It is always exciting when you decide to learn a new skill, but it can sometimes be difficult to know where to start or look for helpful tips and tricks. So, here are some top tips to know when getting started with cooking.
Start small and easy
Just like with anything that you want to learn in life, it is best to start at the beginning. If you start by learning the basics, this will help you to build a strong foundation of knowledge on which you can support the continuation of your cooking journey. For example, you could learn how to create your own pasta sauce from scratch with vegetables and tinned tomatoes; you could do something as simple as save your vegetable scraps and learn to make vegetable stock, or even take a look at how to make roasted garlic from thebutterhalf.com. All these examples are common, basic, and straightforward to follow for almost any beginner, as well as being easily adapted if you wanted to experiment with different ingredients or methods.
Make your own recipe book as you go
Instead of overwhelming yourself and cooking new meals each day, try to spread your learning curve out over a few days throughout the week. This way, you are more likely to remember and absorb the information, techniques, and steps of creating a dish. Doing this when you are first starting out also allows you time to figure out if you like the dish that you created and gives you time to write down in your own words how you created it. This can be beneficial when you are getting started with cooking as following your own instructions can often be easier than reading others. Not only will you make the process of cooking each meal easier, but you will slowly compile a recipe book full of dishes that you like to eat and enjoy cooking.
Invest in some quality cooking utensils
Cooking is supposed to have an element of fun and excitement to it, which can quickly disappear if the tools you are working with cause you problems. This could be anything from your chopping board not being big enough or not having enough pots and pans to cook everything at once to the wrong type of knives. You, of course, don’t need expensive equipment or even a vast collection of gadgets that do everything, but it doesn’t hurt to invest in some of the basic and most frequently used kitchen essentials to help make your cooking experience easier and therefore more fun and enjoyable.
Be patient with yourself
People can often give up on any new venture pretty quickly if the learning curve feels too steep or if they feel that they are not learning quickly enough. But cooking is a lifetime skill that has almost no skill ceiling, meaning that there is always something to be learned. So, instead of being hard on yourself and comparing yourself to how much more you still need to learn or how much you don’t know, instead be patient with yourself and reflect on how much you have learned and how far you have come since you first started.
There is a lot more help online when it comes to learning to cook. Just be sure to remember these tips.
