Why did Veeky Forums start cooking?

I wanna know more. What did you live alone since 14?

You gotta eat, better learn to cook.

Why do you need a story when learning an essential life skill?

At what point did you discover you were gay

>Tfw both parentsare great cooks and you picked up cooking aspiring to be like them.
closing in on my moms skill level, but my father is still out of reach.

Moved out. Was eating takeout day to day for while then I started cooking and realised it was pretty easy to cook most things and usually tasted better than the low-mid range takeouts/restaurants I went to, and was cheap, so I just continued,

>mother was an okay cook; willing to try new things, but lacked an understanding of the fundamentals of cooking
>father was terrible and overcooked and underseasoned everything, turned me off steak and zucchini until my 20s
>dad was also pretty lazy and would get my brother and me to do basic prep work like peel potatoes—I didn't learn much from this, but it did condition me that kids should be involved in cooking dinner
>I also liked cake, so I would get mum to help me with box mixes from which I gained a good amount of experience over the years
>from my early teens, I would cook the occasional dinner and began to take more responsibility for it as I grew older
>being at home most of the time in my early 20s, I came to an agreement with my mother that I would cook dinner every night, which gave me the majority of my experience

I don't really know why I started cooking. Partly because I liked it, partly because the food my parents cooked was miserable and I wanted something better.

I don't cook too much any more, but I have enough knowledge that I can approach most recipes with a high degree of confidence to produce very good results. Same with baking; I'm probably responsible for the majority of the income of charity bake sales at work.

i started cooking around 6 or 7 because my family had a rule that if you cooked you didn't have to wash dishes and i fucking hate washing dishes

by the time i was 12 my mom would give me her credit card and i'd do all the shopping for the family too.. i fucking love grocery shopping

I hardly ever cooked at home, but my parents are pretty good cooks. The meals were diverse and healthy, almost always made of fresh ingredients. I grew up believing that this is the only way to go.

When I moved out I realized I knew nothing about cooking and had to call my mum for recepies. In the very beginning I even had to ask her the most basic of basics, like for how long to cook a potato. I cooked every day, and a month later I already had a reputation among my housemates for elaborate and expert cooking, but that tells us more about them than about me.

I like to eat well. And to eat well I must cook well.

I suppose it must have been at Montessori preschool. That's kind of like a Waldorf school, but for regular middle class folks like my parents.

>move out, and into my own house
>first day, cook ramen, with egg
>comes out looking fuckign awful
>next day, try again, looks better but the veggies arent that good
>begin on the path towards learning to make meals that are good

As a kid my mom did all the cooking, at the time I didn't know it but it was just generic bland lower middle class white people stuff. Fast forward, parents get divorced, we live with mom who steadily become more and more of a hands-off parent (if she was home generally she was locked up in her bedroom and us four kids just had to figure shit out ourselves). I'm the third of four and at the time I was like 8ish? So for a while my meals consisted of shit like instant ramen, boxed mac and cheese, shitty white people "tacos", generally just stuff an 8 year old can make with package instructions or that my older sisters were willing to try making. This continues pretty much my entire childhood, with me figuring out how to make simple shit like eggs along the way. At 18 I end up moving out because family drama shit, my girlfriend and I rent a room from her parents and I live there a couple years. Her parents are a step up in the sense that they regularly cook "meals" for the family (stuff like some kind of meat, instant mashed potatoes, and a frozen vegetable, but an actual meal at least). Her mom is the kind of person who is convinced she's a restaurant tier cook because she's like a 4th generation Italian American and she's worked in fast food or school cafeterias for 20 years. Eventually we end up moving out for more family drama reasons (long story short they're both mentally unstable alcoholics who didn't like people in the house doing anything without their say so).

>Cont.

We had started to experiment with cooking simple dishes ourselves over the last few months because we both started working jobs where we were always home late and as a result her parents basically told us to go fuck ourselves and stop using "their food" which was supposed to be accounted for in our rent. When we moved out we were able to start actually stocking a kitchen for ourselves, so we decided to go full from scratch with everything and force ourselves to learn new stuff. We bought only ingredients, no preprocessed stuff (saving money was a main concern as well as quality). I started looking up recipes and tutorials online, started lurking here a lot for advice and inspiration. Memes and shitposting aside you guys are awesome. Chef John is also my nigga.

to;dr: shitty childhood made me want to figure out how to do better, now cooking is a hobby I enjoy quite a bit.

Sorry about the blog post.

My mom was never a good cook but she had a few dishes that weren't too bad and we mostly just asked for that.

Taco night, rice and cream of mushroom soup mixed together with swedish meatballs, pesto pasta, rare steak with buttered potatoes with fresh herbs.

Personally I started cooking around 15 but was a natty, now Im 27 but have been working in kitchens for 11 years and im a pretty G cook, which is a double edged sword because I have to cook for people ALL

THE

FUCKING

TIME

I have today and tommorrow off and me and my GF are having a dinner party tonight, and then I gotta go over to a friends tomorrow to do a catering for 25 people by myself(at least I get paid for this though).

