I can't cook.

[Dace]

Please do PM me

Since I am putting together a cooking class, covering the basics is important so if I can see what it is that you are hoping to find it will help me in my research.

You are exactly right about the recipes...recipes are great to give you ideas on different flavor combos but really all you need to know is the basic preparation method...then you can tweak things to your personal taste.

Simple example is roasted potatoes (or any veg) roasting in the oven gives a nice rich flavor. All you need to add is some sort of oil to help them brown and help seasonings stick, salt & pepper and a splash of acid (balsamic, white wine or white wine vinegar, lemon or lime juice) to give them a little zip and what ever seasonings ( herbs & spices) are going to give it the flavor you want ( compliment your meal). Balsamic, garlic & rosemary....white wine, lemon & thyme....lime, cilantro & cumin.....the combinations are pretty endless. It is more about understanding the method and putting together interesting flavor combos.

 

[freemotion]

And you learn the methods from following recipes, unless you are fortunate enough to be taught the basic methods.

Equipment is important, too. I could not figure out why I could not make flavorful sauces like my mothers until one day I went to her house and made a dish using her cast iron skillet, under her direction. I did everything the same, but I did not have my non-stick skillet. The dish was absolutely fantastic. I no longer have ANY non-stick cookware with the exception of a small skillet for dh to cook his eggs in. I use a small cast iron skillet for mine.

 

[patandchickens]

And you learn the methods from following recipes, unless you are fortunate enough to be taught the basic methods.

Well, up to a point. Obviously you have to start with *a* method *to* learn, which sometimes involves a recipe.

But recipes don't usually teach methods -- only experience does. Like, when a recipe says "heat oil in skillet, brown meat, then add..." there is a vast amount that's being glossed over, there, about HOW to brown the meat. For which I honestly think, unless you have someone looking over your shoulder to help, intelligent experimentation is required.

Also it seems like a large number of people (certainly not everyone, but a LOT, these days) mistake recipes for technique, as if a recipe will tell you everything you need to know to make that dish well, and as if just getting a lot of books out of the library and making a gazillion different recipes will turn you into a good cook.

Whereas it is pretty definitely true that you have to ride a lot of *different* horses to become a good rider, I think that the opposite is true of cooking... you have to have some dishes that you make over and over and over and over, paying attention and experimenting slightly all the while, in order to become a good cook. (Obviously you can make other things *too* , but I don't think you can really be good at even a simple thing like browning meat effectively until you have browned ONE cut of ONE kind of meat in ONE way for ONE recipe a whole big lotta times, and learned from the accidental and intentional variation you experience.

And again, as far as using whatever's in the pantry, you have to have a small number of basic recipes to base things on, but then I just don't see any substitute for winging it (mildly at first) and learning what happens.

JMO of course (oh, and baking is a BIG exception, it takes a long long time before you can successfully wing it in *baking*, I don't ever expect to get there myself ),

Pat

 

[Dace]

And you learn the methods from following recipes, unless you are fortunate enough to be taught the basic methods.

JMO of course (oh, and baking is a BIG exception, it takes a long long time before you can successfully wing it in *baking*, I don't ever expect to get there myself ),

Pat

I agree Pat...baking is much more of a science. If you do not follow a recipe to the letter, you will most likely have a flop!

 

[patandchickens]

I agree Pat...baking is much more of a science. If you do not follow a recipe to the letter, you will most likely have a flop!

Or in the case of me, sometimes even if I *do* follow a recipe to the letter I get a flop LOL

I will stack my ability to whip together a tasty whatever out of whatever's available, against any nonprofessional cook around, but I am a terrible baker Partly thru lack of sincere practice, and partly for the same reasons that I also more or less suck at bench chemistry

Pat

 

[freemotion]

And you learn the methods from following recipes, unless you are fortunate enough to be taught the basic methods.

JMO of course (oh, and baking is a BIG exception, it takes a long long time before you can successfully wing it in *baking*, I don't ever expect to get there myself ),

Pat

I agree Pat...baking is much more of a science. If you do not follow a recipe to the letter, you will most likely have a flop!

Well, I started baking as a rather young child decades ago. By the time I was 14, I was making the bread for the family in 6 loaf batches.

So with more experience with baked goods than the average person, less than the professional, I look at baked goods recipes as mere suggestions! And they always come out edible, even if not the way I'd hoped.

I will have to concede to the above opinions somewhat, but not fully. It is easier to learn methods from someone, yes, and I watched my mother for years, which helped a lot. But if you have no one to help you, you can still learn through trial and error and a bunch of recipes if you persist and don't give up in spite of failures and just give the really nasty stuff to the chickens!

We also have the internet now, so there are some pretty cool things available, like videos on youtube to help get a visual.

Some day I hope to help young (and not so young) people learn some of the skills that they might not have anyone to teach them. In my retirement. Not having any kids of my own, I will be auntie to anyone who wants me!

 

[reinbeau]

I have to tell a funny story. This past summer I was up at our (the New England Unit of the Herb Society) herb garden at Elm Bank, we've got a nice demonstration garden up there. We were participating in a festival being put on by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. We were selling little herbal crafty things. I was wandering around the herb garden when a Chinese woman came in with her family. This lady was from mainland China, very knowledgeable about their herbs, and interesting in learning about ours. We walked around and talked about many things. Then she went up to the sale table and I resumed my duties up there. She came upon our cookbook, one the unit put together from all of our favorite recipes, we selling for $12.00. She was fascinated with it, she didn't know what a recipe book was. She told me they didn't have anything like that in China, you learned how to cook from those around you, your mother, grandmother, aunt, whatever, nothing was written down to pass along, it was all learning by doing. I had never heard that! She was very interesting to talk to!

I know how to cook, many things I don't use recipes for, but I do love to read and collect them, and will use them if they appeal to me - I always make it per the recipe the first time, and then go from there if I think it needs tweaking. I've been cooking since I was little, my mother is an excellent cook and we always had great food on the table even if I was a finicky eater who wouldn't eat anything that touched (oh, yea, I was one of them!). Now I'll basically eat anything that doesn't eat me first!

 

[freemotion]

Hah! I still don't like my food items to touch each other. I like to experience each food's flavors individually.

My mother still insists that as a child I could pick the ingredients out of a meat loaf and put them in piles on my plate! Of course, I have no recollection of this, so it must not be true....

Funny about the lack of recipes in China. I'll have to ask my friends who lived there if they noted that. Wow.

 

[poppycat]

You can wing it in baking, just not quite the same ways that you can with pantry cooking. If you have a "core" recipe for cake, bread, cookies, you can make substitutions of like ingredients. But you have to have experience as to what flavors combine well AND you have to maintain proper ratios of fat, dry ingredients and leavenings. (now that Pat mentions it it's an awful lot like bench chemistry except that thank god I'm not graded on my baking by my former o-chem professor or I'd never set foot in the kitchen again)

I think in all cooking you have to accept that you will have some flops. We try to laugh about them and then I just try again tomorrow.

The other thing that I think is really important for good cooking is a certain appreciation for food. My sister CANNOT cook to save her life. But on closer inspection, she just looks at eating like another inconvenient body function. She eats for fuel period. So she doesn't pay attention to things that taste really good (or bad) and why they do.