Ask Lemmy

I started as a kid with simple things. Cooking and frying eggs, pimping an instant soup, etc.

Then they had a real chef in a weekday afternoon TV show. I started emulating his job, learned about using the "claw" to cut vegetables, how to make soups and sauces from scratch, and what spices to use.

When I was a teenager, I was visiting relatives, and a bunch of farmers wives were peeling and cutting onions en masse. They invited me to join, more for the fun of having a young man on the table. This was a time and culture where a male had no place in the kitchen, so imagine their surprise when I got a different knife out of the kitchen, sharpened it, and started cutting up onions way faster than they did...

I like cooking competitions, more so the high end ones than the average cooks ones because I aspire to cook dishes that are amazing. Still working my way up there, but shows like Culinary Class Wars have been great for inspiration.

Also helps that I'm in a financial position where I can afford to grab new kitchen toys, whether it's wider bowls, nice knives, or gadgets to accomplish specific tasks.

I suggest reading up about specific techniques, because a lot of it has nuance that isn't obvious. Like for example, for a long time I thought I was frying things when I was actually steaming them because just hearing a sizzle doesn't mean you're frying (and I still haven't fried anything but I do sautee things now).

Other then that, think of something you want to make, then look up a recipe for it and try to make it. Cooking allows for a ton of variation. Hell, even baking allows for it, though the differences you try out can have a larger than expected effect on the final result. But seriously, experiment and be creative, your failures will help as much as your successes. Other than fires, allergies, and freak accidents, the worst result you'll generally see is needing to throw out some food. But even that is rare from my experience. Most often I either pivot into something else or say "this would have turned out better if X" as I serve it anyways.

Learn how to balance flavours and while it won't make everything you make amazing, it will bring up your baseline to "not bad". Also there is a very fine line between "tastes absolutely amazing" and "tastes boring/gross" and knowing how to balance flavours will help you get to that "amazing" state consistently when your food has the potential to be there.

Also knife safety is important. It won't make you an amazing cook (though knife skills can really help), but following knife safety could have a huge impact on your life, especially if you get some good knives. They say sharp knives are safer than dull knives, but I'd add a caveat: as long as you are using them safely in the first place. A dull knife can make you use enough force that it ends up going through your finger when it gets free from whatever it was stuck on, but a sharp knife will go right through your finger without any force if you're cutting in a way that aims it at your finger. And as an added bonus, the technique that I use also makes my cutting better because my finger deliberately acts as a guide, which helps with consistency.

Other than that, play around and have fun! And take notes, it sucks so much to make something that is amazing but then realize you don't remember how you did it the next time. Something as small as forgetting a teaspoon of mustard can have a huge impact on the final result.

My mom taught me to cook from a pretty young age. Not that it's exactly cooking, but the first thing she taught me to make myself was just a bologna and cheese sandwich, which obviously left an impression on me lol.

Start by watching YouTube videos about cooking - specifically single skills like how to chop with a Chef's knife, how to get a good sear on cast iron, how to sauté, fry, etc.

Then try some recipes that incorporate these skills.

Then once you can follow recipes alright then move on to experimenting and tweaking recipes. Try your spices. Identify what goes together. You'll get the hang of balancing acid, heat, sweet, salty, etc. You'll fail sometimes but you'll learn.

Eventually start making your own combinations and you won't need recipes (which doesn't mean you'll never use them).

I learnt at cooking school, because i was a chef at one stage. That was 2 decades ago, and I've lost most of those skills now.

I worked in a group home in college, and part of the job was cooking. When I started, my cooking level was pretty much spaghetti and sauce from a jar. Fortunately for me, there was a set menu with recipes to follow.

I've learned quite a bit since then, but I'm still very much a "mechanical" cook. I'm good at following recipes, but I won't typically be able to improvise a meal with whatever is on hand. I'll take a look at what we have and start searching for likely-looking recipes.

Started off as a kid wanting to eat simple things like eggs without having to be dependent on someone else making them.

My parents got me started on basic stuff like scrambling eggs, boiling pasta, and following basic recipes, but everything past that was basically self taught. Both my parents can cook just fine, but as time went on they did it less and less often, so by the time I was in highschool I made most of my own meals, not usually anything too fancy but I never relied on the microwave at least.

I've been using YouTube as a resource more and more the last few years. Helps a lot to figure out the stuff that my parents didn't teach or that I couldn't easily trial and error. Firstly, it's nice seeing someone else do it and secondly as blogger-type recipes grow more and more long-winded it's honestly not much of a time difference

My mom was a chef, and she taught me some absolute basics like how to hold a knife and a couple of recipes. She also told me that when learning, if I mess up it’s okay, but try to eat everything you make to learn to taste what went wrong.

I got really good after I started watching “Good Eats”, though.

Trial and error. You need to know what you did wrong to do it right to get better and better. Salt and pepper is your friend. Recipes are nice (not your ad driven life story) but get 2 or 3 of the same dish and see how they differ. There’s so many ways to do one thing, and they all may be right but for YOU, you need to find what’s CORRECT for YOU. Also grab some music or blast the TV, this is your time, to take your time, to time the food right, because this will feel right in the end. Enjoy.

