Hey /ck/. This is my first time posting here so I'll cut to the chase.
I decided for my New Year's resolution that I would learn to git gud at cooking, so I figured I'd start off by making Shepherd's pie.
Any tips for DIY cooking for rookies?
>diy cooking
As opposed to what?
>>7229525
As opposed to ordering in/going out/having someone else cook for you/etc.
>>7229516
>Any tips for DIY cooking for rookies?
Think of things you like to eat.
Look for recipes, pick one that sounds good or has a lot of good reviews.
Buy ingredients.
Follow recipe.
Enjoy food.
>>7229533
So just cooking, as opposed to not cooking...
>>7229545
Exactly.
>>7229543
OK, that sounds easy enough.
>>7229543
You underestimate how retarded even intelligent people can be when it comes to learning how to cook food for themselves.
>>7229570
If people are too retarded to follow a simple recipe, then so be it. They can continue to eat at restaurants and buy shitty frozen meals.
>>7229588
That video needs to be in a sticky along with a link to google.
Food wishes, now go.
>>7229588
Wow, I was just watching the latest season of Maron and in one episode he makes fun of youtubers.
I thought the guy they had on was an exaggeration or caricature, but this guy is literally exactly the same; I'm glad I wasn't born a few years later and grew up watching shit like this.
>>7229601
He had a whole written article to go with that too.
http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=learn_to_cook_moron
>>7229570
With youtube and other cooking videos, its actually really hard to fuck up. You choose a few good channels like cookingwithdog, food wishes, or good eats or really anybody with a significant number of followers that has them because they offer straight up recipes and not because they are "personalities".
Listen to what they say and follow their recipes EXACTLY, do NOT substitute, especially if you cook food from a different culture. If you can't find the ingredients go to a specialty grocery store like an Asian or Spanish market. If you can't find all the ingredients for a dish you've never made before, do not make it.
The good people will not leave out steps and the video allows you to see. Take in and seriously follow the advice of only a few people at first, but remember they are not food gods.
A lot of people especially on here have trouble believing there is more than one way to cook something. They also take in some chefs kitchen rules as the final word instead of thinking. Good Eats and the guys weird thing against "unitaskers" is the best example I can think of. No you almost certainly don't need that avocado scoop, but there's nothing wrong with a rice cooker, especially if you enjoy rice with a large number of your meals. The idea is good, don't clutter your kitchen with junk, but make your own judgements.
As you get better expand the number of chefs you listen to, look at multiple recipes for the same dish, combine advice and experiment.
>>7229588
That's retarded as fuck.
>recipes only have 4 steps
>prep ingredients, combine them, put them on the heat, take them off the heat
He might as well have said, "prep your ingredients and cook them", making it two steps.
Or he could have just said, "cook food for yourself, dummy, because everyone knows how to do that", making it into one step.
>>7229625
He addressed that in his online article:
http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=learn_to_cook_moron
>In the video above, I said cooking comes down to 4 basic steps, but really it boils down to just two:
>Get stuff
>Add heat
>That's it. Sometimes you don't even have to add heat if you're making a salad. And if you are, that means you have enough time to learn how to cook something because you clearly have enough time to waste it making a salad.
Listen carefully because this is very important advice. Lots of people think cooking is all about complicated recipes, big cookbooks and arduous effort. Really it's more of an innate thing.
Learning to cook is much more simple, so pay close attention to what I'm going to say. Are you listening?
Fry an egg and experiment with various seasoning. This will give you an idea of what flavours go well together which is the most important quality in cooking. Fry an egg, cut it in quarter, season each quarter differently. Try one with cayenne and, I dunno, chives? Just experiment with lots of seasoning combinations.
Then fry another egg and repeat the process. Keep frying eggs and experimenting until you get a good idea of what works. You can eat 3-4 eggs in a day, heck you're from /fit/ so probably 6+. If you eat 6 eggs in a day, that's 24 egg quarters, 24 seasoning combinations in a day. You're talking about 1000 seasoning combinations in just over a month.
>>7229622
I know how to cook, but remember a time when it seemed daunting.
For me the hard part was the actual cooking, as in knowing how to tell how hot a pan should be, knowing when to stir/flip something, or let it be, and knowing when something was done.
I think people who don't cook have this idea that there is a certain way things are supposed to turn out, and there's some kind of science behind it, rather than it just being about experience and personal taste.
>>7229516
Start with Italian, find good recipes and don't skip steps, this will teach discipline and you will quickly learn why every step is important, use good ingredients, try and find good cook books as opposed to use the internet, it's not the end of the world but cook books are definitely better than a platform where every retard can put shit online - see Marie's Italian Tomato sauce
Don't be a fag in the kitchen and use stuff like jarred minced garlic or pre chopped onions, if you can do it yourself fresh then just fucking do it because that goes a long way. When you realize you start hating yourself and start to drink heavily and chain smoke while being a total fucking dick then congratulations you are on your way to becoming a good cook.
>>7229636
Fuck off.
