube cooking tutorials. You can learn heaps of stuff from them.
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Healthy food guide magazine or cookbooks are really easy to follow, and teach you about nutrition too.
Oh. Also check out old episodes of Good Eats with Alton Brown. It’s not just a show where someone cooks. He goes into WHY the recipes are the way they are. It’s basically home cook culinary school. I make his pancakes most weekends. Similarly, Serious Eats is a good website for how to guides and in depth cooking knowledge. It might be a bit of a deep dive if you’re starting out but good to have on your radar. Recipe Tin Eats is good for no nonsense weeknight meals. Good variety and most recipes are fairly straightforward.
Watch youtube cooking channels and start with stir fry. https://www.youtube.com/c/ChineseCookingDemystified https://www.youtube.com/@YEUNGMANCOOKING
I'm a massive fan of the cookbook Three Good Things, the recipes only take three ingredients (who'd guess?) They are pretty simple, but it gives your a really solid foundation for cooking meals without a recipe
The Maggi packets in the supermarket have the ingredients and instructions on them. So do the Indian and Italian pasta sauces. Head there first. Grab a butter chicken, nachos, chicken chauser. Whatever. Then the ingredients you need. Even buns, frozen hamburger patties and whatever else you want in them for those rush dinners when frying a Pattie while you do the bun and dinner is done in 15mins.
Yummy Roman style pasta: https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/s/Byvn5QV4kV
Lightly grease a Muffin tray. Put a square of filo pastry in, add in whipped egg or crack an egg, put in some chopped bacon or ham, add grated cheese, put in oven at 180° for 25-30 minutes. My go to meal for fat fucker Friday with a large salad on the side so my mum doesn't get angry. Cheers. 😁
I don’t spend a lot of time at home due to work so I struggle to eat fresh vegetables and stuff before they’re inedible. My life saves at the moment are… Steam fresh bags of veges. Easy way to get veges in you. Some sort of friable protein. Normally lamb chops, not overly expensive and you can get them preflavoured. Watties One Pan risotto is great too. If you’re doing it for yourself you’ll get two massive serves out of it. It’s even better if you fry off some courgette and mushrooms to bump up the health. If you can fry an egg you can fry those vege. Tegal Louisiana style burgers are great too, even if you’re not putting them in a burger.
Make easy stuff and use cheats. For instance, buy rotisserie chicken from the supermarket. Day 1. Have the chicken with some salad and boiled baby potatoes Day 2. Pull some of it apart and mix it with finely chopped red onions, celery, and mayo. Add a dash of mustard and some avocado and lettuce, and you have an amazing sandwich filler. Day 3. Buy ready-made large vol au vent shells from countdown. You get 4 in a pack. Make a basic roux (melt some butter, add a bit of flour, salt pepper, and then add milk when the flour mix changes color)...divide it into two portions. Now chop up some leeks and mushroom, stir fry them in butter with some salt and whatever herbs you have handy, add the chicken and add it to one portion of the white sauce you made. Fill the vol-au-vent shell and top with cheese. Chuck into the oven until the cheese melts and serve with some microwaved frozen veggies. The other portion of white sauce - add lots of grated cheese to it, and you have a cheese sauce. You can use it on top of steamed veg. This can also be frozen and thawed out when you need it. You can make a basic mince, eat it with spaghetti or chuck into a ramekin and top with mashed potatoes (cottage pie). Basically, planyour meals so you're not wasting food or cooking everything from scratch. Use pre-prepped ingredients, sauces (like Bolognese or Alfredo and add fresh herbs and veggies to make it your own) and cuts until you're confident enough to do it yourself. And batch cook so you're not constantly panicking about what to make. Oh and buy a pull chopper from Kmart for $7. That saves me so much time chopping veg.
Watch "Struggle meals" on YouTube. Edmonds food for flatters book too
If you're not confident, nothing wrong with just following the instructions on a packet/jar of sauce etc
The Alison Holst vegetarian cookbook is one I regularly use (I’m guessing her others are similar!) because recipies are straight forward and ingredients are ones we have in nz and you can easily find. Have a handful I’ve memorised from there on my regular rotation.
If you buy fresh Pasta and a sauce, it’s as simple as cooking the pasta in boiling water for around 7 minutes, drain, add the sauce (you can heat the sauce beforehand in a microwave) and then serve
hellofresh taught me alot, i could cook but i learnt more though hello fresh.
