/ck/ - Food & Cooking

Make something you already like to eat

Learn to make a fried egg sandwich

Honestly, there is very little to cooking that is overly technical. I compare cooking to art and baking to science. Baking requires a lot more technique and precision and is more easily messed up. Find and try out different recipes. Follow them to the letter. Add your own twists to your taste. Sometimes you will find recipes that just aren't good. Find new ones. It's a lot of trial and error. The more you do it the better you will get.

>>18635996
>Cooklet here, what's a simple recipe I should start to learn. So far I can make sandwiches and cereal and boil water.

Get a colander

Buy the cheapest fusili pasta the store sells.

Do that thing you already know how to do with water - you need about a liter/quart, and you should salt it - somewhere between a heaped teaspoon and a flattened tablespoon

While you're wating for the water to boil, measure out 200g/7oz of fusili (If you have no weight and/or you are a huge autist, that's about 200 individual pieces.)

Once it's boiling, dump fusili into water, and stir while you wait for it to come back to boiling (this might be instantly, or take a little while, depending on your stove and how much water you used)

Once it is back to boiling, back your heat down to ca. medium - you want it to keep it at boiling temperature, but there's no reason it keep it at a very high roiling boil, that's just a waste of electricity and also risks splattering burning hot starchy water on your hands.

As it boils, occasionally give it a stir with a long-handled utensil that can take the heat, e.g. a long spoon.

At some point while you're not stirring, put your colander into the sink.

Once your boiling time is up, turn off the stove and drain the fusili into the colander.

You now have 1 (one) lunch meal. It is about the most boring meal in the world but it's warm and it's 800 calories. And you've tried cooking fusili, so that's a plus.

You can do any number of things to improve this dish, but make just this, just fusili, before doing anything else, just so you don't have to learn five new things at the same time when you try to make a more interesting meal with fusili.

>>18635996
I'm in the same position you're in anon. I was looking through some videos, and these recipes look very beginner friendly, seems like these barely any skill, so it's a start.
https://youtu.be/NMcE21hhhXs
https://youtu.be/qRQxIcbIT3A
Gonna go out tomorrow to get some groceries to make these, hopefully I don't burn the house down.

>>18637218
A few notes

(1) You boil the fusili without a lid on. You can put a lid on while waiting for it to come up to boiling, espceially the first boil before putting in your fusili, but once the fusili are boiling it's lid off - you *can* boil pasta with the lid on but due to a starch/water/pressure interaction, the water level will rise in boiling pasta water, and more so if there's a lid on, and you risk it overflowing your pot. This is very annoying.

(2) If you don't have a colander: Once the time is up you kill the heat, move the pot to another burner, put a lid on kind of off-center so there's a little gap (you want the gap small enough that a cooked fusili cannot fall out), hold the lid tight to the pan (to avoid burns, put something in between the lid and your fingers, e.g. a dry dishcloth) and drain into the sink through that little gap. This is how mama did it at home, it's how I learned too, it works fine but a colander is easier (and the more people you're cooking for, the harder it is to lift the pot and hold the lid back at the same time)

(3) This general technique works for basically all dry pasta. Spaghetti is too long for most pots but if you just stand it up in the water, the part below will soften fast and now the whole thing fits.

>>18637227
Is this dude for real