Being a good cook doesn’t necessarily mean knowing specific recipes. Most cooks have their own repertory to draw on. I think that it does mean that one should have a basic knowledge of sauces, herbs, spices, proportion, and a solid sense of timing. A cook should also know basic knife skills, what the terms simmer, boil, saute, and sweat mean, and be unafraid to tackle new or complicated dishes.
ETA: missed Tripolar’s comment.
For me, a good cook is someone who can step into a kitchen, survey the ingredients, and make something everyone will enjoy without having to have any sort of recipe written down. Recipes are fine, but sometimes you just don’t feel like trekking out to the store and want to use up the pantry along with some veggies that are about to go off in the fridge, or maybe you have some meat that needs to be used up, or want to clear out freezer space, etc.
And building on this, and Tripolar’s comment, understanding the basics of building flavor and what various cooking techniques are appropriate for your ingredients. To me, basic stuff is knowing your cuts of meat and which are good for long, slow cooking (beef chuck, pork shoulder, chicken thigh), and which are good for quick cooking (your classic beef steak cuts, pork loin chops, chicken breast), which can go either way, and which are just totally useless (beef eye of round. Sorry, just a cut I happen to despise.)
Also, learning to use your taste buds and to taste along the way and, most importantly, adjust at the end. Most dishes do need at least a salt adjustment at the end. I don’t understand people who cook and don’t taste. And, also remember that if it’s a long cooked dish, it will concentrate flavors over time (assuming simmering that allows evaporation), so if you’re tasting early on, you should adjust mentally and aim for a more dilute flavor. But just use your senses!
I agree with TriPolar in that it’s more about techniques.
When I was teaching myself to cook, I only made one dish - Vegetable Lasagna with Alfredo.
I learned a ton of things in just trying to make that one dish really well. Figuring how to make an Alfredo without breaking the sauce was a major accomplishment. From that I was able to make homemade mac and cheese quite simply.
I’d say knowing how to make all of the “mother sauces” is a good set of basics for any aspiring cook. Lots of technique that apply to hundreds of dishes.
Do you mean simply boiling water to make pasta. I certainly agree anyone who ever wants to be able to feed themselves should know how to boil water and tell when pasta is ready (hint - taste it, don’t throw it against the wall). Regarding how you flavor the otherwise bland carbohydrate, the list of sauces is long and varied. Perhaps you meant one should have at least one sauce in one’s repetoire?
To help chacoguy, my 15-minute marinara:
1 - medium onion, grated on the largest holes of a box grater (including all juice) (about 1 cup)
1/4 - teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 to 1/2 - teaspoon crushed red pepper
pinch - sugar
1 - teaspoon salt
2 - tablespoons butter
1 - 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
extra virgin olive oil, fresh cracked black pepper and 6-8 leaves fresh basil*, to taste
1 - Melt butter in medium saucepan over medium to medium-high heat until foaming subsides, but do not let it burn. Add onion, crushed red pepper and oregano; saute for 3-5 minutes, stirring frequently.
2 - Add crushed tomatoes, sugar, and salt. Bring to boil, then reduce heat and let simmer while pasta cooks, 8-15 minutes, stirring occassionally. (I will add the pasta to the boiling water right after reducing the heat on the marinara).
3 - Finish with drizzle of good extra virgin olive oil, a few grinds of black pepper and a chiffonade of basil.
Bingo. One of my favorite stories happened at my grandmother’s funeral. After the burial, we went back to her house and I surveyed the food we’d been given by well meaning neighbors who apparently couldn’t cook. And inedible potato salad and a pot roast cooked to the point that you could barely carve it. And a house full of hungry men. I had my sister wash the po’ salad and pick out the potatoes. I had my brother take a hunting knife to the roast and just cut off whatever he could. I heated oil, threw it all in with some onion and damned if we didn’t have a huge pot of hash on the table in no time. Man food!!
Good addition, and I agree. It’s second nature for me, but not for most folks. I mentioned this thread to my wife and she said “I think a good cook is someone who can make dishes that please people.”
For me, understanding how long things take is the primary required skill. If you don’t understand that you can’t put the eggs and bacon on at the same time, you’re going to have a lot of failures in the kitchen.
Yeah, I have most of the requisite skills, timing ( for the most part) seasoning, technique, improvising… if you know how to do all that, it’s easy to add new things to your repertoire…my point is I am just surprised I never made a pot rast beofre because it seems like such a basic thing. I’m not using a recipe either.
**D Odds **Yes, I meant spaghetti sauce.
chacoguy : Do you like Mountain Dew? you might try this.
Ditto on what **pulykamell **and **Chefguy **are saying. Know the food and it’s flavors. Coordination is a big deal. If you know your timing you can make some pretty complicated dishes in one pan. A recent thread discussed cooking potatoes and a roast together from recipes with different temperatures and timing. It should just seem natural to adjust to get those things to work. Rarely do I have time to find all the ideal ingredients for a dish, I’ll look through the fridge and the cabinets for flavors and textures that I know will combine to make something good.
