How To Start Cooking In 5 Easy Steps: Talent Not Required
The dangerously delicious thing you’re looking at is called a butterscotch pie. Me attempting to make this pie became the foundation of how I learned how to cook. That was a few months ago. I now cook regularly and make significantly healthier choices.
How You Start Cooking
1. Create An Occasion
If you’re not cooking right now, then that means the habit hasn’t been formed yet. Forming habits can only be done through action. Action is a physical manifestation of emotion.
What the above logic sequence means is that you will make your life easier by having your first (or most recent) attempt be meaningful to you.
Pick a birthday (yours, a friend’s, a significant other’s, etc.). Pick an event (work or community potluck, a date, etc.). Hell, try it on Mother’s Day for all I care. Just pick something that is going to have an emotional attachment.
Once you have the date set, put it in your calendar. Set a reminder.
Commit.
2. Pick A Dessert
You might be wondering — why a dessert?
Dopamine.
Desserts typically give more neural stimulation than, say, green beans. The physiological effect of salivation is stronger for a layered chocolate cake than it is for roasted carrots.
What this means for you is that starting with desserts makes it easier to pick up the habit of cooking. You’ll eventually have to switch to cooking healthy food — but it’s easier to get the habit and skill going first.
When I bit into that butterscotch pie, it felt really good. The woman next to me felt the same way. Previously unknown relationship goals were achieved that day. Levels were gained.
I started baking those pies for three weeks straight and then started switching it up to a broader array of foods.
3. Gather Equipment
Alright, you’ve got the date and you’ve got the dessert. Hopefully you didn’t pick something insane like home-made caramel.
Now it’s time to get the various tools of the trade assembled. Does your recipe require a big mixing bowl? Go out and get one. Don’t try and make due with small bowls if that’s all you currently have.
Why?
Because you’re still new at this, trying to succeed, and should be going for a low barrier to entry over an artificially high one.
Once you get good, there’s more room to “make do” with what’s on hand. This is not where you are yet.
Does the recipe call for mixing? Whipping? Beating? Get something like this electric hand mixer. Keep it simple, keep it cheap. Low barriers to entry. There will be time to go for high end stuff later if you get into this.
Is what you picked going in the oven? Have oven mitts. Two of them.
Does what you’re making require an internal temperature to be reached? If you’re making a dessert then it probably doesn’t, but if you’re going rogue on me then go get a cooking thermometer.
4. Gather Ingredients
Once you’ve got your date set, your dessert picked, and your equipment in good order — now it’s time to get the ingredients.
I recommend buying these one to two days before your cooking attempt. Let’s be real — early attempts are stressful. Isolate some of that stress into different-day prep work. Or don’t. If you’re easily overwhelmed though, this can help.
Most recipe ingredients are easy to find and readily available at large grocery stores. Every now and then though you find yourself requiring something niche.
For me, the first time this happened was needing something called Red Currant Jelly. Apparently British people have this in their stores. Unfortunately, there was a revolution about 250 years ago that set off a chain of events making this hard to find in American stores.
The other big thing to watch out for here are the Instacart/Target/etc. shoppers. I know it’s convenient. That said, I recommend getting your ingredients in person. It gives you more control of the situation. You’re more likely to get everything you need if you go yourself.
If you go rogue here, double-check the delivered groceries. We want to avoid a situation where you’re rockin’ and rollin’ and suddenly in an “oh shit they forgot the ____” situation.
5. Make The Attempt
The day has arrived! Hell yeah — let’s do this.
If you have a printer, print out a copy of your recipe. If you don’t have a printer, keep the web page up and on-hand.
Put on some music. Pick a playlist that’s a little upbeat.
Lay out all of the ingredients you’ll need to make your dessert. Measure them and isolate them.
Begin following the recipe step-by-step. Do not differentiate. Eventually you’ll develop understandings of how ingredients work for textures and flavors — but starting out it’s best to stay humble.
Whenever your recipe calls for a time (i.e. time in oven), you’re going to set a timer on your phone. Or oven. Or microwave. Be aware that phone timers sometimes don’t go off properly if you’re on a phone call when the alarm is supposed to trigger.
When you have a range of times in a recipe, you want to pick the minimum. If I tell you 5–10 minutes in the oven, the move here is to pick 5 minutes. Cooking times work the same way as haircuts. You can add more time to the cooking similar to how you can cut more hair — but once that time has been used or hair has been cut, there’s no take backs.
Also — you’ll probably make some mistakes. Jot things down when this happens and learn from them. Practice makes perfect.
Let me know how it goes!
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