So believe it or not there are actually people who exist that dont know how to cook

Christ.

Did you eat some of it?

...was it good?

Maybe its an american thing but
My palette is desensitized so unless a flavor is very intense i cant identify it when mixed with others

Suburban millenial babbies raised by single mothers who themselves either did not know how to cook or were too busy working to bother. They just bought their kids fast food or candy and junk food to eat every night.

kys flyover

my thing is, if you can follow a procedure in lab, you can cook.

no one with a STEM degree should be unable to cook.

People who were not raised with Italian grandmothers in their lives.

Historically, unless they were a chef by trade, most men never saw it as a necessary skill. They always relied on some squaw to feed them (first their mother, then their wife).

Not true at all. Cooking is more than simple trite procedure. It's not a science, it's an art. Great cooking requires, improvisation, imagination and creativity. Something many (though certainly not all) STEM people lack.

To be great at cooking you need all those things. To make healthy and somewhat tasty meals 21x a week you just need to be able to follow basic instructions. If you have a STEM degree you should be intelligent enough to be able to google how to cook for yourself at a basic level.

>spend ~$1 on tomatoes and seasoning
>or spend fuck-knows on shitty flyover sauce

I'm a suburban millennial baby raised by a single mother. That is why I know how to cook.

>people don't know how to tomato sauce

First sautee onions and fully cook beef in pan. If not use beef use olive oil on onions to cook.

Then put in tomatoes. Then simmer with salt pepper basil oregano garlic for until it is not taste acidic.

Very easy. Just cook until tomato acid is tomato sugar.

Successful people are much more likely to pay for cooked food than to cook it themselves. In other words: poorfags

That doesn't make a great cook. That makes a drone.

Do you only eat ragu?

But whatever flyover tomato sauce which calls for a cup of sugar?

I know, that's what I said. If you simply act as a drone you can cook your own food. The people described in the OP are even more worthless than drones.

>Success is entirely monetary

You are Murgans are so far up shit creek you don't even realize it.

>$1 on tomatoes and spice
Not true. Particularly not true if you're making a good sauce that calls for more than just tomatoes and spice. Olive oil alone will put you at a minimum of like $5, now factor in the opportunity cost of spending the time making the sauce.

Suddenly a $3 jar of pre-made sauce is pretty attractive, particularly when you live in a liberal crunchy health-food obsessed urban environment where you can get quality shit in jars.

he's dead jim

Also, spice is fucking expensive. I understand it's an investment, and you'll have a fuck ton leftover for future cooking, but when you're young and haven't developed a spice collection it adds up if you want to suddenly start cooking.

holy shit, this.

it was a fucking shock when I went to college and tried to make something more complex than cup of noodles.

>$1 on tomatoes and seasoning

You can buy about 2 roma tomatoes for a dollar. That's not enough fuckin' tomatoes bruh

Eat shit

>spices
>expensive

By them in bulk, you fucking troglodyte.

...

there's still the upfront cost of purchasing them. buying in bulk is even more upfront cost than buying a smaller amount.

My roommate doesn't know how to cook either, it's painful to watch him check the fridge and realize he doesn't actually have any food.

>asks about a burger i'm eating
>tell him he's welcome to make one if he wants
>"sure, you just microwave it right"
>n...no...
>"oh, well nevermind then"

come to think of it, I haven't even seen the man boil water.

i dont know shit about cooking besides of taking a Pizza in the oven, heat up some premade soups or anything. i never bothered to learn it, i had my mum who was always making some dinner, and after that i have my girlfriend who knows how to cook.
but i dont like it that way and want to learn it.

i dont want to ask my gf or someone because of my autism in this case or whatever.
but i cant really get over it to get started.
there are too many questions for me like

which temperature do i choose for what, or how di know something is cooked to the right spot or how much seasoning i should use, or even which seasoning should i use to get it tasted like what, and many more stupid shit.

i know some would say to just get a receipt and get started, but i dont know. ist not the same. because i dont really learn the core elements of this stuff in my opinion.

what can i do? or should i just kill my self? fuck me.

excuse my english im not a native english speaker.

One of my friends is just now, at age 25, learning how to cook without packaged ingredients.

He rents his mother's basement. She strictly follows recipes, but has a good eye for picking them out, and her execution of them is generally flawless.

She goes away, and nine times out of ten, he eats pogos. It's kind of tragic.

"dont know how to cook" means too lazy/doesn't feel like cooking. Most people can follow a recipe if they want to make something. Also if they aren't used to cooking it's unlikely that they have stuff to actually cook with around the house.

