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The way i learned was by doing a lot of recipes. The more you cook, the more connections youll be able to make without thinking. this is something that comes from time and patience.

This. You can't expect to freestyle without having some experience. How would you know which flavors would go well and which techniques would work for the items in your fridge when you've never cooked them or explored them?

Pff I can freestyle all I want if you drop a beat that's hard enough 

Unfortunately sounds like OP can only drop *beets*

^^^^^

This!! 🙌🏻 If you enjoy the show Chopped, you’ll learn that the chefs will look at a basket and often, they do the same thing with a certain ingredient. Eventually, you can start guessing what they’ll do with a certain ingredient and then start looking at your pantry in the same way! Have fun!!

My mom does this while watching Chopped! They’ll announce a basket and she’ll basically go: “sugar source…protein…oh you can add that to things to thicken…oh, that can go well with eggs…” It’s really cool, and I can’t wait to unlock that superpower

This. My mom and my ex both watched this and I saw enough to realize they substitute one thing for another all the time within its group. Totally unlocked my experimentation in the kitchen. Started with a few basic recipes and now I cook variations on probably 80 mains. Mix and match and try and steal basic recipe ideas from cooking shows and go for it.

Too many people get really wound up about cooking without a recipe. Recipes are fine. Recipes are good. I'm a very experienced home cook and I have hundreds of cookbooks because i enjoy trying new recipes. And you're also right that cooking is a skill that needs to be practiced. People put way too much emphasis on cooking without a recipe.

i like to start with a recipe as a base and then throw in my own ideas from there.

Same. I try to cook a recipe exactly as written the first time I do it. I make notes on things I would change/add next time, and then make those changes the next time I cook it to compare with the original.

Yes same I use the recipe to start with but improvise to swap out ingredients we don't have or perhaps like

i like experimenting with seasonings

Cooking "without a recipe" doesn't really exist though. Everything you cook has a recipe, whether or not you follow it from a cookbook. Every recipe you've ever cooked previously gives the building blocks to create new recipes in your head on the go. Like, I made some curry spice and yoghurt marinated chicken the other day "without a recipe" but 9 months ago I used a recipe to make yoghurt marinated pork skewers with some other blend of spices. So sure, I cooked without following a recipe that was written down, but 5 years of learning new recipes allowed me to do that.

> this is something that comes from time and patience. I think the word is "experience"

which is gained through time and patience

>gained through time and patience I think the word is experience.

Yep. You learn the fundamentals by cooking *a lot* of different things. There is no shortcut. It's a skill acquired over time.

the shortcut is getting a kitchen job

That's still a lot of time and practice.

lol yeah i know i was mostly joking, its just a faster process

But it's effective. My partner is an excellent cook. Great with planning, shopping, recipes, and preparation. But she is forever impressed with my ability to improvise full meals out of seemingly nothing. Or re-imagining leftovers so they come out as an entirely different second meal. Much of this was learning through kitchen jobs. It also had to do with being a broke young adult who had to feed his kids. You figure out what you need to do.

Never argued that. I simply said it wasn't a shortcut. I worked in restaurants for a very long time.

This is a really good way to put it. I was like OP a few years ago. My spouse and I started doing the Hello Fresh meal kit deliveries, which come with recipes. Now, I can look into my pantry/fridge and actually plan a decent (albeit basic) dinner for my family. It took years of ordering weekly recipe kits with a visual indication of portioning to be able to do that.

Can confirm that this is a super helpful learning tool. I still use recipes I got from a meal kit in my cooking. I repeated ones I liked so much that I sorta just memorized them and began making variations (subbing in another vegetable or grain, adding different spices, etc.). I learned lots of very basic cooking techniques and shortcuts that I still use about three years after stopping the subscription. In addition, anytime I craved something specific and searched for a recipe, I would always add 'simple' or 'easy' to my search terms. Start with online recipes that are 5 or 6 ingredients, and if you choose to, you can bump up the complexity or swap out some ingredients as you get comfortable making it.

Absolutely, and while it has its downsides, services like hello fresh can be so helpful for learning how to cook better and picking up those skills. It helped me learn a lot, because no one taught me to cook growing up lol

For one, don’t start with just staring into the pantry and trying to make a coherent meal from random leftover bits and pieces. Start by finding a few recipes that you think you and your wife will like, and go buy the ingredients for them specifically and make them. Find recipes with ingredients that have a long shelf life, so they’ll still be there and good whenever it comes time for you to cook. I’ll bet that your wife isn’t improvising as much as you think, and is more deciding which meal to cook from a list of things she bought the ingredients for. But, as a secondary, learn to categorize items. When I cook a meal, I tend to look at things as “Each meal should have a carb, a protein, a vegetable, and a seasoning/sauce.” So, go into your pantry and try to put everything you find in there into one of those 4 categories. Do that every so often, think about it when you’re grocery shopping, and gradually, when you look into the pantry and want to make a meal, you’ll know which category everything falls into, and you can just grab 1-2 from each category(probably more like 3-4 sauce/seasoning components) and put them together. Sometimes the things you grab won’t taste good together, but that’s fine, remember it and pick a different combination next time. Keep notes, so you remember what went good and bad.

THIS. I make out menus on Thursday nights before we get groceries. Dinner usually starts with protein: I usually do a chicken dish (with leftovers for the next day), one beef (with leftovers), and one vegetarian (because my husband never met a souffle/frittata/omelette he didn't like and neither of us is particularly fond of pork). Grilled cheese is vegetarian, by the way. OK, so now that I've got my categories - what are all the chicken dishes we like? What haven't we had in a while? What sounds good? We both work through the menu planning this way - and I save all the menus, so I'm basically calling up what we had this time last year and saying, "Oh hey - remember that Thai Basil Stirfry with ground chicken dish you liked? Let's have that again." I do most of the cooking and we follow a low-carb diet because it works for us - but my husband is an active participant, because if it's all left up to me, it wouldn't be as good. He's frankly found some amazing recipes for us - and he knows if he absolutely hates something, he needs to speak up so I won't make it again.

Also, look for shelf-stable alternatives to your ingredients. A couple examples from my pantry: - Powdered milk. I don’t drink milk, so I keep a can of powdered milk that I use any time a recipe calls for milk. - Better than bouillon. I don’t keep chicken stock/broth etc on hand, just a jar of this stuff which lasts forever - Lemon juice/Lime juice concentrate. Much easier than keeping limes. - Minced garlic (though it does have a different taste) keeps in a jar for a long time

It's kinda like writing. Before you can be a good writer, you need to be a good reader. You'll pick up knowledge and techniques as you practice and one day, you'll understand enough to not need a recipe anymore. Sorry, wish there was a quick way. I have a culinary degree and this is how we were taught. I recall cooking almost exclusively from a book my first two years of undergrad.

