So I finally want to move beyond my “fast food and ordering out” diet and actually learn to cook. But I seriously know nothing about it. I mean, I can make grilled cheese and…that’s about it. Imagine the biggest idiot in the kitchen you know and multiply that by at least 50, and you’ll have a rough idea of my kitchen incompetence.
So what I want to know is what are some good meals for a kitchen beginner to start with?
Are you cooking for just yourself? And do you like leftovers?
Moved IMHO --> Cafe Society.
Get a basic cookbook like Betty Crocker and start from there. Recipes in that book tend to be made with easy-to-find ingredients and simple instructions. There’s a cookbook for singles out there that I don’t know the name of, but people seem to like it. Someone will come along and identify it.
Myself only
Crock pot meals. Dump a bunch of stuff in and it’s done when you get home from work. Maybe have some frozen veggies or salad on the side. Google crock pot recipes or slow cooker recipes for ideas.
For example, a beef roast, carrots, an onion or two, and potatos. Have some of the roast and veggies for one meal and get a big enough roast so that you have left over meat. For meal #2 season it up with some taco seasoning and make tacos.
You might also ask for this to be moved to Cafe Society. ETA: already moved.
What do you like to eat?
When cooking for yourself, something as easy as boiling pasta is going to be tough if you don’t have a way to strain it, so make sure you have a kitchen stocked with the right ingredients and equipment. The basics would be large and small skillets, large and small sauce pans, flipper, spatula, tongs, mixing spoons, and measuring cups/spoons. A veggie steamer is nice. Cooking oil (I prefer olive) and spices like salt, pepper, garlic powder, “Italian Seasoning,” should be on hand.
Buy a head of broccoli. Cut up into small pieces. Spread on foil lined cookie sheet. Sprinkle with olive oil, salt, pepper and parmesan cheese. Roast in hot oven til it smells delicious. Eat.
Get some potatoes and rub 'em with crisco. Throw in a 400 degree oven for 45 minutes. Take a steak and sprinkle it with salt and pepper on both sides. Put a bit of oil in a medium-hot skillet. Sear the steak on both sides, roughly 4ish minutes for each side. Put on cookie sheet and throw in oven to cook for the last 8ish minutes with the potatoes. Add a dollop of red wine to the skillet and boil it while stirring til it’s reduced a bit. Steak and potatoes with wine sauce.
Let’s quantify this, because it’s hard for me sometimes to understand what somebody means when they say “I don’t know how to do ANYTHING in the kitchen.”
Do you know how to:
Use a large kitchen knife without cutting yourself?
Prepare a vegetable to be chopped? How to peel an onion, or a clove of garlic, or clean a bell pepper?
Boil pasta and tell when it’s done?
Saute some veggies in a pan?
What if it starts burning first? 
Any schmuck can follow a simple recipe, right? I often think the real skills in being a home cook include things like stocking your pantry, planning (minimizing!) your shopping trips, getting the most out of your ingredients (e.g., roast the beets and saute the greens) and using up leftovers without getting sick of them. Are you interested in learning any of that, too? Because, IMHO, the best way to learn that stuff is by watching someone else who’s good at it, then just jumping in and trying it. Don’t be discouraged!
Barely
Not off-hand, but I could probably figure it out,
No
I’m not entirely confident I know what “saute” means
Hmmm. Gotta think about this.
Don’t know if you will do leftovers (some people will not - absolutely NOT - do leftovers - I’m one of 'em :D)
BUT:
Here are a few things I used to make for myself, lo those many years ago when I was all by myself:
HAM and MACARONI
Buy 1 Ham steak from the grocrery store - one slice - maybe $4?
Buy 1 Box of Kraft Mac and Cheese (Deluxe - I don’t do powdered)
Fry up the steak in a frying pan: Put about a tablespoon of butter in a frying pan and melt it over medium heat - put the ham steak in the pan and fry it up - while it’s browning, make the Mac and Cheese. Fifteen minutes tops.
You can also do the same thing with one of those smoked sausages from Ekrich or Johnsonville or whomever - fry it up and have sausage and mac and cheese. Hot dogs work here too.
CHICKEN BURGERS
Buy 1/4 lb. chicken salad from the deli at the store (this is for one meal.)
Buy Velveeta - the small box will work.
Buy hamburger buns or rolls - croissants work good for this too.
Put chicken salad in a bowl
Cut up some of the Velveeta and mix it in with the chicken salad (this is to your taste depending on how cheesy you want it.)
Put it in between the buns and wrap it in foil. Cook at 350 for about half an hour. You can substitute cheddar for this if you want. This works with Tuna salad as well.
CHEESE HOT DOGS
Buy a package of hot dogs.
You will already have leftover Velveeta from the above recipe.
