#AdultingInKitchen #CookingTips #MealPlanning101 #KitchenConfessions
If you’re struggling in the kitchen…
Hey there, fellow kitchen newbie! I see you, feeling overwhelmed and lost when faced with the task of cooking for yourself and your wife. It’s okay, we’ve all been there at some point. But don’t worry, I’ve got your back with some practical tips to help you navigate your way through the culinary world like a pro!
Identifying the problem:
- Feeling uncreative when cooking
- Struggling to come up with meal ideas on the spot
- Concerns about catering to different dietary preferences
Solution 1: Meal planning
Start by planning your meals ahead of time. Dedicate some time each week to sit down and decide what you’ll be cooking for the coming days. This will not only help you avoid last-minute panic but also give you a sense of direction when it comes to grocery shopping.
Solution 2: Stock up on essentials
Make sure your pantry is well-stocked with essential ingredients like rice, pasta, canned beans, and vegetables. Having these basics on hand will make it easier for you to whip up a quick and delicious meal without much effort.
Solution 3: Embrace simplicity
Remember, not every meal has to be a Michelin-star creation. Keep it simple and focus on using fresh, wholesome ingredients. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different flavor combinations and cooking techniques.
Solution 4: Communication is key
Since you and your wife have different dietary preferences, communication is crucial. Make sure to discuss your meal plans with her and find ways to accommodate both of your tastes in a single dish. This will not only make mealtime more enjoyable but also strengthen your bond as a couple.
Final thoughts:
Don’t be too hard on yourself – learning to cook is a process, and it’s okay to make mistakes along the way. With a bit of practice and the right mindset, you’ll soon be whipping up delicious meals like a seasoned chef. So roll up your sleeves, put on that apron, and let’s start adulting in the kitchen together!
I hope these tips help you on your culinary journey. Remember, the most important thing is to enjoy the process and have fun experimenting with new recipes. You’ve got this!
Give these suggestions a try and watch as your confidence in the kitchen grows. Happy cooking! 🍳🥦🍝
The way i learned was by doing a lot of recipes. The more you cook, the more connections youll be able to make without thinking. this is something that comes from time and patience.
Dude I’m the 37 year old wife who has to follow a recipe or get that same paralysis lol. My husband is one of those that can improvise.
I’ve heard that stir fries can be a good way to practice that. You can get bags of premixed stir fry veggies at any store and kind of customize the sauces you ad and can cook up meat separately for the nonvegetarian.
Practice practice practice. With experience, you’ll be able to do what you want. For guidance, I suggest salt fat acid heat by Samin Nosram, and ruhlmans twenty by Michael Ruhlman.
Carbs (microwave mashed potatoes, microwave baked potatoes, rice cooker), legumes(canned beans, lentils, garbanzos), vegetable (frozen or fresh) and a protein (country style ribs in the instant pot).
When you don’t know what to do, sandwiches and pasta.
For one, don’t start with just staring into the pantry and trying to make a coherent meal from random leftover bits and pieces. Start by finding a few recipes that you think you and your wife will like, and go buy the ingredients for them specifically and make them. Find recipes with ingredients that have a long shelf life, so they’ll still be there and good whenever it comes time for you to cook. I’ll bet that your wife isn’t improvising as much as you think, and is more deciding which meal to cook from a list of things she bought the ingredients for.
But, as a secondary, learn to categorize items. When I cook a meal, I tend to look at things as “Each meal should have a carb, a protein, a vegetable, and a seasoning/sauce.” So, go into your pantry and try to put everything you find in there into one of those 4 categories. Do that every so often, think about it when you’re grocery shopping, and gradually, when you look into the pantry and want to make a meal, you’ll know which category everything falls into, and you can just grab 1-2 from each category(probably more like 3-4 sauce/seasoning components) and put them together. Sometimes the things you grab won’t taste good together, but that’s fine, remember it and pick a different combination next time. Keep notes, so you remember what went good and bad.
Start simple with quality whole foods and improve.
* Olive oil, salt and pepper are your friends.
* Pickles and vinegars add nice contrast.
**My favorite**
1. Poached eggs
2. Poached eggs with sourdough toast
3. Add canned beets, goat cheese, chopped pistachios
4. Or smashed avacado with lime juice drizzle
5. Side of fresh fruit
6. Add pickle / pickled vegetables
**Next favorite**
1. Ribeye Steak. Salt and cooked to temp
2. Grill/sautéed asparagus or cauliflower
3. Add toasts as above
4. Add fruit as above
**Underrrated**
1. Burrata cheese + cherry tomatoes
2. Add toast or fruit as above
**Quick Easy**
1. Green apple + Brie + honey + sourdough toast
….. mix and match
It’s kinda like writing.
