It's intimidating to think you could ever make your own meals at home if you've never done it before, and if your only experience of cooking is watching TV food shows. Those chefs are so fast, and they have so much fancy and shiny kitchen equipment!
My induction into the world of home cooking happened gradually, but one of my big influences was Jamie Oliver via his show the 'Naked Chef' on the Food Network. One of my go-to cookbooks for home meals is Jamie's Dinners, for the great flavor profiles and the relative ease of the recipes.
HOWEVER: When I first bought the book, I was a new, and relatively inexperienced home cook. There's a section in the book called '10-Minute Meals', which are supposed to be meals you can prepare with a quick stop to the grocery store and within 10 minutes of getting home. He even clocks in his own prep times so you can see how easy it is. Ha! Those meals easily used to take me 40+ minutes to get on the table.
Same goes for the much maligned Rachel Ray. Love her or hate her, you still have to admit that her recipes are much more home-kitchen ready than most other celebrity chef recipes. Even so...remember her show, "30 Minute Meals"? Yeah, those used to take me 60+ minutes to get on the table.
I remember feeling extremely inadequate and discouraged that it took me 2-4 times longer than it was 'supposed to' take to make a decent meal. The things that kept me going:
1. I'm a glutton for punishment.
2. I was only cooking for myself, so no one was starving as a consequence of my slowness (other than me).
3. Related to #2, no one else was hovering around the kitchen with constant critiques, so I was free to make mistakes. (Full disclosure: I am guilty of hovering around the kitchen when others are cooking, with my own critiques -- but I am working on it!)
4. I loved the feeling of accomplishment once the meal was finished, and it vaguely resembled the pictures of the recipes I'd seen either in the cookbook or online. And - they tasted delicious. Most of the time, anyway.
My advice to budding home cooks:
1. It takes patience, time, and a lot of practice. You might be slow now, but it gets easier.
2. Start with a 'simple' recipe -- I mean really simple. Limit recipes you'll tackle to those with no more than 5-10 ingredients, build your confidence, and then go from there.
3. Don't be afraid to substitute other ingredients in your recipes. This took me a long time to learn -- goes against my OCD and detail-oriented nature, to my detriment. Substitution can give your dishes a unique flare, but it also saves time and helps you learn to use up what you have on hand. It helps to follow the recipes exactly the first time, but if it's going to take a 40 minute trip to the grocery store because you don't have any lemons, use the limes in your refrigerator instead. Or Google 'substitutions for lemon' and see if you've got any of the stuff that comes up in your cupboard.
4. Have a high tolerance for failure. Things will get scorched, burned, or taste horrible. It's okay. If you can't fix it, or it's entirely inedible, throw it out and eat something else. Even if the dish is a failure, you are not a failure -- you're learning and building your skills! You'll do better next time.
5. You probably need a few foundational cookbooks. The difference between having a cookbook and getting recipes off the Internet is that cookbooks often discuss basic cooking techniques, substitutions, and variations in the narrative in between recipes. I'm a bit obsessive, but I got started by reading The Joy of Cooking from cover-to-cover. Say what you will about the book being dated but there was a lot of great foundational information on cooking skills.
6. You don't need to go out and buy a ton of equipment all at once. Start cooking with what you have and build your arsenal piece-by-piece. Figure out what kinds of food and recipes you like, and you'll figure out what you need. If you think you really have nothing, or if you are set to go on a kitchen shopping spree, here's a good starting place courtesy of Mark Bittman and the New York Times: A No-Frills Kitchen Still Cooks.
Get out there and start cooking. And bon appetit!
P.S. Here's more advice for getting started, more eloquently stated, from one of my favorite cookbook authors, Andrea Nguyen: 5 Essentials for Home Cooks.
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