How to Be a Better Cook, One Day a Week
10 Simple Ways to Teach Yourself to Cook Better and Build Confidence in the Kitchen
So many people have pretty extreme anxiety around cooking, certainly when it comes to cooking for other people. If you’re like me, you like to follow a recipe, and you get uncomfortable when things don’t go exactly as written.
After all, I’m a pastry chef. And in pastry, we use pretty precise measurements that shouldn’t be manipulated without a good understanding of what the ingredients do.
I didn’t go to a formal culinary school, but I’ve been cooking in New York City pastry kitchens for over a decade. I constantly feel like I’ve still got so much to learn — especially when it comes to savory food, since that’s not where I invest most of my time. It can be stressful to feel that way, but it’s also a great thing — because there’s always something new to discover!
People think I’m just being self-deprecating when I say, “I don’t really know how to cook, I just make dessert.” But it’s true. Until about a year ago I didn’t know my way around most proteins, vegetables, or starches. Sure, I can make ice cream in pretty much any flavor I can imagine, my chocolate cake is super moist, and my Paris-Brest rivals any French bakery’s — but I didn’t know how to cook rice or bake a potato.
All of that started to change in August of 2018 when I asked the Chef de Cuisine in the restaurant I work in if I could start making “family meal” once a week. For those of you not familiar with professional kitchen routines, “family meal” is the meal that is cooked for everyone working in the restaurant before the start of the daily pre-shift meeting and dinner service. He agreed to let me cook on Sundays, the lightest staffed day of the week.
I was honestly terrified. I had just signed up to cook for 15–20 people once a week with no actual clue of how to cook. The night before my first family meal I couldn’t sleep and had nightmares about failing, an anxiety I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Since then I’ve cooked nearly every Sunday over the last 13+ months since I originally volunteered for it, and this is what I’ve learned about teaching yourself to cook.
Pick a time to cook and commit to it.
This sounds obvious because it’s like developing any other skill. Whether you’re a writer, artist, learning a new language, or training yourself to do anything else — you have to put regular time aside to commit to learning your new skill.
Family meal at the restaurant is served at 4 pm every day. I give myself from 2–4 pm nearly every Sunday to cook (not including looking up recipes and grocery shopping which happens casually during the week). I have the added accountability of knowing that if I don’t cook, all of my coworkers are going to be upset at me — so there’s no “not feeling like it today.”
Find someone to feed so they can keep you accountable for putting food on the table.
Start with what you don’t know.
Did I mention that I didn’t know how to cook rice? Or bake a potato? Or boil beans? Or bread chicken? The list goes on, but the point is that I started making a mental list of things I didn’t know how to make and started incorporating them into my meals one by one.
Most basic cooking skills are picked up after the first try and you can move on to more enjoyable things. Once you know how to bake a potato, you’ll never forget, I promise.
Also, make a mental list of things you like to eat when you’re out, but don’t know how to make. There’s few things as satisfying as cooking your favorite meal for yourself, exactly how you like it.
Play to your strengths.
It should have been no surprise to me that my strong suit in the kitchen is baking. But sometimes it takes you a little while to see what’s right in front of you. Once I figured out that I could bake 8 cups of rice in 12 cups of water for about 40–45 minutes in a 400°F oven, I was thrilled! If it can be baked, I can cook it! Salmon! Butternut Squash! Chicken Parm Sandwiches!
Not surprisingly in hindsight — I can make a pretty good pizza as well. Yeasted doughs, baking till my senses tell me it’s done, intense love of cheese…I was born to make pizza.
This applies to pretty much any kitchen equipment. If you’re a grill master, figure out how to make everything you can on the grill. If you’re a strictly stovetop or maybe a slow cooker kind of person, there’s more than likely a recipe out there to cook what you want to cook in the method of your choosing. Which brings me to my next point…
Look up as many recipes as you can on the dish you want to make.
There are countless ways to cook the same thing, which might seem overwhelming but it’s a huge benefit to you.
Dig through your cookbooks collecting dust on the shelf and back issues of Gourmet. Google your dish and scan through five or ten different versions of the same recipe. If you’re planning on baking or grilling or sauteeing a certain dish, include that in your search. Different recipes will use different ingredients and techniques that will appeal to you in different ways.
After you’ve read the same recipe several times, you’ll have a good feel for what you’re supposed to do before you even start cooking, what the necessary ingredients are, and what you can be flexible with.
Learn how to properly salt your food!
