Kitchen anxiety

[Anonymous No.4958844]

Is anyone else more interested in the 'thought' of cooking than actually doing it?
I watch cooking shows and collect cook books and have tons of recipies laying around i've clipped from magazines and found on the internet and elsewhere, and I always buy all these different spices and herbs and stuff, and I love it all...

...but as soon as I go to actually cook something.. I get nervous and just chicken out and end up burning everything or saying fuck it and making a microwave dinner.
I always brag about how great of a cook I am to everyone at work and my friends, when I can hardly chop a potato without cutting my hand.

Anyone else feel this way?

[Anonymous No.4958848]

>>4958844
lol no. ive never made pulled pork or cooked meat in an oven before in my life and im doing it tonight. man up OP. i cook all my meals

[Anonymous No.4958849]

there is a much larger underlying problem here, you need to address your lack of self-confidence head on.

[None !2fiREZiSTw No.4958854]

No

[Anonymous No.4958857]

>>4958844

No, I don't feel that way. I've always enjoyed cooking shows, I have some excellent cookbooks, and keep a good collection of my family's recipes. I'm an excellent cook and usually cook dinner 3-4 nights a week, while my wife cooks the other nights.

I'm sorry I can't sympathize with your anxiety. I get small bouts of anxiety. In my job, I have to make decisions that could cost the clients whose land I manage a lot of money. But I deal with it, make the decisions that need to be made, and move one.

You need to cut the shit with your anxiety. Tell your mind to "fuck off" and just blindly follow the recipes in your cookbook. I'm sure most of them will come out if you follow the recipe.

[Anonymous No.4958919]

>>4958844
I have similar situation, I read much more than I cook/bake and generally enjoy watching good cooking shows. ( Protip: Watch Two Hungry Italians).

When I first started I failed a lot like you say but I worked up the confidence with time, just keep trying, maybe go for easier recipes and most importantly DON'T TRY TO MULTITASK. Unless you are a genius or something you can't pull that shit off without tons of experience with timing. I can pull off fairly complex recipes on first try now, just do the prep work first, then concentrate on cooking, don't go running between the pot and the board. Also always cook like your life depends on it, try to attend every little detail, you probably won't be able to but if you just wing it, you won't improve. Do it slow but do it right.

[Anonymous No.4958947]

>>4958844
Just imagine what you couldn't do with all these spices and herbs:

Staghorn sumac
Tonka bean
Asafetida
Urfa biber
Ajwain
Fenugreek
Anardana
Juniper Berries
Za'atar (the plant not the condiment mix with sumac)
Machalepi
Fennel Pollen
Wasabi
Amomum melegueta
Amchur
Kala Jeera
Nigella
Pasilla de Oaxaca chile (smoked Pasilla pepper)
Galangal
cao guo (Black cardamom)
Mastiha (gum mastic)
Long pepper
Cubeb pepper
Caraway
Licorice root
Sichaun peppercorns
Sarsaparilla
Wattleseed
Grains of Paradise
Star Anise
Lavender
Mahlab
Sweet birch syrup
black limes
preserved lemons
kaffir lime leaves
dried rose petals
rosewater

[Anonymous No.4958957]

I used to get anxious when trying to multitask too much in the kitchen. I just slowed down a bit, got everything prepared and chopped before cooking, and that went away.

[Anonymous No.4958959]

Cooking isn't that interesting, it just isn't.

Imagine doing it for 8 hours a day? jesus

[Anonymous No.4958988]

>>4958947
>mfw there's only 4 items on that list that I'm not intimately familiar with.

[Anonymous No.4959016]

>>4958959

Kindof like sitting at a desk looking at spreadsheets, or pushing products you don't believe in.

tl;dr, every job is shitty and we all waste our very short lives on bullshit

[Anonymous No.4959017]

>>4958947
>Galangal

YES

[Anonymous No.4959062]

>>4958844

>kitchen anxiety

I never really cooked until I lived on my own for the first time in grad school, when I also started watching food network (Good Eats at its best).

Long story short, I now have 7 years of school debt and got a job as a line cook 2 months ago.

I never have much of a problem cooking at home, for myself and my other (I look up everything online to make sure I know what I'm doing, and take 3 times longer than necessary).

Tonight at work my chef opened up a bunch of bags of frozen raviolis that he was given as samples (I never got a chance to even see what kind), then proceeded to tell me to cook them for "family meal", and make a sauce.

I don't work at a station that makes pasta, or pasta sauce. I haven't even been there long enough to know what was available to me, let alone what they contain (we've got "liason", and "brandy sauce", and the like, which the daytime crew makes).

In any case, my heart completely sunk, and I felt 10 times the anxiety I felt on my first day (and I have anxiety issues).

Also, the restaurant doesn't do "family meal", and the chef was clearly just testing me.

I ended up throwing some S&P, chopped shallots and garlic into some white wine and letting it reduce. Then I added some butter, some parm, and too much of the "liason" (it's cream with something else - and I clearly added too much as it turned out almost like a soup). I topped it with a mixture of parsley/lemon zest (I'm blanking out on what that's called).

I had no idea what I was doing, and knew the entire staff was going to taste it.

I made it right before the dinner rush, never actually got a chance to try it, and didn't get any feedback.

I have honestly never felt the cooking anxiety I felt tonight.

>and i just want to believe nobody really cared about the sauce, and were only discussing the actual raviolis, just out of hearing range

[Anonymous No.4959065]

The only thing I fret over is my lack of cooking knowledge, which sucks since I wanna cook a lot of nice dishes for my parents, but I feel like I keep making the same thing over and over without any clue as to what else to make.

Also if I mess up I get dejected easily, like when I messed up my first attempt to make a red wine sauce

Twice

[Anonymous No.4959129]

I live alone and cook a pretty broad variety of stuff for myself. but If I had to cook a meal for a group of people...nah. fuck that.

[Anonymous No.4959573]

I get having to clean up the messy kitchen after I cook anxiety, but that's about it.

[Anonymous No.4959599]

>>4958844

This is the result of too many TV shows and advertisements that convince people that being a "foodie" is an achievable and highly powerful form of cultural capital.

Whether or not this is true, it's obviously not for you. You should spend your money on better clothes instead. They're just as useful as being conversant in what to do with garlic scapes and sunchokes.

[Anonymous No.4959602]

>>4958844
I'm your opposite. I love cooking. I hate cooking shows. I have a lot of spice an herbs that use on a regular basis. And I refrain from impulse-buying cookbooks and cookware as I know they probably won't have much place in my cooking on the long run. And I'm sorry for you because people says I'm a good cook, not me.
>feelsgoodman

You remind me of when I was selfconscious. Allow yourself some failure. Try easy basics and practice. Little improvement is better than no improvement at all. At least it is better than lying to oneself as you seem to be.