Where do I start?

Where do I start?

I want to be a fantastic next-level cook. Do I look up lesson plans online, cook dishes from cookbooks, or dedicate a month at a time to a certain type of food.

How does a beginner get good?

just start finding out what you wanna cook
the most important is being able to cut veggies garlic and shit without removing ur fingers

I want to be well rounded and versatile

bro just look up recipes on youtube that you want to make. I recommend going to the Food Wishes channel. Look at Food Wishes' library. Sort it by popularity and watch any video that intrigues you.

how to be a great amateur cook in 2016:
1. Buy all of the proper ingredients
2. follow a video-recipe

Professional Cooking by Wayne

I could give a wide range of advice, but to such a broad question, just start cooking. Take mental notes of your successes, as well as your mistakes. A big fuckup can be a huge learning experience.

Be inquisitive, try to have specific questions so you can find answers to them. Then you will learn.

Kind of like learning Guitar. You can understand all the musical theory and watch numerous guide videos, but if you don't pick up the instrument, then you won't know anything.

And, the best bit of advice, have fun!

>just start cooking
I have. I started with Gordon Ramsay's scrambled eggs, then made panna cotta and with that made pomegranate syrup and caramel sauce.

And today I tried (failed) to make crepe cakes, but they kept being undercooked in the middle.

I have also been tasting as I cook them to take mental notes on why I'm doing what I'm doing.

I still feel lost though. I need some sort of direction.

> then made panna cotta and with that made pomegranate syrup and caramel sauce.

To specify, I made Gordon's chocolate panna cotta with a hazelnut brittle, and a moat of caramel sauce (which wasn't on the recipe), and also the one from his Christmas video.

This is why I'm wondering where I should start because I could easily do videos online or recipes from the internet but would I be learning anything?

You need specific questions to get specific answers.

Also, it seems like you're making treats instead of food, which seems like you're treating it like a hobby instead of a life skill. Not to be harsh.

>You need specific questions to get specific answers.
Recipes online will have me do a recipe that requires something like a sauce or a syrup and I'll make that once and my 'learning' is very scattered and unorganized. How will I retain how to make a syrup or a brittle or a particular dish if I only make it once?

I lack a specific structured schedule or routine to go about it in a progressive manner. There is so much to learn like pastas, sushi, steak, desserts, breakfast foods, how individual food items work with one another, etc. but I simply don't know where to start.

So here is my question: When I wake up tomorrow, what is the first to go about learning how to be a good cook that can carry on through the week and the subsequent ones?


>life skill
this is my goal.

***When I wake up tomorrow, what is the first thing I should do to go about learning how to be a good cook which can carry on through the week and the subsequent ones?

Cooking is more about technique and knowledge than recipes. On the flipside, without going through recipes you'll never get the chops to know what you're doing.

No real way to tell you how to start (required cookware, basic recipes, essential spice rack, making base ingredients like rice, staple ingredients to always have) but for you to learn yourself. Pick a recipe, do it, take mental notes of successes and failures. At the same time, you learn what you need or can throw away through all of it.

Looks like you're lacking in the savory lunch and dinner department. Other than just going and cooking some things that would fill you up, I can only say that onion, garlic, and the allium family in general will get you far. Also making your own stocks.

I got gud at cooking from doing short-order for my friends when we'd get high.
Breakfast, burgers, soup, shit I'd make anything as long as I had the necessary ingredients. Start with the basics and eventually you'll get bold enough to explore other options.

learn herbs and spices
buy a flavor bible if u need to

i'm sure there are tutorials on how to develop knife skills.

get whole animals (chickens, fish) or get un-broken down pieces of cow/lamb/pig and look up online how to break them down

learn what a roux is

learn the mother sauces

learn about what a consomme is and learn how to make one

learn about different oils/fats and their different uses

learn what an emulsion and how to emulsify things, as well as what causes emulsions to break

learn how to sear/baste proteins with butter and herbs in a pan

learn everything about the egg and how to cook them in different ways

learn about mire poix, sofrito, etc

taste everything you make at multiple stages throughout the cooking process

taste your ingredients (within reason) before using them, always be on the lookout for new things to try

learn to clean as you go and always have your mise en place before even starting to cook

that's probably a pretty good start. also, pic related is a really great resource.

This, I just recently discovered how universal garlic can be. I use it like salt and pepper now.

>Wants to be an overall good chef
>Wants direction.

Direct all your crazy to perfecting a a single dish up to your (potentially unreasonably high) standards. You can learn a lot as a result. The knife skills you need, using the right pan, cooking with the right amount of heat, food prep, etc.

These are skill you can carry over to the next dish you want to work on.

i forgot a couple:

learn the differences between onion variations (shallot, red, white, etc) and also about shit like leeks/scallions/chives

learn about acids and vinegars especially. sherry vinegar is one of the flavor cheat codes and i would consider it more of a seasoning than part of the cooking process, but learn how to utilize them all

maple syrup is another flavor cheatcode.. maple syrup/sherry vinegar/butter/salt are all flavor cheatcodes.

I'd recommend getting a handbook/notebook (the kind that you write in), and start writing down recipes as you're cooking them or after. It really helps on remembering them afterwards. If you're a bit anxious, it might help to keep a spreadsheet of what you have done in the past and how many times, or maybe writing what you learned when you fuck up
And by the way, since you mentioned him, Gordon has a few tips on his official YouTube channel, and he has a few series on cooking where he teaches you what to do, Ultimate Cookery and 100 recipes to rely on or something like that, those are also all over YouTube, they can be useful for throwing you into something different or helping in ideas.

Learn how to do proportions. It'll help you scale down ingredients to the recipe's standards if you want to cook smaller portions.

this is a good idea