Not everyone has a patient family member to teach them how to cook. Learning how to cook for beginners can be a frustrating, nerve-wracking experience. There are often many cooking failures to recover from, the learning curve may be steep, or access to essential items may not be possible.
Even with all the things that can hold people back from having a positive cooking experience, these cooking tips for absolutely beginners will help make things easier.
How to cook for beginners:
Start with your key ingredient
Sometimes, I go grocery shopping and see ingredients on sale that I’ve never used before. If I’m feeling adventurous, I’ll pick some up and figure out what to do with it later. Even with basic fruits and vegetables, it may be a challenge to figure out what to make with the ingredients, let alone how to go about making something. There are two websites that are designed to help you out with this:
Supercook: recipe search by ingredients you have at home
All Recipes: search for recipes featuring your key ingredient
Get recipe ideas from the backs of packages
Begin your cooking journey with simple recipes, then work your way up
Never cooked a single thing before? Try these very basics first:
Each thing you make will be a little victory that will give you confidence to move on to slightly more complex recipes.
Watch and learn
I’m sure you know that you can find the answer to just about anything on YouTube. This includes directions on how to make whatever meal you’re trying to cook. Watch YouTube videos to learn basic techniques, see how it looks when the ingredients in recipes come together, and how the finished product should look. You’ll learn all kinds of beginner cooking tips by watching someone and listening to how they describe the cooking process.
Use dinner prep services
Dinner prep services have been popping up a lot lately. They typically have one main meal, plus a side or two. For a little less than the cost of going out to eat, you can prepare a home-cooked meal following simple instructions that are sent to you. Not only that, but you will be sent all the ingredients you need. For people who don’t cook very often, this is awesome since you can try your hand at cooking without needing to buy more ingredients than you’ll ever use. For instance, if the recipe calls for ¼ teaspoon of cumin seeds, that’s just what you’ll get sent. Here an ultimate list of dinner/meal prep services.
