Learning Cooking
Posted by Skrud at Monday, October 10th 2005 at 7:09pm
I realized something last night, while sifting through hundreds of food basics and recipes on eHow.com last night, desperately trying to find something I’m capable of preparing: I don’t know what rosemary is. I had to look up colander in the dictionary. What’s “Swiss chard”? I also learned that when my mother isn’t home, I starve. I think the only foods I can put together on my own are eggs (omelettes, scrambled, sunny-side-up or over-(not-so)-easy), and bagels with cheese or peanut butter. I also don’t think there was any meat in the house, but even if there was - what would I do with it? Yep, I’m completely helpless.
So it’s time to start learning some cooking basics. I need to be able to make some handy, quick meals that I can eat when I have no money to go out. I suppose I should start with something like pastas, but I’m a little intimidated seeing as how pasta in my house has always been so terrible that until I finally went to Spaggio’s for the first time (like, last year) I thought I just didn’t like pasta. It turns out that spaghetti isn’t supposed to be goopy and slimy and slippery. Who knew?
If anyone has suggestions and pointers of where to start looking please tell me!
You’re a man, start with meat. Figure out how to cook chicken in any possible way without poisoning yourself and take it from there. The rest will follow quite easily. Take it from a man who has managed to go close to 2 months without starving.
he speaks the truth…especially with chicken. You can just marinate it…put sauces on it, and stick it in the oven. And there you have baked chicken :o You can make stews with it too. Onions and Peppers are good for stews btw. :)
Pasta can be good (like lasagne for example). It’s not too hard to do. If you go to the grocery store and see the lasagne noodles, there’s usually a recipe on the back. Follow that, and it’s all good.
You should learn how to BBQ. EVen though it’s a little bit late in the year, BBQing is a manly staple of cooking. Just marinate the meat (optional, but reccomended), and then throw them on the BBQ until it looks done.
Here’s how I make pasta, and its real good…
Sometimes i dont even put sauce, cuz its so good as it is.
BBQing is the way to go, manly, and nothing to wash afterwards. You just close the top, and scrape it off the next time.
You can’t scrape forever. Cleaning the grill is the king of all annoying clean-ups. It becomes harder the longer you wait to clean.
I say, since winter is coming, pay the extra money for just one t-fal pan. Just be careful to never use anything metal to flip your meat, and give your pan an initial wash immediately after use. The rest of the cleanup is a joke. Nonetheless, cleanup of the pan will always be the most annoying of all your dishes until the day that pans fit nicely into the sink for cleaning (that day will never come, not even nanobots can save you!).
Also, aside from chicken, there’s steak. If you just get the right spices (I go with meat tenderizer, garlic salt and montreal steak spice), it is probably one of the easiest meats to prepare.
And for breakfast, eggs. Slightly harder, but also very easy, as long as you master the art of breaking the shell properly (I still sometimes mess up). Also, your goal is to make an egg without char and without liquid egg.
And if we come back to chicken, if you cut it up into small pieces and throw in some cubed vegetables to cook with it, you get a whole dinner seamlessly combined into something that is digested in moments. Now if only I could perfect the Homer spaghetti power bar that doesn’t make you die…
HOw about stirfrys? they’re hard to mess up.. Since I know you like asian food, if you go to chinatown you can get Korean Bulgoli sauce, it’ll cost you
HOw about stirfrys? they’re hard to mess up.. Since I know you like asian food, if you go to chinatown you can get Korean Bulgoli sauce, it’ll cost you less than 3$ but will guarantee a fool proof way to cook meats that’ll turn out great… Alternatively we can set a date aside and I can come over and teach you the basics of cooking. At least set you up with some dishes so you won’t starve. All done in under 30 minutes :)
I once tried to create a stirfry. I messed it up hardcore. The recipe called for “1 pc. ginger”. So, I found a piece of ginger in my pantry and tossed it in. It was a whole root. Now I’m hypersensitive to ginger and can only handle it inreally small doses. What the fuck kind of measurement is ‘1 pc.’???
un pied carré?
get a good cook book. they have been the biggest help since moving out on my own.
hey skrud, word on the street is that you have a blog and that it is famous, so I have looked into it during my late night procrastination. My timing is impecable. Luckily for you, I happen to be a master chef. If you can’t harass your mom for her secret cooking techniques, I’ve been told you should invest some money into a book called “the joy of cooking”. You will be a master chef like me in no time at all and chicks will dig you like they do me. cough Though really, the secret to learning to cook well is to eat everything you make, no matter how much it looks like dogpoop’s vomit when it doesn’t turn out. This will inspire you to cook better, believe me.
Eddie, you were my Gotcha! target. But I got killed before I could buy a watergun. You bastard.
so who killed you? I won’t tell anybody you told me. :)
I’ll send you a Word document full of my Mom’s recipes. I’ve been using them ever since I got to Ottawa, and quite frankly, I’ve been doing pretty well.
They’re not too precise with the measurements, but they’re very simple. Anyways, I’ll e-mail them to you.
Sorry, I couldn’t find the recipes. I’ll give you the simplest chicken recipe that I have off the top of my head. It’s a Filipino dish called Adobo.
You will need: 1 tablespoon of cooking oil (vegetable, canola, it doesn’t matter) Chicken 1 Onion diced (you don’t need a very large onion) 1/2 teaspoon of cracked or ground pepper (I prefer cracked, but it’s good either way) About 1/2 cup of vinegar (I’m not sure what the exact measurement is) Same amount of soy sauce 2 cups of water
Directions: Heat the cooking oil in pot Drop in the pepper Drop in the chicken and stir until a little brown (this should take about 2-3 minutes) Stir in diced onion Stir in the soy sauce, vinegar, and water Put the stove in “Medium” heat and let simmer for about 30 to 45 minutes or until most of the water is gone.
And you’re done.
Taste. If it’s too sour, add more soy sauce. If too salty, add more vinegar. Cooking a good meal is ultimately in the tastebuds of the cook.
Enjoy!
Look into grabbing the torrent for the Good Eats series - Alton Brown [altonbrown.com] is a cool dude. “Everyday Italian” (also on the Food Network) is another solid show if you’re into simple Italian cuisine and hot hosts (like myself).
I also concur that “The Joy” is a good book and a worthwhile investment. You might as well get a good all-purpose knife while you’re at it, like a Fiskars asian-style blade. Sharp as hell and easy to use.
you tell me to rtfm all the time…. but lucky for you, i like you, so imna come up with something to help you understand the ways of the food.itll take some time and some thought… but ill come up with something edumacational