Follow the recipe, then don't follow it. As a beginner, follow the damn recipe. Read the ingredients list, buy the ingredients, and follow the instructions to the word. I know too many beginners who get lazy, don't follow the recipe and then the food doesn't taste good. Then, once you've gotten it down, start to tweak and experiment. Try adding a new ingredient or substituting something you don't have. Once you're not a beginner, you can skip following the recipe.
Learn the basic science of searing, emulsions, salting and temperature (hot & fast versus low & slow). The Food Lab/Serious Eats is a great resource for this. Salt Fat Acid Heat is also good.
Gain intuition. Learn to taste the food and see what's missing. You probably need to add more salt. Maybe a little acid? Or you could slip in some butter.
You will need to use more fat and salt than you think. When beginners watch me cook, they're shocked at how much salt and fat I add. It's still a fraction of how much you eat at a restaurant. This is especially true if you're blanching or boiling something, as the water needs to be really really really salty. Pasta water needs quite a few tablespoons of salt. Don't worry about it.
I read a theory that the whole bacon wrapped whatever craze was due to bacon being essentially fat and salt. People became obsessed with adding bacon because they weren't adding enough salt and fat.
American food tends to not have a lot of vegetables, but a crapton of carbs and meat. Try to learn Indian, Chinese, Korean or Mediterranean dishes. Beans are a great meat substitute.
Being Indian and Doing Indian cooking I learned a lot by going through the basics of Spices and blends. I have a list of recipes from my mother and grandmother and understanding why they were blending the way they were was very helpful.
Also I learnt to meal prep for the weekday on the weekend. Most of the foods is more of preparation (creating batter, dough etc) and the cooking on actual heat is simpler.
The blog post is a 3,500 word advertisement to Amazon affiliation links. A selection of "helpful" advice given in the post:
- How to chop food? "Just search them on YouTube"
- "When you are first learning to cook I recommend avoiding complex recipes"
- "Get cooking"
Finally: "The goal of this post is [..] to provide fairly comprehensive [..] roadmap for going from a cooking noob to solid home chef." Sorry. This is not it.
[^] Alternatively, the title might be interpreted to mean "Cooking for founders [who are visiting you]". This is also not the case.
Granted I already knew how to cook at the point where I was suddenly living apart from my spouse for a few months. It being Texas, I picked up a huge package of tortillas. It's amazing how well you can eat if you just know how to quickly saute some meat and vegetables.
Yep. It's the first recommendation on the list! Though I typo'd (fixed now) as sauce pan.
If you have someone who needs to learn how to quickly, you don't teach them theory, like the different kinds of heat transfer (which this says you should learn, and then names them, and then does not teach you about them). You teach them how to make some basic, healthy things that work with a bunch of ingredients.
It's really easy to teach someone to make a stir fry or a one-dish oven-baked dinner, and those are great starting points because you can use a lot of different ingredients with those techniques. Once you can manage those, you'll be able to make yourself a quick, easy, cheap and healthy dinner. You can read books about theory and heat transfer methods after that.
Elon would disagree: "One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to."
https://lifehacker.com/elon-musk-on-learning-new-things-view...
Here's my version of the "minimum viable set": 1. big, sharp knife 2. cutting board 3. wooden spoon 4. pan.
IMO, the particularly dispensable: "instant read digital cooking thermometer", "micro-plane zester", "fish turner spatula", "large heat-safe glass measuring cup", "honing rod".
Again, still love the intention. Nice post!
Read Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Then read Jacques Pepin's La Technique. Then watch Jacques' old tv show Fast Food My Way. You will become a decent cook just from these 3 sources. It covers all the basics you need to know, and the rest comes from experience. (Jacques also put a 3 hour video of techniques on YouTube recently, go find and watch it. And check the JP Foundation website for more recipes and videos)
All recipes are just patterns and methods applied to ingredients. Often there is a vast range of tolerance in each, and you learn the tolerances mainly by exceeding them. So experiment with recipes and you will learn what doesn't work, which leaves only what does.
