I’ve never been much of a cook, but it’s something I’d love to try and get better at. I’ve got a growing family and as much as freezer food is serving them now, when they’re older I’d like to be able to cook them something genuinely nice.
Now’s a good time to learn then (when they will forget your mistakes.)
Rather than specific dishes, focus on techniques. Learn to make pan sauces and your food immediately goes up several levels. Be generous with herbs and spices (those little pots you get in supermarkets are not supposed to last long). Serve white rice on the side and mix noodles in to the dish (pasta is a kind of noodle). Learn to make stock and bone broths, if you cook a whole chicken you can serve the best cuts as part of the meal, save the rest for a stir-fry or sandwiches and you can use the bones and connective tissue to create a broth that you can freeze for later. Vegetable soups are also great and can use up all sorts of bits and pieces. In cold weather you can put them in a thermos as a hot packed lunch.
If you want to make something sweet, store bought rolls of filo pastry can be quite good these days, add some fruit, fresh or tinned, and cook.
Experiment, most importantly. If you don’t know how to cook with something, find people from where it comes from and see what they are doing with it.
1 pot spaghetti “non-carbonara”. Cook 130g spaghetti while whisking an egg with some good pepper and fresh-grated parmeggiano. Drain noodles, keep a little bit of the noodle water in the pot. Noodles back in, egg-cheese goodness on top (no heat, just the hot noodles and warm pot). Mix until everything is creamy. Enjoy.
I’m from the Midwest so wild rice casserole (almonds on top for sure)
I’ve never heard of a wild rice casserole, with, or without almonds. Where do they make this?
If it’s a casserole, there’s a 90% chance it’s Minnesota.
Hahaha you are correct it’s Minnesota
Casserole and wild rice brings that to like 95%. The other 5% would be neighboring states
Stuffed chicken breast or pork tenderloin. Fairly easy to make but seems impressive. Can be kept to a few ingredients or expanded upon. Teaches preparation and cooking techniques because it can be very simple or very complicated depending on how you choose to make it. Can be breaded or sauced. Teaches cooking times in the oven. There are loads of recipes online. Ingredients are easy to get. Goes with pretty much any side you could choose. Even if it turns out not so great it often has cheese as a redeeming factor.
I would also suggest that if you really want to learn to cook start with knife skills and prep. This is often overlooked by home cooks. A lot of what limits people in choosing what to make is the time it takes to prep everything not the actual cooking. The better you are at preparing the more enjoyable your cooking experience will be.
Want to impress impress at a family gathering with a relatively simple dish?
Potatoes are stupid versatile and easy to get right.
For me, my goto in this area is:
Get a pack of Yukon goldens. You could do baby reds, but don’t get Russets for this. They don’t saute well.
Preheat a saute pan or skillet to medium, cut each potato into a half or a third (bigger ones to a third) and rinse.
Mix potatoes in a bowl with about a tbsp of vegetable oil or butter and liberal seasoning of choice. There’s this parmesan-garlic blend I like, but it’s pretty hard to go wrong on the seasoning because potatoes work with basically anything.
Throw the mixed potatoes into the saute pan, add about 1/4 of water and cover. Cook for 10 minutes or until the potatoes are lightly seared and tender.
Stir occasionally with a spatula so that they don’t stick to the pan. Add a little water when you uncover to stir, the steam is important.
Put it on a fancy plate and bam. The compliments roll in.
For a meal, add onions (or really any vegetables) and choice of protein. My goto is chicken thighs cooked separately in a cast iron.
Cheap, easy, flavorful, versatile, substantial.
We recently discovered you can do this same prep, and then just roast them in an air fryer, and they’re awesome
Nice. I’ll have to give that a shot
Anything I can make in a crockpot. I can do a pretty mean pot roast.
Wraps!
This isn’t a fancy meal, but it’s healthy and fast.
Get a wrap (about 12 inches in diameter), and fill it with whatever you think is healthy. For us, that’s cucumber, tomatoes, avocado, lettuce, black beans, cheese. We’ve also included bacon, chicken, salsa, and rice. Add some seasoning, olive oil, and lemon juice.
Look for recipes you like or want to try online then save them, this is how I started. I always try to aim for making one new meal a week, sometimes it’s a flop, but at least I’m broadening my culinary horizon.
Once you get into cooking you will realize it’s really not that hard to make good food and it’s a fun activity that lets you be creative.
If you enjoy YouTube tutorials Binging with Babish (older videos) and J Kenzi Lopez both have excellent videos and recipes online that helped when I first started cooking.
