The Art of Cooking — Not As Hard As You Think
That’s right, I’m making a statement. Cooking is an easy and essential skill. With that, I shall end this post.
I’m kidding. Well, about ending the post at least, I’m allergic to saying anything concisely. However, I do stand by the statement that cooking is an easy and essential skill. At least, cooking in its most basic form. I wholeheartedly believe that everyone should be able to prepare their own food. I believe this because everyone, as far as I know, needs to eat food in order to survive. Oh, and when I say “cooking”, I actually mean “food preparation”. This is for all the pedants out there who are about to get on my back about actual definitions. Words are made up, get a life.
Now that I’ve written a long enough paragraph to line up with that picture… Wait, that was too honest. I meant to say, now that I’ve introduced the premise of this post like a professional, let’s get down to business. I specified that I’m talking about basic cooking, because there is definitely a level of skill to consider. Cooking is considered an art, and for good reason. I absolutely don’t consider myself an expert or an authority on the subject, I just like to rant about things that I care about. However, while I’m not the most skilled cook out there, I have grown up cooking and I am capable of making tasty food.
I do have a couple of huge advantages when it comes to cooking especially when compared to some of my peers. Most importantly, I like cooking. Because I enjoy it, I’m more likely to research food and to play around with it, and I’m infinitely more willing to cook. This means that I get much more practice, because I choose to do it. I was also brought up by someone who likes cooking, and so I was taught how to cook and bake as a child. Along with being taught how to cook, I was taught that cooking is something that can be enjoyed. I’m not going to suggest that I have a natural talent for cooking, because I don’t think I do. Maybe there’s an instinct there, but that instinct is absolutely learnt. It would be more accurate to suggest that I have a natural propensity towards the enjoyment of cooking, rather than an inborn talent. Finally, along with access to an early education, I also have access to half-decent ingredients and cookware.
I’m not saying that you need to rear and grow your own food, or to have taken out a mortgage to stock your kitchen. But it does make a different. Good ingredients, along with a competent cook, make for healthier and tastier food. Seen as the two main purposes of food are to keep us alive and to taste good, this matters. When it comes to having good cookware, you should probably focus on one thing. Get the best knife that you can reasonably afford. Do your research, shop around, and if you can only afford one decent knife, get a chef’s knife. While you’re at it, grab a sharpener and maintain your knife. A knife will be the tool that you use the most often, and you’ll notice the difference immediately. A sharp knife makes chopping and slicing quicker, easier, and even safer. By safer, I mean that the knife is less likely to slip while you’re using it, so you’re less likely to cut yourself. If you still manage to cut yourself, it will be entirely your own fault. It’ll also be surprisingly painless and bleed a whole lot as the wound will be deeper than with a blunt blade. (Source: a couple of stitches on my foot and a now oddly shaped fingertip.)
So, anyone starting out with cooking is going to want good ingredients and at least a decent knife. Obviously, you’ll need more to stock a kitchen, but I’m going to assume that you have the essentials on hand because I’m already going off on a tangent. Maybe I’ll write another post about that in six months time or something, it’s not like I actually plan these things. Let’s finally move onto the bit that I actually wanted to talk about when I started this post, which is the importance of learning how to cook and how you can pick it up.
The basic skills of cooking are just that, basic. Almost every dish will require you to learn them, and over time, you will find yourself mastering them. Knife skills are incredibly important, I honestly can’t think of a dish that doesn’t require you to pick up a knife at some point. I write this, knowing that the thousands reading this are currently screaming examples at me. Anyway, you’ll need to be able to use them. The trick to using a knife is to hold the bit that isn’t sharp, and to use the sharp bit to make big things smaller. You can make the big bits into different shapes, but the most important part is to get them all the same size. This means that they will all cook at the same rate. Don’t worry, I’m not going to describe all the basic skills this painfully, but the point is that as long as you’re able to safely use a knife, you’ve got a large chunk of cooking down. When you start out, speed doesn’t matter as much as precision. Speed will come with experience, but fingers have a finite ability to grow back.