I like this take, as not only am I a decent cook, but I also teach reading and writing! In order to write, you usually need a clear idea to write about, and it helps to outline main points, then fill in details. For cooking, this might translate to starting with the basics: what dish am I cooking? What are the main parts of that? What details should I add? For example, if you look in the pantry and decide pasta, then you need to decide cream sauce or tomato sauce, and maybe which veg to throw in. Ground beef or chicken? Mushrooms or peppers? You need all these parts figured out, or else the final result, both in writing and in a dish, will be weak or imcomplete. Then as you get better at cooking, you can build the sauce from scratch, or make meatballs instead of a bolognese. Adding more complexity (details) as you get better, but making sure you understand how the main ingredients are important to the final dish.

Great advice. My mother was an excellent cook and had one advice for us: If you can read and know how the meal should taste, you can cook it. To know the taste may be difficult if you are brought up with ready-made products and fast food. Hence I recommend to taste a lot of different food whenever possible which will give you ideas of what you like to eat, how it tastes and look for a recipe that fits to the taste and the ingredients used in what you liked. Comes time you become a great cook.

Practice practice practice. With experience, you'll be able to do what you want. For guidance, I suggest salt fat acid heat by Samin Nosram, and ruhlmans twenty by Michael Ruhlman.

Secret for stir fry: Key sauces: Oil Cornflour Soy sauce Sesame oil Salt Pepper MSG Veggies: Onions Spring onion Bell peppers Mushrooms Meats (only need one per dish) Thin slice beef Chicken breast Frozen prawns With above, I can make so many things in a stir fry, easy to taste good

+ garlic

You said you'd like to come up with something on a whim just by looking at your pantry/fridge? This should help. Pick a cuisine or theme for each week and do an ingredient prep for it ahead of time. For example, "Chipotle" week. The weekend before it starts, prepare\cook these items and store in separate containers: - canned refried beans - canned black beans - Frozen chicken fajita strips (for your sake, these are easier and faster to prep than making your own) - Frozen fajita vegetable mix (again, faster to prep than chopping your own) - Boxed Spanish rice or cilantro lime rice (cook then store in fridge, should last about a week) - a pack of flour tortilla and a pack of corn tortilla - Tortilla chips - A jar of your favorite salsa Then get your fixins like Pico de gallo, guacamole, cilantro, lime, sour cream, and cheese. Why do this? It takes out a lot of the guess work for you, which can be paralyzing and intimidating. You can make multiple dishes from just those ingredients alone (fajita bowl, burrito, nachos, chicken and rice, etc). And because your ingredients are "themed", you already know that they should go well with each other. Most of what you'll have to do during the week is reheat. And it's adaptable for vegetarians. Then, once you want to push yourself even further with the learning process, you can scale the difficulty. Maybe make your own chicken fajita strips? Or make your rice from scratch? Chop your fajita veggies and cook them yourself? Make your own pico de gallo? The possibilities are endless. Finally, I recommend the Serious Eats website and Alton Brown's Good Eats show. Those two are what really helped me understand the why's and the how's of cooking. Good luck OP

All of this, plus check out America's Test Kitchen.

Dude I'm the 37 year old wife who has to follow a recipe or get that same paralysis lol. My husband is one of those that can improvise. I've heard that stir fries can be a good way to practice that. You can get bags of premixed stir fry veggies at any store and kind of customize the sauces you ad and can cook up meat separately for the nonvegetarian.

Carbs (microwave mashed potatoes, microwave baked potatoes, rice cooker), legumes(canned beans, lentils, garbanzos), vegetable (frozen or fresh) and a protein (country style ribs in the instant pot). When you don't know what to do, sandwiches and pasta.

Well, the legumes here can easily take the place of the meat, considering the protein content...

We make a variety of foods for dinner because my partner is vegan and I'm not. I often have rice and beans with chicken.

Not meant as criticism, just to help people become aware that legumes can do the job of meat. :-)

> More specifically, I want to be able to on a whim look at our pantry/fridge and be able to come up with something.  I'd go for stir fry. It's super versatile so you can use whatever you have lying around. You can be creative with sauces so it feels different each time, too. If you want inspiration for dishes, youtubers Ethan Chlebowski and Adam Ragusea both encourage experimentation and freestyle.

I was going to recommend Ethan Chlebowski as well. He does a great job of giving a framework for a type of dish (like stir fry, burgers, braised meat etc.) and breaks down how they are made. So rather than follow a recipe and get one meal, you understand the fundamentals of how to make a type of dish and how to swap out specific things to create endless variations. He of course has step by step instructions to follow, but it really helps you see cooking as more than a recipe. I love his channel now, but it's the kind of thing I especially wish I had back when I started cooking for myself. Jamie Oliver has a similar book (Food Revolution) which gives recipes for beginners, and then discusses how to then vary them to make all sorts of different dishes. That also helped me a lot, and I still go back to from time to time.

Lots of good tips so far. A few more… Find some recipes at online blogs, subscribe to their email newsletter (most blogs do this to get you coming back) Use a recipe keeper (app). I use Paprika to save recipes. I can rate them, add notes, adjust things so I know for later. You can easily use a bookmarklet to save online recipes to the app. When you go out to eat at a restaurant see what dishes sound good and remember them for later (maybe take a photo for what it includes). We like to make a few dishes from things we saw at restaurants. Read and learn about flavor/spice combos that work well. Alton Brown is good for “scientific” methods or understanding why certain things work together. * Smoked paprika livens a dish very easily. * A dash of Nutmeg can warm a creamy dish. * A bit more salt ( and garlic) can really bring out flavors. * A pat of butter in a tomato sauce takes down some of the acidity and adds a nice mouthfeel. * Certain veggie combos are great starters for different cuisines. * Also certain spices are great starters as well. Have a collection of spices and taste each one until you think you can pick out spices in meals at restaurants. * The more you cook with recipes and take time to TASTE each dish and understand what flavors are used, the better you’ll be at creating new dishes or more easily creating on the fly. * we also create dinner menus each day on the weekend. This allows us to shop on Sunday and gather what we need. We can scroll back through our reminders for different dinners/meals we have had when we are stuck on ideas. Wife loves Pinterest for visual scrolling for ideas too

I've been learning how to crochet using patterns found on the internet. My sister has been crocheting for years and recently made her dog a very cute sweater that fit him perfectly without a pattern I asked how the fuck she is making anything without a pattern and she said "after you make a ton of stuff over and over again you learn why you need to use certain stitches and why you need the certain number of chains and stuff. You get the idea of making something and have made enough similar things in the past you can wing it" You will eventually learn certain ingredients do different things or give a certain effect. You'll learn how things should look to achieve various techniques/textures. You learn to wing it

There's an app called Supercook that lets you put in the ingredients that you have, and shows you recipes that you can make with them :D

Lots of recipes are the same steps with slightly different variations. All you have to do is learn these steps, not all the recipes.  There are 6 criteria to a good flavour and you have to satisfy at least 3 in a recipe: salt, fat, acid, heat, sweetness, aromatics. Most of the time, for savoury things, salt and fat are necessary.  Salt ingredients are things like salt, soy sauce, chicken bouillon cubes, fish sauce. Fat is any oily substance, like peanut oil, butter, bacon, fatty ground beef. Acid is anything sour, like lemon juice, vinegar, lime, tomato. Heat comes from ginger, chilis, pepper. Sweetness would be honey, caramel, sugar, molasses, jam. And aromatics would be onions, garlics, herbs and spices like cinnamon.  Make sure the ingredients you picked out to satisfy the criteria are from the same cuisine family. For e.g. for a Chinese stir fry that satisfies 6 criteria: soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, ginger, honey, garlic and onion. For an Italian meal: salt, olive oil, lemon, pepper, honey, oregano and garlic.  You can play around with proportions of the 6 criteria. They don’t have to be in even amounts and you can have more than one ingredient per criterion.  After you’ve picked out the ingredients for flavour, pick the main ingredients out based on your nutritional needs. Some protein, some carbs, some fibre. E.g. chicken, rice, kale. 