Anything casserole. Beef stew, Reuben or golumpki. Just dump stuff in a pan or slow cooker.
The biggest thing with getting better at cooking is to just find a recipe that looks tasty and go for it. Follow the directions and see how it comes out. Try to understand the directions too. Why are we cooking things in X Y Z order? Why are we cooking at this temperature? Etc. You might still mess stuff up, Ive been cooking at home for 10 years and still have meals I just have to trash because theybare unsavable, but try to figure out what went wrong, and then try making that meal again but looking to fix your mistake.
There are also some great cookbooks and resources out there to kickstart your journey of understanding cooking. Salt Fat Acid Heat is a fantastic book that dives into the four pillars of what makes something delicious. It was also adapted into a Netflix series so you can watch that as well. The Food Lab is all about nerdy food science. Kenji Lopez Alt has spent his time figuring out the science behind cooking so you dont have to. Also, a lot of info from the Food Lab is also available on Serious Eats’s website, where Kenji was a writer for a long time.
Also if you have kids, get them involved! Learn with them so they have a jumpstart on being comfortable in the kitchen!
Now to answer your actual question, my go to recipe is pizza. Ive been making it pretty much every week since I was 22. I’ve built up a collection of tools for pizza making, so I have a propane oven that reaches 900°F for neopolitan pizza, a baking steel for regular oven pizzas, pans for south shore bar style pizzas, etc. Its all nice to have but you can make pizza on a cookie sheet or in a cast iron pan. The first pizzas I made were store bought dough in a greased cast iron pan with jarred sauce and some shredded mozz. Nowadays I make my own dough and sauce.
For an easy NY style pizza I use Kenji Lopez Alts same day dough recipe (https://youtu.be/uXkT8LbCPOY), and for the sauce I do
- 1 28oz can whole peeled tomatos (I like Cento, but look for brands that dont use Calcium Chloride or Citric Acid in the ingredients)
- ~2tbsp Olive Oil
- Like 2-3 tsp of kosher salt Blend all that with an immersion blender in the can of tomatos (might have to pour out some of the liquid in the can).
Often times Ill just leave it at that, but you can also add dried oregano, dried basil, a pinch of sugar, or some red chili flakes to spice it up.
https://damndelicious.net/2014/06/13/one-pot-zucchini-mushroom-pasta/
This recipe is really easy and quick. The only thing to watch out for is to move the pasta around a bit at the beginning as it softens so it doesn’t all stick in one clump. It’s really good if you toss in some thawed pre-cooked shrimp for the last 5 minutes or so.
https://www.jocooks.com/recipes/no-knead-bread/
Also don’t underestimate the comforting smell of home made bread. It’s easier than you think but just takes forethought. Fresh buttered bread turns a simple soup or stew into something special.
This one:
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/keith-youngs-chicken-cacciatore-recipe-1946896
You want to cut the quantities in half, the batch is absolutely huge if you do the recipe as-written. It basically cooks enough chicken cacciatore for an entire team of firemen.
It’s a flexible and forgiving recipe, though. You can play around with it, do substitutions, etc.
Costco short ribs in the instant pot. With the random Asian spices I have in my pantry. Freezer to table in 50min. The instant pot is my favorite tool.
Baked chicken - There are a ton of these recipes but they all come down to basically the same thing: Brine, put seasoning on, cook it in the oven, let it rest a few minutes, done. It takes a little time from start to finish, but the total investment of actual effort is like 5 minutes. (I keep a little tupperware of premixed seasoning.) Combine with a tray of vegetables in the same oven and/or some rice or something. (I actually do this with skin-on chicken thighs instead, but it’s basically the same)
Steak - Learn to cook a good steak, it’s fuckin magic. Again you can find recipes online. Let it warm to room temperature first, put salt and pepper on it, sear the outside 30s or so on high heat including picking it up and hitting the edges, then lower the heat and flip it every 60-90 seconds to let it cook, and at the end dump some garlic and butter in the pan to flavor it. Let it sit a minute or two and you’re good bb.
Blueberry pancakes - Use fresh blueberries.
Lately, I’ve been eating a lot of faro instead of rice, pasta or oatmeal. It has a nice nutty taste and chewy texture that I like.
Mix it up with some veggies like sliced carrots and chickpeas for a complete meal.
https://cookieandkate.com/roasted-carrots-recipe-with-farro-chickpeas/
https://www.thekitchn.com/one-pot-farro-carrots-chickpeas-recipe-23012504
Farro is great. For a side dish I tend to cook it in spiced broth (chicken or beef depending on the main course) instead of water. Another one you might like is kamut.