Split the hot dogs down the front but don’t split all the way through the ends. Stuff the hot dog with slices of cheese. Put 2 toothpicks through each hot dog. In a frying pan (that has a lid) fry up the hot dogs using LOW heat with the cover on until the cheese is just getting melty. Then take off the lid, turn the heat up just a little so it’ll brown the hot dogs. This goes really well with the leftover macaroni salad I mentioned above.
PIZZA BREAD
Buy pizza sauce (Pastorelli is, in my not so humble opinion, the best)
Buy a loaf of italian or french bread
Buy some mozzarella cheese
Buy other toppings as you like them
Spread pizza sauce on bread (after you have cut it up), cover with toppings. Bake at 450 till the cheese is melted.
ITALIAN BEEF
Buy a small container of Papa Charlie’s Italian Beef
Buy really decent rolls
Buy cheddar cheese
Buy a green pepper
Buy an onion
Chop up an onion and the green pepper and then sautee them in a skillet with olive oil until they are wilted (you don’t want browning - you want them limp and cooked.) Heat up the Italian Beef (SLOWLY - if you heat it too fast it gets tough), put it on the rolls, add the peppers and oinon, and eat it. Add cheese if you like cheesy beefs.
TILAPIA
Buy Tilapia fillets (1 or 2 - depends on how hungry you are)
Buy a lemon
Buy an onion
Buy garlic
Buy butter
Take a tilapia fillet and put it on a piece of foil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Put a slice of a garlic clove that has been chopped up on top of it. Put two thin slices of onion on top of it. Put two thin slices of lemon on top of that. Put a pat of butter (1/4 Tablespoon) on top of that. Fold the edges of the foil all over to make a “packet”. Bake in a 350 oven for 12 minutes or so.
Or, as a last resort, depending on where you live, you could come over by my house for dinner. I always make too much anyway.
And frankly, I can’t scale down the recipes I usually use(d) when the household was bigger - how DOES one make lasagna for one? 
Your first ally are the food packages themselves. They contain instructions, and usually, at least one recipe involving the food in the package. One you can guarantee and been tested and refined until it is as fool proof as possible (given the ingenuity of fools 
). For example, look at the back of the package of lasagna noodles. Recipe for lasagna! On the back of the container of cocoa: chocolate cake! While a back-of-package recipe rarely represents the most absolutely divine version of a given food, you will rarely go horribly awry.
It’s also good to have a reference cookbook – I favor How to Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman – because they explain basic principles and methods of cooking, along with providing recipes.
Do what I do when I started cooking: See what you like to eat, try to copy that recipe. Look up at least 3 different recipe’s for the same dish, then take what is identical in all of them and follow it to the letter.
Also, there’s no shame in starting with baby steps. Go ahead and buy semi-prepared foods and assemblle them into dinner. For example, pasta (follow package instructions)+jarred sauce+fully cooked sausage. Or Caesar salad kit (found near the packaged lettuce) + precooked chicken (in the fridge case). Although semi-prepared foods are neither nutritionally nor financially ideal, they’re healthier and cheaper than your current diet of fast food & restaurant meals, so its a solid step in the right direction. Once you’ve got a little confidence, you can cook more from scratch.
I’d second the slow cooker as well. There’s just no skill involved beyond dumping things in the pot, turning it on, and waiting. And, in cooking meat, it is virtually impossible to cook it unsafely in a slow cooker. As a bonus, the kinds of things you cook in a slow cooker, like soups and stews and chili, can easily be frozen in tubs, and then reheated in the microwave later.
Roger Ebert: The Pot and How To Use It
You can do so much with a $15 rice cooker. Mine is a little more fancy as it doubles as a slow cooker but you can’t go wrong with a simple modern rice cooker. Modern as in they have gotten a little smarter over the years. I use mine to make oatmeal, rice, pasta, soups, stews, steam veggies and meat. Best of all all you need about a square foot of counter space and an outlet.
The best part of Roger’s (RIP) article is that he encourages experimentation. You can buy his book but it’s pretty much just an expanded version of his blog entry.
There are other rice cooker books out there here and here (and I have those) but the free blog at the top of this post is enough to get you started.
One feature I like about my Aroma is the smart steam feature. Smart steam means that the timer doesn’t start until the water begins to boil. Then after it’s completed steaming for whatever time I’ve set it for, it chimes. Truly set-it-and-forget-it cooking.
I second this suggestion. I started my cooking career asking my room mate how to cook Kraft Dinner and then went several years just doing take out because I had no confidence. I bought How to Cook Everything and started off with some easy looking recipes. The more you do the easier it becomes.
Get a children’s cookbook. They will have easy-to-understand directions for a limited number of simple dishes.
Books for adults tend to assume that grown-ups know everything, and only need instruction on the fine points. For true, rock-bottom basics – go with a kids’ book.
Take a few out from a library for a test drive to see which one works best for you.