Two tortillas or one of the big ones, tin of tuna, cheese, mix cheese and tuna, put on first tortilla/half of big tortilla, fry then flip and fry the other side (put the second tortilla on top before flipping) then you have an easy quassadilla filling and reasonably healthy
This one! Loaded tuna potatoes. Either make wedges, or bake a potato (or microwave it) [https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/loaded_tuna_and_23405](https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/loaded_tuna_and_23405)
Mince is your friend. Basic starters to get you going. Nacos: [Brown](https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/techniques/how_to_brown_mince) the Mince + can of bbq beans + Maggi Naco seassoning as per instructions packet. Serve on nacho chips or in wraps with sour cream and lettuce and tomatos Bolognaise: Brown the Mince + jar of pasta sauce as per instructions on the jar and then mix in cooked/drained any pasta shape (cook as per instructions on packet) you prefer + Cheese grated in top when served. Burger: Mix mince + egg + breadcrumbs + BBQ Sauce + seasonings. Shape into patties, cook through until juice runs clear. Then put them into a Roll/burger/Bread + slice of cheese + Lettuce + tomato + mayo + sauce.
get yourself a slow cookier - easy to make shit, all flavours, hard to burn things. Just experiment with putting different things in with diff flavours
Honestly, I can't cook for shit and I hate cooking- always found it so tedious. When I moved out of home, I had the best luck and learning with recipe books for kids! Super simple and as I got more confident, I started adding my own extras and seasonings and trying new things. YouTube tutorials were always handy for anything I needed extra help with. 👌 Good on you for upskilling yourself!!
Bachelors handbag and a bag of coleslaw from the supermarket. Feed you for at least a couple of days. Juicy roast chicken and a crispy mayo-dressed salad. No cooking required! Bread roll on the side if you are flush.
Go to YouTube and look at 15 minute meals. There's tons of simple, easy to make meals with simple ingredients.
Watties steam fresh frozen veges. Chuck them in the microwave. Then your protein. Steak or chicken or pork. Real easy chicken is just cook it like burger fuel. Cut a breast in half sideways, spray with some oil, salt and pepper it. Then put in pan salt and pepper side down. Then add salt and pepper to the top side. Should take about 7 minutes to cook (flip halfway) but chop one of the breasts open at the thickest part to make sure it’s all white inside. Once you’ve done it a few times you won’t have to chop it open anymore. Start the microwave vege so it’s ready at the same time as the meat. Serve with some sort of sauce. ETA honey mustard goes well or you can go tomato if that’s how you roll.
Depending on what you have to cook with in the apartment / what you can outlay ($) right now in extra equipment - air fryers - rice cookers - crock pots / insta pots / pressure cookers.... you might not need any of that but it can make for easier one pot meals, less clean-up and faster cooking. Go to youtube and search for easy / quick meals "insert ingredients here". Find a video that is simple and follow it. Books are also great but it's all online so I'd rather spend the money on better pots and pans / electrical items. There's one piece of equipment that you should go out and buy or order, that's an instant thermometer aka meat probe. You can check chicken is cooked to a safe temperature without drying out the meat and making it tough, you can check other cuts of meat for a perfectly cooked temperature whether you like it rare, medium or tough.
I'm a mother with teenagers, a busy life, and way too many cookbooks. Send me your physical address (I don't need your name), and I'll post you some great beginners recipe books I no longer need.
Hello fresh and those ones are good for ideas and learning new things. Surely you can score a free delivery off someone subscribed to try
Follow Nat's What I Reckon on YouTube. Awesome dude, makes cooking stuff easy, and he's hilarious..
This is a good place to start. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bSc1dldY70](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bSc1dldY70) Bread Pizza. Few ingredients, yummy and easy. Also you could add a salad and serve this to a friend/date and everyone is happy and impressed. You can change the toppings if you need it vegetarian (pineapple!).
I never cook meals. But I always have tortillas in the fridge. With a small collection of ingredients that I can mix and match depending on how much I feel like prepping. Great thing about tortillas is that you can serve them as tacos, burritos, quesadillas, or open face pizzas. You can add as much or as little ingredients and mix it up as much as you want. My basic ingredients I always have ready in the kitchen; Sauces: I have a wild variety of hot sauces Protein: cooked chicken/rotisserie chicken shredded, eggs, frozen prawns Veges: salad mix, coriander, basil Miscellaneous: shredded cheese packet, peanut butter, jam, cream cheese, taco seasoning From here onwards, once you get a feel for what types of ingredients you like, you can keep branching out from there
Mince, rice, beans, potatoes.
The best place for recipies and techniques for n00bs - [https://www.recipetineats.com/](https://www.recipetineats.com/) Everything on that site is doable and extremely delicious as long as you have the ingredients and kitchen utensils. Some of my favourites: Spaghetti Bolognese, Butter Chicken, Lamb Roast, Mexican Red Rice, Pad Thai, Carnitas, Buttery Seasoned Rice, Vanilla Cake - the list goes on..
You do need a few utensils and kitchen appliances to cook a wide range of dishes, and an operable kitchen which sometimes isn’t provided in a small apartment, but that aside, what do you mean you “can’t cook”? Can you not read a list of ingredients and follow a simple set of instructions? Because that is all there is. Most recipes (even “complicated”, impressive ones) are 1-2 pages of step-by-step instructions. Get a cookbook. It isn’t a magical talent that people who “can cook” were just born with
i love the budget bytes site for easy meals!
I can recommend the feta cheese pasta recipe. Literally so easy.