My top three resources for cooking:

Alton Brown. I’ve been a fan of his for over 20 years at this point. He used to make cooking shows for the Food Network, but has been making YouTube videos that are, IMO, his best work yet. He’s like the Bill Nye of cooking. Each episode is a deep dive into a topic, with explanations of the science and history behind the steps of the recipe.

J. Kenji López-Alt. He’s behind Serious Eats and has a YouTube channel. Serious Eats in particular prefaces their recipes not with filler stories like some sites, but detailed explanations of the decisions they made for the recipe, and often different options you can take. When I want to cook something new, I will usually look for a bunch of recipes from different sources to get a feel for what they have in common and how they differ. If there’s an article on Serious Eats, especially by Kenji, I can probably just stop there.

Brian Lagerstrom. These are the most conventional cooking videos on the list, but he’s also THE most directly practical cook on this list. By that I mean, there have been more occasions where I’ve seen him make a recipe, decided to try it out, and actually done it fairly soon after with success. The recipes are very well-explained, and sometimes even shows you why you should do things a certain way by showing you what happens if you don’t. Every food presenter will workshop recipes, but it’s rare that they show you the failed versions to teach you something!

All of these are great for explaining the process of cooking. It’s one thing to just copy a recipe, but understanding the why behind it is so much more useful to teaching you how to cook in general. That helps you build overall skills, and develop the ability to modify recipes, improvise, and maybe even develop your own recipes.

I’ll also second Chef John and Babish. When I go looking for a specific recipe, they’re names I look out for and know have good information. I also quite like Adam Ragusea, but he is the reason I installed SponsorBlock. (He’s gotten much better, but there was a particularly annoying period where he was REALLY chasing ad dollars. Can’t really blame him, he has a family and wanted to make a career of the channel, and did.)

Best of luck! Cooking can be fun, and such a good skill to have. :)

Soup is the garbage disposal for your fridge. As long as it’s not actively rotting, throw it in a pot and boil in for two hours, it will taste pretty good. The more different things you add, the better it tastes.

Any time you eat meat, keep the scraps/fat bits/bones, stick them in a container in your freezer. Toss that in the soup pot.

this recipe is one of my favourite things to eat. it’s am gonna break it down into phases for you, so it’s not so difficult at first.

first time around, just fry 500 grams of ground beef until nice and brown. while it’s cooking, make this sauce :

1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce 4 cloves garlic finely minced or grated 1 tablespoon sesame oil 2 tablespoons brown sugar 1 tablespoon rice vinegar 1 tablespoon ginger root grated 1 teaspoon chili garlic sauce (sambal olek)

once the beef has finished cooking, add the sauce to the pan, and cook for a minute or two. serve it over rice.

if you like that recipe, then you can make it fancier and tastier.

this time, you want to first chop up an onion, and cook that until translucent. when you first put the beef in the pan, chop up some baby bok choy, (or something similar), into strips. wash it. then when the beef is almost finished cooking, add the bok choy to the pan. cook until it starts to wilt. (usually my pan is very full from the bok choy, but don’t worry… it will decrease in size as it cooks).

once the bok choy has wilted, add the sauce like before, and cook for 1-2 minutes, and serve over rice.

next time you make the recipe :

before you start cooking, get a carrot, and shred it. place it in a bowl, and add 1 Tbsp rice vinegar 1/2 tsp sugar pinch of salt mix that up, and leave to sit while you do the rest of the recipe. congrats - you just made ‘quick pickled carrots’ which sounds fancy when you tell people.

make the rest of the recipe as before, but this time, also cut up some green onions, so that when you’ve finished cooking, you add rice to the bowl, put the ground beef on top of that, then add your shredded carrot, and sprinkle some green onions on top. now you have a fancy presentation, and even more flavour!

the ultimate version of this :

do all the cooking and prep mentioned above, but this time also dice up some cucumber. you will also need a few extra garnishes here : sesame seeds, Kewpie mayo, sriracha, crispy fried onions, and crunchy fried garlic.

this time you are going to plate everything in separate piles. rice, beef, cucumber, carrots, and green onions. then you want to drizzle really thin lines of Kewpie back and forth, across the whole dish. then rotate the plate/bowl 90 degrees, and do the same with sriracha, being careful here, if you don’t want too much heat. then sprinkle the sesame seeds, fried garlic and fried onions over everything. congrats - you have now made a restuarant-worthy and trendy Korean Beef Bowl!!!

feel free to ask questions, because i think there’s a huge chance that i didn’t explain this very well. good luck on your culinary journey!

