On The Difficulties of Learning to Cook

I don’t have many strict opinions. In fact, I’m often willing to change my mind if I’m wrong, and have done on some major issues. But one of the few stances I remain strong on is that everyone should know how to cook some basic meals. Sounds simple enough, but, well nothing is ever truly simple.

Turns out, like everything else, there’s some difficulties to overcome when it comes to learning to cook.

“But Medic, we have the internet for learning everything!”

Yes, we do, but not everything on the internet is accurate or true. Sure, someone posted their recipe for cookies on this cute little blog, but what works for them might not work for you. There are hundreds and thousands of variants for pretty much every recipe out there, so which one is the right one to pick? And which of these recipes are not just user-friendly but actually produce results?

Youtube content farms also don’t make things much easier. Channels like “5 minute crafts” (their own channel name being a lie) often lack crucial information or miss out key parts of their recipes. Some recipes are flat-out fake, particularly in baking and cake decorating channels. These things are put together to make money from ads, nothing more. How To Cook That does a great job showing how these things are fake, as well as explaining how to cook and bake correctly. But how is a person just learning how to cook supposed to know whether a recipe will work in the first place?

Sure, a lot of recipes do technically work, they just need tweaking. For example, I might not have self-raising flour, so I have to compensate with extra baking powder, because I know I have to accommodate for that. But when you are learning how to cook, you don’t know how to make these tweaks!

Having the right tools is also an issue.

What’s also easy to forget that not everyone has a big kitchen with all the tools they need. At the bare minimum, you need multiple types of knives, spoons, a whisk and a spatula or two. Plus multiple cutting boards (one for meat and one for vegetables at minimum). You also need bowls, saucepans and frying pans, as well as oven-proof dishes. There are things that can be improvised, but that just makes life more difficult. And you often don’t realize you are missing something until you actually need it.

But some people don’t even have stove tops or ovens. And that can severely hinder the ability to learn. Heck, even I didn’t have a stove for a while. Everything I cooked was done in the oven or the microwave, which made cooking things like pasta a massive pain in the butt. And buying a stove or an oven or whatever can be expensive. So can buying smaller, more conventional cooking tools, like a Slow Cooker or Air Fryer. Sure, you CAN learn alternate cooking tools, but that’s even more work on top of an already daunting task.

Sometimes it’s just a bit too expensive.

The last problem is, well, money. Cooking your own meals can be cheaper than buying ready-made meals, but you need to know how to cook in order to properly plan ahead, which means buying the right quantities. But some items are only cheaper in bulk, while some ingredients might go off before you can use it all. And sometimes, ready meals are genuinely cheaper, depending on location.

It’s also worth mentioning that a lot of people live in ‘food deserts’. There are plenty of places where the only shops around tend to be under-stocked, or lack fresh vegetables, or mostly only sell frozen or dry food, which is cheaper and easier to store for longer periods of time.

On top of having to buy any tools you’re missing, the cost of cooking can add up weirdly quickly. Doubly so since you can’t really skimp out on cheaper items all the time. That cheap, flimsy tupperware won’t last nearly as long as some thicker stuff. And electrical items these days just don’t seem to last no matter what.

Finally, time can also be expensive. After all, who wants to spend 10-30 minutes cooking when they’ve been slaving away at work all day?

That being said, there are still steps you can take to learn.

Luckily, there are lots of rather cheap meals you can learn to make yourself. Pretty much anything involving eggs should be cheap and easy. And minced meat is great and versatile, being used in all sorts of commonly eaten dishes. Learning to cook simple carbs like noodles, rice and pasta, then learning to cook things to go alongside those carbs, is also a good path to take. Mix-and-matching food items makes food overall go a long way.

Really though, I think the best way to learn is to find something you really want to try making yourself. Doesn’t matter what it is, whether it’s something simple like a fried egg, or making bread, or something more complicated like macaroons. Once you get the hang of cooking things you love, then you can expand your horizons further.

I also recommend getting some extra tupperware. It’s just so useful.