You’ll also need to be able to use both the hob (stove-top) and the oven itself, depending on what you’re cooking. Hob cooking is where you get a pan and apply direct heat from the bottom. Usually, you’re either cooking with a fat (frying or sautéing) or you’re cooking a solution (simmering, poaching, boiling, etc). In the oven, you’re placing your food into a hot environment and letting it come up to temperature in there (roasting, baking, braising, etc). You don’t need a scientific understanding of these processes to use them effectively, especially as a beginner. However, you do need to have a good eye for timing. Even now, years into my cooking journey, timing is where I’m most likely to go wrong. Hours of preparation are meaningless if the end result is a burnt mess. Timing and temperature control are the two keys to making sure that your dish will be edible, and one great way to get a handle on these is to follow a recipe.
Oh yes, recipes. You see, the secret to becoming a good cook isn’t just learning how to follow recipes, but it’s also learning how not to follow recipes. Stay with me. Most recipes are fairly easy to follow and present the task in a step by step manner. What I recommend for a beginner cook is to pick a few recipes that you like the sound of, then master those recipes. This will have a few results. First, you’ll have a signature dish that you’re comfortable with. I have a few that I fall back on when I can’t be bothered to think of something to cook. But you’ll also find yourself getting better and better at key cooking skills. You will become faster and more precise with a knife, you’ll be more aware of the effect certain temperatures have on your food, and you will have the timings down to a tee. Then, once you’ve mastered these recipes, you can move onto the next step. Experimentation.
When you experiment with a dish that you’re familiar with, a few things can happen. It can go horribly wrong. It can be a transcendent experience, and the dish becomes a thousand times better. Or, the dish is just a bit different. It might not noticeably change at all. But the experimentation phase is where I fell in love with cooking. You see, as you become more familiar with the process, you learn that some things work well together. You learn how to balance flavours to make a dish feel whole and satisfying. And you learn what to avoid. But, in time, you get the satisfaction of elevating a simple dish into something special. Even better, you learn how to make a delicious meal simply with whatever’s left in the cupboard. Fun fact, herbs and spices are your friends. Don’t neglect them. Maybe there’s another future post there in seven months time, who knows.
For example, baked beans on toast is a British classic. Despite what some people believe, this isn’t considered a gourmet dish in England. But it’s hot, staggeringly easy and quick to cook, fills a hole, and doesn’t taste half bad. There are literally three ingredients: bread, butter, and however much of a tin of beans that you can shovel down your gullet. Typically, I have half a tin. All you need to do is toast and butter the bread and heat up the beans, either on the hob or in the microwave. They are edible cold, but nobody wants that. But recently, I’ve taken to playing around with this incredibly basic meal. First of all, we usually have homemade bread around, which already elevates toast to delicious levels. But what I like to do is to add a couple of things to the beans. Usually, this will be a finely chopped shallot and a similarly treated garlic clove. I sauté those in a saucepan until they’re soft, along with whatever spices I fancy. I’m partial to using some some kind of curry powder, but just a spike of ground paprika and cumin works wonders as well. Once that’s heated through, in go the beans and we carry on as normal. It’s a couple more ingredients and maybe a few more minutes, but it just makes things a tiny bit more special. Oh, and add cheese. Always add cheese.
Before we finish up, I just want to make one more point. As you look into cooking, you may discover that there are a lot of things that you can do from scratch. I love trying to make things like bread (in case you hadn’t guessed), bacon, sausages, and all kinds of pickles and condiments at home. Depending on the difficulty of what you’re making, you may find your homemade version miles nicer than anything you can buy. Or you might need to practise until you get it right. I would always recommend giving this kind of thing a shot, but I’m not going to rabbit on about it. Well, not now, I might have yet another post in the works, who knows. Different people have different resources, whether they be time, money, or equipment. The most important of these is time, although patience also plays a part. While it can be satisfying to make a beloved treat from scratch, the hard truth is that it’s not always worth it. So, give it a shot. Or don’t. Just have fun with it.
Edit: I know that the first couple of paragraphs don’t actually line up with the picture, publishing the post changed the format slightly. However, it’s kind of funny to me as is.
