Why I got over being scared of cooking

I do a few things pretty well.

Cooking hasn't been one of them.

For a surprisingly long time I've been able to get by knowing hardly the first thing about preparing a hot meal:

• Through high school my parents prepared the meals.
• Through college I had a meal plan.
• Through graduate school I only did very basic cooking (rice, pasta, etc.) and used what little disposable income I had after my stipend to get decent meals elsewhere.
• After getting my first “real job” with only myself to support, I could still get by very comfortably buying a fair bit of prepared food.
• Then, my wife came into the picture.  Cooking is one of a great many things she can do well.

One would think that I'd be all over learning to cook because it's usually healthier and less expensive than eating out or eating prepared foods with lots of packaging.

Not so.  It's probably fair to say that I was scared of cooking.  I think the last time I prepared an entree for my wife was before we were married.  I tried to cook chicken and was a couple of seconds away from giving us both food poisoning.  (Relationship tip:  Don't give food poisoning to your significant other.)

Time to learn.  It's now or never.

Fast forward to about a month ago.  My wife's parents had been living with us for around the past three years, and after having been exemplary house guests that entire time, were moving out.  My father-in-law had been doing me a giganticly huge favor by making big batches of my favorite soup for my lunches.  (The linked article is over two years old, and I'm still not sick of that soup!)

But my parents-in-law have moved out now.  They offered to stop by to help out with things as they had (they were only going about ten miles away) but that would just postpone adjusting.

If I didn't learn something about cooking now, when would I?  Likely only when I absolutely had to, and it would be under duress, and it wouldn't be pretty.

So at about 10 PM I decided that I was going to make the soup, start to finish.  I learned what julienning carrots entailed, and what simmering was. I cracked out the kitchen scale and measured stuff out.  I cried about seven ounces of tears cutting up onions.  I used no less than six measuring cups and four stirring utensils.  You'd think I had been cooking for eight hundred people.

Preparing and cooking that soup using an entirely uncomplicated recipe took about four hours.  I'm not kidding!

In the end, though, I had fifteen servings of highly acceptable soup.

And, moreover, I now at least knew that I could do it.

Nine morsels I learned as a novice cook

People pick up different things when they're starting up a new skill.  Here's what I found useful:

1. Search engines are your friend.  When I needed to learn about julienning carrots, I got my choice of videos when I searched Google.  In a different context, on Thanksgiving day, I searched how to tell when sweet potatoes are done. (My wife started them, and I had to finish them while she was at the store.)  Cooking information is in abundance on the internet.
2. Recipes work. Within the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, “novice” is the first level, and performing at this level requires “rigid adherence to taught rules or plans.” In other words, a recipe!  Thank God that there are expert cooks out there sharing their recipes with novices!
3. At the same time, recipes are forgiving on some things. It was a relief that I didn't need to measure things out to three decimal places.
4. Peeling the skin off of an onion is more than the dry crinkly part. I had a bunch of chewy tough little onion skin pieces in my soup because I didn't peel off enough.
5. The first time can take a lot longer than expected. Four hours the first time for what should be an hour and a half. And I had all of the ingredients on hand! If I were to do it again, I'd start earlier in the day.
6. The following times get easier. Not just in preparing that first meal, but with all of the other experimental meals.  I found it was far easier making the soup the second time around.  And I'm not nearly as leery as I was starting a new recipe, or handling food prep.
7. Paying attention during cooking is important. One contributing factor to me being stove-shy was that I didn't pay attention one time when I was hard-boiling eggs. I forgot about them, and was reminded of them when I smelled them — from upstairs. And heard them exploding as they were heated past 100 Centigrade.
8. OFF and HIGH are but two of many temperature settings. The eggs exploded because I had turned the stoves on HIGH (as opposed to OFF). I would have had more chance to remember had I used one of the settings in between those two extreme stove temperatures. Utterly amazing how far these modern appliances have come, isn't it?
9. Eating your own good meals is enjoyable because it's satisfying!  To be fair, sometimes a meal is enjoyable for no other reason than someone else prepared it.  The same can be said for preparing you own, but for a different reason.  I admit I get a little rise when I think to myself: “I did this!”

Master chefs:  Any tips you'd care to share?  Secret recipes not necessary.  🙂