I hardly cook at all. I want to, but think it's impossible. Prove me wrong.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Because I don’t want to hijack the thread that inspired this one too much, all I’ll ask you to do is to take a look at this thread and my responses to it.

Basically, my problem is that I eat a lot, and I mean a LOT, of pre-processed or cooked foods. I know it’s probably unhealthy and costly, and I love it on the rare instances I cook something for myself besides basic spaghetti with butter and cheese, but I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible for me to cook regularly with any satisfaction, for basic reasons I’ll quote from the linked thread:

(See the linked thread for more detail.)

One thing to remember: I slavishly adhere to recipies. I never, repeat NEVER deviate from them one bit. I panic when I do, because I know so little about food that I’m terrified that I’ll screw it up. Further remember that I have a habit of ingredients sitting unused for so long that they go bad on me. I’ve wasted enough money on that, and I don’t want to do it again.

I am seriously in despair over this issue. I have completely given up hope of ever eating anything but microwavable frozen stuff. A friend believes that a dear friend of his contributed to his own death by cancer by habitually eating a lot of preprocessed foods. Is a similar early death my inevitable fate. I have run out of hope. Please help me find some.

2

Can you get over the deviating from recipes thingy? I’ve worked on a cookbook with a friend which was published and I’m currently working on a cookbook. I’ve done some cookery articles as well. I take it as a given that people will deviate.

Take a recipe which you like with ingredients you are willing to eat. Then replace one ingredient at a time with stuff you also are willing to eat. Track down a cooking for one cookbook and work from that. Libraries are a good source of cookbooks.

And what is the worry with things going wrong? It’s just food.

3

The worry? Wasting. I hate wasting money, and I hate wasting food. Every time I drop or let rot a significant amount of food, all I can think of is the money I wasted, and I feel really bad for the people who could’ve eaten this food that I just callously wasted, had I not bought it just to throw it away.

And I don’t know how to get over it.

4

(Get over the non-deviation, I mean. Feh.)

5

I had a cookbook where there are pages of lists. Basically the recipes (of which there are many) go something like this:

Take any three ingredients from list one. Do some action to them (eg broil together/put in a casserole dish with a cup of stock/. Then add your choice of ingredient from list two and simmer. Add a seasoning from list three for last 4 minutes of cooking. Serve.
Etc Etc.
Except there’s actually a lot more variety than that. I’d give examples except i’m about to move and packed that particular cookbook already.

Bascially, it’s a way to make the same kind of recipe using whatever you have in the house.

This way, you get to only pick ingredients that you like. You can use whatever you have on hand, in a number of combinations, so things don’t spoil.

You only have to learn three or four cooking techniques, each of which would make about 30 different meals depending on the combination of ingredients.

Also, it gives you controlled deviation from recipes.

I feel this kind of book may be a good starting point for you.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember the title, although I do remember it was published by Reader’s Digest…

6

phraser: Ooo, that sounds like just what I need.

If anyone recognizes this book, PLEASE let me know through this thread!

7

I agree, my wife thinks that I am a fantastic cook, but in fact I know only a handful of cooking techniques:[ol][li]Stir-fry - strips of meat (or none at all), cook until brown, remove, selection of vegetables (sliced), fry with a seasoning of your choice, add meat at for last few minutes. The only trick is learing which vegetables take longer than others (e.g. carrots, celery). Start with packet sauces for stirfry. Serve with noodles or rice.[]Stew - pretty much as above, but cooked for longer in a pot rather than a wok, and veg/meat is in chunks. Same rule re cooking time - tomatoes and mushrooms cook quickly, add just before the end or they will disappear. Serve with rice.[]Grill - Do meat/fish under the grill with a little oil/butter and lemon juice or spices, serve with whatever you fancy (baked potatoes, rice, couscous, pasta)[*]Pasta - pretty much anything goes, mix together with a little cream/creme fraiche and serve with grated parmesan cheese.[/ol][/li]
Like you, when I first started cooking for myself (when I left home as a postgraduate student) I followed the cookbook slavishly. I blamed my chemistry training, where deviating could result in an explosion :slight_smile: :eek: but six/seven years on I am learning what sort of flavours go together, so that if we don’t have a particular ingredient to hand, I can make a fairly good guess at something that will not ruin the dish as a substitute - not that it always works :slight_smile:

As far as the waste is concerned - do you have the time/energy to plan a menu for the week before you go shopping? This is something that we have started to do recently, and it has made us much less likely to buy something on a whim and then come home to discover that we have nothing to eat it with and it ends up going off.

phraser’s book also sounds like a really good starting point for you - have fun, it is an exciting journey into the world of food…

Grim

8

Another hint:

If you are worried about food spoiling, make a double batch of a recipe and freeze it. That way there is no food spoiling in the fridge, and you have instant meals in the freezer if you need them.