>>7229639
I think it's also a matter of motivation since most people are too fucking lazy to actually rev up those fryers.
>>7229653
One autist has been spamming it for the past two weeks.
>>7229661
I see. Thanks for letting me know. I'll filter him.
>>7229644
I say use fresh every single time you do a new recipe until you do it correctly. After that experiment with the cans, pre-chopped, and other convenience foods and see how they affect the taste. Cooking good food takes time. Unless your time is worthless (you're a college student or something) or you're preparing a very special meal if you're going to be cooking for yourself you're going to be making some tradeoffs.
>>7229665
I'm not the originator nor the spammer. I just think it's funny and on topic for your thread. It's honestly not that bad of advice as long as you don't take it to extremes
>>7229516
>>7229543
This, it's just following instructions. A couple caveats though:
Try to find a recipe written by an actual chef, or at least someone who has at some point been paid to cook food, not some random chucklefuck who's uploaded their twist on mac and cheese to allrecipes.com.
Actually follow the instructions. 90% of early cooking fuckups are down to people substituting and changing things that they can't be bothered to find when they don't know what the fuck they're doing.
bbc.co.uk/food/ has good recipes from a bunch of different professionals, or look up chefs on youtube if you find seeing the thing done easier.
Some tips:
Read the whole recipe and prepare the list of ingredients first, unless specifically told not to. Just have it everything ready in bowls so that you're not fucking about reading while stuff is sat cooking away.
"Preheat" means get your pan on five minutes before anything goes in it, and your oven on fifteen minutes before you need it.
Get your pan hotter than you expect, you can just lift it up if it's too hot, but a lukewarm pan gets you soggy, bland food.
Taste is powered by salt. If your food seems bland, you probably need more salt.
>>7229677
You make some good points, but recipes written by actual chef's tend to take a lot for granted, and assume you already know basic techniques.
People like Alton Brown are popular because they hold your hand through the process and treat you like a little kid who has no clue what you're doing.
>>7229677
>Taste is powered by salt. If your food seems bland, you probably need more salt.
I'd extend this to all spices. Use more seasoning than you think you actually need. Restaurant food taste so much better than a lot of people bland home cooking because it is heavily seasoned.
>>7229644
OP here. Is Italian just an easy place to start? Should I save Shepherd's pie for later then?
>>7229691
I remember he had a baking episode where he said exactly how many times to whisk the ingredients together.
In retrospect, it was probably just a cross promotion for Iron Chef, so that he could say, "put it down and walk away" at the end.
>>7229701
It is the easiest in my opinion and Italians have a lot of diverse foods from meat, fish to pasta and desserts, shepherds pie isn't hard either and is a good place to start but in general I believe that Italian is pretty diverse and it can teach you a lot very quickly because in every part of Italy most dishes are very different and in every place they do something differently each time.
>>7229717
Got it, thanks. How does lasagna sound for my first attempt at cooking then?
>>7229707
I vaguely remember that. As I recall, it was him making a point about how the most commonly made mistake of whatever recipe he was explaining was over mixing. I want to say maybe it was biscuits or pancakes or something, but I can't remember for sure.
>>7229701
You'll be fine with shepherd's pie, it's just cooking two separate things and dumping them on top of eachother, so there's plenty of room to check how things are going and correct any problems.
>>7229726
That would be a great idea, you already have a lot of choices, for example you can make a lasagna with bechamel which is something that every cook has to know or you can make one with ricotta filling. Just get yourself motivated and figure all this stuff out and it will be pretty satisfying when you make a lasagna for the first time. Also if you're making bechamel always remember you need to have fresh nutmeg on hand.
>>7229691
Yeah, I didn't know how to address that. Probably the best thing to do would be combining reading regular recipes with watching someone like Alton Brown explaining the various processes.
>>7229701
Start with what ever it is you want to cook within reason
>>7229814
Telling him to post pics on here and not get discouraged is fairly counterproductive. As soon as he posts anything all the trolls on this board who get mad at OC and would rather just re-post the same stale conversations and arguments over and over again will just shit all over whatever he makes, regardless of whether it looks good or not.
>>7230019
Why later this week? Do you have dinner plans tonight?
>>7230145
I already had dinner tonight so I'll probably do it tomorrow or sometime later this week.
>>7229516
Gordon Ramsay's Ultimate Cookery Course: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4sylQahxyepBiKD1V7VPkahHoEVig_4C
>>7230161
I thought /ck/ didn't like Gordon Ramsay.
>>7230161
>blocked in your country due to copyright grounds
>>7230169
It's a good introduction to basic cooking. Simple recipes emphasizing good technique and even extends into how to purchase good ingredients.
>>7230179
Even though it may be illegal and unethical, a sufficiently motivated person might be able to find a torrent by searching for the name.
>>7229622
A rice cooker isn't a unitasker anon.
>>7229676
I'm surprised you didnt say tbhfam, memedrone.
>>7229676
>I just think it's funny
It isn't.
>>7230169
Bitch, we may talk shit but we LOVE Ramsay here.