And of course, practice. Try things. Stick with what you know when you’re cooking for guests, try things out for yourself and your family. You may screw up once in a while as you learn. If they complain tell them to make to their own food.
That said, there are some dishes that are good for learning, a pot roast is an example. With that you have to sear the meat to bring out the flavor, and it’s not in most recipes but you should brown your vegetables also. You don’t need to add liquid, there’s plenty in the meat and vegetables, but if you like that sauce thrown in the mushroom soup. Just making eggs in a frying pan with butter will teach you a lot about proper temperatures. Perfect your recipes as** August West** did, what a great example that is.
Finally, if cooking stresses you out, it’s just not your thing. The cooking should be as enjoyable as the eating.
Well not quite finally, one more technique every cook should know that my grandmother taught me. To make potato kugel start by putting some potatoes on the kitchen table. Then sit down. When someone comes into the kitchen stand up and peel potatoes. When they leave sit down again.
I was pretty sure I knew what you meant, but again it’s not clear. “Spaghetti sauce” is not specific. Is it a tomato-based sauce? A cream-based sauce? An olive oil-based sauce? Or do you mean that one should have any one sauce used to top a bowl of pasta? I’m aware that in large swaths of the U.S., spaghetti sauce is shorthand for a basic tomato sauce. But it really does no justice to the versatility and breadth of sauces to top pasta.
I learned a expensive lesson in college.
Don’t buy an expensive roast for pot roast. It doesn’t have enough fat and isn’t intended to be cooked that way. The one I cooked was so dry and tough half was thrown out.
Buy a cheaper roast. Fat on it for flavor. They come out tender, juicy and falling apart every time.
That’s true, I suppose I meant a basic bolognese… tomato based sauce with meat.
aceplace,I got the cheapest roast I could LOL
There is a strong relation between price and type of roast best suited for pot roasting, but it’s better just to know your cuts. You want to pot roast something like chuck (the easiest not to screw up–anybody, and I mean anybody, can make a decent pot roast with this cut) or brisket. Rump roast or bottom round work okay, too, but have a different texture and can get a bit stringy/dry if you’re not careful. I would, at all costs, avoid the (usually) cheap eye of round. You basically want a well-exercised cut of beef that has a good bit of intramuscular fat but, more importantly, connective tissue, which contains collagen, which renders down into gelatin, which is what give you that falling apart texture and moist mouthfeel.
What does it mean to “break” the sauce?
Alfredo sauce is one of those things that sounds incredibly complicated but is so easy to make.
Heavy cream, butter, Parmesan cheese, dash of nutmeg. You don’t want the cream to curdle, (breaking the sauce) so cook it over low heat until simmering.
My latest culinary discovery might sound good. Alas, you probably don’t have the ingredients. Make some cocoa with Dagoba Xolotl mix (chiles & spice added to organic chocolate). Let cool & pour into popsicle molds–like this. In 8 hours–Popsicles of the Gods!
Yeah, I’m not a fancy cook. Good at quick pasta for one–variations on Puttanesca rather than Red Gravy. Have discovered that roasting vegetables in the oven with olive oil, Panko & maybe some parm works great–but makes the kitchen Hellish in a Houston summer. Have fed a family (did that in high school when Mom visited her dying mother after work) & helped on Thanksgiving. Enjoy recipes but often fiddle with them. Not a fine baker, alas.
At least one co-worker “doesn’t cook.” Huh? Say you hate to cook–but nobody, male or female, young or old, should get away with that shit.
ETA: Martha Stewart makes Fettucine Alfredo with Parmesan, butter & salt. That’s it. Her show on PBS is great for beginners & has plenty of good hints for non-beginners…
Stews are by no means pot roasts, which was the subject of the OP. If you open the pot before its time, the pot roast loses a bunch of moisture to the atmosphere (which, in a stew, would instead be lost by the gravy, thickening it slightly and not affecting the meat in the slightest). Not remotely the same thing.
A “broken” sauce is when your fat and liquid separate, so instead of a smooth, velvety sauce you get something that looks clumpy and curdled floating in a sea of thin, yellowy liquid.
Alfredo sauces may be easy for ivylass, but as a young, broke, Navy guy trying to figure out how to cook to save money, it took me quite a few tries.
Temperature, when to add the ingredients, how long it sits on the stove, are just some of the factors that led me to many broken sauces before I figured it all out.
I do exactly the same thing with pot roast to check doneness. No issues. You can make a perfectly good and moist pot roast completely uncovered, if you wanted to (though, I suppose it would not be a “pot roast” then.) A wet cooking environment is not necessary to keep the inside of the meat you are cooking moist.