One more:

Many of the items needed in making your own food aren’t actually fresh things that will spoil. Eg, pulses/beans/veges etc can be stocked up on in dried (eg peas/lentils/beans), canned (beans, veges, fish) or frozen (veges) form, and are just as easy (if not easier) to use than fresh ones. Frozen vegetables apparently have a higher vitamin content than fresh ones because they are frozen fresher than any you can buy in a grocer, and that freshness is preserved.
This way, you can have a variety of items on hand without having to worry about spoilage

9

This is the problem right here; you need to find a way to relax about it; my suggestion is to start by making a meal that:
-Doesn’t matter (i.e. if it cocks up, you have something else to fall back on)
-Doesn’t cost much (cheap, basic ingredients)
-Doesn’t require elaborate preparation
-Doesn’t require precise measurement of ingredients, cooking time or temperature.

I was going to repost my experiments with a simple potato recipe at length, but there’s already a thread on it here.

Start off with potatoes, milk, butter and cheese; smear some butter on the inside of an ovenproof dish and pile in layers of sliced potatoes with a little grated cheese now and again, then pour over some milk (not so much that the potatoes are floating, but enough so that you can see it when you tip the dish a little.
Turn the oven up to about halfway through its temperature range and put the dish inside; leave it there for an hour then take it out and poke it with a fork - if it seems like the potatoes are cooked, eat it, if they still feel crunchy, put it back in the oven for a while longer.

OK, but that’s just a fairly plain potato dish, so you can add stuff to make it different/better; maybe a little chopped onion in between the layers, or some herbs/spices, or peppers, or a layer halved tomatoes on the top, or some chopped bacon, or whatever you fancy.
If the worst comes to the worst and it is inedible, you can throw it away and you’ve wasted a few cheap ingredients.

I reckon that if you can get confidence in breaking the rules once, it should all be downhill from there.

10

Buy any book by Nigel Slater - he talks about food and food techniques, and gives recipes that don’t rely on exact ingredients or exact amounts. He is also very entertaining and brimming with enthusiasm.

11

I would also recommend cookbooks by Jamie Oliver (“The Naked Chef”) and Nigella Lawson (I think I got her surname right; I’m not terribly familiar with her, but I browsed a book of hers at a friend’s house and her approach seemed very similar to Jamie’s). They also tend to follow the “a bit, a glug, a dollop” approach.

I will join the chorus of other voices to say: Your fears of screwing up a recipe by not following it slavishly are unfounded. In BAKING, yes, it’s more about chemistry and such and you must be accurate. But, say, a stew or stir-fry will not be ruined if you use too many carrots, or oregano instead of basil, or chicken instead of beef. It will just taste a little different. (And remember that some of our favorite foods [potato chips, chocolate chip cookies] were invented via screw-ups.)

Yes, sometimes a meal does not come out perfect. Use it as a learning experience. Mr. S and I will often talk about what could improve it next time: Needs more cheese, less tomatoes, let’s use black beans next time.

Remember that it’s okay to use canned or frozen vegetables instead of fresh, or store-bought soup stock instead of homemade, or dried onion or garlic bits in place of fresh, or water in place of wine, if that’s what makes you comfortable in starting out. Yes, the food will be a little different, and the food snobs will howl. But once you get comfortable with the basic techniques, you’ll be more willing to try the fresh stuff.

Is it possible for you to take a basic cooking class in your area, say through a local community college or tech school? Or do you know someone who’s a good cook that could mentor you?

And last, but not least, kudos to you for seeking help! I’m sure lots more of the foodie Dopers will be in here with very good advice.

12

It sounds like you need a good grounding in the science of cooking before you feel comfortable. For an interesting read, try getting What Einstein Told his Chef by Robert Wolke. He talks about the chemisty behind cooking, and sprinkles in a few recipes. He sort of veers around, though, and doesn’t necessarily touch on all the basics.
Perhaps you should take a browse through the cooking section of your local library. There should be at least one or two books that talk about recipe science there.
Once you understand the whys, it will be much easier to know what you can and cannot change about a given recipe.

13

In nearly 10 years of marriage/adulthood, we’ve completely screwed up exactly two meals. I tried some egg rolls that were disgustingly inedible. He tried a fish stew that turned out…slimy. Like Scarlett67, we’ve had a few meals where we discussed a way to improve it when it didn’t turn out quite as good as we intended (but was still edible).

Cookbooks that sell themselves on their one-skillet meals tend to have simpler ingredient lists. It’s actually harder than you think to screw up a cooking project (baking is another story). You could start by buying a Hamburger Helper and adding a bunch of fresh vegetables to the recipe (celery, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, whatever you want). Freeze leftovers in individual containers for the next few days.