Honestly most home cooking is not very hard. You do need to be taught a few basic concepts, like how to chop vegetables, what different cooking methods like frying/sautéing/baking/roasting/etc refer to, but once you have the basic concepts down, you can do the majority of recipes you find online.

For learning the basics, there are quite a few cookbooks aimed at complete beginners. I was staying with a friend and rifling through her cookbooks—she had one aimed at students that spent time explaining all the basic cooking concepts at the start of the book before you get to the recipes.

Where the skill comes in is stopping following recipes and being able to come up with a dish that tastes good. It takes a while to learn good flavour combinations, when’s the right time to add an ingredient, how exactly to cook each ingredient, etc. But I would say a beginner can follow the majority of recipes I see shared around online. Just look for recipes that sound like something you actually want to eat. Read the instructions to check they don’t sound too hard, and then go for it. Good luck, and enjoy your cooking journey!

Yooooo this community slaps, what is going on? Literally every post a useful piece of advice. You rock!

Chef John (FoodWishes) and Alton Brown on youtube are good resources. Chef John makes a lot of relatively simple homey-meals. Things you could take to a picnic, or serve at thanksgiving: potatoes au gratin, casseroles, that sort of thing. His oleo-saccharum lemonade is a winner. Alton brown is more of a food nerd. He often makes nostalgic things and always tries to elevate whatever he cooks to perfection.

I recommend starting with soup. It’s extraordinarily versatile and you can make large batches if you’ve got food storage (or hell, sometimes I just stick the whole pot in the fridge and dip in the ladle as-needed. does tie up the pot though.). Soup is an excellent way to use up many leftovers; fried rice is a good ‘refrigerator magnet’ too.

Fellow non-cook that sometimes dabbles here: my favorite easy food prep is a pack of ramen, then add a whole bunch of stuff I like. I cook this according to the directions on the packet, but while it’s boiling I’ll add a teaspoon of my favorite hot sauce, some smoked tofu, maybe some kimchi, corn, beans, and/or whatever I’m in the mood for.

You might be tempted to go buy a bunch of equipment but you can get really far with the basics once you’ve learned good technique:

• a decent paring knife and 10" chef’s knife (Victorinox fibrox are decent quality and not too expensive as knives go)
• an end grain wood cutting board
• a medium sauce pan
• one or two sheet pans
• one 8" or 10" stainless steel skillet
• a spatula and some wooden spoons
• a pair of tongs
• stackable measuring cups and spoons

That will get you very far. If you find you’re enjoying cooking and want to improve your kit, you can add things as you need them (whisk, masher, boning knife, stock pot, etc.). Try to avoid buying unitaskers. You can mince garlic with a knife, so unless you’re mincing a ton of garlic, a garlic press is probably not a good investment because it only does one thing.

There are a ton of video tutorials for learning knife skills online but if you want something printed, Henkels has a Complete Book of Knife Skills that I’ve found very useful.

You’ll want to keep your knives sharp. You can learn to do it yourself with a double sided 400/1000 water stone and a video tutorial. A ceramic pull through sharpener will do in a pinch but they’re pretty hard on the knives. Metal pull through sharpeners will destroy the edges of your knives, so don’t buy one of those. Also don’t use anything motorized because the heat can damage the heat treat and wreck your knife.

You will read on the Internet that cast iron is the One True Material for skillets and frying pans. People who say this are in a cult. Cast iron pans are great for searing because they retain a lot of heat but stainless clad aluminum will give you better control and more even heating, Teflon will give you better non-stick performance, etc. Personally, I reach for my stainless steel skillet most often, which is why I recommended it above. You may also read that you should never wash cast iron with soap because it will ruin the seasoning. This is bunk. The seasoning is chemically bonded to the surface and you can’t scrub it away unless you’re physically removing material with hard abrasives or caustic chemicals. Soap and a scrubby will not hurt your pan. Do thoroughly dry anything cast iron after you wash it, as it will rust if you don’t.

There is probably a restaurant supply in your area and they are probably open to the public. That’s a great place to get things like skillets, sheet pans, racks, ramekins, tongs, etc.

Pick up (or borrow from the library) a cookbook that teaches cooking technique through recipes. These are some of my favourites:

• Ruhlmann’s Twenty - Michael Ruhlmann
• The Food Lab - J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
• Salt Fat Acid Heat - Samin Nosrat

It’s old, but I taught myself to cook watching Good Eats. His stuff isn’t always the best, and some of his methods are out of date now. He makes you understand what you are doing though, not just showing recipes.

