Cooking

5/16/22 Why learn how to cook? Because if you can cook, can follow recipes, and have muscled your way around a kitchen long enough, you can do a whole lot more. DIY a project with step-by-step instructions? Simple compared to roasting a turkey. Chemistry lab? No fucking problem, especially compared to hollandaise. Advanced electronics and computer programming? Easier than getting the damned oven to be reliable. Above all it gives you the attitude of "fuck it" and the courage you need to take things on. So yeah it's kind of a secret "in" to dozens of other fields of study. If you can learn how to cook, you can learn just about anything.

NYC Food Safety Certification Free Course Read this. Learn it. Breathe it. Or never set foot in a kitchen again as long as you live. It's that important.

New budget stuff: r/BudgetFood Contains a lot of helpful info. Added to this page 3/17/23

Timesaving Stuff

Fit Men Cook 11/15/23 Truly something special. The author, Kevin Curry, has cracked the code of fast, cheap, easy AND healthy. The website is free, and there is also an affordable subscription fee app for iphone.
Allrecipes 6/19/23 After a lot of experimentation to find the most accessible and easy-to-follow recipes I've concluded that Allrecipes is the easiest site to work with here for any occasion. Give it a try. Here are their 15 minute quick and easy meals and Dorm meals and College meals
Art by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt Added 4/1/23. After several years reading this guy's work, I can tell you with full certainty that he can save you a lot and I mean a lot of time and trouble learning things the hard way. It appears he's also written some cookbooks. Generally speaking? Recommend.
Serious Eats Can't remember a technique for cooking something? Never learned it? Use the search bar.
Copycat recipes Startpage search They are a lot more doable than they seem
Cooking For Engineers Has stood the test of time, especially in these days of endless pages and pages gushing about how great the recipe is instead of just posting the damn recipe
What's Your Go-To 5 Minute Meal? reddit thread
r/mealprep
r/slowcooking

Cookbooks for Beginners

Bress 'n' Nyam by Matthew Raiford with Amy Paige Condon - uh, if you like any sort of food classified under the umbrella of Soul Food or Southern Food or whatever you want to call it, then you need this book. Yesterday.
Recipes from the Backs of Boxes, Bottles, Cans and Jars by Ceil Dyer and More Recipes from the Backs of Boxes, Bottles, Cans and Jars by Ceil Dyer - added 4/1/23. Why? Because most of your favorite restaurants and favorite chain restaurants likely use these recipes or some variant thereof already. Surprise!
Everything by Peg Bracken - yep, this will help a lot
Basically anything "copycat" be it official or unofficial; there's a reason these recipes are simple and it is that kitchen staff have to churn a lot of these recipes out in any given day
The How-To Cookbook for Teens by Julee Morrison - high in calories and high in fat, which is good when you're just learning. If you're concerned for your health there are vegan substitutes for most of the animal products used in these; swap those for the animal products and you're good to go.
The Joy of Cooking, any edition - added 5/28/23 because I noticed a trend in food blogs. A lot of them get a lot of either inspiration or outright plagiarized recipes from The Pioneer Woman (Ree Drummond), who in turn either adapted a lot of her recipes from the Joy of Cooking series or wound up making a lot of really similar stuff due to coincidence (and also has scads of talent as a fantastic cook in her own right). I know this because I have been reading cookbooks and cooking blogs for fun for around 17 years. The only difference between the Joy of Cooking and these blogs (except for The Pioneer Woman, which was good before Hearst took over that blog and mangled it and is still kind of usable if you can stand corporate schlock interfering with your recipe - print the printable fast or save it to pdf and get the heck off the site) is a lack of pictures and a lack of really long introductions gushing about how great the recipes are, and a surplus of helpful information. So these recipes, like, work. Who knew The Joy of Cooking would stand the test of time like this? I sure didn't.

Required for a functional kitchen, besides the usual appliances of sink, stove, and refrigerator

