New to Cooking

Hello all,

I am a college senior about to enter her last semester. This previous fall semester marked the end of my college athletic career, freeing up a lot more time. I have dropped my meal plan for the spring semester and have made it my goal to become a good cook.

I know that is a pretty unspecific goal, but I'm not sure how else to put it. As of right now I have mastered one dish...Lasagna. I can also cook chicken and steak in very basic manners.

I am pretty comfortable in the kitchen (I won't burn the house down, at least), but would love to actually look forward to dinner.

Any and all advice is welcomed, and thankfully so! Please share whatever it is that you think I should know. Equipment, ingredients, tips, recipes...anything!

Watch Alton Browns show, dig up the early episodes. His recipes are generally good, and he explains whats going on with the food so you gain an understanding of whats happening with different cooking techniques. I pretty much learned to cook from his show. Remember he is half crazy, so stuff like his "rule against uni-taskers" can be ignored. His early episodes have more basic information.

Watch Americas Test Kitchen and other cooking shows on PBS. Test ktichen is the best cooking show on TV, IMO, and the other shows on PBS are generally better than the god awful crap thats on food network (excepting Alton Brown, obviously). Cooks country is the same thing as Americas test kitchen, that just have a different name for some reason.

Make some dishes that feature a single spice or technique prominently. You want to get familiar with the flavor of spices so you can adjust them to your taste and adapt recipes that are almost good to something good. Eventually you want to be able to look at a recipe and know what you want to change by reading it, or even create your own by looking up several recipes for the same dish and taking what you like and leaving what you don't, so that means experimenting.

find a copy of the tassajara cook book it'll teach you everything you need to know for preparing any vegetable

Seconded on Pete_T's recommendations. Alton Brown really made me interested in the science of cooking, which I think is the most important thing when figuring out how everything works!

You say you can make Lasagna? Tell us more about that.

To create a complex multi stepped dish like Lasagna you must have mastered a few skills already. Boiling water, cooking pasta, creating a red sauce (or if from NJ a gravy). Browning and seasoning the meat. Seasoning the cheese mixture. Grating cheese. Peeling and chopping garlic. Plus slicing and chopping herbs and whatnot for the sauce and cheese ect ect.

My somewhat rambling point is that you can grow as a cook from what you have mastered already.
Give us some more ideas of what you are doing already.

ditothegreat said:

Hello all,

I am a college senior about to enter her last semester. This previous fall semester marked the end of my college athletic career, freeing up a lot more time. I have dropped my meal plan for the spring semester and have made it my goal to become a good cook.

I know that is a pretty unspecific goal, but I'm not sure how else to put it. As of right now I have mastered one dish...Lasagna. I can also cook chicken and steak in very basic manners.

I am pretty comfortable in the kitchen (I won't burn the house down, at least), but would love to actually look forward to dinner.

Any and all advice is welcomed, and thankfully so! Please share whatever it is that you think I should know. Equipment, ingredients, tips, recipes...anything!

Click to expand...

It is great that you wish to improve your cooking skills. My tip would be to list your 5 favourite dishes and then learn to cook them. They don't need to be complex, but if they are things that you enjoy eating it should be easy enough to motivate yourself.
Good luck and please keep us posted (Bonus points for photos!)

A few quick tips.

To judge how cooked meat is when you fry it use your hand. Place your thumb and forefinger tip to tip and press the muscle at the base of your thumb. If the meat feels like that when you press down on it it is rare. Using your fingers progressively to your little finger gives a progressive indication to well done.

After cooking meat let it rest for 5 minutes under some foil to retain the heat. The meat will relax, reabsorb juices and be much more tender when you serve it.

A good resource is "Cooks Illustrated". It's a magazine published by the folks at "America's Test Kitchen." The "America's Test Kitchen" cookbook is awesome. The magazine and cookbook-like everything ATK puts out-feature recipes; how-to guides; and reviews of kitchen tools, appliances and packaged food items.

Others have mentioned Alton Brown (+1)

I also recommend the book, "Cookwise" by Shirley Corriher.

Bon Appetit!

Learn to make a good tomato sauce...that is the basis for so many great, easy and cheap pasta dishes.

Try these websites:

http://www.epicurious.com/
http://cookandeat.com/
http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking
http://www.cooking.com/recipes/rehome.htm

Learn to make your favorite dish...it's a priceless skill.

I find this book really good; http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0563539070?ie=UTF8&tag=dreafulfltd-21

The good thing is she doesnt just say do this & do that, she explains the reasoning behind the way she does things a certain way.

Get yourself a copy of the Fannie Farmer cook book. It has been my cooking bible since I was a pup. The only shows on tv worth anything are Cooks Illustrated and Alton Brown. The rest are just noise.

ditothegreat said:

Hello all,

I am a college senior about to enter her last semester. This previous fall semester marked the end of my college athletic career, freeing up a lot more time. I have dropped my meal plan for the spring semester and have made it my goal to become a good cook.

I know that is a pretty unspecific goal, but I'm not sure how else to put it. As of right now I have mastered one dish...Lasagna. I can also cook chicken and steak in very basic manners.

I am pretty comfortable in the kitchen (I won't burn the house down, at least), but would love to actually look forward to dinner.

Any and all advice is welcomed, and thankfully so! Please share whatever it is that you think I should know. Equipment, ingredients, tips, recipes...anything!