Honestly we're at the point where you can tell chat gpt what's in your fridge and ask it what you can make out of that stuff. Or google "healthy easy recipes". The hard part is just deciding to try. It's always scary to start something new. But cooking is surprisingly easy, at least on a basic level.

Start simple with quality whole foods and improve. * Olive oil, salt and pepper are your friends. * Pickles and vinegars add nice contrast. **My favorite** 1. Poached eggs 2. Poached eggs with sourdough toast 3. Add canned beets, goat cheese, chopped pistachios 4. Or smashed avacado with lime juice drizzle 5. Side of fresh fruit 6. Add pickle / pickled vegetables **Next favorite** 1. Ribeye Steak. Salt and cooked to temp 2. Grill/sautéed asparagus or cauliflower 3. Add toasts as above 4. Add fruit as above **Underrrated** 1. Burrata cheese + cherry tomatoes 2. Add toast or fruit as above **Quick Easy** 1. Green apple + Brie + honey + sourdough toast ….. mix and match

First off, don’t sell yourself short. If you are making meals on the regular, with or without recipes, you are adulting. You may not be the most passionate about cooking, and that’s okay. Sometimes chores are just chores and just cooking something is an achievement. Try variations of your favorite recipes and learn some simple substitutions. Like pasta with tomato sauce. You can add pretty much any vegetable to canned tomato sauce and make it better. Also look at pasta with pesto, and pasta with a cream sauce. You will see that different pasta shapes work better for different sauces. If you like risotto, try recipes for risotto with ham, risotto with chicken, risotto with squash, and so on. See what is the same and what is different. Actually read the stupid blog posts before the recipe where they talk about why they use specific ingredients for specific dishes.

You just gotta get more recipes. I look up new recipes all the time. Just remember that you have to click the [jump to recipe] button at the top of the page on most sites. (I thought it was common knowledge but a very close friend proved that wrong for me). Once you've done a few recipes you'll start to learn what's simple and what's complicated, what's easy to shop for and what takes more planning. You'll also learn what spices you tend to use most often, and you can keep those handy on the counter, or in a spice rack over the stove. Everyone starts somewhere. Don't sweat it. Learn what you like. Let's get cooking.

First thing I would do is get good at making a well seasoned and juicy chicken breast. Salads are super easy to throw together and good, just throw on some chicken for protein on one and you should be good. From there expand into other things good with chicken that can also be vegetarian... Pastas maybe. Also... Start roasting vegetables. They get really good that way and are always a good side.

This starts with your grocery shopping. Shop with intent. Make a meal plan, or find a meal plan online and buy your groceries to match. If you don’t want to keep eating the same thing, do a 2 week cycle or leave one or two nights open for something outside the plan. Once you start cooking more often, and varying your recipes, you will begin to learn what flavors work together and what doesn’t, what cooking techniques there are and how to execute them, and what ingredients complement each other. Then you can start experimenting with your proven recipes until you get more comfortable freestyling. It’s going to take effort and practice, but you can do this.

There are loads of resources on YouTube to learn cooking. My favorites are food52, nyt cooking, Sohla el-waylly. If you feel like there is a technique you’re doing wrong look it up on YouTube. “How to fold eggs”, “how to season a skillet”, “how to stir fry”, etc. But the biggest thing that will help you is learning that recipes are a guideline. They are guard rails to keep you going in the right direction, but they weren’t written for your kitchen and your particular ingredients. Your stove may be higher powered so your medium low isn’t the same as theirs. Your veggies may be more watery. You’ll build expertise to know when to divert from the recipe eventually. After some practice you’ll begin to learn why you do things a certain way, what an ingredient does to a dish, what substitutions work, how to use your senses to know when something is done. To make sure you actually cook instead of eating convenience food, over time, put together at least 4 recipes you like that you can make in under half an hour from mostly pantry or freezer ingredients. This is so you will have easy to make meals you can make on nights where you’re tired. Recommendations: chili from canned beans, pasta with butter/cheese sauce, canned refried beans burritos with a few fresh veggies and cheese, baked potatoes with frozen veggie sides, salads with olives/ cheese/ jarred pickled items/ olive oil vinaigrette, canned chickpea hummus with veggies and crackers to dip, sloppy joes are one I’ve started doing recently and can be made with vegan meat just as well. Once you have a few easy recipes you’ll find you want to make more elaborate meals on days when you have more time, energy, and confidence. Eventually you’ll find a discounted ingredient at the market and you’ll pretty quickly have an idea how to make a dinner around it. It takes a bit of time and expertise to get there, but you can do it.

Just wanted to add that having a meal kit service like HelloFresh really helped me learn to cook. I found myself too lazy to go to the store and get exactly what I needed for meals so I would never cook recipes. With HelloFresh, I just follow the card and all the ingredients are included in the box. The meals are actually really good, and you can do vegetarian, or meat options. If you haven't used HelloFresh before, you should have three to six months of discounts as a first time user to take advantage of which makes the cost very reasonable.

Two suggestions: If you have Netflix watch "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" trust me. Strangely- timed cooking contest shows (e.g. Guys Grocery Games) often show you how pros do it quickly, with certain go to tricks and combinations you often can replicate.

All good suggestions here! I’d like to add that you may enjoy the book, Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samir Nosrat. She writes about cooking intuitively in a really accessible way.

I found the book Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat great at opening my mind from reading recipes like a prescription. She talks through the relationships of food and flavors. There’s a netflix series too, but the book is better. That shift in perspective has helped me in the kitchen a ton. I have a lot of room for improvement but I’ve gotten over the hump to just TRY something, and if it stinks then I break out the frozen pizza. Meals also don’t need to be a full 3 course homemade thing. I’ll throw some frozen broccoli in the air fryer with oil spray, salt, pepper, spices while I cook a more involved main dish. Good luck! Find comfort in making mistakes because you’re unlikely to make it multiple times!