The chef must know how to wash dishes quickly by hand. If that's you and you never learned, you better learn.
Chef's knife, one that feels comfortable in your dominant hand which you can happily use for everything
Paring knife, for small jobs
Knife sharpener, either the draw-through kind or the round kind. And do not store your knives in a knife block. They can't be cleaned. Keep the knives sharpened; sharpen them every week at least! And learn how to use them properly, Youtube videos help here.
Plastic cutting boards, three, preferably in different colors. Not wood, not glass, not some weird substance: plastic. Lay them on a kitchen towel to cut without the board moving around. Plastic is superior as it can be sterilized between uses; color coding is to prevent kitchen cross-contamination.
Whole bunch of kitchen washcloths, to clean with
Clean kitchen cloths for various purposes, such as to dampen, wring out, and cover rising dough with
Bunch of sponges, also dish soap
Dish rack
Laundry machine, for cleaning kitchen washcloths, because sterilizing them with handwashing and then boiling water in a sink is not fun
Two baking sheets
Bunch of mixing bowls, nested is good
At least one large mixing bowl, preferably glass or ceramic, in which to let dough rise
Plastic wrap or preferably beeswax food wrap
Cooking utensils including at least two wooden spoons, one flat spatula made of basically anything (but do not use metal on nonstick pots and pans), and medium-sized whisk. It is also really good to have a large ladle and a large slotted spoon.
Saute pan, the size that fits neatly onto a gas or electric stove burner but is a couple inches larger in diameter, stainless steel preferred
Two saucepans, roughly same width as your average electric or gas stove burner
Smaller saucepan
Four-quart pot, roughly the same width as a large saucepan, in which to make stuff like chili etc. One that has the same general proportions as this thing
Tupperware or preferably glass food containers with plastic lids, for leftovers
Measuring cups, both liquid and dry, and measuring spoons, nested is good. While we're being anal here, good to get a kitchen timer as well.
At least one baking dish of some sort, like a ceramic cake pan, or a cast-iron skillet
A piece of chain mail to use as a scrubby if you have a cast iron skillet. Trust me on this.
All-purpose cleaner, and some disinfectant just in case (or use boiling water in a pinch). The disinfectant can be bleach, or some other kind of germicidal substance. Do not mix cleaning substances.
Broom, dustpan, mop, mop bucket (to be filled from the bathtub), and soap for bucket
Hot pads made of 100% nonsynthetic fabric
A set of dishware to eat all this stuff out of, for however many people you'll regularly be feeding

Inexpensive kitchen doodads for making cooking somewhat more fun or easy

Specialty knives like serrated bread knife, Chinese cleaver, medium-sized knife for chopping larger fruits & vegetables
Cookbook or cookbooks you can always rely on. If you don't have one, find one. I use Joy of Cooking if I'm stuck, or several trusted websites. To hold cookbooks open, try putting heavy cans or pans on both sides of the book, or holding it open with other books as weights.
Things to make dishwashing easier such as scouring powder or gel for dishes (bon ami, Barkeeper's Friend, baking soda, mixture of baking soda and dish soap, etc.), rubber elbow-length gloves, plastic food scraper, nylon scrub brush, loofah slice, dish wand
More baking dishes of various types, such as loaf pans, muffin tins, pie pans, casserole dishes etc. but beware the noncoated metal kind or any rusty dishes. They can and will alter flavor and color of the food.
Popsicle molds
Corncob holders
Cookie cutters
Vegetable steamer
Potato masher
Rolling pin
Electric mixer, because whipped cream is better when homemade. Also can make meringue, yay!
More mixing bowls. More mixing bowls. More! You can never have too many. They're often used as serving bowls in my house.

Investment-type cookware for if you're really, really into cooking and willing to save up or splurge on expensive gear

Stock pot, for exactly that
Roasting pan; works in tandem with stock pot
Cuisinart or some other kind of food processor, the most common kind in commercial kitchens is RoboCoupe
Blender, such as Blendtec
Wok ring, wok ladle, and wok
Bamboo steamer and steamer stand to fit inside said wok

Cookbooks (American)

Cookin With Coolio by Coolio
From Crook to Cook by Snoop Dogg
The Joy of Cooking, any edition you like
Anything by Ree Drummond
Good Eats series by Alton Brown

Tea Party Stuff

Alices Tea Cup by Lauren and Haley Fox

Japanese Cookbooks

Cook Anime by Diana Ault
Let's Make Ramen! A Comic Book Cookbook by Hugh Amano and Sarah Becan

Vegan Cookbooks

This Aint No Picnic: Your Vegan Punk Rock Cookbook by Joshua Ploeg
The Uncheese Cookbook by Jo Stepaniak
Vegan Indian Cooking by Anupy Singla

Links to recipe websites

Indian

Indobase

Japanese

Southern/American

Pioneer Woman
Southern Plate Note: If you're looking for something fast, easy, and cheap, this is the best recipe website for that. Also it's great for beginner cooks.
Taste of Home
Deep South Dish

Chinese

Vegan

Thai

Malaysian

Rasa Malaysia

Miscellaneous

NEW 5/12/21 Quick Meals

Here are some good staples you can get frozen or premade from the store for quick meals: chicken nuggets, flour tortillas, bread, instant mac and cheese, jarred pasta sauce, chicken tenders, tortellini, gnocchi, dumplings, peanut butter, canned tuna or salmon, eggs, mayo, canned beans, store-made spreads such as hummus. Also see: Vegan foods Here are some other quick meal ideas:

