If you now open any advice on financial stability or advice on how to become healthier, or advice on how to find a new interesting hobby that will be useful to you, then in all these tips you will see one common link, and this is the advice to cook at home. Why is it so? When you cook at home, you save a lot of money compared to eating out. At the same time, even if you cook not the simplest dishes and even exotic food, the ingredients can initially cost quite a long time, and instead of one trip to some Japanese or Mexican restaurant, you can cook 7–10 dinners at home for the same money. When you cook at home, you have complete control over the nutrients you put into your food, so you can be sure that there are no excessive oils, trans fats, or seasonings that you shouldn’t. This way you control your diet and stay healthy. Also, joint cooking is considered one of the best hobbies for couples, friends, parents with children, and so on. Therefore, today we will talk about how to learn how to cook easily and fast.
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Start with the Basics, it’s Easy and Fun
Most likely, you already know how to cook some simple dishes. We do not know your real level, and we will assume that you are just starting to learn how to cook both simple and more complex dishes. There are three directions in which you need to get some basic information. These are kitchen safety and hygiene, necessary tools and utensils and basic cooking techniques. There are so many videos on the Internet on each of these topics, and no need to spend money on beginner chef courses, certifications, beginner chef courses from popular culinary leaders, and chefs like Gordon Ramsay and so on. Everything you need, you can find for free on YouTube, in your language and at the speed and format that suits you best. Don’t skip this part, because once you know enough about these three things, it will be much easier and cheaper for you to cook further.
Master Simple Recipes
A lot of people start cooking because they want to learn how to cook their favourite food, and very often it’s a rather complicated meal, or a meal that you’ve eaten in a restaurant and really want to try. Or it’s some trendy dish that people show off on Instagram and you really need that too. But in fact, better start with mastering simple recipes and choose beginner-friendly dishes, because you will practice on them, and it will be much easier for you to move on to more complex meals, and at the same time not spend a lot of time and not throw money away on those recipes that didn’t turn out. Think of simple recipes that don’t require the most expensive ingredients that you can easily substitute and buy locally. Focus on such recipes, and then you will get delicious food and gain enough experience to move to the next level. This is where the basic skills you acquired when you taught kitchen safety and utensils come in very handy.
Understand Ingredients and Flavors
If you, like us, love to watch different cooking shows, then you see that in these shows, one ingredient is constantly replaced by another. There are entire competitions dedicated to making the same dish but with different ingredients, or making a given dish cheaper, making the recipe as luxurious as possible, and so on. In order to play with recipes like this and use what you already have and not spend extra time and money looking for ingredients, you need to understand the tastes, ingredients, and organization of the pantry. You need to understand what basic set of ingredients you should always have on hand, and how many meals you can cook from this set. In this case, you will save a lot of money on takeouts and no matter what you need – a diet dinner, a hearty breakfast, or a festive menu for receiving guests, you will be able to quickly navigate your pantry and quickly prepare the right meal.
Develop Time-Saving Techniques
Imagine how long it takes you to cook the food you usually order in a restaurant. And think about how quickly they bring it to you, although the restaurant cooks for a significant number of servings. Of course, the secret in this is the professionalism of the chefs, but the main thing is the time-saving techniques. There are only three of them – planning dishes and their proper organization, preparing ingredients in advance and multitasking in the kitchen. Read about these techniques, and find them online. Again, do not buy any paid courses to learn about this somewhere. If you have such an interest, then online videos are enough for you to learn how to butcher meat and fish and make preparations, from which you can then make several full-fledged dishes. Such preparations should be in the refrigerator or freezer for every person who cooks at home at least sometimes.
Keep improving your skills, because cuisines around the world are constantly evolving and new technologies, new devices, and a different approach to food processing are emerging. If you are just starting to learn how to cook, then all this will be quite interesting and useful for you. When you start cooking at home on a regular basis, you will find that this is the best way to learn how to save money and how to eat healthier, lose weight and be more confident in your organization of life. Of course, for many people, cooking looks like something very time-consuming, but with modern kitchen organization methods, you can easily avoid this.
