How did you learn how to cook?

Cafe Society
1

An e-mail discussion inspired me to post this. My friend is teaching her boyfriend’s son how to make some basic dishes. Apparently he’s a pretty fast learner.

How old were you the first time you cooked anything more complicated than toast?

How old were you when you cooked your first full meal?

When was the first time you fed others? Did any of them die?

What was the first really complex thing that you cooked?

What were some of your earliest breakthroughs that you could honestly brag about?

Did someone teach you, or did you learn it on your own?

2

Back in the Good Old Days, when I was in high school, they still offered Home Ec classes. My school specifically had one for boys called Bachelor Foods. It was an Intro to Cooking class populated almost entirely by jocks. It was there that I learned valuable lessons like

baking soda and baking powder are two different things
pies aren’t that hard to bake
if you keep the first item in mind, biscuits are easy
crock pots are your friend

and more. Without a doubt the best class I took in high school. The rest I learned through trial and error, and lots of cookbook reading and TV show watching. The Galloping Gourmet was an early influence.

3

How old were you the first time you cooked anything more complicated than toast?

**12
**
How old were you when you cooked your first full meal?

21

When was the first time you fed others? Did any of them die?
Party of 20 people. No.

What was the first really complex thing that you cooked?
**
Beef Wellington**

What were some of your earliest breakthroughs that you could honestly brag about?

**
I could grill food in near darkness.**

Did someone teach you, or did you learn it on your own?

Watched my mother. Started experimenting. Found recipes. Started experimenting.

4

When I was 12 I was visiting family in the midwest. We stopped at grandma’s, and I noticed that her husband had a magazine called Gourmet. Really? A magazine that was nothing but recipes? I was intrigued. I asked Bud (step granddad) if I could have a couple of issues. He said he couldn’t break up the collection, but he let me borrow a couple issues while travelling. I returned them two weeks later.

Decades later, when he died, I found that he’d left me the entire collection in his will. I will have those for the rest of my life.

Anyway, I copied a few of the recipes, and a few weeks later cooked for my family. None of them died, and they said it wasn’t bad. And of course my mother insisted on interfering as much as possible. :smiley:

I never really cooked much after that until I got my first apartment. My parents bought us about $80 worth of groceries. That was a lot in those days.

The next 6 months were like a sitcom. My roommate and I managed to destroy food in various amusing ways. But somehow we kept fed and didn’t burn the place down. We mostly worked out of a cookbook that I got at a yard sale.

About a year later I impressed my mother by boasting that I’d made roasted pork l’orange.

I think my most impressive moment was Christmas dinner that I made for my friends. It was some sort of pot roast with some rather impressive (and wine-infused) gravy. I don’t remember what the side dishes were.

5

How old were you the first time you cooked anything more complicated than toast?

From the time I could stand on a kitchen chair, I was in the kitchen with my mom. I’m pretty sure I could do grilled cheese, scrambled eggs, stuff like that by the time I was 8 or 9.

How old were you when you cooked your first full meal?

15, possibly younger. I know by the time I was 15 my mom had started working and I used to make dinner on a regular basis for the family.

When was the first time you fed others? Did any of them die?

I remember making lunch for my mom and her sisters all by myself right after my brother was born. I was 10. They’re all still living.

What was the first really complex thing that you cooked?

I have no idea. I made a cake, cut it into the shape of train cars and decorated it to look like a circus train. Does that count? I was in 3rd grade. I won first place.

What were some of your earliest breakthroughs that you could honestly brag about?

Oh, I don’t know. I’m good at finding whatever’s in the kitchen and making a thoroughly yummy meal out of it.

Did someone teach you, or did you learn it on your own?

Mostly from cooking with my mother and grandmother, but I have learned a lot on my own as an adult.

6

Yeah, I’d say that counts. I’m impressed.

7

I don’t know the precise answers to any of the OP’s questions, and I’m not sure I can say I’ve ever cooked something really complex. But I can say that some of what I learned about cooking, I learned in Boy Scouts.

8

I wanna play!

How old were you the first time you cooked anything more complicated than toast?
Around the age of 12 or so my mum had a part time job, and one of us kids would be responsible for starting potatoes, or putting the roast in the oven, or peeling carrots or something. So it all started around then.