Gnocchi with pasta sauce: Cook gnocchi according to package directions. Saute some garlic minced with salt in a spoonful of extra-virgin olive oil or sunflower oil on medium-high heat. Add a jar of pasta sauce, and stir. Serve with the sauce. This works with tortellini too.
Bagel pizzas: get any pizza toppings you want, jarred pasta sauce or canned marinara sauce, some Italian seasonings, mozzarella cheese, and your favorite kind of bagels. Put some sauce on the bagels, top with mozzarella, sprinkle with seasoning, add toppings. Either broil these until the cheese melts, watching carefully, or bake them at 350 until the cheese melts.
Instant mac and cheese goes perfectly with bacon, or chicken.
Quesadillas are easy, but load up on the vegetables and meats or it'll get boring fast
From the vegan section: make toast. Warm up a can of kidney or pinto beans. Add soy sauce and optionally some brown sugar. Mix with chopped green onion and serve over the toast
Bean burritos are also easy if you know how to wrap up burritos. However, if you want the beans refried instead of just heated up, mashing them with the back of a spoon or a potato masher is annoying. Generally speaking plain cheddar cheese shreds in these is good, also minced onions, minced tomatoes, and salsa or hot sauce. For extra fanciness some sauteed onion and bell peppers would be awesome.
Peanut butter jelly sandwiches are classic for a reason. Serve with potato chips.
Tuna or salmon salad doesn't have to be any fancier than just the drained fish mixed with mayonnaise. Slap some on some bread or toast, maybe melt some cheese on there, and you're good.
Fish cakes: mix a can of drained fish with 2 eggs, whatever seasonings you want, and 1 slice of crumbled white bread with a fork. Fry patties of the stuff in a skillet until they're done.
Generally speaking chicken nuggets or tenders can be baked at 375 F for 40-45 minutes regardless of brand. They can be cooked at the same time as tater tots on a baking sheet, and served with mustard mixed with honey. Or just served over whatever.
Toast with nut butter or a storebought spread is good. I grew up eating avocado toast for breakfast almost every day and it's great plain

Recipes

Black beans Pioneer Woman

Chicken broth Instructables Hint: doesn't actually need the vegetables

Miso soup Just One Cookbook Bonito flakes are often impossible to find in Western supermarkets, so it is okay to substitute chicken broth. Yes, I know it's sacrilege.

Pasta salad Instructables

Rice on the stovetop The Woks of Life Extra hints: Most rice in supermarkets is too old to be cooked with this quantity of water and this cooking time. For white rice, I always go for 1.25-1.5 parts water to 1 part rice, soak it for 20 minutes, and cook it for 18 minutes, not 15. Also, finding the exact setting of your stovetop to make the rice simmer but not boil is tricky. The heat setting isn't actually "low." It's more like "medium low." It'll take a couple tries to get it right. If you want to make the rice grains separate from each other and thus give the rice a better texture, cover the rice in cold water, swirl the rice around, drain the water off, and repeat until the water runs clear, then proceed with the soaking, cooking, etc.

Bean burritos Mommy's Memorandum

Chili Instructables

Beef vegetable stew Instructables

Chicken stew Southern Plate

Pizza bagels Instructables

Instant oatmeal Instructables

Regular oatmeal Quaker

Avocado toast: this is what I grew up eating for breakfast. Literally just mashed ripe avocado on toast.

Spaghetti with jarred sauce Pioneer Woman Just in case you didn't know how to make spaghetti or pasta: bring plenty of water to a full rolling boil in a pot over high heat, add a sprinkling of salt, pour in some pasta, and try a piece of pasta every few minutes until it's the consistency of a gummy bear or slightly softer, with no crunchy bits. Pour the contents of the pot into a colander in the sink and you're done.

Relish tray Southern Plate An idea. Fruit plates and vegetable plates with cut-up nicely arranged fruit/veg also fall into this category.

Salad The Kitchn

Israeli salad Feasting At Home Not so much one "salad" as an idea. You take your vegetables and chop the ever-loving hell out of them, dress them with olive oil, salt, and lemon juice and call it a day.

Breakfast burritos The Kitchn

Blanched vegetables Simple Daily Recipes

Steamed vegetables The Kitchn

Extra Recipes

Ranch dressing Pioneer Woman It is possible to make this with dried parsley, dried chives, and yogurt or buttermilk instead of sour cream, just enough to thin out the consistency.

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