I'm 30 years old and I've never cooked in my life. Eating all this premade cap is probably why I feel like garbage...

This user knows what's up, the first thing I learned was to boil an egg at various stages of soft/hardness.

If you're struggling for ideas on what recipes to start out with, the way I got ideas was trying to recreate my favorite meals from restaurants. What are some of the staples in your diet? What's your favorite fast food restaurant? Look up copycat recipes and start with the easiest sounding ones. Other than that, some general rules are

>always brown meat in some kind of fat, oil or butter, gives it a better flavor regardless of what you're making
>aromatics (garlic, onion, carrot, ginger) go in before you brown the meat
>half a teaspoon of salt will help your onions soften faster
>don't crowd your pan. too much of anything and it'll steam rather than crisp/brown
>if you're not into certain types of veg try roasting them in the oven, the taste improves dramatically
>start out with very small portions of spices and herbs when flavoring a dish. you can always add more later but you can't take it out
>just keep practicing

How do you even find a dwelling without a stove?

I'll try this out thanks. Any reason why it needs to be (((kosher))) salt?

Well I lived with my parents for awhile did the whole college thing. This house was dirt cheap but no stove.

I started with bread. I grew up homeless so never had anyone around to teach me how to cook until I gave it a go when I was 19.

All I would do is make a dough with all purpose flour, a packet of yeast, a pinch of salt and warm water. Then I'd knead it, let it rise and bake it. Most of the time I failed miserably, yes even with it being that basic.

You'll learn when to measure ingredients until you become comfortable eyeballing them, you'll learn patience, you'll learn that sometimes doing nothing and waiting, or doing something repetitive that seems to not need as much time as people say can make all the difference. And then when you finally get good making basic loaves of bread you begin thinking about what new ingredients you can add at different points of the process to change the flavor, texture, etc. There are good reasons why humanity started off with bread and branched off from there, user.

Stews and curries are a good place to start. They're very difficult to get wrong and they're healthy (usually).

Very sound advice user

start with food network step by step video guides and youtube ones

I gotta agree with this OP, even autistic morons can probably cook pasta. Put some sauce and meatballs in a pan, and boil some water and put the noodles in the other pot. Wait like 20-30 minutes and then BOOM, delicious pasta with sauce and meatballs.

HELL, even making stove-top macaroni is easy as fuck. Boil the water and pour the noodles in it, then drain the water and add like a shit load of butter with cheese and then mix all up, fucking delicious.

steak is no different than making microwave meal. Its not cooking unless you literally butcher the cow yourself .

Everyone has their own opinion of course but I personally think some of these are stupid or could be discouraging. Pasta is like making ramen especially if you use store sauce so it's not cooking. Making bread? Not a good idea, too technical and you can easily fuck up the mix or burn/underbake the bread.

I will approach this with a few things in mind and I'm going to assume you're on a budget so I'll take that into consideration.

Chicken is the cheapest most cost effective protein. In many cases you will find chicken to be sold for $1 to $2 a pound. Conveniently for you, you can buy chicken parts in bulk already butchered. This is important because you probably don't have a set of knives or any other kitchenware either.

Which brings us to part two. Buying a pan. You can use the 5 pounds of chicken you bought for $5 to $6 over the next few days to learn the basics. You should get a 12 inch pan.

At this point you will be roughly $20 in your setup. You will need salt, pepper, and some oil so let's bump this $20 into $30.

A cooking spatula can be had for under $5, we are at a total of $35. I'm going to assume you have a plate and a fork.

Finally, chicken also has the added benefit of being extremely good for your physical and mental health and can aide significantly in depression or physical recovery due to the nutrients and protein content.

Chinese stir fry. Any meat, any veggies. Hard to fuck up too bad. Also, learn to make rice. Google the right seasonings.

