adam ragusea’s videos have taught me so much about cooking. he’s very much an advocate for cooking by feel, he teaches a lot of the food science behind his recipes, and his recipes are very easy to follow.

My dad forced me to cook as a kid, that was stressful. Then when I moved out, I was way too broke to eat out, so I learned more by trial and error/looking things up. Then later, I worked in a kitchen for like 5 years.

By making mistakes! I have always been experimental with food and it eventually paid off. I can cook very well now, and love to. Lucky you to have a cook!

My mom made food for us, and kept easy to make stuff too, we were well fed, but she was not a good cook, just spaghetti and chili and eggs, wirh an occasional crab/shrimp boil, it was fine but she didn’t enjoy cooking.

My dad did most of the cooking, it is serviceable food some great some just okay, but he’d have a thing where he introduced me and my sister to cooking by starting with asking us to taste food during cooking and going “do you think it needs any salt? Any pepper?” type questions

This progressed on to “can you make the mash whilst I make the sausages? Can you slice that vegetable whilst I…?” - easy tasks that are out of the way of the main bulk of the meal

Then on to eventually “wanna try making the Sunday Breakfast today?”

A steady progression of increasing responsibility, in a way that disguises that’s what’s happening

A really great way to teach, tbh

I learned to cook the same way I learned to have sex. Trial and error, usually by myself, sometimes with a partner, and I read some publications about it that had plenty of pictures.

Opened cookie book. Followed directions. Suddenly had delicious cookies. Realized that I could do this with other things.

I just started trying recipes on the internet. Did Hello rotten Fresh for a bit but quit that because of quality reasons. Now I have a collection of “signature” dishes, a few I’m refining, and a good sense of what to do with ingredients and how seasonings interact to make something without a recipe to guide me.

I did cooking at school, all the way to GCSE, very nearly went to culinary school instead of doing A Levels and Uni. I decided against it as chefs are more likely to work evenings and weekends than your average IT nerd. I do not regret it, IT can be toxic but nowhere near as toxic as a lot of commercial kitchens.

As I got older I realised that I enjoy cooking, and I am a good cook, but I am not a chef and being a chef is a completely different level due to the volume of food and dishes you have to make. Cooking for yourself you make for a handful of people most of the time, usually a single meals worth of dishes, and you will still eat it even if its bad most of the time. A chef might do over a 100 covers from a menu of dishes and they have to be at least good, while working as a team to do so.

At least for GCSE there was a lot of repetition over dishes to get good at them and their basic techniques, and an encouragement to experiment with them. I must have spent six weeks making victoria sandwich cakes for example.

Post school, cooking books and youtube to expand the range of cuisine that I can cook.

I watched a lot of PBS and YouTube videos to better under what I should look for when cooking. After that it’s really just get in there and try it. Flavor is subjective so that videos kind of stop being helpful at some point. ATK and Babish do a pretty good job of explaining what is happening and what to look for to know that something is done cooking.

Something my mom said, I am slightly paraphrasing: Cooking is simple, you just put things on heat source, don’t let it burn i.e. add ingredients in the ‘right’ order, control the heat, stir and stir; balance the salt and pepper. Voila.

The updated version is: heat the pan, add little oil or butter, lightly fry chopped onions, add stuff to it, stir to prevent burning, sprinkle salt and pepper, Voila. When you’re ready to start being fancy, experiment with spice mix, later you don’t have to rely on spice mixes.

YouTube

• Food Wishes, Chef John M

• Chef Jean-pierre, god bless the man. He taught me everything I need to know about Onyo

I didnt yet. When I left home i was too poor together any real ingredients, and lived off whatever the supermarket was selling for “about to throw it away” prices. Usually cakes and bread, remade sandwiches and whatever. Now that I’m in a real family again the other members are all super picky and only eat about 5 meals, so theres no room for trial/error to learn, and most staple ingredients are blacklisted anyway.

my moms is like that only does expensive takeouts and barely cooks herself, she used to before she got lazy and just goes out shopping all day. i can sorta cook, but not entirely self-sufficient, we do use rice cooker.

Have kids to feed. Have random things to cook. No time. Get creative. Fail. Try again next time. Succeed. Repeat. Fail. Succeed. Fail. Succeed. Start to plan ahead. Continue to fail or succeed. Try to teach kids so they fail less than me. Hope kids teach their kids. Break cycle of family not knowing how to cook. Family line succeed. Humanity saved.

My parents had a restaurant and needed some help for the differents services. So they put us at work (brother, sister and I).

Younger I didn’t understand the luck I had to eat restaurant quality meal every day. I was kind of happy to eat a junkfood in a US burger chain.

Now that I grew old, I cook because it’s way cheaper and also because it’s a moment where I could decompress from an exhausting week. Also when we are cooking I let my son participante, and I explain to him the differents ingredients that we put in the recipe.

My bet that he will also Cook when the time comes.