Growing up, there was a calendar in the Kitchen that was called The Shit Day. My three siblings and I and my mom would each get a shit day, where we had to do all the cooking and cleaning.

So I learned to cook by doing it.

I didn't. Though you can figure out the basics with some common sense and trail-and-error. But I really don't care for it.

My parents rarely cook, I mostly learned it from just trying some basic stuff first and than slowly trying new stuff. I highly recommend searching some simple stuff wth ingredients you like and expand on it if you want

My mom was a drunk and would be unreliable for food and the stuff she made was often bad so if I wanted to eat I needed to figure something out. My first real cooking experience was trying to impress her with a nice meal and it worked. The monster liked me, and food was a great answer for making a bad situation better.

After that it has been... Whatever works. I talk to people about their tricks and try cuisine I might not otherwise like cause it is good to know. Get cookbooks and watch cooking shows sure but also exploring the concepts behind how and why. I chose to learn basics. Why something turns out the way it does from the way you cook it (poached, baked, broiled, fried) and then add to it and adjust.

Humans are great puzzle solvers and cooking is a personal puzzle for what tastes good and what you have to work with. Get the basics down and then be ok with mistakes.

From the directions on the back of boxes along with trial and error.

Combination of my parents teaching me and the necessity of learning when I was poor living on my own at 18. For the latter, lots of youtube videos, cooking shows and cheap 5 dollar cook books. Now I do well but still try to learn new cooking things as a fun hobby instead of survival need.

I got sick and had to go on a restricted diet that was salt free AND potassium free. I had to learn to cook because everything has salt and/or potassium. Found out I love to cook and bake!

It is an ongoing process.

Learned the basics from parents, friends, and others when young. Nothing fancy, just how to cut things and apply heat when needed.

As a young adult learned more from the internet, expanded what I could make a bit. Kept it simple because undiagnosed ADHD made complicated cooking tedious. Baking was fine because it is a regimented process with exact measurements and steps!

As an adult learned from my wife, Good Eats, Youtube, and more. Learned how to cut properly, what 'high, medium, and low' on the stove actually means. Learned how to adjust cooking for different pans and stoves and whatnot.

Still not great with remembering which spice adds what flavor and frequently still guess wrong on temps and whatnot because I don't cook often enough for it to stick, but still improving. Next month I will most likely be cooking almost daily and the increased frequency will be great practice that greatly improves my skills as well.

Some from my parents, some from school, and some from trying shit :3

Overall the cooking classes I got in school were probably the biggest part of learning it lol

At first my dad showed me how to grill a chicken in our oven and how to make mashed potatoes from powder and open a can of sauerkraut. Our mom was in the hospital for several months and our dad had to work shift so he sometimes wasn't at home and at about 13 it was ut to me to Make lunch for me and My 11 years old sister when we came home from school.

After mastering that I did a lot of trail and error. I still for the love of god can't cook a rabbit, it't always terrible dry and chewie.

But other things like beef, vegetable soup, chicken, barszcz etc. I am now cooking consistently as they should taste.

But the most fun I have cooking with stuff which randomly is in the refrigerator, sometimes it's a miss, but most of the time I have a feeling what will work well together.

Small steps. Some cookbooks talk through the basics. Lock in some staples and built from there. Eggs 3 ways, pasta sauce, simple desserts. I was surprised how simple and impressive a gelatine-based panna cotta is. Once i got some under my belt, i tried something more intricate - Lemon sabayon pine nut tart with honeyed mascarpone cream from the french laundry.

Funny how desserts are formulaic, so follow the recipe. Daily cooking is usually by 'feel'.

Oh and always ask that amazing lady for advice.

I got off the ground by taking cooking classes in grade school as one of my electives in both junior high and high school. My parents weren't great at teaching much of anything. I have no passion for it but I figured I should know, and I like to cook for people I love even when I won't bother to if it's just myself.

My biggest weakness is knowing what spice to use, so I have actual cheat sheets I printed out and pinned above my stove lmao.

I was more or less forced to contribute at home. It was not just cooking, but the whole process of dinner. It started with me having to set the table, clear the table, do the dishes and when we got a dishwasher, load it. Then I also had to peel potatoes, cut vegetables. The older I got, the more responsibilities I got. At some point I had a dedicated day in the week where nobody would be able to cook for me and others would eat later than I would. These days were initially just me and my dad, so my dad showed me literally once how he made pasta bolognese. The next week, it was my turn. I was given feedback on my cooking and the next week I could try again. I kinda liked doing it so in due time, I also had to cook on another weekday. My mom would show me how she handled certain things and after a while, but the time I was 16, I could make a couple of dishes and did so at least twice a week. My sister was gearing up to be a professional athlete (sadly she never made it that far) so she rarely cooked but once she stopped her sport, she would also cook twice a week.