Grilled cheese is piss easy. Butter your medium hot pan, throw a sandwich with any type of cheese on it. Cheddar recommended. Move it around a bit so it gets coated with butter. Let it brown. Flip. Butter. Move. Wait. Great for experimenting. You can try different cheeses. You can add things like bacon, an egg, tomato. I always add a light spread of mayo and mustard to the inside of it.

Make a nice chicken soup. Brown cut chicken pieces. Put those in with carrot, potato, celery, onion and chicken broth and your googled seasoning. Simmer for an hour or two. You can add or remove things as you wish.

Make a spaghetti sauce. Brown onions and minced garlic. Add canned crushed or fresh tomatos. Add seasoning that google tells you and olive oil. Simmer 10-15 mins. Done. Boil water, add a teaspoon of salt. Once it's boiling add any noodles. Make sure they are all underwater. 10 mins. Take a noodle out and chew it. Whatever you prefer is when its done.

Just remember to experiment. Anyone can follow a recipe, and you should at first but to develop your tastebuds and cooking common sense you have to experiment. Everyone fucks up a thousand times when starting out.

Bullshit. Don't be angry because you considered yourself talented for being able to boil water. Cooking steak is a basic skill that is entry level cooking. Boiling pasta is not a skill.

I made increasingly complex grilled and cold sandwiches to start out.

My dad was a chef. To teach me he gave a sack of potatoes and taught me many different recipes.

It teaches you the basics of a lot of different techniques. Frying, baking, chopping, boiling, seasoning. Buy a sack of potatoes, do something different with each one.

Also, eggs.

making a sauce is you autistic retard

Making a sauce is easier than cooking a steak. There's more room for error and you can sometimes correct mistakes in your timing.

seriouseats.com/2013/03/ask-the-food-lab-do-i-need-to-use-kosher-salt.html

making focaccia is no different than wonderbread. it's not cooking unless you literally pick the grain yourself .

My go-to recipe for beginners:

grouprecipes.com/73215/arroz-de-tomate-e-feijao---rice-with-tomato-and-beans.html

Personally I only use half as much rice and add some ham or bacon.

No shit retard. When people talk about pasta recipes they obviously mean the sauce.

Yeah but what did you do after the age of 18?

Damn son, better late than never I guess. I'd say start off easy, baking frozen foods, boiling pasta, heating up canned foods on the stovetop, etc. Once you feel comfortable using an oven and stovetop start cooking basic meats like chicken or ground beef, things you really only need to season with salt, pepper, and oil. From there I would say look up some recipes that give you clear step by step instructions to follow that use a wider range of ingredients. After you've done all that you should have a more general sense of what foods pair well, what spices work well together, etc. and you can start experimenting

Not him but thanks. Was an interesting and informative read

Here are some really good beginner dishes to make.
>scrambled eggs
>pasta
>stir fry
>baked chicken
>pot roast
Also I would just search whatever you want on youtube. There are a ton of videos for every conceivable cooking topic or question you could have.

Potatoes! They're cheap, nutritious, and can be made many different ways fairly easily.

steam veggies and eat with some seasoning

honestly the best thing i ever did for myself

the seasoning helps you get over the utter lack of flavor, or overpowering vegetableness

>seasoning
do you also use Mrs. Dash?

>30 years old
I started cooking at 11 years old. Start by watching youtube videos or buying recipe books.

>he only uses olive oil and salt to season
white people should not cook

>There are good reasons why humanity started off with bread and branched off from there
There's literally no other reason besides the fact that it was cheap and long lasting.

just get a pan and throw everything you can in it

no, but im intrigued. is that made purely for veggie eating?

No you can use it on pretty much everything, but I like to sprinkle some on my veggies. It's healthy too, so you're not adding a bunch of crap to your healthy food.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Dash

can i sprinkle some on your ass before i go to town on that bad boy?

I think what he was going for is 'easy'

Okay OP. From one woman to another:
Start with rice.
The finish product would be soft deliciousness. It took me 4 tries with rice before I realized that you have to rinse the rice before you cook it, rinse it until the water looks semi-clear instead of cloudy.

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