> mom always cooked great homemade meals for me as a child
> when I moved out I just wanted to cook food that resembled my mothers in the slightest
> been watching cooking shows since early teens, and finally put it into praxis
> end up being so far ahead of all of my friends culinary wise it's fucking painfull
> I literally can't get them to help me with anything in the kitchen without them fucking up somehow
> everytime I cook they think I'm in a bad mood because I don't want any help
> I'm only in a bad mood because when they do help they do a fucking half assed job of it

The worst thing is they don't really seem to care if they do anything wrong, and if I tell them they get offended and pissy
I love my friends but god fucking damn it, WHY WOULDN'T YOU DO ALL YOU CAN TO MAKE THE BEST MEAL POSSIBLE WTF

Not the people you replied to, but I mix store-bought sauce into a base made of fresh and canned ingredients to help the flavor and increase the volume. What do you think?

>which temperature do i choose for what

Google it.

>how di know something is cooked to the right spot or how much seasoning i should use

Practice.

The only way you'll ever get started is to accept that you can and will fuck up, and those fuckups are how you learn.

You're getting the worst of both worlds. Just learn how to season your base properly; it's less complicated than you think.

Why the hell did he think you have to microwave burgers?

I learned cooking.
Then I stopped giving a shit.
Too few hours in a day to waste time like that.

...

As a chef i find it great.
Just name shit in french and make it look fancy and the masses will pay 10x the actual price.

Just like how my restaurant serves egg benedict for 64 bucks, and we get at least 10 orders aday in slow days for the benedicts.

Little did they know it's just boiled eggs with a slap of salmon and spinach, doesn't cost 5 bucks to make.

oh also women seem to be really impressed by the fact i can make almost anything in the kitchen.

pic related is a lunch i made from scratch for a picnic with the mates: mini-beef wellingtons, pene pasta, parmasan puffs and fudge chocolate cakes.

This thread isn't about being a great cook, just make good enough shit to not die from.

presentation on the wellingtons is cute but the rest looks like supermarket hot case tier

Those are all well over 1$ each

Where the hell are you going where tomatoes and spices are that cheap? Seriously, a shaker of table black pepper is a dollar, what the hell else are you going to do for the rest of the ingredients? Suck off the grocery store manager?

$1.50/kg extra plus maybe $2.00 for oil and garlic is worth it for the incredible difference in quality. Basil and oregano should be growing in your garden for free.
It's still a home cooked meal for at least 2 people, from scratch, for less than $10

There's fancy cooking and regular cooking.

Many dishes count as "simple", as in "just mix this stuff and cook for X amount of time".

People who learn to cook, coming from a non cooking background, seem to want to jump into "gourmet" or fancier food rather than get the basic with easier dishes.

$5 of olive oil in a single dish? Surely youre missing the fact that some costs are amortized over many dishes

He was probably just hoping it involved the microwave because that's literally the only cooking device he knows how to use. There's an expression for this but I can't think of it, but basically the same problem will be approached differently by an engineer, a mathematician, or a physicist because they know what they are good at and try to apply it to everything.

>mini beef wellingtons

What cut of meat did you use, I'm genuinely interested in making these for Christmas now.

Filet

This is wrong

my roommate just eats ragu pasta and frozen pizza

he cooks the pasta, puts it on a plate, then just spoons ragu straight from the fridge onto the pasta

when i asked him about it he said "oh the pasta heats up the ragu"

when we moved in together i had to show him how to operate the washing machine

Tfw when just sauce is a meal for 2

Maybe this is why I never learned to cook

Yea, enjoy your $3 jar of ready made sugar liquid.

M8 if you are too lazy to boil 25 cents of pasta then you have bigger problems.

ragu might as well be ketchup

Genius cooking requires improvisation, imagination and creativity, something that no one outside of fine dining will ever, ever need to know

Great cooking requires being able to read and follow instructions.

Same here user. You can learn anything on the internet.

It's better than not being able to make food at all.

>Great cooking requires being able to read and follow instructions.

I disagree. Reading and following instructions to the letter is a recipe for mediocrity, not excellence.

A beginner can and will follow a recipe verbatim. A good cook will use his senses--tasting the food to adjust ingredient amounts accordingly, looking at the color to adjust cooking time/heat, and so on.

>21 meals a week
What?

Breakfast, lunch, dinner. 7 days a week. 3 x 7 = 21.

>What?
What does 3 x 7 equal, user?

