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A New Love: Jacques Pépin's Fast Food
Talking Him Into It - Feeding The Guy
Another Change, and Two Summer Shortcakes
« I'm Not A Domestic Diva... | Main | Restaurant Supply Catalogues »
People in their twenties complain to me all the time that they don't know how to cook. For anyone who wants to learn to cook but doesn't know how, I have just one piece of advice: Just start (I'd say "Just do It", but Nike'd get me for copyright infringement).
There is no way to learn to cook that doesn't involve trial and error and eating some terrible meals along the way. That said, there are a few things that can help you jump-start your learning.
1. Cooking shows are a great resource. I almost never make any of the dishes I watch celebrity chefs cook, but the shows give me a sense of how things are done (what "stiff peaks" of egg whites do, what a reduced sauce looks like, etc.)
2. Good cookbooks are the meat of learning to cook. A good cookbook not only tells you what to do but also gives good descriptions of the results you should get. I do own some of the classics like The New Basics, but the books that get the most use in my kitchen are the ones that have good, descriptive writing and nice pretty pictures of the food that inspire me and give me an idea of what I'll be eating. I love Jamie Oliver's first book, The Naked Chef, and Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa Parties! because they're fun, inspiring books and the food is also great. The key is finding a book that inspires you and mirrors your taste in food.
3. Cooking with someone who knows what they're doing is probably the best way of starting out in the kitchen. My mother always had me help cut vegetables, stir sauces, and give my opinion when we were deciding if the turkey was done, and it gave me a huge leg up. But some of my best cooking help also came from my best friend who taught me to make tacos and French toast and have fun cooking. So grab any friend who knows how to cook and have fun.
Posted by georgia to Kitchen and Cooking on August 15, 2005 06:00 AM | permalink | Email this post
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Great advice! In our house, we started out with cookbooks that were kind of silly, which made them unintimidating: Food Men Love, for instance, and The Healthy College Cookbook. From there, we moved up to How to Cook Everything, which soon became our bible.
Also, I find that some cooking shows are more accessible than others. Emeril is entertaining, but his dishes are too fussy for me. I like Rachel Ray and Tyler Florence better - we have their cookbooks now, and I routinely reach for them when there's a crowd coming over. They're good party planners, too: they show you stuff that can be made in advance, so you don't have to stand over the stove while your guests make small talk without you!
Posted by: Cassie at August 16, 2005 08:03 PM