**
How old were you when you cooked your first full meal?**
I don’t really recall. Maybe not until I moved out of the house for the first time at 20. (I lived at home through college.)

**
When was the first time you fed others? Did any of them die?
**See above. Probably that same summer. Although I was definitely in learning mode and cooking a lot of easy pasta dishes and the like.

What was the first really complex thing that you cooked?
I don’t know. I think recipes just continued to get more complex with time and experience. Probably the year I cooked a turkey dinner for Christmas, complete with home-made sausage stuffing and all the trimmings. I was trying to impress my new girlfriend. It worked (for 3 years anyway).

What were some of your earliest breakthroughs that you could honestly brag about?
I used to love making blackened fish with rice and vegetables. Blackened catfish or shark for example.

**Did someone teach you, or did you learn it on your own? **
Definitely just learned on my own, although I used to like watching cooking shows on TV. Besides, pretty much anyone can follow a recipe. Once you make a few dozen things following recipes you start to get a feel for how to start winging it.

9

Age 11 in the Boy Scouts. You camp with other boys, and rotate responsibility for purchasing and preparing food. Cooking Merit Badge is once again required for earning Eagle Scout.

I was making Dutch oven stews, kabobs, chicken on the grill, etc.

10

Apparently so, as that is what was the impetus for the conversation that started this thread.

11

I was born to a family of good cooks, all of them women. The men didn’t cook but they did enjoy eating and were not shy with various tasks around the kitchen including killing and butchering the occassional live chicken or turkey. They were also pretty good at the clean-up duties. So everyone was quite involved with the meal in one way or another.

Being the oldest male of my generation, I was the first out of the gate to actively cook meals.

I don’t recall when I first started but I think fairly young - pre-teen years, for sure.

I pride myself on being a good cook and there is little in the kitchen that would intimidate me or put me off. To this day there are few things I enjoy more than planning a meal, going out to get all the ingredients, then doing the prep and cooking. I follow recipies but just as often they are a source of good ideas on which I then do my own riff.
I’d cook for my parents and sybling and relatives in my teens on a regular basis. Then friends. Then my own family.

I don’t recall feeling like any particular dish was complex. Usually it was a question of: that sounds good, I think I’ll make that.

I’m told my greatest gift is for making chicken. I’m dubbed King of Chicken by my kids. I don’t particularly try to be good at making chicken, it’s just that it’s kind of boring so it requires being creative. Doesn’t hurt that we like chicken so there has been many opportunities to achieve the royal competency level.

However, I do not bake. I refuse. It may as well be alchemy to me as it requires the discipline of measuring for which I simply do not have the patience.

Having said all that, my wife kicks my ass in the kitchen. Even in the few things I tought her. I don’t like to admit that very often because she gets all, “You’re doing it wrong! Let me do that!” Although I’m still the King of Chicken and meat in general because she doesn’t like handling the raw stuff.

12

About 8 or 9 years old. I remember taking out books from the library to cook granola and sweet cookie-type stuff that kids would like, and then I remember learning how to make omelets by the time I was about 10 or so. Oddly enough, I almost never make omelets these days.

If you count breakfast, about 10, with the omelet. I also learned pancakes (from a mix) and scrambled eggs at about the same time.

Same as above. None dead. I used to make my mom omelets for breakfast occasionally.

Now, cooking breakfast and the occasional dessert was pretty much all I knew how to do until college. I didn’t start on soups, stir-fries, roasts, or anything like that until I lived in my own place. And I don’t feel I really started understanding how to cook well until after I graduated college and lived on my own. My roommates remember me as a good cook my junior and senior year of college, but, looking back at those days, I don’t really feel like I knew what I was doing. I was still having fun and experimenting and learning, but not quite understanding how all the pieces fit together.

Depends by what “complex” means. Is classic chocolate mousse from scratch (whipped egg whites and all) “complex”? If so, then about 14 or 15.

I can’t think of a specific dish. I can think of breakthroughs in terms of philosophy, though. In 1996 I took the better part of a year off from my university studies and worked and volunteered in Europe. The first two months I worked at a Michelin starred restaurant as a kitchen porter in Scotland. This was the first time I had ever encountered fine cuisine. I learned how to identify, name, and use all sorts of herbs I hadn’t seen or used before, or only vaguely knew in dried form, but had never seen in real life. I learned the importance of fresh ingredients. And I learned cooking actually wasn’t all that (or needn’t be) complicated. That to make a great meal, you don’t need a recipe with “secret” ingredients and a laundry list of herbs and spices or whatnot. Just use good ingredients and good technique to build and complement flavors.

