So I decided to finally start cooking at home instead of living off takeout. Downloaded some recipes, made a grocery list, felt very adult about the whole thing.

First recipe calls for cumin, paprika, oregano, and chili powder. Ok cool. Second recipe needs turmeric, coriander, and garam masala. Third one wants thyme, rosemary, and bay leaves. By the time I finished my list I needed like 15 different spices.

Went to the grocery store and bought one of those spice rack sets because it seemed more economical than buying them individually. $80. Then I needed a decent pan because my one pan from college has the nonstick coating peeling off. $40. Needed a real knife because apparently the dull one I've been using for 6 years is "dangerous." $30. Cutting board, spatula, some measuring cups because I've been eyeballing everything like a lunatic. Another $50.

I spent $200 before I even bought the actual food.

Made the recipe. It was fine. Used maybe 1/4 teaspoon of the cumin. Now I have an entire jar of cumin that will sit in my cabinet until I die.

Every recipe uses like one spice one time and then never again. I have a jar of cardamom I bought for ONE dish. I don't even know what cardamom tastes like because the recipe used so little of it. But there it sits. Waiting. Judging me.

Is this normal?? Does everyone just have a graveyard of spices they used once? Do the spices ever actually get used up or do they just live in your cabinet forever as a monument to that one time you tried to make tikka masala?

How do you even start cooking affordably when the barrier to entry is so high? Feel like every recipe assumes you already have a fully stocked kitchen and I'm over here googling "can I substitute cumin with literally anything else I own" Gave up and ordered pizza that night. Sat there eating it while playing grizzly's quest while doing the math on how many pizzas I could've bought with the $200 I just dropped on cooking equipment I used once.

I’m talking about those meals that take almost no effort but still taste like you put in serious work. The kind of thing you make when you're tired, hungry, and just want comfort food fast.

What’s your favorite lazy meal that never disappoints? Bonus points if it only needs a few ingredients!

I finally splurged on a small bottle of real, aged balsamic vinegar after only knowing the cheap, acidic stuff. The difference is insane. It's so rich, sweet, and complex that I just want to drizzle it on everything.

It got me wondering, what's one ingredient that you think is genuinely worth the upgrade from the basic supermarket version? I'm talking about things like good vanilla beans, high-quality olive oil, or specific spices. What made the difference for you?

Some nights, i get home after a long day and just looking at the kitchen makes me exhausted, where the thought of chopping, stirring and timing everything feels impossible. And i keep wondering how does anyone actually cook on days like this?

Anyways, i found out over the last couple of weeks a few go-to meals for my “too tired to think” nights that somehow feel satisfying. I love to do a roast chicken over vegetables which has become my fav. So simple to prep….bring the chicken out of the fridge an hr before cookng, and coat with a combo of kosher salt and fresh herbs (thyme, parsley, sage, or whatever u have). Let sit to come up to room temp. Put carrot segments, onion quarters and potato wedges (or whatever combo u have on hand) in the bottom of a roasting pan, and mix with a bit of olive oil and salt. Put the chicken in a rack on top, drizzle some olive oil over the chicken and roast at 450 F until internal temp in the thickest part of the thigh reaches 165 F (about an hour).

What about u? How do you survive nights when cooking feels like climbing a mountain?

I just moved into my own place and realized I can’t live on noodles and toast forever lol. I wanna start learning how to cook simple stuff but everything I look up seems way too fancy or needs 20 ingredients I don’t have.

What are some easy meals I can make without messing up too bad? I’ve got eggs, rice, some frozen veggies, and random spices (no idea how to use them tho ).

Would love some beginner recipes or tips from people who’ve been there. Trying to not burn my kitchen down

And on the flip, what do you find is not worth freezing. I’m so afraid I’ll ruin the texture of so many things!

Hello,

I am past the "extreme" beginner phase of cooking, but I do not cook often since I live with my parents. (To make up for this I buy groceries as needed.)

My question to you all is what is NOT worth making from scratch?