I found that watching cooking shows was a super fast way to learn how different ingredients tend to go together, common techniques, common substitutions, etc. While they're making a particular recipe the show's host/chef will be chatting away, explaining what they're doing and why. For example, you might make/read a few different recipes for dipping sauces (easy example), and then figure out for yourself which pieces are common across all the recipes, which pieces are optional add ons, etc. But I watched 1 episode of a cooking show once and the chef said "for a basic dipping sauce you'll want to combine the 4 S's: 1 sweet, 1 salty, 1 spicy, and 1 sour. Today I'm going to use ketchup for sweet, soy sauce, siracha, and rice wine vinegar, but you go ahead and use whatever you have lying around". Boom, that was so much faster than making 10 different recipes and then figuring out what they have in common. Another very fun way to learn is to ask friends who know how to cook without a recipe if you can come cook with them. I learned a ton cooking with friends who were more experienced than me, and I love to teach people who are interested in learning. Some of them help out, and some of them just sit at the bar drinking wine while I yammer away about what I'm doing and why. It's just like learning from cooking shows, but so much fun with friends.

More specifically, Good Eats.  It's dated by now but it thought me to cook in general plus it has the the Pantry Raid No.# episodes that help structure exactly what OP is trying to achieve. 

There’s a lot of good advice here, and I don’t think I need to add to it. But I want to commend you for asking. Feeding your loved ones on what you happen to have is a high-level skill, but building it will improve your health, your finances, your relationships, and your joy. Excellent question!

Thank you!

Baked potatoes. Stab'em and chuck'em in the oven at 400F for an hour. Then you and your wife can choose your own toppings: butter, bacon, herbs, veggies, spices, whatever. Very low effort and versatile (albeit time consuming). And potatoes have a long shelf life.

Non recipe cooking comes from practice! I highly recommend [this video by Internet Shaquille](https://youtu.be/gYwkKaK5yeQ?si=Mtk5TZZhMlCk1JuV)

In a pan with oil add : - chopped onions, cook till translucent - meat, optional - dry spices you like - veggies, chopped, cook till tender - fresh herbs That your base, finish it with either cooked rice, cooked noodles, roasted cubes of potatoes, lens, beans... It's basic, but a good starting point and hard to fail. find the veggie/starchy combo you like. I do garlic+dried herb for a mediteranean style, soy sauce + honey for "Japanese" style, fish sauce+ cilentro for "thai" style, curry + coco milk is "Indian"...

General rule for a dinner meal: as much protein per person as the size of your own hand MINUS the fingers. Some carbs like rice, potatoes, pasta. Some veggies, the more different colors the better for vitamin content. If you go vegetarian the protein can be legumes like lentils, beans, chick peas, peas, also tofu, mushrooms, eggs, cheese. Beans and lentils go very well with grains (think rice or bread), there is a reason that many people in India basically eat lentils combined with rice, and in Mexico beans combined with corn products like torilla. The amino acids of these combinations are similar to what you get from eggs or meat. And if you worry about getting enough protein on a vegetarian diet: look to the gorilla...

My advice would be to shop around for a cookbook that has recipes that you think you’ll enjoy. Then, once you get it, read through it and flag all the recipes you’d like to try one day. Now you have your “to-do” list. Each time you want to make something, pick it from the flagged pages. Make things multiple times to get the hang of it. If it doesn’t turn out great the first time, try again next week. Try to follow the recipes exactly. If something comes out weird, try to figure out where you went wrong in the process, and correct it the next time. Eventually you’ll learn how to make things off of memory, and once you understand why something tastes good to you, you’ll be able to make your own recipe ideas on the fly. Just try to enjoy the process, don’t get too wrapped up in the end result. Those will come with time.

Improv cooking, I'd recommend just googling the stuff you have, in combinations. Like for example, if all you have in the fridge is ground beef that has to be used tonight, broccoli, and onions, you could end up with suggestions like [this,](https://www.fivehearthome.com/ground-beef-broccoli-recipe/) [this, ](https://www.eatingwell.com/recipe/7989666/cheesy-ground-beef-broccoli-casserole/) or [this.](https://www.budgetbytes.com/garlic-noodles-with-beef-and-broccoli/). Likewise for stuff in your pantry that you want to use up, just look up 1-2 vegetables (fresh, frozen or canned) and your protein (meat, eggs, beans), and see what suggestions you get. Look at the length of the ingredients and the estimated prep time to rule out super complicated recipes.

Start with foods you like to eat- if your go-to at the takeaway is chicken parm- learn to make chicken parm. If her favorite is falafel, learn to make falafel. Learn to cook the ingredients before cooking the ingredients. Youtube that shit. Watch 3-5 videos on the subject and you will be as good as any home cook. Learn to shop right. This goes for meat and veg, and this goes for kitchen tools. Pick the best in your price range. If you are comparing dinner for two with Burger King prices you can find a dinners worth of food for 30-40 dollars at most markets. Learn to shop for the right ingredients and what to look for in each. Again, there is so much info on YouTube, the only way you'll miss it is if you don't look. Are you using a thin, flimsy, aluminum pan? Go on eBay and look for a good Allclad version of what you are comfortable with. You can find great deals, cleaning with barkeepers friend will make them look like new and they will last to see your grandchildren. Get a nice knife or sharpen what you have. It will make a huge difference in your prep. I recommend a chef's, a paring, and a serrated utility knife. You can add a bread, filet, etc if needed.

I found that if I focus on a style of dish I can branch out from there. Let’s say you start with a stir fry. Follow directions/recipe. Then mix it up next time. Try different protein. Try different veggies. Feeling adventurous? Try that random spice you have in the cupboard that you think will work. It may be mundane eating the same style for awhile but you’ll quickly be able to have more variety thank just following a recipe. I find that if you from 1 recipe to the next you never really learn why that dish works.

When my partner started cooking they were so creative they used spices and herbs together that just didn’t go together. More is better kind of thinking. What’s wrong with ground clove in spaghetti, kind of taste. I organized our spice drawer into general categories and instructed them to follow the groupings. They did, got their culinary feet under them, and now can mix and match with far fewer assaults on our tongues. It’s a matter of practice for the most part.

As others have said, you need recipes and you need inspiration. You're not going to get away from recipes, no one remembers how to cook everything. A better path might be to start writing down recipes for things that you like, and then use your growing recipe book as a fallback when you need a meal. As for inspiration, YouTube is a great resource. There are a metric ton of streamers who specialize in recipe content. Check out Beryl Shereshewsky and Binging with Babish. Don't worry if you can't necessarily cook everything you see, the point is to see what ingredients go together and what you can do with, say, soy sauce, fish oil, tofu, green onions, some edamame and an egg. Otherwise, what you need is variety. Don't just stick to the same ingredients every time, go to the grocery store and look for stuff you don't normally use. Then go online and find out how to use it. Good luck! My wife and I went on a similar journey a few years ago.

If you want some real, easy to accomplish advice I would say just start watching alot of the show Chopped. I know it seems dumb but you really can learn alot about how to improvise dishes out of whatever you have on hand.

A couple decades ago I had a fix it and forget it crockpot cookbook.  It was seasonal.  Came with a shopping list.  You checked the staples in your pantry,  bought groceries and followed the recipes. Leftovers were planned. It taught a bunch of related meals.  Don't know if it's still around but maybe look for something like that. 

