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submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by Lerios@hexbear.net to c/food@hexbear.net

hiiiiii communists who live in my pc, do any of you know how to cook?

i don't. at all. a few days ago my roommate taught me how to scramble an egg, and i had never had broccoli or cauliflower or (most other vegetables 🙃) until he let me try some of his, so that's approximately where i'm at with food knowledge. given that i'm clueless and live with several people in a completely open plan house, i try to avoid cooking anyway because i'm constantly being watched in the kitchen and people are making their little comments. BUT work is sending me traveling so i have a kitchen all to myself for 2 weeks and an affordable supermarket about 10 minutes walk away. i plan to use this time to try to learn a bit <3

the only problem is that i have absolutely no clue where to start. i can make rice and boil pasta and that's about it. do any of you have recipes that are accessible for a noob and will help me grind my skill up? gamer-gulag or any idea of places online for my situation?

i have no dietary restrictions and i'm open to trying pretty much anything once. i'm just confused and every recipe i click on online seems to be some artisan shit that needs 2 hours and tools and ingredients i've never heard of

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[-] pastalicious@hexbear.net 6 points 4 months ago

As someone else has said. Ethan Chlebowski is a great source of knowledge. When I was forcing myself to learn how to cook when I was like 28 I watched a lot of Food Wishes because he's very clear and usually shows most of the work that goes into it without cuts. Sam the Cooking Guy used to make his videos like that but they've gotten into more slick editing which I don't like.

Check out J Kenji Lopez Alt's channel and Ethan Chlebowski's side channel for more raw footage of cooking. It was VERY useful to watch the process. If the recipe said chop the onion or dice the onion or mince it... I didn't know what that meant. Seeing them do it explained so much more. Also a great way to learn things that might not be immediately obvious to look up at first. Like which side of the onion to cut off before splitting it in half and making your vertical cuts before making your horizontal cuts. These things may seem obvious to us after we've been cooking for a long time but I remember how it felt to know nothing.

BudgetBytes has some great recipes and sorting options for different diets. Doing lots of simple recipes is going to be essential. If you start to build confidence and want to go off recipe, I find soups and stews are super forgiving for mistakes and late in the recipe swerves. "Oh this doesn't taste how I wanted it to, I'll just add a few glugs of sriracha (or a spoonful of miso paste, gochujang, ghee, some gochugaru flakes, a cup of lentils, some lemon juice)"

Be better than me, don't get upset when you mess up a recipe. It took me a long time to reframe and realize that I learned from the mistake and can do it better next time. I've only fallen in love with cooking in the last 4 years as the sense of self efficacy has developed.

And finally... do all the prep work before you start doing anything with an element of time or urgency. Consider that the recipe author may chop much faster than you or me so if they suggest, for instance, you start sautéing the chicken and THEN chop the vegetables they forgot the chicken might overcook before us mere mortals can finish chopping. I get all prep work done and put everything in its place so I'm ready to work through the cooking steps with ease.

this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2025
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