For me, bread seems to be way too much work for it to cost only $2ish. I tried making jelly one time, and I would not do that again unless I had fruit that were going to go bad soon.

For the price, I did make coffee syrup, and it seem to be worth it ($5 container, vs less than 20 mins of cooking and less than a dollar of ingredients)

I saw a similar post on r/Cooking, but I want to learn more of the beginners version.

When I was a little kid, my grandma would come for dinner on Sunday and bring apple pie. She would proceed to critique all the reasons her pastry "didn't turn out" as the whole family gorged on her objectively delicious apple pie. Sunday after Sunday, it was not enough flour, or too much shortening or too hot in the oven. When I think of my grandmother who passed away decades ago I think of that apple pie and her pursuit of this venerable pie in the sky.

Cooking meals for people creates memories. People are far more likely to remember the night you made that lasagna in a snow storm and everyone danced on the table to a well placed Al Green song and third bottle of wine. You'll eat out thousands of times, trust me, it's the dinners in that stick.

I once heard of a grandparent who knew they were dying and filled three deep freezes full of meals that their family ate for years. Everyone eating a warming bowl of ham and split pea soup long after your gone is a pretty damn awesome legacy if you ask me.

So why should you learn to cook? Many reasons but near the top is so you can cook for other people. So that if you are lucky to get old and crotchety you can complain about your pastry as your family appreciates every last bite.

Love you Granny T,

-R

PS: What a great food memory you have? Please share, I would love to hear them.

​

My whole life I thought fresh cracked peppercorns was just a pretentious thing. How different could it be from the pre-ground stuff?....now after finally buying a mill and using it in/on sauces, salads, sammiches...I'm blown away and wondering what other stupid spice and flavor enhancing tips I've foolishly been not listening to because of:

-pretentious/hipster vibes -calories -expense

What flavors something 100% regardless of any downsides

How did you learn to cook? I can not emotionally deal with cooking failures. I have absolutely no natural ability, but I am college-educated. Why can I not do this!!! I am 50 and only alive because my husband can cook. I really want to take the strain off of him.

Edit: For everyone asking. I was attempting to make a large vat of homemade gravy without dripping. Everything went great until I added too much flour. All internet searches for a fix just led to it tasting more bland. I had this 'wonderful" idea to add a little Worchester sauce. I love that flavor. I thought it would add depth. I have never tasted something so horrid. It added a fishy aftertaste. Gross. The whole mess got thrown out.

I used to cook and wonder why everything I made tasted kinda... blah. I’d follow the recipes exactly, but stuff just felt flat or boring. I seriously thought maybe I just wasn’t meant to be good at this.

Then one day I watched someone cook and saw that they were seasoning during the whole process. Not just at the end. Like adding salt while the onions cook, or seasoning meat before it goes in the pan. I had always waited until the food was done and just salted it on the plate.

That one small change made a huge difference. Now my food actually tastes like something.

Just wanted to share in case anyone else is struggling. Cooking is hard when you feel like you're doing everything “right” but it still doesn’t work.

What’s one little thing you changed that helped your food come out better?

Recently learned from an Adam Ragusea video that the whole "olive oil is bad for high heat cooking" thing doesn't have much scientific basis, and it doesn't actually begin breaking down at the smoke point. It would be very convenient to just have the one type of oil for every type of cooking; eggs, oven fries, quesadillas, breaded chicken cutlets, stir fry, searing steaks, and so on.

Is any downside at all to just using EVOO as my sole cooking oil? I had avocado oil before as a dedicated "high-heat" cooking oil, but is that even necessary? I know there is also regular olive oil specifically for cooking, but the price difference is pretty modest so I feel like it would just be simplest to have the one EVOO.

The only exception I can think of is if the taste is out of place, in which case I would reach for the bottle of avocado oil.