It took me way to long to learn not to be afraid of oil when cooking and grilling food. I burned a lot of food for awhile under the assumption that I shouldn't be adding too much fat to homecooked food.
* Matty Matheson - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpqH8-BBNTsluhcOzFKWLuw
* French Cooking Academy - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0lG3Ihe4LGV851lODRIS5g
* Bon Appetit - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbpMy0Fg74eXXkvxJrtEn3w
* J. Kenji Lopez-Alt - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqqJQ_cXSat0KIAVfIfKkVA
* Munchies - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaLfMkkHhSA_LaCta0BzyhQ
Watching Matty Matheson is fun but damn do I feel ill with some of his recipes. They are food porn - a fantasy not intended for the real world.
Funny how you can hear written text.
E.g. tonight (I'm in CET) I made this simple veggie delicacy; happens to be vegan too:
1. toss in some freshly chopped ginger and garlic in some olive oil on medium heat
2. add a couple of finely chopped shallots (or even a plain white onion is fine)
3. sprinkle some cumin seeds, salt, and freshly ground black pepper
4. next up: two chopped green courgettes
5. then, toss in two chopped, medium-sized portobello mushrooms
6. finally, add some precooked chickpeas (but if you have the discipline for it, the best chickpeas are dried peas that you soak overnight for 10 hours, and boil the next morning for 30 minutes; no contest).
Stir-fry it all for 10 minutes or so, and you'll intuitively know it when it is ready. You can have this with any kind of carbs -- couscous, tortilla wraps, rice, some variants of pasta, bulgar, you name it.
Rinse, repeat with many other vegetables and protien combination (flavoured tofu, seitan, et al). No need to go wild over following a recipe to the dot, or on heat transfer mechanics.
Uhh, ok. Includes tips like "Make it taste good"
However, it really doesn’t resonate with me. I was hoping to get some extra tips for min/maxing my kitchen time or some tasty slow cooker recipes. Perhaps a recipe for a macro and micro nutrient rich smoothie with minimal ingredients.
Cooking well is mostly attitude and confidence. Prep and cook everything at the same time, figuring out the order to do it all in parallel is a fun puzzle and executing it gives you a rush. I never measure any ingredients and improvise recipes constantly.
"Don't cook everything evenly" is very good advice. Let things sit at appropriate heat, amateur cooks are too touchy. But I disagree about recipes, they are just suggestions to me, good to know the outline and then leverage your general knowledge of cooking to get it done.
Maybe cooks use these terms differently but in physics this is heat conduction not convection. Convection is when heat is moved by moving matter in gases or fluids.
Well, that depends a lot on what you're baking. Baking bread can be very easy, and very rewarding. There are few things more delicious than freshly baked bread with butter. There are some simple cakes that are also easy to make. But yes, fancy desserts are hard.
They’re not that hard, the issue is that most of the recipes online are lying to you. A lot of tips and tricks for working with pastries and chocolate are basically an oral tradition and aren’t well documented anywhere.
Lately I buy a healthy roasted nut butter (pistachio, walnut, pecan etc) and dip it (covered completely) in a mix of hempseeds/shredded-coconut/flaxseeds and eat that with a spoon. I'd buy a non-cookbook that gave me more paleo/AIP/low-lectin food-combinations like that. Or just info on how to make better salads. (I add a lot of fermented foods like pickled red onions lately)
I do sometimes bake a bunch of turkey meatballs and eat those over a couple days - but I've given up on making turkey burgers or chicken. It's just too much work. I'd rather heat up frozen broccoli daily with a side of canned tuna. I really hate cooking, it's a huge time-sink and extremely unenjoyable.
One tip: get a sound vide cooker. It’s so foolproof and you have a lot more leeway, sometimes even hours, when you actually eat. Great if you get locked into something and don’t want to be interrupted until you’re done.
E.g. how to roast chicken thighs:
- Preheat cast iron pan in oven until the oven has been at 450 for at least 10 min.
- Place four chicken thighs in the cast iron pan with a good amount of space in between, after tossing them in a gallon ziplock bag with olive oil, sea salt, and pepper.
- Roast for 20 min at 450, then pour out excess fat. (If you don't do this, then again you're just steaming the chicken.)