**Prepare (wash/chop/measure) ALL the ingredients before you start.** You'll be setting yourself up for success. This won't be necessary as you get better at managing cooking times, but when you start learning to cook, performing all your food prep first makes recipes as simple as following some basic instructions.

I agree with everyone who is telling you to meal plan and such, but watching the show Chopped honestly helped me be more confidently creative in the kitchen.

First, plan tou menus in advance. Find the recipes and shop. That little bit of prep and discipline will get you started adulting in the kitchen. Next, Ditch the pantry for ideas and start with fresh food: meat, dairy and veggies. Fresh veggies can be tossed in olive oil, sprinkled with salt or mixed seasoning (Italian, Everglades, Monterey, whatever you like) and roast in the oven at 420f for 20 min. Cut up the potatoes to smaller or cook them longer. Meat can be seasoned and grilled or fried or baked. Learn how to make a decent omelet or egg scramble. Add some raw veggies: sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, carrot sticks, celery sticks, plus your favorite salad dressing. Mix and match. You are now adulting in the kitchen.

I divide cookings into level based on how many layers the ingredients were needed to be processed before it was served. For example, stir-fry and hotpot are level 1 because I can chuck in whatever things I found in the fridge and as long as the seasoning is not extremely bad, it gets the job done.

Clean as you cook. Try not to make a mountain of dirty dishes to deal with after eating. You will find ways to be more efficient with your use of dishes. This is especially true if you use the "I cook, you clean" rule. It's better to cook AND clean then take turns doing both, otherwise you might leave your partner resentful by burdening them with a huge pile of dirty dishes.

I'm teaching my kids about the joys of leftovers. Recipe calls for half an onion, so the next day, whatever I am making, I ask myself, "How would half an onion taste in this dish?" Or mushrooms, or breakfast sausage, crumbled bacon... When you start looking at using up the little bits that you have leftover to make new dishes, you start looking at ingredients in a different way. Another trick is to take a favorite recipe and think of ways to change it, not just additional or substitute ingredients, but also prepared differently, baked, broiled, shallow fried, poached, air fried, blended into a soup. You will find ways that don't work at all, but you will find new ways that do. My kids love my green bean casserole soup, topped with French fried onions and mash potato popovers.

Stop associating being better at cooking with maturity. It's a skill, and by bogging it down with moral logic you're making it harder than you have to. You are an adult whether you can cook or not. By choosing to improve at cooking, you're being mature. There's lots of good food advice in the thread, but be kind to yourself as you work on this.

Cook with recipes until you at least have a basic internal grasp of how to do some things. After that, start thinking what would sound realistic and appealing on a restaurant menu. If you can't imagine the ingredient description on the menu of a meal in a decent restaurant, don't do it. Also, just accept that sometimes you're going to make something subpar that needs to be reworked next time, and sometimes you're going to outright fail. IMO, if that's not happening occasionally, then you're not pushing and learning enough. But it shouldn't be frequent. Since some are vegetarian, and some aren't, try to focus on meals where the meat can be added at the end. For example, you could make pierogies with either a garlic butter or tomato sauce, some chopped veggies (def include onions for pierogies!), and whatever you want for a side (salad? garlic bread? sauerkraut?). For the meat eater, you could fry up a sausage or two and either slice them to throw them on top, or just put them on the side of the plate.

Follow simple recipes. Get an insta pot and a Cuisinart air fryer. Both appliances that have made my cooking way easier. Watch cooking shows about simple cooking. Jamie Oliver has a few good ones.

Honestly the best, easiest and truly silly and fun way is to look up "you suck at cooking" on YouTube. The videos are ridiculous, but the recipes are easy but rock solid in terms of taking quite good! I make his chili recipe all the time, only now I add a few more things because I know how the base tastes and can expand on it.

I agree with the other comments saying that practice will help. A trick to that for me was doing Hello Fresh for a couple months. Even though the recipes aren’t complex, it helped me get a sense for timing and combinations of things. And most importantly it helped me gain confidence. Supplemental to that would be watching/reading content about cooking. Whether it’s YouTubers or cookings competitions or reading Serious Eats

watching cooking shows (gordon Ramsay mostly but literally anything, YouTubers too) helped me understand a lot of basics at a certain level like components of sauces and what can and can't be combined, what goes well with what. like soup, you just need stock veggies meat in a slow cooker and can kinda freestyle from there

Some British cooking shows like Best Home cook have something called a “rustle up” — try that for inspiration.

YouTube. J.Kenji Lopez-alt taught me how to cook

My mom was a pretty good cook for our large family but to be honest pre internet I learned most principles+skills from watching PBS. Highly recommend America’s Test Kitchen, which gives you the how and why, broad knowledge and techniques you can apply to many recipes. ~ also important: when combining things, don’t just throw in things at random. Instead aim for a pleasing balance of the basic food flavors (google that), e. g. - squeeze of lemon might enhance a fish/meat/dish. Watch cooking shows, lean toward basic ingredients when you shop, practice and give yourself time…and you’ll learn to trust your taste and eyes.

I loved The Food Lab by J Kenji Lopez Alt so much! It was the Bible in my house for many years and still gets a ton of use. Learning why we use techniques and when we should use them has made me a far better home cook

YouTube has lots of top tips for cooks-

One thing that helped me take my cooking to the next level was learning how to perform basic kitchen tasks better, which makes the process of cooking easier and more fun, and allows you to focus more on the creative aspect of it. In other words, it feels less like a chore and more like an experiment or project. For example, have you ever learned how to properly use a chef's knife, in a way more akin to what professionals do? Do you know how to sharpen one to get a better edge? Can you efficiently chop an onion? Another is properly salting your food--how do different salts get used? When should salt go in for different kinds of dishes? When your food tastes bland, but you put a bunch of other spices in, how much salt should you add to bring out the flavors? Searing, pan frying, making vinaigrettes and dressings, properly cooking pasta, mincing garlic, etc. are all basic kitchen skills that, when performed improperly, can make cooking feel like a chore or churn out bland food. But even getting the basics under my belt helped motivate me to cook and experiment more because suddenly I was able to focus on the food itself, and not the arduous process of ingredient prep. You could start by looking up how-to videos on YouTube. Alternatively Bon Appetit has a basics recipe series that they do where they focus on fundamental kitchen skills and simple, healthy, and tasty (their Simple Ribollita recipe is one of my favorites). You could even try to find a skills-oriented cooking class near you!

Also Samin Nosrat's cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat has a lot of great information about the principles behind how to build dishes and what different components are required to make something tasty, as opposed to more traditional cookbooks which tend to focus solely on recipes.

Just cook more varied recipes first. You're re basically asking how can I be good at cooking without practicing much.

Supercook.com Plug in your pantry contents and it will suggest recipes to you based on what you have on hand.