This is less the story of how I learned to cook and more the story of how my parents trained their servants to cook for them.

Twenty years ago I bought an Italian cookbook called The Silver Spoon and followed the instructions. Some time later I bought the book 1080 Recipes by Simone Ortega, of Spanish recipes. These two covered almost all my needs and taught me everything I know, that is not much but is enough to enjoy my meals and not be scared to try new recipes.

Other than the basic cooking lessons we had in school I did a lot of trial and error when I moved from home.

Mum and dad did cook and I sometimes helped in the kitchen but that only gives you confidence to try, you don't actually learn until you fuck up and bite into medium rare chicken.

I use Youtube. I also learn from my grandma. She knows how to cook many dishes and I'm very impressed by her.

I... never learned how to cook properly. Parents did cook all meals at home but only knew how to cook things about as delicious as your average Northern Europe staple, so the only thing I was taught was how to cook rice... but I do not like rice 💀

Out of convenience I ended up just throwing everything in a pot and make sure they are well-cooked, do meal-prep, and eat the same food over and over again; personally don't mind so it works for me. If it is not enough taste, just throw in some olive oil and spice, if not good enough more spice, if still not good enough add MORE spice, usually works out quite well & is quite healthy

The basics at home as a kid

But once I started watching cooking YouTube, my cooking improved massively

I'm still learning, but Rainbow Plant Life is the only reason I can make a 1/2 decent dish. To this day, I still need recipes for things I haven't made before/in a while. Generally I think of cooking as a "You get out of it what you put into it" kind of deal. If you want good food, it's going to cost money and time.

My mother taught me a couple of my favorite meals before I moved to an apartment, and after that I just followed instructions in recipes. It's remarkable how if you just do the things recipes say to do, and not things they don't, you'll end up with the dish they show you.

I never cooked anything in the past. A good friend/neighbor joked about my eating habits while we went grocery shopping together and that inspired me. One day I set myself a challenge to only eat home cooked meals for 4 weeks. I used an app with simple and very easy to follow recipes (KptnCook from Germany). It was tough but I learned a lot and I realized my potential. Since then I usually cook 3-4 times a week, often more than I need so I have leftovers. I love it!

I watched a lot of cooking shows on TV as a kid, just because I liked them. (DIY shows too, BTW, which is why I'm also comfortable doing my own home maintenance.)

My mom was just an awful cook and my father didn't cook. I learned by starting with recipes off the internet. The more I did it the better I got. I also started making bread with my sister as a way to bond with her when our family was falling apart.

Once you understand to season to taste and have some recipes it's not hard. And you pick up more skills where you see them, and grow familiar with new ingredients as you use them. Simple recipes are simple, and while many of them have depths of complexity the fact is you can't really fuck up american style tacos or baked ziti that bad if you follow the instructions and set timers. And if that's still a problem start with something cheap like rice and beans and accept that it'll be fine and you'll screw up sometimes. The biggest thing is learning what works/doesn't and why.

Oh also I grew up on good eats which taught a lot. I then graduated to seriouseats and use J Kenji Lopez Alt's recipes and guides wherever I can, he explains the why wonderfully

From what I remember, in order

Watching my mother cook

Begging my mother to allow me to handle a knife to cut vegetables or stir food. Also she taught me to crack/open eggs near the frying pan so it won't "break"

Getting into a Technology and Livelihood Cooking Class, the thing I remember that I haven't learned outside of that class is learning how to properly hold a knife and sharpen it, the various vegetable cuts and the effects of cuts on flavour, and using a toothpick to hold the shape of rolls

Reading a book called "Salt, Fat, Acid and Heat" as essential components of flavor. Helped me to stop making bland food lol because I used to be conservative with salt and fat and was making food that only tasted good to myself

Watching youtube videos of recipes and how to do stuff. The youtube videos helped me a lot

I wanted japanese dishes, so I was promoted to "Japanese home chef".
Othee than that: I wanted to keep up with potential peers and not be reliant on Hotel Mom™ to provide me food.
And thus began my quest into collecting and documenting recipies :)

I was already vaguely interested, and when I was desperate for a pandemic hobby, it was a fairly natural choice. I can recommend "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" by Samin Nosrat as a good introduction - recipes, but, more importantly, explains a bunch of basic concepts and "whys". Then, if you can stomach youtube (ublock origin or some other adblocker + sponsorblock are basically mandatory), check out e.g. Food Wishes (Chef John, aside from a râthër wéîrd spèàking style, is good at explaining things in an accessible way), Helen Rennie, Frank Proto and others.

Trial and error is a must eventually, but starting off that way is very likely just wasting food, effort and motivation because failing at cooking can be pretty demoralizing.

Most everything I learned, I learned from my mother. Cannot remember when, but at some point I got saddled with being the one who helps my mom cook most every night. No complaints here since it's an essential life skill.

Definitely not from my parents. I had to teach myself in college and have been doing the same til now. Following recipes obviously helps, but also taking classes or watching YouTube is great for the more subtle points as well as making sure you've covered the basics.