well I learned how to cook because most of my family were cooks …… dad and grandpa in the army and what was known as the army air corps and grandma knew hot to cook but she worked a lot so hamburger helper and such were dinner a lot and she didn’t mind premade shortcuts
but when I turned 13 and moved in with my mom I ended up cooking a lot for the family and learning how to feed people with a can of kidney beans a pack of egg noodles some bbq sauce and 4 hotdogs ……… taking care fo a family like that made me decide to live in place and with people where I was only responsible for me for the most part
oh and when mom finally bought a washer and dryer for the house … the extend of her doing laundry was showing us how to use them at one point I was showing other peoples kids how to use a washer and dryer ……
but I don’t like cooking everyday so id just eat out unless something struck my fancy or I had a craving for something particular if I lived on my own …
I grew up watching Julia Child & The Galloping Gourmet with my parents, and they were willing to let me try anything I wanted to. I didn’t do too much cooking for the family until I was about 10, when my mom decided she’d had enough of cooking (I was the youngest of four boys). So, my dad started cooking dinner and the deal was, if we wanted dessert, we had to make it ourselves.
So, I learned to bake before I really learned to cook meals. Cooking I sort of picked up along the way.
My mother was a stay-at-home parent who raised me to be a stay-at-home parent (or even just a stay-at-home wife), with expectations that I would cook and care for the home while my husband earned the money… however, she constantly complained that it was “easier to do it herself” and gave me no real chores or responsibilities, and limited cooking lessons (I knew how to make fried tomatoes, but that was all). When I moved out of home, had we not had cooking lessons at school, I would never have prepared a meal. I was taught how to cross stitch, and make salt dough ornaments, and make little witches out of old stockings, and other creative pastimes that aren’t a lot of functional use.
I’m a pretty good home cook now, and even finally getting a handle on housekeeping, and I’m raising my kids in a different way to how I was raised.
It was probably somewhat important to her, but back then you were expected to get married and the little woman would take care of things. So my sister got the instruction. It didn’t help that I was a little shit who refused to learn anything and was a picky eater on top of that. Nothing like being on your own to force you to pick up a cookbook and a knife. And when I did get married, it was to a woman who could barely boil water. Circumstance is a hard master.
I never received any childhood cooking lessons from my mom.
I moved away for college, and wanted to make my favorite home cooked meals. I called my mom for recipes and instructions. I also asked my grandmother how to cook dishes that I loved.
My parents expected us to cook, and do it well. Family of seven, my mother majored in chem. Yes, cooking is a lot like chemistry but not enough to entice her to do it full time. SO we kids were expected to contribute to the work around the household including preparing meals.
I was also a Boy Scout, and learned to cook on open fires. I feel…skilled - gastronomically speaking.
Was never taught, thank heavens. My mother was not a very good cook, and her mother was a horrible one. She may have instructed my sisters, I don’t know, but not me or my brother.
My father in his later years is quite the burgeoning chef though: One of our rituals when I visit him is us getting wrecked on martinis and him whipping up ( and showing me how to ) and eating, some awesome food.
My mom’s a great cook, mostly German style meals. As a kid we eat well and always look forward to mom’s meals. As a teenager I asked mom to teach me her cooking and she did.
When my mom became disabled from Rheumatoid Arthritis I took over the cooking for the family. I enjoyed it and we still eat well. I created a few one dish meals when I got older and I have a favorite dish I call my Swedish Stew.
Groqing up, my Dad did most of the cooking. He taught my three brothers how to cook normal food along with fish and wild game that we havested from hunting and fishing. It’s just what we did. Mom worked nights so we always made sure that she had something waiting for her when she got home.
Now as an adult, I do most of the cooking as I am self emplyed and I have the time and ability to do so. My wife works a pretty high stress corporate type job and it’s just easier for all of us if she doesn’t need to cook. She can bake like a pro and it still amazes the kids that she can whip out a cake or cookies from scratch when the whim hits her.
Our goal was to raise the kids with a sense of independence to be able to take care of themselves at an early age. That started with simple sandwiches and treats, to easy microwave meals, to now as they are getting older, full blown meals. Personally, and i mean no offense, but I find it fairly pathetic when a grown up cant follow simple instructions to make food. It’s really not that hard. I do realize there is a difference in choosing not to cook versus choosing not to learn how. If eating out is your thing, more power to ya!
I never learned to cook as a kid, and I like fairly simple stuff, so I learned to do what I call “cooking by science experiment.” If I have a good, precise recipe that doesn’t include too many difficult cooking terms (or, nowadays, a good YouTube video), I can follow directions and produce something that’s tasty and mostly fits the photo on the recipe.
What I can’t do is improvise, or approximate. Don’t give me a recipe that says something like, “Add a dash of this, this other thing to taste, and put it in the oven at somewhere around 350 until it looks right.” That will make me panic. I want, “Add 1 tsp of this, a cup of that, and put it in at 400 for exactly 20 minutes.”
I’m amazed by cooks who can just toss a little in here, a little there, whatever they happen to have in the fridge, and end up with something good. I would end up with a mess, so I don’t even try.
I was taught cooking basics and follow a recipe, also to modify a recipe. What I didn’t get taught is how to enjoy it. I hate cooking, the whole buying, prepping, cooking, cleaning just bores me to death.
As children we didn’t really cook much growing up, but we did a lot of baking (cookies, brownies, cakes, etc.) My mother was a great cook, so we didn’t lack for good food.
When I finally got an off-campus apartment in college, my sister-in-law, who happened to be a home economics teacher, got me a “survival kit” of basic spices, oils, and other dry ingredients. Most importantly she gave me the paperback version of the Betty Crocker cookbook. It had a lot of basic instructions and just enough “why” to make cooking less intimidating. I’d read the first few pages of each section (such as baking, vegetables, chicken, etc.) just to get the basics down and learn how to do some simple recipes. She was more influential to me than my parents were.
To my father, the notion of not teaching basic cooking skills to an able-bodied person would be absurd; as I like to say when I explain the difference in size between kitchens within 200km of Vitoria and those in Barcelona, “where I’m from, ‘to cook’ only has plural conjugations” (ok, unless you happen to be alone… and heck, you can always use a majestic plural :p). To my mother, it was important to have other people be able to handle housework, so she wouldn’t have to. They taught me the very basics and I built up on them; later I was part of teaching my brothers.
When I was little, Mum made a few attempts to teach me some baking; basically a Victoria sponge and a basic cookie recipe, but that was about her limit. Later, once my parents started their own business, my parents split the cooking, no-one had any time, and baking and stuff like that just stopped.
Dad’s a slightly better cook in that he’s more willing to try new stuff, and didn’t have weird prejudices about pasta or other innocuous foods, unlike Mum, but that did mean some spectacular fails along with the tasty stuff he sometimes made. Neither of them were ever taught at all to cook, so it was pretty much trial and error anyway, with about a decade of heating up frozen stuff when they were both too busy to even try.
Most of what I’ve learned is from experimenting, housemates and the chef in the cafe I used to work in.
On weekends, my mom taught art at Sunday school, and my brother was off doing other things. So it was just me and my dad at home. He was a decent cook, but abusive, so I’d fix my own breakfast either earlier or later than him, so I wouldn’t have to eat with him. I went to amazing lengths to avoid being around the man.
I want, “Add 1 tsp of this, a cup of that, and put it in at 400 for exactly 20 minutes.”