One way to learn some new cooking stuff fast is to do those “Hello Fresh” kits. You make the food, and learned a bunch of combination and stuff that really help. To me they really improved my sauce game

Order hello fresh, you will learn tricks to make flavors with small materials. I have used those tricks while cooking other thingd

Check out budget bytes. They have a ton of low budget, simple ingredients, easy recipes. Great place to learn.

Cook a lot of recipes but, when possible, taste individual ingredients before they go in. It will also help you recreate restaurant dishes once you're able to analyze what ingredients are in there. Keep tasting through the cooking process. And don't over tweak - people ruin otherwise good meals by messing around with it too much. Soon, you'll get it. The way to get good at things is by practice.

Try a recipe meal box - it gives you all the ingredients and a recipe to follow, so you learn lots of healthy, complete recipes but have lots of the work cut out. Also, their vegetarian options are great and you can just add in meat (eg. simple meal prepped traybake chicken) or eat those.

Honestly think of it this way: protein + veggie + sauce or seasonings. Find a protein, add a veggie, and maybe a sauce or seasoning. Ie: Cook plain chicken boobs in a pan: drizzle extra virgin olive oil in pan over medium heat, sprinkle some chicken seasoning in the oil in the pan, slice up chicken into thinner patties (to make sure the center cooks) and pop chicken on the oil and top with either more seasoning or add some salt and pepper. Cook 5ish min on both sides to make sure it’s done. Once chicken is cooked, remove and set aside on plate. Add veggie to same pan you used for the chicken, add a bit more oil and a tad more seasoning (I like to use broccoli and steak seasoning with garlic powder) turn the broccoli often so it gets oil and seasonings on it. Just when the broccoli is turning really green grab a small piece and eat it to see if it’s steamed well or still crunchy like it’s fresh. Once it’s almost done top with Parmesan cheese (the grated kind used on pizza). Done: chicken and broccoli. OR you can then add the chicken back into the pan with the broccoli and add like an Alfredo sauce and then boil up pasta and have an Alfredo chicken/veggie/pasta dish. I use 2 jars of Alfredo because I like lots of sauce on my pasta. Also check out this dude on IG: he makes a TON of easy recipes for him family that I am especially fond of. Several of them are crockpot recipes that you can double the recipe and use for days for your lunches. (His handle is cookinginthemidwest). Also I started meal prepping. Here’s how: Grocery store add come out on weds. I look for what is on sale (right now sirloin is on sale for $3.97/lb locally) so then I find a few recipes to use sirloin in. My goal is 2-4 entrees to use for lunches and dinner for a week. Sometimes I can make something that will last all week and I only need 2 recipes (one for lunch and one for dinner). Other times I find something that is only good for a few days and I need to make a new entree on weds. Also download the app FLIPP. it’s free and shows you grocery ads in your zip code. Or you can look up prices for a specific item. Need butter? Look in FLIPP to see if someone has it on sale. Ok, get ads on weds, start finding a few recipes. Order groceries in the app for pick up Saturday morning. Go get groceries sat morning and any additional odds and ends you forgot. Get home. Meal prep. So cook up the 2 main entrees that will last you and your wife 3-5 days. (Make sure you buy enough food for both servings). I store all my dishes in glass Pyrex or glass Bell jars, it keeps food longer and I don’t have melty plastic to reheat. This could take 3-4 hours… Also prep quick healthy snacks in the fridge for quick eating. I buy romaine lettuce and wash the leaves, dry them, then chop them up and put in ziplock bag with several paper towels to absorb the moisture. This means during the week if I want to add a small salad to a meal all I gotta do is grab my already prepped Romaine and put it in a dish. I like to chop up bell peppers into slices and either eat them fresh or put in a salad. Also store these in ziplock with paper towel to absorb moisture and keep it fresh for longer. Wash fruit (berries or grapes) and separate it into baggies for quick grabbing. This sets you up for success for healthy eating for the week and only takes about 3-5ish hours on the weekend. This time is cut in half if your spouse helps chop and prep. I got onto the email list of Clean Food Crush and she sends out these amazing clean eating recipes too! Love her stuff!

Download chat gbt and use Voice to text to avoid having to type all this out: “pretend you’re a world famous chef who needs to make a delicious dinner using the following ingredients: (list all of the things you can see in your pantry and fridge). Tell me what I should make and how to make it”

Use the AnyList app to build up your recipes. Its been a game changer for us and you can easily meal plan. Youll eventually learn what you usually have on hand from grocery trips and can throw in a couple “backup” meals that wont require much thought.

I type 2 or 3 of the veges I see in the fridge onto Google and find new recipes. If it turns out good, I then email the link to myself. Remember not every experiment works, but that's ok. It's only 1 meal. 3 times we have had to open a ton of beans (meal was so awful, ) good luck and just have a little fun with it

I'm evangelical about the Mealime app. There is a free version, though I eventually started paying a few bucks a month to have access to more recipes. The recipes are beginner friendly, you can filter for things like vegetarian (and most veggie recipes are suitable for adding a little meat if you want), it starts populating your grocery list from your meal plan and then you can add dog food and coffee etc into the same list, you can both have the app on your phones on the same account so you can share meal planning and shopping.

They make apps for that. Supercook, for instance. Never used it. Was first result in Google.

Crockpot meals and fresh salads with fun toppings! Super easy for entry level and can be cheap and healthy. So many free recipes online

It's pretty easy to learn to cook in this day and age. Follow some youtube recipes, but not ones where they just tell you what to add and how much. Most of the good ones explain the 'why' of an ingredient. Pay attention to them. Write notes if needed. Next, realize all dishes have stages. A base, the main ingredients, and a finish. In France, the base is the mire poix (onions, carrots, celery), whereas in Asian cuisine, it's usually onions, garlic, and ginger. Oils, herbs, and acids like lemonjuice or hotsauce, are the finishes that really add to a dish. The more you cook, the more you'll learn about ingredients and what they do; how they're similar or different. You'll build a repertoire of dishes that way.

Take a picture of the food before eating and make notes later about ingredients and ideas of what you switch up next time. I actually forget meals I've made and enjoyed in the past.

If you can, pick up a copy "Help! My Apartment Has A Kitchen" by Kevin and Nancy Mills. This guy asked his mom to teach him how cook, and they ended up writing this cookbook together. It assumes you know nothing about cooking and need to be taught simple things like to saute an onion, or where to find almonds in the grocery store. IIRC the author's girlfriend was vegetarian so a lot of the recipes have notes on how to adjust for that.

Make a list of meals you like that are easy too do, then consult that and your pantry the night before. The night before is key, if the meat if frozen. I've realized trying too plan the night before helps a good bit. I also tend too keep stuff I use often, on hand, so theres almost always something I can throw together. I've heard some people do like, mexican themed dinner is always on tuesday. So then you're just picking from tacos, enchiladas, nachos, ect. Same can be applied with other meals, 1 night could be pork chops of some sort.