The one good thing though is that people know not to bug me when im in a kitchen, people always used to ask if they can give me a hand or help out in any way and I suppose I come off as a shitty person when I tell them to gtfo, but honestly any good cook doesn't want people mucking about in the kitchen, I understand youre trying to be helpful but seriously you're in the fucking way.

All the men in the family cook, and all the women sit on their asses and get cooked for. I knew I had to learn sooner or later, or my mom was gonna starve when dad died. Plus, as my brother put it: It's the best way to make a buck without going to college or working hard labour like a fucking chump.

Found making meals to be cheaper on a budget than buying prepacked stuff. I never realized how much chicken nuggets cost before I started costing them out per oz vs. raw breast.

Don't you dare tell this to democrats, eating healthy on a budget just isn't possible you shit Lord.

Moved to my own place when I was around 20 and started cooking.

My mom died when I was 14 from a heart attack when she was driving and I don't have contact with my father besides with his money from the child support, my grandmother was my legal tutor but she never really cared about me, so I was living alone in the apartament of my mother. My grandmother is dead now, she died like 2-3 years ago, and because she never did a testament I got all his money, car and 2 houses.

In my family, mom is shit at cooking while dad is godtier, and he usually cooks on sundays, same as you. Why are modern women so shit at cooking? I literally know no woman who can be considered really good at cooking (maybe my sister), but I have met several men who are really good.

I feel like all woman cooking nowadays consists of some weird low fat diet fad foods.

Combination of most people just not learning to cook anymore and modern feminists equating anything that remotely resembles the classic "housewife" stereotype with slavery driving women away from the skill.

my mother cooks like a white person stereotype

not even kidding, her goto meals were always frozen dinners, pasta with canned sauce, chicken soup made of unseasoned chicken carrot and potato boiled in knorr chicken broth powder and half a shaker of salt, and most complex of all the shepherds pie that was just the soup but thicker with pouch gravy added and mashed potatoes shoveled on top. people in hospitals and prisons eat better

I started cooking when I started working out at 19 years old. I wanted to eat more than what my mom cooked. She was a decent cook, though so I liked her food, but wanted more food to gain weight. In the beginning itwas just chicken breast and rice and veggies. As time went on I started experimenting and trying new dishes.

I really had to start learning how to cook when I moved out at 20 years. That's when I started to learn cooking for real and over the next 6 years cooking became a hobby for me and now I'm decent with my regular meals. In the meantime my mom also improved her own cooking style by a lot, so now we enjoy cooking more elaborate meals together during holidays and such.

I've been cooking for a while, but it was never anything too fancy and may have involved a lot of frozen/premade products. It was also a hassle. I tried to do shit fast and in batches. The batches thing hasn't changed, but recently, I've started cooking all my food. I barely go out. This is mostly to save money, but cooking has started to become a lot more fun. I'm looking up more recipes for new stuff to make. Just got some more cookware and hope to do even more cooking in the future.

Mom is a good cook. She has a real problem with new recipes, though, since she hates following instructions and ends up creating culinary abominations when doing something for the first time. She'll substitute ingredients and change instructions/procedures on a whim, and then complain when things taste like Satan's sweaty taint.

Dad has a basic as hell cooking knowledge, but what little he knows is great. Mostly sandwiches, pies and other things that are easy to carry around to eat, a remainder of the days he spent driving around the country inspecting then-Texaco gas/service stations.

My sister is a side step in evolution, evolving to be exceedingly efficient in creating piles of dirty dishes, cutlery and accessories to cook something as simple as toast.

My mother's cooking sucks ass, I learned how to cook out of necessity. I'd probably be dead by now if I didn't.

>I was born in le wrong generation, why is everyone in my small bubble representative of the entire world?
Yes that must be it, feminism is why your female acquaintance in college only knows how to microwave pop tarts

Super special oldfag protip: basic life skills are something that people get better at as they get older

The reason teenagers and 20somethings appear to suck at cooking more than your grandma is because your grandma has been doing it her whole life

Not because the Female Ghostbusters brainwashed the teenagers into sucking at cooking

Source: middle aged man, used to wonder the same shit when I was your age

We all go through this, you aren't special

>be in highschool
>no dad
>mom gets laid off and has to work shitty job for long hours
>she's a god-tier chef
>sisters are useless cooks
>start cooking
>the end

>parents were shitty cooks
>full retard disaster tier worse than a 12 year old level shitty
>start cooking so I can eat something edible for once
>start cooking every single meal on moveout to uni to save money
>still cook all meals because I get off on seeing how little money I can spend a year

>dad too stubborn to learn
>mom starts asking me to teach her how to cook
>taught her how to use seasoning and how to cook meat so it isn't shoeleather

>parents have always been ridiculously busy
>also mom is kind of a healthy food freak so microwaved shit was out of the question when home alone
>therefore learned to cook

I was always interested in it because my mom would spend a lot of time cooking, sometimes I would help. I didn't really start cooking until college because my mom and I both use cooking as relaxing/alone time so we don't cook together much except on thanksgiving or christmas

Hispanic, family of both parents who are good cooks. Middle child, got interested in cooking at the age of 8. Slowly helped around the kitchen.