Before you can be a good writer, you need to be a good reader. You’ll pick up knowledge and techniques as you practice and one day, you’ll understand enough to not need a recipe anymore.
Sorry, wish there was a quick way. I have a culinary degree and this is how we were taught. I recall cooking almost exclusively from a book my first two years of undergrad.
Honestly we’re at the point where you can tell chat gpt what’s in your fridge and ask it what you can make out of that stuff. Or google “healthy easy recipes”.
The hard part is just deciding to try. It’s always scary to start something new. But cooking is surprisingly easy, at least on a basic level.
First off, don’t sell yourself short. If you are making meals on the regular, with or without recipes, you are adulting. You may not be the most passionate about cooking, and that’s okay. Sometimes chores are just chores and just cooking something is an achievement.
Try variations of your favorite recipes and learn some simple substitutions. Like pasta with tomato sauce. You can add pretty much any vegetable to canned tomato sauce and make it better.
Also look at pasta with pesto, and pasta with a cream sauce. You will see that different pasta shapes work better for different sauces.
If you like risotto, try recipes for risotto with ham, risotto with chicken, risotto with squash, and so on. See what is the same and what is different.
Actually read the stupid blog posts before the recipe where they talk about why they use specific ingredients for specific dishes.
You just gotta get more recipes. I look up new recipes all the time. Just remember that you have to click the [jump to recipe] button at the top of the page on most sites. (I thought it was common knowledge but a very close friend proved that wrong for me).
Once you’ve done a few recipes you’ll start to learn what’s simple and what’s complicated, what’s easy to shop for and what takes more planning. You’ll also learn what spices you tend to use most often, and you can keep those handy on the counter, or in a spice rack over the stove.
Everyone starts somewhere. Don’t sweat it. Learn what you like. Let’s get cooking.
In a pan with oil add :
– chopped onions, cook till translucent
– meat, optional
– dry spices you like
– veggies, chopped, cook till tender
– fresh herbs
That your base, finish it with either cooked rice, cooked noodles, roasted cubes of potatoes, lens, beans…
It’s basic, but a good starting point and hard to fail.
find the veggie/starchy combo you like.
I do garlic+dried herb for a mediteranean style, soy sauce + honey for “Japanese” style, fish sauce+ cilentro for “thai” style, curry + coco milk is “Indian”…
You said you’d like to come up with something on a whim just by looking at your pantry/fridge? This should help. Pick a cuisine or theme for each week and do an ingredient prep for it ahead of time.
For example, “Chipotle” week. The weekend before it starts, preparecook these items and store in separate containers:
– canned refried beans
– canned black beans
– Frozen chicken fajita strips (for your sake, these are easier and faster to prep than making your own)
– Frozen fajita vegetable mix (again, faster to prep than chopping your own)
– Boxed Spanish rice or cilantro lime rice (cook then store in fridge, should last about a week)
– a pack of flour tortilla and a pack of corn tortilla
– Tortilla chips
– A jar of your favorite salsa
Then get your fixins like Pico de gallo, guacamole, cilantro, lime, sour cream, and cheese.
Why do this? It takes out a lot of the guess work for you, which can be paralyzing and intimidating. You can make multiple dishes from just those ingredients alone (fajita bowl, burrito, nachos, chicken and rice, etc).
And because your ingredients are “themed”, you already know that they should go well with each other. Most of what you’ll have to do during the week is reheat. And it’s adaptable for vegetarians.
Then, once you want to push yourself even further with the learning process, you can scale the difficulty. Maybe make your own chicken fajita strips? Or make your rice from scratch? Chop your fajita veggies and cook them yourself? Make your own pico de gallo? The possibilities are endless.
Finally, I recommend the Serious Eats website and Alton Brown’s Good Eats show. Those two are what really helped me understand the why’s and the how’s of cooking.
Good luck OP
> More specifically, I want to be able to on a whim look at our pantry/fridge and be able to come up with something.
I’d go for stir fry. It’s super versatile so you can use whatever you have lying around. You can be creative with sauces so it feels different each time, too.
If you want inspiration for dishes, youtubers Ethan Chlebowski and Adam Ragusea both encourage experimentation and freestyle.
First thing I would do is get good at making a well seasoned and juicy chicken breast. Salads are super easy to throw together and good, just throw on some chicken for protein on one and you should be good.
