I know you lads probably get this thread a million times a day...

Be careful user. The food doesn't matter nearly as much as the way you present it.

>mouse

pudding, cookies, meringue, cupcakes (kind of still cake)

this girl will think you're a fag if all you cook is sweets though

Fuck. I've shamed my ancestors. Time to commit sudoku.

I'm here if you need me.

You're going to get a lot of meme and really stupid answers, so let me outline learning cooking.

Cooking is the equivalent of running through a burning kitchen and putting things together until it tastes good. That said, Cooking is really not about the ingredients when you start, it's more about technique, when you read recipes, you're not learning so much what the ingredients do. What you're really learning about is how to cook simple things together and combine them together.

To use an example, every dish that requires beef steak of some sort, from a simple steak to beef burgundy, shows you that you cook the steak on high heat with a bit of fat in the pan. It doesn't tell you why, it tells you how. Why does it need to be high heat? To trigger the Maillard reaction which is the reaction that makes things crispy or have a crust, which is why bread has a crust and why chicken wings are crispy deep fried. Why do you need fat in the pan? Because fat unlike water doesn't evaporate out of the pan.

The thing is you don't particularly need to know why things are done the way they're done in the beginning, as you become wizened in the kitchen you'll pick these things up, but you don't need that right now.

With all that said, here's a couple tips.

When cooking meat, you don't want to crowd the pan because it simmers in it's own juices rather than crisping up.

When cooking vegetables, most of the juice is water, and will cook out of the pan, but you often do need a bit of oil, butter, or other fat to cook them because of that fact, as they have little fat on their own.

Taste for seasoning as often as you can, you can always add salt but it's hard to take salt out, with that, you can take salt out of a sauce or stew by adding a peeled potato to soak up the salt.

(1/2?)

Your food comes up to temperature while cooking, but taking it off the heat doesn't mean the food itself isn't still cooking, you have to account for this, food keeps cooking out of the pan. On a side note this is why it's easy to overcook eggs.

Knife skills are one of the most important things in the kitchen, keep your knife sharp because you want to put as little extra pressure to cut things unless you want to slip and cut yourself. A dull knife is much more dangerous than a sharp one.

You literally, scientifically cannot overcook mushrooms.

Baking is not the same thing as cooking, cooking is an art, baking is a science, baking you cannot fix, cooking can always be fixed.

Spices, they're the thing that holds your dish together, this one is more of an experience thing, the more you cook the more you realize what spice goes in what style of dish, and how they work together. Don't worry too much about this, just find some simple recipes, and follow them, you'll understand it soon.

Lastly, here's a couple phrases or terms people will say in cooking videos that may help to remember.

Fond: the burnt-on stuff that accumulates at the bottom of a pan.

Deglaze: Deglazing is the act of adding a liquid and gently boiling or stirring the fond free from the bottom of the pan to incorperate into a dish.

Roux: A roux is a mix of butter and flour in equal parts often used to thicken sauces and stews, yes, you can combine the two things above with this, to make a better tasting roux, this is how they make some gravies.

Simmer: A small gentle boil that often means small bubbles on the edges of the pan to small bubbles in the middle of the dish, this generally occurs at around 180 degrees.

Shortening: Any fat that's solid at room temperature, that can be incorperated into dough or pre-baked goods to give a crumbly texture. Such as Lard / Monteca (If you live in the south), Butter, or Margarine.

Go watch foodwishes on youtube and make something from chef john
Make chicken parmesan
Most women your age dont appreciate cooking and are tetarded anyhow

One last note, once you get better at cooking, don't stay with what makes you feel comfortable, seek out recipes that are hard to do, or use a technique you're not familiar with. Once you have these techniques down, you can combine them in really astonishing ways, this is how chefs think.

"How can I use unconventional techniques to achieve a better product"

It helps spur creativity and innovation in the kitchen, also, it helps to have friends or family to feed to, the best feeling in the world is making something and it blows your family's collective dick off.

Good luck with your cooking.

Also real shit, Chef John from Foodwishes on youtube, is a good example of technique orientated cooking. He's a great guy to watch, some people do find problems with the way he talks though, personally, I find it endearing.

I'm so sorry, I've been packing because I'm travelling in a couple hours. I sincerely appreciate your replies and everyone else's too. That's exactly the kind of advice I needed.

she hates dry sweets and doesn't even like sweets all that much but I feel like I want to give her an entrée, a main course and a dessert.

She likes hearty, meaty dishes and likes spicy food and has a very very high tolerance for spicyness. She often eats pasta too, but tries to avoid carby stuff. She also likes curry (We ate a home made chicken curry when she came over this weekend)

Oh yeah, you asked for an easy to make dish that wows?

youtu.be/ifWWRZSWS18

wow thank you so fucking much user. This is precisely what I needed.

Thank you guys so much, this is one of the most helpful boards from what I've gathered. I hope great ingredients come to you and you eat wonderful dishes every day until you die.

will you be useful

Just murder the bitch and eat her.

Marathon episodes of Good Eats

chef john chicken tikka masala bro. do, that, shit. tastes amazing, and is pretty damn easy.

follow the recipe to the T

This youtube channel is fantastic. Thanks for sharing this I'm a newfag to Veeky Forums

I really wish there was a beginner's guide/sticky thing on Veeky Forums that contains the basics and the initial knowledge and direction needed for a novice. We should try making one.

This guy gave some solid advice, I'm just gonna build on some of the things he said

As previously stated cooking is so much about technique, and sadly recipes rarely go deep into why you should do the things you do

a good source of info on the why's of cooking I like to use is seriouseats, alot of their recipes can be a bit of a hassle but their foodlab series is really good

also youtube is also a great place for inspiration and learning proper technique, chef john has already been mentioned but I'd like to also recommend kitchen daddy

now for some general advice

know exactly how hot your oven get, the numbers can be a bit off and it's really important to know, so get a thermometer. Also get used to check your food around the time it should be finished and not just blindly follow the recipe

when you're cutting veggies to incorporate into a stew or something, keep the vegetables at roughly the same size, uneven cutting leads to uneven cooking meaning raw and/or overcooked veggies

don't be afraid to turn up the heat, when you cook meat and the like on the pan you decrease the temperature greatly, account for this by keeping it hot and turn it down once the stuff has risen in temperature, you really wanna get those brown bits especially if it's for a stew

and OP remember to have fun, it sounds pretty dumb but you really gotta have fun when cooking, it's great that you want to learn this skill and it's probably gonna suck alot at first, but once you start giving a fuck and gather up some experience it gets alot easier also you have to cook like three times a day and if you hate it it's really gonna suck. That being said focus on doing things right and really take your time, and start with simple recipes that really rely on good technique, things like french onion soup that focuses alot on browning or carbonara where temperature control and timing is key. And remember what marco said

"perfection is alot of little things done well."

>drizzle in a bit of olive oil
>1/4c of olive oil

Listen to him, especially on the having fun thing, cooking is also one of the only hobbies where day drinking is acceptable

I've noticed people say this frequently, but nobody decides to start it up. I bet if you just start one, even if it sucks, some autist will come by and critique every letter, and he will end up writing the whole thing. People don't like to start on a task, but we do love to criticize others.

Try.

Failure just means learning

This, don't be afraid to fuck up, but eat your mistakes to learn what failure tastes like, if you understand what not to do you'll have a much easier time succeeding in the future.
Also food safety is not a meme, cross contamination is real and will cause your stomach severe distress. Keep your shit clean, cook your meat throughly until you know what is safe, and if it looks/smells bad throw it away. 10$ steak isn't worth a 10,000$ trip to the emergency room

Try making kool aid with it