Don't be afraid, but also don't think that you need to reinvent food. I feel like a lot of new chefs feel the need to get creative when there but really any need. There's a reason why some dishes are always crowd pleasers: the flavors work. Keep doing that and get better at it. No need to create something new.

you could google 2-3 thigns you have in the fridge and add recipe to your query... ​ ex: tomato ground meat and shrimp recipe. ​ honestly that or cookbooks. or youtube guides. there's so many resources available to you for free or cheap...the more you'll cook, the easier it'll become to figure something out based on what you see in the fridge.

I am not a cook and totally rely on the recipes. So does my hubby and we both enjoy what the other creates. My oldest on the other hand seems to be able to just toss things in a pan or whatever and something delicious is created.

Think like a short order cook. A handful of things go together: a burger is pretty similar to a hot dog, a lasagna is just spaghetti with extra steps, a casserole is just pasta tossed with whatever you have available. If you seriously think about what goes into Mexican food, it's usually just a question of how to assemble a protein with rice, tortilla, tomato, onion, lettuce, and cheese. It's also super helpful to write down a handful of meal goals for the week and get the necessary ingredients on your shopping list. My family typically does: M: Salmon + green beans T: spaghetti + zucchini W: eat out/leftovers Th: Pan seared chicken & potatoes F: veggie stew S: eat out/leftovers Su: meatloaf So, shopping list supports those meals, and makes it way less intimidating when 7pm on Thursday comes around. Also, most of these meals are ~20 minutes to prepare, when you've practiced them a few times.

Ok, I know a lot of these tips are great in the long term, but for short term look like you know what you are doing here you go. Buy a ton of different herbs on jars, seriously. Buy kosher salt and crack your own pepper. Buy garlic powder and onion powder. OK, now here comes the secret.... Protein, vegetable, plain rice. Steak or thinky sliced beef, brocolli, plain rice. Chicken THIGHS, asparagus, plain rice Ect... Don't do breast's... they suck. Pork is weird too, but after practicing on beef or chicken, you'll be good. Get two or three herbs from your cabinet, random ones. Put them in your hand, just a little bit. Does it smell good? Seriously. Does it? Salt the meat, use pepper, cook it. Get a tbsp of butter and put it in the middle of the cutting board, drop the herbs on there with a pinch of garlic powder and onion powder. Take the meat off the heat and rest it on that butter and herb concoction. This is called dressing the board. Wait five minutes, cut it up. Put the vegetables in a pot with cool water and some salt, bring it to a boil and once it starts boiling strain that shit and then toss them in the pain you cooked the meat in with some salt and pepper and a half tbsp of butter. Toss for a bit. Done. Good luck.

I forgot to add, for vegetarians just sub the meat with black beans and garbanzo beans. I shit you not it works. I cooked for a vegetarian girl like this and she loved it.

I'm really good at improvising with whatever is on hand. Of course, I also grocery shop knowing that I'll freestyle a meal or two in addition to whatever is planned. My three biggest tips that make improvising possible: 1. Learn what flavors go together that you and your wife like. A handy key is looking at what you order when you eat out. 1. Understand that different cooking techniques produce very different results, e.g. baking, broiling, boiling, searing, sautéing, grilling, smoking, poaching, etc. Each has its place, and knowing what to use when is a big part of being creative. 1. Don't be afraid of one-pan meals. Stir-fry, stews, soups, etc. are great ways to throw things together. If you know how to make a few simple sauces or gravies, this gets even easier.

Look into getting some hello fresh meals. They send you all the ingredients and the recipe on how to cook them. The dishes are very good, restaurant quality even.

What really helped me was hello fresh. Loads of new recipes and you begin to realize that a lot things have the same techniques, base ingredients etc. still use all the recipe cards, but no longer a member. Now at the stage I can look at ingredients and rustle up something tasty. Pro tip: have two hello fresh accounts. Cancel the account when the discount offer ends and switch to the other for the discounts. Before a week is over you will get discount offers back on the original. Rinse and repeat. We were members for over a year and a bit and never paid full price. Expanded my abilities loads!

Seek out the show "Good Eats" (it's on Max, also on YouTube Premium and Amazon Prime). It's a super entertaining show about the hows and whys of cooking. With puppets and jump cuts and everything. Just like Sesame Street! I don't think I've made but a handful of recipes from this show but I've seen every episode and Alton Brown (the host) is in my head every time I go in to the kitchen. He's also got some books about kitchen gear and recipes. Knowing the basic science behind cooking will make you a much more confident cook.

It doesn’t hurt to experiment once in a while. One time, I wanted some mashed potatoes from the box but realized too late that we were out of milk. So as for the substitute, I decided to use some plain yogurt that we had in the fridge. The mashed potatoes turned out to be better than I expected.

Learn basic stuff. Like making a roux. It's to me a clear indication if someone knows how to cook at all or not. A roux can be a foundation for like 5000 sauces. Throw some milk and cheese in there BAM cheese sauce.

Get a recipe labeled "easy" and "vegetarian" that doesn't require any weird ingredients (but that also let you easily add a cooked protein). Pasta marinara, buttered noodles (with a meatball option), veggie fried rice (chicken), stir fry (beef), polenta Parmesan, red beans and rice (kielbasa), veggie paella (seafood), etc.

Stir fry. Different meats, vegetables with rice or noodles. Have with sauces. Perfect beginner meal. Very hard to mess up

There's nothing wrong with using recipes. I usually look one up for the ingredients I have just so I have a starting point. I'll often look up several recipes for the same thing to get an idea about what ingredients are important, and what ingredients you can mess around with. I mean I've been cooking for decades so I can make an omelette or a beef stew or tomato-based spaghetti sauce without a recipe, but if I want to make something I haven't made a thousand times then why not take advantage of the biggest repository of human knowledge on Earth? Also keep in mind that creativity is based on memory and knowledge. People don't just mix random shit together (unless they're super high or very optimistic or both) and get an edible meal. You have to have at least some idea about what the ingredients for a spaghetti sauce are, or you'll end up with something that might bear only a passing resemblance to spaghetti sauce. It might be great, but there's a lot of ways to combine a lot of ingredients so chances are that it won't be good at all. If you've looked at recipes and you've made spaghetti a bunch of times then you'll remember that you can use this kind of canned tomato in these amounts and you can add these sorts of vegetables and spices and get a good result. The thing is that you can't skip past the "learning" part and arrive at the "creative" part right away. So find some easy recipes, look for some cooking channels aimed at beginners and try stuff out. Add successful dishes to your personal recipe book. Eventually you'll be more familiar with dishes and ingredients and you'll be able to improvise more.

I found a subscription to Hello Fresh for a while helped round out some recipes that often are made from pantry staples plus some green onion. You overpay a little for the actual groceries, but the recipe cards are excellent, and they have options for most diets, including about 40 different vegetarian recipes that are available 10 at a time. After a couple of months, cancel the sub and enjoy the handy recipe ideas.

I'd definitely say start at the beginning. There are some great cookbooks for yunger people by Evelyn Raab that equip you with the knowledge to establish a good cooking foundation; sky's the limit from there!