From there expand into other things good with chicken that can also be vegetarian… Pastas maybe.
Also… Start roasting vegetables. They get really good that way and are always a good side.
General rule for a dinner meal: as much protein per person as the size of your own hand MINUS the fingers.
Some carbs like rice, potatoes, pasta.
Some veggies, the more different colors the better for vitamin content.
If you go vegetarian the protein can be legumes like lentils, beans, chick peas, peas, also tofu, mushrooms, eggs, cheese.
Beans and lentils go very well with grains (think rice or bread), there is a reason that many people in India basically eat lentils combined with rice, and in Mexico beans combined with corn products like torilla. The amino acids of these combinations are similar to what you get from eggs or meat.
And if you worry about getting enough protein on a vegetarian diet: look to the gorilla…
My advice would be to shop around for a cookbook that has recipes that you think you’ll enjoy. Then, once you get it, read through it and flag all the recipes you’d like to try one day.
Now you have your “to-do” list. Each time you want to make something, pick it from the flagged pages. Make things multiple times to get the hang of it. If it doesn’t turn out great the first time, try again next week. Try to follow the recipes exactly. If something comes out weird, try to figure out where you went wrong in the process, and correct it the next time.
Eventually you’ll learn how to make things off of memory, and once you understand why something tastes good to you, you’ll be able to make your own recipe ideas on the fly.
Just try to enjoy the process, don’t get too wrapped up in the end result. Those will come with time.
This starts with your grocery shopping. Shop with intent. Make a meal plan, or find a meal plan online and buy your groceries to match. If you don’t want to keep eating the same thing, do a 2 week cycle or leave one or two nights open for something outside the plan. Once you start cooking more often, and varying your recipes, you will begin to learn what flavors work together and what doesn’t, what cooking techniques there are and how to execute them, and what ingredients complement each other. Then you can start experimenting with your proven recipes until you get more comfortable freestyling.
It’s going to take effort and practice, but you can do this.
Improv cooking, I’d recommend just googling the stuff you have, in combinations. Like for example, if all you have in the fridge is ground beef that has to be used tonight, broccoli, and onions, you could end up with suggestions like [this,](https://www.fivehearthome.com/ground-beef-broccoli-recipe/) [this, ](https://www.eatingwell.com/recipe/7989666/cheesy-ground-beef-broccoli-casserole/) or [this.](https://www.budgetbytes.com/garlic-noodles-with-beef-and-broccoli/). Likewise for stuff in your pantry that you want to use up, just look up 1-2 vegetables (fresh, frozen or canned) and your protein (meat, eggs, beans), and see what suggestions you get. Look at the length of the ingredients and the estimated prep time to rule out super complicated recipes.
Start with foods you like to eat- if your go-to at the takeaway is chicken parm- learn to make chicken parm. If her favorite is falafel, learn to make falafel.
Learn to cook the ingredients before cooking the ingredients. Youtube that shit. Watch 3-5 videos on the subject and you will be as good as any home cook.
Learn to shop right. This goes for meat and veg, and this goes for kitchen tools. Pick the best in your price range. If you are comparing dinner for two with Burger King prices you can find a dinners worth of food for 30-40 dollars at most markets. Learn to shop for the right ingredients and what to look for in each. Again, there is so much info on YouTube, the only way you’ll miss it is if you don’t look.
Are you using a thin, flimsy, aluminum pan? Go on eBay and look for a good Allclad version of what you are comfortable with. You can find great deals, cleaning with barkeepers friend will make them look like new and they will last to see your grandchildren. Get a nice knife or sharpen what you have. It will make a huge difference in your prep. I recommend a chef’s, a paring, and a serrated utility knife. You can add a bread, filet, etc if needed.
I found that if I focus on a style of dish I can branch out from there.
Let’s say you start with a stir fry. Follow directions/recipe. Then mix it up next time. Try different protein. Try different veggies. Feeling adventurous? Try that random spice you have in the cupboard that you think will work. It may be mundane eating the same style for awhile but you’ll quickly be able to have more variety thank just following a recipe.
I find that if you from 1 recipe to the next you never really learn why that dish works.
Just wanted to add that having a meal kit service like HelloFresh really helped me learn to cook. I found myself too lazy to go to the store and get exactly what I needed for meals so I would never cook recipes. With HelloFresh, I just follow the card and all the ingredients are included in the box. The meals are actually really good, and you can do vegetarian, or meat options.
If you haven’t used HelloFresh before, you should have three to six months of discounts as a first time user to take advantage of which makes the cost very reasonable.