Click to expand...

Not sure where you are at, but many cities have a "singles guide" (assuming you are single. Some of the activities always involve cooking. I met some great people and learned some complex dishes along the way.

Michael

A big +1 to Alton browns show. I learned an enormous amount about cooking from that show when I first started cooking for myself. My other suggestion is to see if you can find a cooking school around you. There's one not far from me that offers a great variety of basic/intro how-to type classes and more specific or higher-end classes tought by local chefs. If you can find one nearby they are a great way to learn a lot and have a great meal at the same time. It can also make for a great date out with that special someone because you get your dinner, your entertainment, and good interaction with your date all in one.

Wow thanks everyone for all of the responses...I will definitely put some of those books on my Christmas list, and check into those shows.

I should have added that my Lasagna is not that complex
My dad used to make it quite often when I was a kid, and he passed the process down to me. I use canned sauce, so nothing too difficult other than adding spices to the meat/cheese/sauce. I feel like lasagna is one of those meals that is fairly difficult to mess up...but am certainly going to try and master making my own sauce!

Wonderful advice so far. Keep it coming!

As far as my favorite dishes (which someone suggest I learn) I am a big fan of anything Italian. A good steak is also in my top couple of meals. I make chicken "fajitas" quite often too, which is a recipe my brother passed on to me.

Tonight, the task is to try and pan grill a steak...wish me luck!

I learned how to cook from watching TV ... Alton Brown packs more useful information into one 30-minute episode than most chefs do into an entire season.

Another good instructor is Ming Tsai ... his style is what I strive for: Simple ingredients combined with quick and easy cooking techniques which produce elegant results.

But for all the time I spent watching cooking shows on TV, one simple tip that they never mentioned is one I had to figure out on my own. READ THE INSTRUCTIONS. Virtually everything you buy in a supermarket contains step-by-step advice on how to prepare it. Once you get comfortable with the basics, its easy to improvise on your own and make up a meal as you go along. You can also pick up free recipe cards and newletters at most grocery stores.

One more tip that might not have been mentioned. Talk to your butcher, fish-monger, produce clerk and other people that work in the food industry. They are a great source of info on how to make the most out of any given
ingredient.

I like the simple stuff. Example:

http://www.mensjournal.com/transcendent-spaghetti

This is the simplest of sauces made by using the best of ingredients. As the man says, execution is everything (except for ingredients, of course).

I think one of the big keys to cooking is learning the basic skills in the kitchen. How to hold a knife, dice an onion, simple time coordination, etc. Practice, repetition, and attention to detail. Confidence in the kitchen grows as your skills grow. And as dpm above said you have years of following directions exactly first. You can't know how to make good adjustments unless you've already cooked everything every way first.

1 - watch as many episodes of Good Eats as you can. Most are available on Youtube.
2 - If you like Italian, watch as many episodes of Molto Mario as you can.
3 - start getting some quality cookware. Stuff you will actually WANT to cook on. Get rid of that beat up 14 inch straight sided flimsy aluminum nonstick pan, which isnt't really nonstick anymore. Don't try to deny it, I know you have one. Every college kid does. . Also look for a better chefs knife. You wold be suprised how much nicer cooking is when you have a sharp knife! I know some people here bash the bigger named German knives, but for starters $100 for a 8" Heinkels from Bed Bath and Beyond isn't a bad start. Stay away from knife sets. They cost more and come with a bunch of crap you don't need. Throw away that flimsy 80 peice knife set you got from Walmart for $20 when you were a Frehsman.

4 - get some good cookbooks. The Art of French cooking is a great one. The Silver Spoon is a tome of info if you like Italian food. No need to reinvent the wheel, just cook what looks tasty. Cook what the recipe says, no substitutions. You will learn a wide variety of cooking methods and flavor blending this way.

This book is a good start because it really covers everything. From cake frosting to escargot.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Ever...9186/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1292267030&sr=8-2

ditothegreat said:

Wow thanks everyone for all of the responses...I will definitely put some of those books on my Christmas list, and check into those shows.

I should have added that my Lasagna is not that complex
My dad used to make it quite often when I was a kid, and he passed the process down to me. I use canned sauce, so nothing too difficult other than adding spices to the meat/cheese/sauce. I feel like lasagna is one of those meals that is fairly difficult to mess up...but am certainly going to try and master making my own sauce!

Wonderful advice so far. Keep it coming!

As far as my favorite dishes (which someone suggest I learn) I am a big fan of anything Italian. A good steak is also in my top couple of meals. I make chicken "fajitas" quite often too, which is a recipe my brother passed on to me.

Tonight, the task is to try and pan grill a steak...wish me luck!

Click to expand...

Italian and Mexican cooking... Sounds like me!

The foodnetwork has heaps of recipes for free that you can look for. Mario Batali is fairly traditional in his cooking but he often mixes the stuff. However, you should be right starting there. Down under, I really enjoy Guy Grossi, his food is just perfect and how I like it.

For Mexican food, I always only have one name: Rick Bayless. His cookbook "Authentic Mexican 20th Anniversary Ed: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico" is one of the best Mexican cookbook I ever had. Finding the right ingredients/spices can be tricky but if you an get them... That book is awesome... I think I only have less than 10 recipes to do in that cookbook and I've done them all!