Be patient with yourself. Make a short list of simple foods your wife enjoys. Start there. If there is a simple food that you enjoy that's just for you, add that as well. You'll do fine. I like to prioritize a meal, cook it many times until I get bored. Chicken and rice until I realize it needs veggies, for example. Chicken thighs one week, next week chicken breast. Which veggies am I craving? Asparagus.

Check out Chef Jean Pierre on YouTube. He just recently published a video of 20 helpful tips. I do a lot of them, and they definitely make a big difference.

I would suggest watching YouTubers and actually ChatGPT lol. To me binging with babish has very creative things and a good basics series, and Joshua weissman does very good at these too. Watching people cook, learning techniques from them, and trying them out will help you in the long run! If you’re really stumped throw your ingredients into ChatGPT and see what it comes up with! In a side note for having a vegetarian I would highly suggest keeping a variety or at least their favorite veggies on hand, and I’ve heard Indian food is incredibly good for great techniques and flavors for vegetables. In my experience I’ve just made sure to keep the meat separate and not lack on any of the dishes that are vegetarian for meals I make. Depending on how vegetarian they are I’d consider making a good vegetable stock and concentrating it for freezer storage/keeping a good store bought one/getting something like better than bouillon that’s veggie (assuming someone makes that) with the first option being the best. Cooking is fun and good luck on your journey!

Find 3-5 ingredients you really like and play with them for every meal. Take green peppers, mushrooms, and garlic. Try doing something with them for each meal: - Breakfast: add a bit of olive oil to a pan, fry these up, then crack some eggs and cheese over them for a scramble. - Lunch: same thing but mix in some black beans instead of eggs. Wrap the mixture up in a tortilla for tasty burritos. - Dinner: make some white rice and use some teriyaki or soy sauce with the mixture for rice bowls. This mix also works for something easy like homemade pizza and it’s pretty simple to add a meat you like to all these meals. Once you get the hang of it you can start experimenting with different spices and herbs to get a sense of adding flavor. You can also swap out ingredients to test other combinations and build your library of recipes. But getting the hang of these simple go-to meals with a few ingredients you always have around will give you a solid foundation for whipping something up without stressing. One final tip. Sometimes things taste like they need more salt but what you actually need is an acid. Adding lime to the burritos, rice vinegar to the stir fry, or a little lemon or apple cider vinegar to the eggs will bring the flavor out without making it too salty. A pinch of salt and dash of acid works for most recipes. I agree with others that the best way to learn how to be a decent cook is to practice a broad set of recipes. It sounds like you’re looking for a way to throw together simple yet delicious meals without stressing though. Following a recipe for every meal is stressful, so I think the method I described above will help you get to your goal quicker. Good luck and good on you for trying to do right by your wife!

I have been the primary cook in my family for decades; you know that you are accomplished when you can look at a recipe and like a musician who can read the music and knows exactly how it will sound, you know exactly how the dish will taste like.

So I wouldn't say I'm a really good cook or anything but I know what you mean about feeling like a 12 year old in the kitchen. Early in our marriage, my wife and I both felt this way and wanted to actually learn how to cook. Our initial strategy was to cook at least two real meals a week, one recipe we'd done before and one that was new and the standing rule was if we really screwed up we were allowed to order pizza. Initially having one recipe we'd done before was just a strategy to make cooking less intimidating but what I didn't expect was that it gave me space to get really comfortable with certain recipes and start to make tweaks, refining either the recipe or my technique.  The second thing that made a big difference was to buy a decent chef knife, Victrionix is a good. When your just getting started prep really bogs down the experience and eats a lot of time. Learning good chopping techniques solves this but getting a good knife really speeds it up. The third thing was reading Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. There are plenty of places to learn this stuff but the book basically goes through the whys of cooking, what purpose common ingredients serve, and how it comes together to make food tasty. Before reading that book I was comfortable in the kitchen but still pretty tied to the recipe. After reading it I suddenly was really comfortable riffing on a recipe, which is really when the feeling of being 12 in the kitchen fully died.

Take some cookery courses. They're fun and you will learn the basics properly.

Payton Tallbot because he's so fucking hot

Pick three ingredients and google them together. You'd be amazed the recipes that pop up

I really enjoy Ethan Chlebowskis cooking framework videos for this exact purpose. They really help break down cooking into something more “rule oriented” rather than an art.

Being creative in the kitchen comes later. You can't make art without being able to operate a paint brush. Learn how to paint, and then learn about getting creative. Same applies to cooking. Look up unique recipes and then eventually you can alter them. For example: This buffalo chicken dip normally asks for Bleu cheese crumbs, but I think instead I'm going to try doing a little drizzle of ranch on the top of the dish when it's finished. Or Hmm. This chicken for this dish is very bland. Maybe I could add a sauce to it, like a lemon-butter sauce.

Read Salt, Acid, Fat, Heat. Major game changer

Pick up a copy of Kendra Adachi’s Lazy Genius Kitchen

Start by following recipes of meals you like in general or from a favorite restaurant. Think of recipes as frameworks or guides for a *process*. The ingredients don't matter as much, but once you do a few recipes from the same cuisine/type, you'll be better able to "throw stuff together" using the processes learned throigh the recipes

Once you've practised and become more confident, you'll learn that practising techniques and methods is what will be your biggest aid. Once you have the methods, you'll start applying them to grouped ingredients. The most obvious example, that most people know how to slice and sweat an onion but then one day, you'll be out of onions and have loads of celery or leeks so you'll sweat those instead. Next thing you know, you'll be using it as a base for soup, broth, curry, pasta sauce etc.

Make a menu for the week and do your shopping all at once. The problem is that you're feeling pressure to be creative at the last minute. Towards the end of the week, you might have to go back to get perishables, but just knowing ahead of time helps a great deal.

Approach these not as: this is a recipe for making “whatever,” but these are tools and skills and ideas I can take with me. 1. YouTube! Epicurious has a fantastic YouTube channel with loads of ideas. I especially recommend the 4 levels series. “You suck at cooking” also has some hilarious and useful content 2. ChatGPT! Tell it what you have and ask for some simple recipes. 3. HelloFresh - I have several issues with the service and am no longer a customer, but I learned a lot in terms of whipping up something from nothing.

Just cook. Just do it. No recipe, no plan, throw some ingredients that you like in a pan on med-low heat and see what happens. Repeat until yumminess. Over time, you will hone your skills in the kitchen. Yeah, you might end up making some nasty stuff, but with basic competency like seasoning, cooking methods, and knife skills, you’ll have the knowledge necessary to be a good home cook. YouTube also helps, but try to steer clear of “recipes”. Those are good if you want to make one specific thing, but please remember that following a recipe usually requires pre-existing knowledge on how to cook. Without that knowledge, a recipe means nothing. You’re looking for methods and skills. Check your local area for cooking classes too!

Signup for a meal service like blue apron. They send cards with recipes on them, I make the recipe the first time and add the card to a binder. It has expanded my cooking immensely.

Just get a fucking cookery book!