And, at the risk of over-romanticizing that time of my life, I also had a revelation later that year at a hotel breakfast in Paris. It was just a simple continental breakfast, but that simple baguette and butter is the breakfast that I will most remember in my life. I literally had no idea how good a baguette and butter could taste. And that reinforced my lesson of it doesn’t have to be complicated to be good.

Then, living in Hungary for 5-ish years, I further learned the importance of shopping in season, and how you can build great dishes out of very simple ingredients, and when to pay premiums for certain ingredients, and when not to.

On my own. I mean, I would watch my father and mother cook growing up, but when I was learning, my mistakes and triumphs were my own.

13

For me it wasn’t really about learning to cook as it was having a father who cooked (my mother cooked also). Therefore I was brought up to consider it normal for a male to handle cooking chores. I was cooking my own breakfast (eggs, French toast, pancakes) at a very young age, and it just morphed from there. When it came to boys home ec, or scouting, the cooking was second nature. My parents would still handle the meal preparation, but I would put together a side, or make breads and deserts.

14

How old were you the first time you cooked anything more complicated than toast?

I think I was cooking scrambled eggs when I was ten or eleven. As I got older I found it interesting to help my mom cook (she’s a kitchen wiz), and so I just kind of picked up a bunch of general cooking sense by osmosis.

How old were you when you cooked your first full meal?
When was the first time you fed others? Did any of them die?

I was the youngest of three kids by seven years; basically as a teenager my older sibs were in college (or graduated), and so it was like I was an only child. Both my parents worked full-time, and we had an arrangement where I would cook dinner one night a week for the three of us. Pretty sure I was doing this by the time I was 13 or 14. Usually I rotated between chili, tacos or spaghetti, all of them made with those prepackaged little envelopes of spices; my effort went into browning the ground beef, chopping veggies, making grilled cheese, etc.

What was the first really complex thing that you cooked?

Served a from-scratch lasagna to several friends when I was maybe 23 or 24. Included a loaf of french bread baked with swiss cheese and drizzled with a blend of butter, poppy seeds, and dried onions. They were my mom’s recipes, but I think that was the first time I had made them on my own.

What were some of your earliest breakthroughs that you could honestly brag about?

Not sure I have any really early brag-worthy breakthroughs. I’m almost 43 now, and it’s just within the past six or seven years now that my wife and I have really graduated completely from prepackaged sauces spices and started making all of our meals from scratch, pulling tasty-looking recipes from cookbooks and from the internet.

Did someone teach you, or did you learn it on your own?

I guess Mom exposed me to the kitchen in the same way that Dad exposed me to car repairs and home maintenance, i.e. it was just me wandering by, going “watcha doin’? Can I help?” and then being permitted/invited to participate. Once I learned some of the fundamentals, then it came down to trolling the universe for recipes and tweaking them to suit my own tastes.

15

My answers will be free-form, since this happened a long time ago. I learned to cook in the Boy Scouts, from my father, who came from a restaurant family and ran a lunch counter before WW II. He was a better cook than my mother when they got married in the late '30s. In junior high I took Food shop and Home Ec (everyone had to) but most of what they taught was nothing new.

Probably the first complex stuff was hor d’oeuvres (stuff mushrooms, pigs in blanket) for a cocktail party we put on for the women in the girls next door my freshman year. Junior and senior year I eschewed the cafeteria and cooked with a partner using hot plates and toaster ovens (no microwaves back then.)

I can’t remember any breakthroughs since it has always been easy - my ability with computer algorithms clearly also extends to the food algorithms called recipes.

16

When I was ten years old my mother taught me how to put a chicken, vegetables, and potatoes into a roasting pan and turn on the oven. When I was about thirteen she started trusting me to follow new recipes.

The first really complex thing was when I was thirteen–a Moroccan chicken dish with lots of spices, vegetables, and fancy couscous.

I don’t think there have been any breakthroughs, other than finally getting my own kitchen to cook in. It’s been a long, slow process of making mistakes and then learning better. It’s been 11 years since I got my own kitchen and I’m still learning.