Also, I use the smell test for herbs and spices to see if it would go in the recipe I’m making up. If it seems compatible, I use it. About the only way to screw up a non-baking recipe (for me, anyway) would be to add too much salt. Be careful of spice containers with salt as one of their ingredients. Start small and add a little more after each taste. After all, you can add more if it’s not enough, but you can’t remove it if it’s too much.

14

Cool that you started this thread Leaper, I meant to suggest it but forgot! What I was going to suggest as well is (since you said you are very picky about food) that you post a list of stuff you eat and people could suggest recepies to make from them? Good luck with your ventures into the kitchen, once mrsIteki convinced me that it is very hard to screw up, I really got into it. The worst that happens is something doesn’t taste wonderful, but it is almost impossible to destroy it.

15

BTW, I cook all the time (pretty much every day), and I experiment with food quite a lot - and I’d say about 5% of my output is either just-about-edible, or entirely disgusting.

Of course, I wouldn’t attempt something I’d never tried before for a dinner party (well, I have done but I just got lucky), but outside that context, if you think of it as a personal hobby, or a series of experiments, you won’t be too upset if it goes wrong.

16

Remember, the freezer is your friend!
I wouldn’t start with Jamie Oliver really, I think he’s a bit out of your league and he uses VERY expensive ingredients. Sainsburys’ sponsor him for a reason! Nigel Slater and Nigella Lawson probably are too.

Start with beginner (college) student cookbooks. ‘Grub on a Grant’ is a good one. They’re aimed at people who’ve just left home and have to cook for themselves for the first time.

17

About pickiness: I have outgrown SOME of my pickiness in that I have grown much more adventurous about trying ethnic foods. I also have learned to trust really good cooks and prefessional chefs – unless it’s something I KNOW I would hate, like a big bowl of mushrooms, generally I am willing to try something that has been well-prepared by someone who knows what they’re doing, even though it might contain something on my verboten list.

Once I found a recipe for African peanut stew. The concept sounded interesting and I really wanted to try it. However, the bulk of the ingredients are things I would not normally eat fresh and generally avoid cooked. As I chopped all those yucky veggies – onion, cabbage, red pepper, yams, tomatoes – I thought, “What the H&LL am I doing?” But I tried it anyway and now it’s one of our favorite dishes. And I’ve learned to love chunky yam mashers, with a little white potato in there and some cream and olive oil. Yum!

And I, the consummate hater of all things, onion, have even occasionally chopped a fresh onion by hand, and even eaten an onion ring or two. (I don’t think I’ll ever conquer raw mushrooms, though, and I’ll only eat the cooked ones if they’re chopped fine. Pencil erasers – bleh!)

How would you define your “pickiness”? Do you have a long list of foods you have tried and dislike, or is it more of an unwillingness to try unfamiliar foods? Let us know and maybe we can help with that.

18

I so know where you’re coming from Leaper. 10 years ago I couldn’t cook ANYthing without burning it, over/under seasoning it, or generally ruining whatever ingredients I started with. I am now the acknowledged Iron Chef of my household. Start with simple recipes as so many others have said already, and don’t worry about messing things up. You will, and it’s part of the process. Each time you do, you’ll discover what NOT to do next time. Just remember, and this is important: fresh ingredients are CHEAPER than buying prepackaged foods. Even if you screw something up to the point of inedibility, it’s a cheap lesson. Do you have friends who are handy in the kitchen? Perhaps invite a friend over and ask them to show you a few things. You supply the ingredients, a bottle of wine or some beer, and they teach you a few basics. Plus you get to share a nice meal as a result.

19

My suggestion would be to learn to cook.

OK, I’m not being too much of a smart ass because I really mean it. You are not going to stop freaking out about changing a recipe unless you know what all the bits do. For example you are not going to get in trouble for substituting green beans for broccoli but you will if you put in baking soda instead of baking powder. Until you know what the essential ingredients are you will always worry.

Are there any community ed claees in your area? That might be a good place to start. Otherwise I would find a cooking basics page on the internet and then a cooking message board. Read first to get the basics. Then when you want to make something look it up online first. If you don’t find your answer then post it to the cooking board for an answer.

It really isn’t all that complex. I just looks obscure to the uninitiated. You should be up and running in no time.

You might also find a mentor. There are a lot of older ladies who are just sitting out their final years looking for something to do. If you could find someone who is willing to make you a project it could get you where you want to be and also make someone feel useful again.

20

Daftbugger, Slater’s ingredients aren’t fancy at all - at least not in the books of his that I have.

Nigella, now… that’s posh nosh off top toff tot, but I forgive her.