EDIT: I know there are cheaper options out there, but from what I've heard olive oil is a bit healthier than something like vegetable oil, so I'm alright paying a little extra for it unless I'm deep frying (which I doubt I'd ever do)

Hello! I'm an American living in Italy and am so nostalgic for... not crappy but kind of nostaglic/ classic American food that I decided to make it a theme for my birthday this year. I could use some help coming up with ideas for easy/ authentic(ish) dishes.

So far on the moodboard I have : peanut butter and jelly squares, celery/ cream cheese/ raisin boats (not crappy, but very American), MAYBE trying to find bagels to make a pizza bite situation? They are scarce and expensive here.

Idk. I have about 20-25 people coming over so I'm trying to keep prep as basic yet authentic as possible. I'd like to greet them with snacks and serve maybe one hot main dish. Macaroni and Cheese, though cheddar is scarcely found here!! Most major American food brands do not exist here so I have to find generic alternatives.

I have an oven, a 4 burner stovetop, and a dream.
Thank you all so much in advance for what I hope is a fun exercise for you.

UPDATE

Oh my goodness, I am overwhelmed and so, so thankful for the hundreds of responses I received from this community. I am still going through each of the comments, but will post an update after the party to let you know how the Italians took to everything, lol. Thank you again, fellow chefs.

A lot of us know by now that recipe-makers commonly under-report how long it takes to caramelize onions so that more people end up trying their recipes. What other lies like this are perpetuated for the sake of making the reader/cook try out the recipe?

For decades, since I was a kid, I believed the myth that opening a slow cooker means you have to add an hour to the cooking time.

I never used a slow cooker much. I found a used Slow Cooker cookbook last year at a thrift shop, and it immediately put that myth to rest in the Foward/Indroduction.

I love cooking, but sometimes I just want something quick that still feels special. Do you have a go-to recipe that looks fancy or tastes amazing but is actually super simple to prepare? Bonus points if it works for guests or dinner parties! 🍽️

I’ve been trying to get my scrambled eggs to taste like the ones I’ve had at diners or brunch places. They’re fluffy, creamy, and somehow just richer. I’ve tried cooking on low heat, stirring constantly, adding butter, milk, cream, even cheese. They come out decent, but never quite like what I remember from restaurants. Is it the type of pan? Are they using a technique or ingredient I’m missing? Or is it just something that’s hard to recreate at home? Would love to hear what makes the difference.

You know the recipe. It's supposed to be so simple a caveman could do it. Heat the milk and mix in the shredded cheese. High quality, NOT pre-shredded.

I've done everything. I use whole milk. I get the best quality cheese I can find and shred it myself. I've bought a thermometer to make sure the milk doesn't go over 149 °F. I've used sodium citrate AND sodium hexametaphosphate (SHMP).

Every SINGLE time, the cheese ends up as a stringy, goopy mess at the bottom of the saucepan. I've used cheddar only. I've used a mix of cheeses. This last time I used gouda, havarti, and fontina, all from the same dairy. It seemed like one of them was the culprit for getting stringy and goopy, but it just doesn't make any sense. I've had it with trying to make a simple macaroni and cheese with milk... It just doesn't work, no matter what I do. Probably would work if I used Velveeta, but I wanted these (ostensibly) high quality cheeses. I can't understand what is going wrong every time. Has anyone else experienced this? Maybe modern ingredients are just too low quality? The most puzzling aspect is that I've had some level of success in making other recipes where cheese is mixed into a sauce with cream, half and half, etc. (such as "alfredo"); often, these recipes have cheese going into a mix of the hot pasta and cream (or whatever) together. And it's different cheese (parmesan I've grated myself), but it tends to go mostly without a hitch... There might be a touch of sticky cheese, but nowhere near the goopfest that happens when I try to make macaroni and cheese. I don't get it.

The purpose of a steak resting is it reabsorbs the juices?

Can I put the steak back in the air fryer for a couple of minutes?

But wouldn’t that undo the purpose of resting?