- Turn down oven to 400, and cook for another 25 - 30 min.
You can apply the exact same technique to most vegetables and mushrooms, but understanding and nailing the principle is key. This recipe for roast maitake mushrooms also explains it well: https://foragerchef.com/simple-roasted-hen-of-the-woods/
When you get it out depends on preferred doneness. Medium rare, medium, well done. Most white meat is cooked well done.
Or you cook sous vide. Wherein, the Maillard reaction is to be done separately.
Chicken legs have to be seared first and then goes into the oven. And then rested. If you have seasonings, let it sit in marinade for 20 mts in the fridge and then 40-45 mts in a 425 deg oven.
While chickens and legs can also be brined for a crackling crispy skin but whole birds cook unevenly. Spatchcocked birds make for more even cooking.
Searing does not seal anything inside. It does provide a pleasing texture and usually flavor, though.
Cooking chicken legs starting in a cold pan produces wonderful results.
Excess fat won’t steam whatever you’re roasting.
essential gear would be a chef's knife, a stainless or cast iron pan, a nonstick pan, a large dutch oven, a sous vide circulator w a large bucket, a 10qt instant pot, and a vacuum sealer.
learn braising, roasting, sauteeing, and baking (veggies and proteins)
whenever you cook something where you can make extra, make a LOT extra, keeps a couple portions and vacuum seal the rest off and freeze them flat (keep your freezer really well organized)
find your core recipes and keep those perpetually in the freezer in small portions
learn to improvise and make gold out of whatever's in the kitchen (if you need inspiration, watch chopped)
I also always loved the tabular layout that included both ingredients and actions in the same format.
e.g. http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/60/The-Classic-Tir...
Carbon steel cookware is good, too.
Neither is good for cooking acidic sauces for long periods of time, use stainless steel if you need to make a tomato or pan sauce.
Note, these books are meant for dedicated inquisitive cooks who are eager to learn. If they're gonna sit on a coffee table or be used for average homemade meals, then these aren't for you. These books are the starting point and foundation of some of the most important chefs in history. It's up to you to Google the book and figure out what it's about and why it's so important (most should have Wiki pages). This is list is only meant to serve as a starting point for what to Google in the first place.
All the books (should) have English translations, however they vary. Some translations leave things out, or give literal translations rather than the meaning, etc. The original title is used so you can have a source point to choose your own translations based on reviews/descriptions.
Listed by order of importance (per my opinion). Mostly focused on haute cuisine and Italian, but another list for Japanese at the bottom. Note, I am biased against nouvelle cuisine, so you'll have to Google that for yourselves.
[Haute Cuisine] Le Guide Culinaire - Auguste Escoffier
[American/Haute] The Professional Chef - The Culinary Institute of America (As well as the Bakery/Pastry version)
[Haute Cuisine] Le Répertoire de la Cuisine - Louis Saulnier
[French/Haute Cuisine] Larousse Gastronomique - Prosper Montagné
[Haute Cuisine] L'Art de la cuisine française au dix-neuvième siècle - Marie-Antoine Carême (Completed only 3/5 volumes before death)
[Italian] La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene - Pellegrino Artusi
[Italian] Il cucchiaio d'argento - Domus
[Haute Cuisine] Ma Gastronomie - Fernand Point
[Italian] Ecco il tuo libro di cucina - Pellegrino Artusi (Still looking for a copy, much less a translated one)
[Technique] La Technique [OR/AND] New Complete Techniques - Jacques Pepin
[Why ___?] On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen - Harlod McGee
[Pairing] The Flavor Bible - Andrew Dornenburg
---[Japanese]---:
Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art
Sushi: Jiro Gastronomy
*[Next 3 are "maybes", haven't had time to read/research them fully.]
Ivan Orkin (Chef focused on Ramen)
Cooking with Kimiko-san
Kimiko's World: Cooking, culture, and festivals of Japan
---[Additional]---:
Ruhlman Twenty - Michael Ruhlman
White Heat - Marco Pierre White
Sauces - James Peterson
Cookwise/Bakewise