I did observe my mother cooking when I was a child, and I have a lot of deluded self-confidence about my ability to cook things, in spite of or perhaps because of my inability to follow detailed directions.

17

I was a spoiled little shit when I was a kid and refused to learn to cook, although I couldn’t help absorbing some lessons from being around my mother. I didn’t cook anything more complicated than popcorn until I went to college, where I was working in the SUB as a busboy to earn my board. The cook had bad feet and was always looking to take a break, so one day I said “hell, I think I can fry a burger: how 'bout you teach me some things and I’ll help you out”. So I ended up doing the entire menu of sandwiches, fries and the like. Nobody died.

Then I went in the military and did no cooking until about three years in, when I decided I would make a Christmas dinner for my then girlfriend and a bunch of other people. I had no idea what I was doing, and there was no internet to help out. So I called my mother to get instructions. The turkey was fine, but the gravy could have been used for brick wall construction.

I got married, and at my next duty station they put me on the night maintenance crew, which meant I had every day off. My wife was working, so I was bored senseless. So I started making her a salad for lunch. Then I got a bit more adventurous and started looking at dinner recipes in a cookbook. The first complicated thing I made was shrimp Creole, which came out surprisingly good, and it emboldened me.

I’m very much self-taught, which means I made a lot of mistakes. It also means it took me a long time to figure out what I was doing wrong. I took a brief class in Cajun cooking in NOLA, but the real revelations came when I took classes in sauces, soups, stocks and stews. The internet has been a real godsend for wannabe chefs, as well.

My recent foray into Indian cooking has been great. I was always afraid of the complexity of the spicing, but it turns out that, like most cuisines, if you can follow a recipe and obtain the ingredients, it isn’t all that difficult. Or at least it isn’t difficult if your sense of timing in on the mark. I wouldn’t attempt it if not for that. Today we had a guest for early dinner. I made shrimp biryani and a lamb meatball curry (rista). Even though I’ve made both dishes before, I was a bit nervous about it. She nearly swooned from the explosive flavors, which made me very happy.

18

I had the good fortune to be a tenant/roommate to a man from Italy who is a professional chef. He taught me some basic tricks to make food taste better. While I’ve told my wife that I am certainly NOT in his league, I am able to do more than toast or cereal. FYI–one simple trick for any beef steak: poke holes in it and salt it and pepper it and then cover it in OLIVE OIL. It’s amazing what olive oil will do for a steak, or any other piece of meat for that matter. (and for every smarty pants out there let me beat you to the punch: it’s amazing what Olive Oyl could do for Popeye and Bluto as well! HA!)

19

Mother was a horrid cook, but a fair baker. She taught me to bake, and I think around age 12, I was on my own with cookies, cakes, etc. But cooking, nope, she was just awful.

I was lucky enough to start working in restaurants at about15. My admiration for short order cooks has no bounds; how those guys and women balance 20 or more orders at once was just a miracle. I watched them and learned; they would let me make some things, or try some idea I had for my own lunch while they coached. I moved on to other restaurants, and just watched. I never worked in the kitchens, but as a waitress hung out a lot, and stayed after just to watch.

I have had nothing to do with food service for over 20 yrs., but I can still time a damn meal!

20

How old were you the first time you cooked anything more complicated than toast?

I remember helpig my parents prepare breakfast (pancakes and omelettes), and needing to stand on a stepping stool. Also dicing the veggies to help for dinners. And learn to cook rice. All before 10.

How old were you when you cooked your first full meal?

By 12 or a bit earlier. If I didn’t want what my parents had, I had to cook something else.

When was the first time you fed others? Did any of them die?

My parents, when I was in high school… By the time I was 15, some nights I was the one preparing the meals for my parents. They’re still alive.

What was the first really complex thing that you cooked?

Despite all the cooking on the stove top and making rice mixes and beans and stir-fries, I didn’t get into baking until 21. So I considered baking complex than stove top.

What were some of your earliest breakthroughs that you could honestly brag about?

Good handle on what to substitute for what or how to mix things and turning out good. My cooking experiments work way better than my research experiments. I can cook better than my mom.

Did someone teach you, or did you learn it on your own?

Taught basics by both parents and a few other relatives. My ex-roomate introduced me to baking. I can now say I cook better than my mom (but not better than granny).