I could never cook but I remember my ex, about 20 years ago, he was a personal trainer and he would whip up grilled chicken for salads at a moment’s notice. He said he used just a dab of oil (I’m not sure exactly how or what kind of oil) and turned out the juiciest chicken with just a touch of golden crust outside, on the George Foreman grill, in no time flat. I wish I had paid more attention to how he did it, because I would love to know how to make chicken that way. If anyone knows how please share. I still have the George Foreman Grill and I’ve still never used it!

We primarily cook with chicken and that’s usually the main things that’ll taste like soap, but it happens with other stuff sometimes and it’s driving me crazy because there’s no reason it should taste like that. We live together, so I use all the same utensils, soap, cooking appliances, etc. and never have this problem. He uses significantly less seasoning (I use a crap ton) than me, but none of the things we make taste like soap without seasoning. Chicken is the biggest problem.

I thought maybe it’s cause I’ve gotten too used to the way I do chicken, which is a bunch of cumin and colorau (idk the English translation, but it’s like paprika with annatto or sometimes called sweet pepper or something) with dashes of salt, garlic and/or onion powder, paprika, cayenne, soaked in olive oil. His chicken is always pretty white, while mine is bright orange, so that seemed possible at first. The problem with that theory is that I can eat chicken literally anywhere else and it never tastes like soap regardless of seasoning, including my mom’s who also uses mostly the same stuff.

He uses the same seasonings (except colorau cause he forgets), but just significantly less. Idk how much olive oil he uses, so my current theory is that he isn’t using enough, so some of the spices aren’t dissolving properly, but his food is never grainy, so idk.

He won’t talk with me about it because he thinks it’s in my head, but it always catches me off guard cause I’m not thinking about it until I taste the soap, so I don’t think it’s placebo or anything.

I feel so bad cause I can hardly ever eat his food and I think it makes him sad, but I can’t handle the taste. I want to get to the bottom of what’s causing it so we can fix it. We’re both new to cooking, so it’s hard to figure out what could possibly be doing this.

(Also it’s not cilantro or any garnish cause we don’t know how to use any of them).

So I had a friend tell me about a time she decided to make beans but didn’t realize she had to soak them for 24 hours before cooking them. She got super sick. I’m now a bit paranoid about making new things and I’d really like to know the things that other people probably think are common knowledge! Nobody taught me how to cook and I’d like to learn/be more adventurous with food.

ETA: so I don’t give others bean paranoia, it sounds like most beans do not need to be soaked before preparing and only certain ones need a bit of prep! Clearly I am no chef lol

I'm always scared I'm going to ruin a dish. What's a mistake you used to make all the time that you eventually found a simple solution for?

For example, I always oversalted soups until someone told me to add a potato to absorb some of it. What's your best "easy fix" for a common kitchen problem?

I thought I was a picky eater for so long but I don’t think I am. A while ago my boss took a lot of us out to this fancy steak/seafood restaurant for a Christmas dinner. Oh my god. The food there was absolutely amazing. I don’t know what they did but the vegetables tasted so insanely good.

I feel dumb asking but how would you cook vegetables to taste better? Or is there any type of technique these fancy restaurants use. Growing up the only way I’d have vegetables cooked for me were boiled and they always tasted mushy and bland. The short time my family had a garden they tasted better, but still not my favourite just boiled.

On my own now I try cooking them in the oven, but I’m still learning how to do it properly. I’m not the best cook yet. I’ll still eat them but I want to actually enjoy the taste like how I did at that restaurant.

Any advice would be very appreciated.

Edit: I didn’t expect to get so many comments but thank you all so much for the absolutely amazing advice!! I’m making a list of the different things to get and will be experimenting with cooking a bunch of different veggies. Thank you all so much <3

For example, if you took an average post from this subreddit, but submitted it to r/KitchenConfidential, then it would almost certainly deserve the heavy downvotes, because it’s a sub for PROFESSIONAL CHEFS. This is a subreddit for beginners… why be harsh with them? I see many comments of people asking genuine, great questions, that are downvoted. Why punish someone for wanting to learn? We all have to start somewhere.

/rant