3 meals a day, 7 days a week. I don't mean cooking for an hour for each meal every day, I'm including making food in larger amounts to have leftovers, whipping simple things like eggs in the morning, etc.

I thought that the norm was to have one meal a day, two at maximum.

I know plenty of successful people for whom cooking is a hobby. I think you mean driven people aren't as likely to cook because they're tightly focused elsewhere. In terms of income the most successful guy I know is a Wall St stress case who works 60 hours a week. He doesn't give a shit about food, nor what it costs. And even though this guy is easily worth 20 times what I am he asks me for restaurant recommendations, because he knows I'm into food and know which places are worth bothering with. He also has a stay at home wife who cooks, so he's never had to pick up a chef's knife in his life.
This. Cooking is expensive if you do it so infrequently that you have to go out and buy every single ingredient you need to make a dish every time you cook because do not keep a well stocked fridge and larder. If you cook on a daily basis the costs of each ingredient gets spread over 2, 3, 5, 10 or even 20 meals. Yeah, stuff like olive oil and spices seem expensive. But my $15 jug of olive oil and my $4 worth of green cardamom in a glass jar are both good for more than 20 meals. So they're actually pretty cheap in the long run.

If you're cooking on a day to day basis it's pretty easy to make dinner for two for under $3.

>>I thought that the norm was to have one meal a day

Dear lord, where on earth is that the "norm"?

Well, burger and syrupland. We need 3 to maintain our svelt figures.

It could very well just be me, I'm not sure. I just don't see breakfast, lunch, or dinner meal-worthy.

Wherever they don't have enough food. South Sudan?

Again, where are you going where everything is amazingly cheap? Where is this magical realm where things are trapped in 1950s pricing? Detroit?

Not everyone lives in Africa, hon.

I dunno how to cook.

I can boil/scramble eggs I guess. I can grill stuff, and cook stuff that just needs to be left in an oven for X amount of time (usually needs to tell me on the lable.)

I can make a pretty good steak.

I guess I could theoretically make some garlic butter.

Other than that? Nope.

I come to Veeky Forums while I eat to read about food.

I want to be good at cooking, but don't know where to start and am also extremely poor.

I learned to cook because I am a shutin with no waifu and I got bored of eating fastfood and frozen food. With so many youtube channels giving you the step by step there is no excuse to not be able to cook. Start with simple shit like speghetti, tacos, and stews.

>Physicist
Assuming the problem is perfectly spherical and exists in a vacuum

>Engineer
lol i dunno ders no answer in the reference guide

>Mathematician
Perfectly correct but autistic and useless answer

I know how to cook, I don't like doing dishes.

This.

I met people in the Navy that had never ironed a shirt, cooked their own food, or been held accountable for their actions.

They were hazed frequently in a couple ways.

There were white trash southerners in my army basic training that had never used a toothbrush. We had to have a class on how to use a toothbrush.

I was in the Marines, no reason to do any of that anymore tho.
>Iron
Take dress uniforms to dry cleaners, utilities don't need it
>Cook
Chow hall, restaurants
>Accountable for actions
Now all branches enforce that, unless you're female

I think its more a thing of not being able to put things together. I don't expect everyone to know how to make a sauce but if given to you at least know how to use it properly

My brother knows how to make pancakes and burgers. And he's skinnier than me. Why is life so unfair? I'm 200 at 5'11. He's 175 at 6'2

Yeah this totally happened

In that situation I would just buy nothing but raw ingredients and only cook single servings.

That way no one steals anything and then see them rage when they see the efforts of my cooking.

>Raw meat? eeww

I learned to cook because I'm a creative freelancer with wildly variable income streams. When I'm too busy to cook I'm making good enough money to eat out at good places. When the money isn't good enough to eat out often I have the time to cook. I learned to cook well so I could eat as well as the places I go out to when the money isn't there for going out. I rarely find myself in the position where I'm just busy enough that convenience trumps food quality. I either have no time to cook but money to go out or plenty of time to cook.

SO what you're saying is you have no job and a shitload of time to spend cooking and that being able to cook ONLY means making gourmet trite, instead of meals to live on.

How fat and uneducated are you, exactly?

I suppose you came out of the womb knowing how to cook, huh? Some people can't even read or write, and they teach that in school. I suspect you may be autistic if this is really difficult for you to fathom.

You're on the internet aren't you? There's more tutorials and recipes available to you than you could fathom. Sorry lazy, that's no excuse.

You're a retard

Adding sugar is pointless. Tomatoes are sweet enough.