I think I can teach you how to love cooking, if you don’t already!
There are many challenges to stepping into the kitchen on a regular basis, and I sympathize! The kitchen is my domain in the house and I am responsible for feeding the family (which I willingly take on)- but its much more than just putting the food on the table. Planning and selecting meals to please everyone, working with your schedule, grocery shopping and crossing your fingers you pick up everything on your list, keeping on budget, avoiding overbuying to reduce food waste, deciding when leftovers will get eaten, and it goes on and on. Its a LOT! And I’m sure the last thing folks want to do is labor over a pot on the stove, hoping it turns out exactly how the recipe is pictured on the blog they got it from.
So I get it. Cooking might not sound all that fun to some people.
But I’m here to tell you: It doesn’t have to be so hard…
Cooking: it’s just a combination of techniques with ingredients. That’s basically it. Yes, of course there’s some stipulations… the ingredients you choose have to “go together” (or do they?!), but let me tell you- that might be the easiest part. Consider the below example:
CHICKEN. BACON. RANCH. Its good as a sandwich. Its good as a pizza. Its good as a pasta. Its good as a salad. Four different meal ideas that are essentially using all the same ingredients, but are so different from one another in how they’re served and enjoyed.
Learn a few techniques, and you’re set…
I am a strong believer in that fact. There are many techniques that translate across all kinds of cuisines, and it helps to know, learn and master a few of them. I always go back to that scene in Schitt’s Creek, the TV show, where Moira tells David, “Fold in the cheese”. Neither of them have no idea what it means, so they begin to panic. They were making mac and cheese! But you know what else requires folding in ingredients? Banana bread, stir fry, pasta dishes. Though a very simple example- this translates to so many more cooking techniques.
If you take the time to learn how to dice an onion, you’ll inherently know how to dice fennel, tomatoes, shallots! If you know how to fix a sauce where the oil and fat have split (think oil and water), well then you know how to fix salad dressings, cheese and cream bechamel sauces, and gravies.
New skills- unlocked!
So get in the kitchen, and keep an open mind!
Get in there! Each time you cook, its an opportunity to learn! Even if you make a mistake, you learn what happens and make sure you avoid it next time. And its not always a mistake or a bad experience- maybe you ran out of a particular spice for a recipe, tried out another one in its place, and the dish turned out even better than you thought! Either way, good or bad experience, its a win. Because you learned something that improves your cooking.
So, keep an open mind when you try something new, and learn to roll with the “punches”. Cooking is very much reactionary, and as you gain more experience, I think you inherently learn how to respond and manage what is happening on the stove or in the oven. These experiences build upon one another, and are really best learned by doing. And a recipe won’t teach you those things!
I hope I can teach you to love cooking, and that’s why I wanted to start a blog.
I want to share my experiences as a self-taught home cook, to ease the difficulty when it comes to tackling cooking meals for yourself, friends, and family. I hope my recipes can inspire you to spend time in the kitchen, to learn something new, and to find flavors you love!