This point really cannot be overstated, and is perhaps one of the most crucial steps for learning how to cook. Proper seasoning was a massive problem for me when I started cooking, which was extra embarrassing working in a restaurant full of people with a palette for well-seasoned food.
The first time I made a red sauce for my first lasagna, my Michelin Starred boss came through and tasted my sauce several times, each time telling me to add salt before any other seasonings. He told me that without the proper base of salt, it would be nearly impossible to build subsequent flavors.
I forgot to salt the ground beef that went into that same lasagna and it came out tasting fine, but underwhelming. One of my coworkers constructively reminded me: When you make a cake, you put sugar in the cake batter. Then when you make the frosting, there’s sugar in the frosting. When you make the vanilla ice cream that’s served with the cake, it has sugar in it too. It’s balanced in different ways, but if it wasn’t there, it wouldn’t be correct. I’ve never forgotten to salt the beef while making lasagna again.
Savory recipes everywhere from cookbooks to blogs will avoid giving actual measurements for salt, which drives me absolutely crazy. Instead, they will say “salt to taste” which is incredibly subjective, so I’m here to encourage you to taste as you go and go out on a limb here when you’re not sure exactly how much salt to add.
And salt the water you boil your pasta in. Make it salty like the ocean.
Talk to other people about your food.
Ask other people how to make a dish you’re interested in trying. Sure, I’m surrounded by a restaurant full of people who know how to cook and I’ve taken full advantage of that. But everyone around you also eats, and they’ve got opinions about what they like. You don’t always have to take their advice, but you might want to once you’ve heard what they know about the dish.
After you’ve made what you’re going to make and sit down to enjoy it, muster up the courage to ask for feedback. Point out what you like or don’t like about what you’re eating and ask what they think about it. Ask what they like about it, or how they’d do it differently. Don’t take any of the feedback personally, positively or negatively. It’s just food.
After you get some reactions, sit back and enjoy the stories your friends and family tell about meals past and other personal anecdotes. That’s what sitting down to a fulfilling meal is all about after all.
When it doesn’t come out right, make it again.
It’s going to come out wrong a few times. That’s okay.
At this point, the people you’re cooking for are aware that this whole cooking thing is a work in progress for you and they’ll probably be completely understanding if something’s not quite right. But figure out what went wrong, and make it again. But better.
Don’t be afraid to try a recipe you’ve never even heard of before.
Just because you don’t know what it’s supposed to taste like doesn’t mean you can’t make something great.
I came across a recipe for Rajma, a red kidney bean curry from one of my all-time favorite food bloggers and was excited to try it. But I was also incredibly nervous because I haven’t eaten that much Indian food — much less cooked it. Nevertheless, I tripled the recipe and set out to make it that Sunday.
By then I had figured out how to salt properly and taste as I go, and even went a few steps past what the recipe recommended adding some ingredients I was interested in (carrots, harissa, more curry powder). To date, that is still one of my favorite family meals!
Research any ingredients you aren’t familiar with. Look up how it’s typically served. Believe the original author when they tell you how many servings it makes and plan accordingly.
The time of day doesn’t matter, but the season does.
If you’re cooking dinner, but you want to learn how to make banana pancakes or quiche Lorraine, make breakfast for dinner. You can eat whatever you want whenever you want to. Depending on how late you sleep in, it might be breakfast at 4 pm anyway.
With that said, if you can cook with the seasons, try to. Your strawberry and spinach salad is going to be the best in the summer. Your veggie casserole is going to taste better with seasonal veggies. Your butternut soup and grilled cheese sandwiches are going to peak in November. Your oysters and mignonette are going to be the best in the Winter. Let the seasons do part of the work for you.
Last, but far from least…
Clean as you go.
After the first few family meals I cooked, the kitchen was so messy it looked like a toddler had cooked dinner. I was nervous and rushing through the steps, in a panic that I wouldn’t be on time for my 4 pm meal time deadline. The guys on the hot line laughed at the scene and half-supportively, half-jokingly told me that’s what it looked like when they started cooking too.
As the Sundays have gone by I’ve gotten a lot more confident in my cooking, and cleaning up behind myself while I’m working is a piece of cake.
My chef likes to joke that if I keep it up I’ll eventually switch from pastry to savory, but I don’t think that’s in the cards. Although, being a more well-rounded cook and having the confidence to cook for myself and others is a skill I’m thrilled to have developed one Sunday at a time.