Two suggestions:
If you have Netflix watch “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” trust me.
Strangely- timed cooking contest shows (e.g. Guys Grocery Games) often show you how pros do it quickly, with certain go to tricks and combinations you often can replicate.
There’s apps like SuperCook and MyFridgeFood that gives you recipes according to what you have in your pantry, cupboards, and fridge. It’s a way to get you started and maybe spark your cooking imagination.
Just get a fucking cookery book!
When my partner started cooking they were so creative they used spices and herbs together that just didn’t go together. More is better kind of thinking. What’s wrong with ground clove in spaghetti, kind of taste.
I organized our spice drawer into general categories and instructed them to follow the groupings. They did, got their culinary feet under them, and now can mix and match with far fewer assaults on our tongues. It’s a matter of practice for the most part.
As others have said, you need recipes and you need inspiration. You’re not going to get away from recipes, no one remembers how to cook everything. A better path might be to start writing down recipes for things that you like, and then use your growing recipe book as a fallback when you need a meal.
As for inspiration, YouTube is a great resource. There are a metric ton of streamers who specialize in recipe content. Check out Beryl Shereshewsky and Binging with Babish. Don’t worry if you can’t necessarily cook everything you see, the point is to see what ingredients go together and what you can do with, say, soy sauce, fish oil, tofu, green onions, some edamame and an egg.
Otherwise, what you need is variety. Don’t just stick to the same ingredients every time, go to the grocery store and look for stuff you don’t normally use. Then go online and find out how to use it.
Good luck! My wife and I went on a similar journey a few years ago.
If you want some real, easy to accomplish advice I would say just start watching alot of the show Chopped.
I know it seems dumb but you really can learn alot about how to improvise dishes out of whatever you have on hand.
All good suggestions here! I’d like to add that you may enjoy the book, Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samir Nosrat. She writes about cooking intuitively in a really accessible way.
I’ve been learning how to crochet using patterns found on the internet. My sister has been crocheting for years and recently made her dog a very cute sweater that fit him perfectly without a pattern
I asked how the fuck she is making anything without a pattern and she said “after you make a ton of stuff over and over again you learn why you need to use certain stitches and why you need the certain number of chains and stuff. You get the idea of making something and have made enough similar things in the past you can wing it”
You will eventually learn certain ingredients do different things or give a certain effect. You’ll learn how things should look to achieve various techniques/textures. You learn to wing it
A couple decades ago I had a fix it and forget it crockpot cookbook. It was seasonal. Came with a shopping list. You checked the staples in your pantry, bought groceries and followed the recipes. Leftovers were planned. It taught a bunch of related meals.
Don’t know if it’s still around but maybe look for something like that.
I found the book Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat great at opening my mind from reading recipes like a prescription. She talks through the relationships of food and flavors.
There’s a netflix series too, but the book is better.
That shift in perspective has helped me in the kitchen a ton. I have a lot of room for improvement but I’ve gotten over the hump to just TRY something, and if it stinks then I break out the frozen pizza.
Meals also don’t need to be a full 3 course homemade thing. I’ll throw some frozen broccoli in the air fryer with oil spray, salt, pepper, spices while I cook a more involved main dish.
Good luck! Find comfort in making mistakes because you’re unlikely to make it multiple times!
I found that watching cooking shows was a super fast way to learn how different ingredients tend to go together, common techniques, common substitutions, etc. While they’re making a particular recipe the show’s host/chef will be chatting away, explaining what they’re doing and why.
For example, you might make/read a few different recipes for dipping sauces (easy example), and then figure out for yourself which pieces are common across all the recipes, which pieces are optional add ons, etc. But I watched 1 episode of a cooking show once and the chef said “for a basic dipping sauce you’ll want to combine the 4 S’s: 1 sweet, 1 salty, 1 spicy, and 1 sour. Today I’m going to use ketchup for sweet, soy sauce, siracha, and rice wine vinegar, but you go ahead and use whatever you have lying around”. Boom, that was so much faster than making 10 different recipes and then figuring out what they have in common.
Another very fun way to learn is to ask friends who know how to cook without a recipe if you can come cook with them. I learned a ton cooking with friends who were more experienced than me, and I love to teach people who are interested in learning. Some of them help out, and some of them just sit at the bar drinking wine while I yammer away about what I’m doing and why. It’s just like learning from cooking shows, but so much fun with friends.
There’s an app called Supercook that lets you put in the ingredients that you have, and shows you recipes that you can make with them 😀