By then later in life got to experiment with other cooking methods. And for the last 4 years took up cooking on the grill. Low and slow, smoking with wood chips/ chunks, sauces, dry rubs. Trying to get involved with using Dutch ovens. I'm also an Eagle Scout.

It's never to late to get involved into cooking. Skills will get better over time.

>heythatsprettygood.avi
ichuckled.bmp

We grew up poor, both parents worked, it was either cook stuff for ourselves or eat bologna sandwiches/leftover beans & rice. My older brother did it first to have something different, but then taught me as I got a bit older.

Now I do it as a hobby, to save money by taking gourmet leftovers for work, and making sure our little one doesn't grow up too picky.

Went to college and had to teach myself. Ramen easymac and fast food gets very old very fast. I found it really fun and relaxing. Got pretty good at it over time.

>Live by myself for a while for a job
>Cook extremely basic things like ham and eggs, instant foods
>Occasionally go out to restaurants to fill in for taste buds needing different foods
>Eventually get back home and learn how to make fried rice from my grandma because I hate being powerless in the cooking department
>Partially also learn because I want to show off to my friends who I really like supporting after everything they helped me with
>Now want to expand on my cooking knowledge and technique so people can enjoy what I make and so I won't have to be a lazy sack of garbage that can't treat himself

>Mom is an okay cook, nothing fancy but can make things that are edible (her major claim to fame is a "family recipe" for pasta sauce, even though she never did it right and her family in New York made it so much better)
>Dad is an okay cook, can make edible meat and potatoes
>Neither can cook vegetables worth a damn, as a result I hated non-carrot, non-corn vegetables until my early 20s
>Move out and realize I have no fucking idea how to cook for myself (the most I've ever done is make cakes from box mixes), so my diet was mostly frozen fried chicken and candy
>Met my future wife, who introduced me to the fact that vegetables can be fucking delicious
>Eventually we move in together
>She decides she doesn't want to cook all the time, so she has me start cooking for her
>Been cooking ever since

I'm still at the "using a recipe" phase of cooking, but I'm slowly getting better and better at improvisation. I'm mostly just petrified of going too far off script, since I'm cooking for other people and I don't want my mistakes to affect them (I recently made a cottage pie with browned beef cubes, but I fucked up the filling by adding red peppers and forgetting to put any seasoning aside from salt & pepper).

18 years ago, it was summer vacation, I was hungry and mom was at work, she told me (over the phone) how to make grilled cheese sandwiches, a fascination began.

I then began making my own breakfast of eggs and sausage.

A few years later I was making the weekly spaghetti (for all of us), then I began making meals for myself (mostly burgers) and experimenting, got fat and stayed that way due to lack of portion control and shitty habits.

I am now 100 lbs lighter, control my portions, and make my own recipes. Feels good.

>Turn 19
>Leave on mission
>Get sent to Spain
>No mac n cheese
>No cheap ramen
>No canned soup
>Starvationmode.exe
>Try to make pancakes
>Equal parts flour and water
>Survivalcakes.rar
>Survival cakes make me very sick
>As soon as my body has purged itself, acquire cookbook
>Cookbook is in Spanish
>Dictionary.epub
>Acquire basic cooking skills and a solid command of Spanish cooking terms

>Grew up with mom cooking decent meals
>Get out on my own
>Don't have the money to eat out at nice restaurants often
>Convenience and fast food expensive and not that delicious
>Better learn to into cooking

kek

My older sister and I have been cooking since I was probably 12 - 13, because our little brother has cerebral palsy (basically can't do anything).

My family wasn't poor, but we weren't well-off either, so when my mom couldn't cook my sister and I were expected to. When my mom died when I was 18 my sister and I took over cooking full-time and rotated nights.

My dad can't cook and considers Kraft Dinner to be amazing food. My cooking (and my sister's) steadily improved over the years.

My cooking really took off when I moved out and I was cooking everyday. I enjoy it because it's a way for me to relax at the end of the day and enjoy a pretty good meal.

This is an old photo of when I was cooking at home (about 7 years ago). Looking back I wish I knew to toss dat sauce with the pasta, but I was proud of it at the time.

I was cooking my own steak at eleven. Until then, I was experimenting with ramen. Fried my first chicken at 12.

started cooking when I was 9 after my parents divorced 'cause I was living with my alcoholic mother who was too busy sucking dick to cook anything decent

Not until I was 17 or 18 and my parents asked me to grill once