I’m re-watching through with my kiddo now as he learns to cook and it still holds up. He’s in middle school and just started a home cooking class and has been cooking circles around his classmates.

Pasta sauce: The jarred stuff is loaded with salt. Get 2 cans of diced tomatoes (I get sodium-free petite diced) and one 6oz can of tomato paste. Dump them in a pan to heat up and add black pepper, basil, oregano, and whatever other spices you want to taste. It’s nearly as easy and tastes way better.

Omelet: I tried finding the minute long video that taught me this a few years back but it’s now lost to the sea of how to omelet videos out there. Crack the egg(s) into a bowl and nothing else. Blend them with a fork or whisk. Heat the pan on the stove to 3, 4 max. Lower is better. Then throw enough butter on to melt across the pan, maybe a tbsp. Cover the surface with the melted butter, then dump the egg blend on top. You should use enough eggs to just barely cover the pan about a half centimeter thick. Let it cook all the way through, it can take a bit on the low heat, but it’s worth it. As it finishes cooking through throw some shredded cheese, spinach, or whatever on top. Fold it over however you like. I really wish I could find that video because it’s a lot easier to see than to read.

A few suggestions. My first is to keep what you are doing about fancying up store bought items. It’s so easy to elevate a store bought sauce with some herbs, spices or a few cooked items like sausage or mushrooms. Go crazy with whatever you think will taste good. Add way more herbs and spices then a recipe suggests to see what it tastes like. From here you can spend more time to find what is “worth it” to cook “from scratch”. Unless you are a professional kitchen there’s always items you will make and those you buy.

Second if you want to learn the science and technique of cooking (which you might not want to) there’s one cookbook you need. Salt, Fat, Acid Heat will talk about what you need in each dish. There’s also a netflix series about it if you want a preview. Have fun and eat!!!

It’s nice to see people taking an interest into new stuff, especially their food! Not every meal can (nor should) be a gourmet meal, but there are many easy and cheap options. I see many suggestions regarding rice and stews, both great base options, but might I recommend soups! I also highly recommend getting a hand blender to easily make good and nice-tasting soups (or smoothies in the summer :) ).

I’ll even throw in an easy recipe:

• 1kg tomatoes
• 1 zucchini/courgette
• 1 bell pepper or sweet pepper
• 2 onions
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1L of bouillon (water + bouillon cubes is the easiest)
• cooking oil (pref. olive oil) Optional additional spices:
• basil
• oregano
• sage
• thyme

Dice the onions and mince the garlic (or chop it finely). Cut the tomatoes, zucchini, and pepper into small pieces. Bake the onions, garlic, and bell pepper in some cooking oil on low-medium heat until the onions start to brown. Add the tomatoes and zucchini. Put the lid on the pot and leave for 5-10 minutes. If the tomatoes are soft and the skin starts to come loose, they’re good for the next step. Add the bouillon and any other optional spices and bring to a simmer. Boil for at least 30 minutes, but longer is perfectly fine. Blend the soup - be aware that it’s hot, so wear long sleeves and oven mitts. Serve immediately or keep it for a day to let the flavours set.

This is a great base soup that you can tweak as much as you like. Want a sweeter soup? Swap the pepper for some carrots or pumpkin! Want a more acidic and fresh taste? Add some white wine vinegar. You can also add some chickpeas or meatballs and vermicelli after blending if you want a more filling soup. Be sure to boil the soup for some time after blending in that case.

I recommend investing in a nicer rice cooker. The cheaper ones always burn the bottom. Them use some boxed broth or stock instead of water. You can throw in a can of chicken and add cheese at the end and you have easy chicken and rice.

America’s Test Kitchen. Super great information and taught in a way that doesn’t require specialized tools. It’s PBS so no sponsorships or anything. Lan Lam is my favorite. They have full episodes on YouTube as well.

https://youtube.com/@americastestkitchen

Also, use this for recipes. It’s open source and free. Also you can use their import tool to scrape recipes of ATK workout paying. I do recommend supporting them, but sometimes you don’t have the money. The app looks real cool for atk.

RecipeSage:
https://recipesage.com/
You can even “add it to your phone’s desktop” and it will behave like an app. :⁠-⁠)

Cook for your friends. Few things bring people together like food.

Start with one or two close friends. They’ll be tickled pink. Repeat every week or so.
Try your food experiments out on them.
Chanced are they’ll get into it too.

That feedback can be great motivation and it lets people know to buy you cooking gear for holidays.