Need advice: cooking as a hobby.

I learned how to cook when I got married, I learned a lot from Betty Crocker, and a lot failures.
Tv is good for techniques, a lot of these recipes most people will never make, although I make quite a few of them, but techniques are my main priority.
Become familiar with some common cooking terms, and read a few recipes for a dish you want to make, which one sounds like ingredients you like, what ingredients are you familiar with, or not familiar with, going with easy stuff. If you find term in a recipe you don't understand look them up on line, or ask someone here.
Cooking is not as hard as it seems, if a 16 year old can move past white brocolli ( you don't want ot know the story), and now be accused of being a resturant chef by people who don't know me but have eaten my food, then anyone who wants to cook can, with the right help and a little study, and a lot of attempts not being affraid of failure.
Decide what 1 thing you most want to be able to cook, and do a little reserch and go at it. Theres a lot of people here who will help you.

 

Get in there and play! That' show you learn best, IMO. That's how I learned.

BTW...when you do that, go ahead and throw the first batch out automatically. You'll save on doctor bills.

(whaddaya mean, "That's just for when Rbell cooks??")

 

well, we threw out the broccoli, and a few other things along the way.

 

When I was single I took a couple of cooking classes at the local Community College. I didn't want to be the prime example of a single guy who lived on soup and sandwiches, or at McDonald's.


After I got the basics down, and felt comfortable in a kitchen, I started getting cookbooks and trying new recipes. I'm not as good a cook as donnA, but nobody has sued me over my food yet, and nobody has died after eating it.

 

Rob, I'm almost certain your a much better cook then I am.
But good advice, learning a few basics and your ready to go at it, cooking isn't that hard.

 

Get a cookbook with pictures. It is much eaiser when starting out.

 

The classes met for 4-hours per week [2-hrs twice a week] for 6 weeks for a total of 24 hours for the class.

 

Step one: Find someone who wants to eat as a hobby.:thumbs:

 

sometimes recipes don't turn out like they should or like you thought they would, but you use ingredients you normally like, unless you do something really bad like burn it it will be edible, you just may not like it, no matter how perfectly we pul off a recipe theres always the chance we won't like recipe, has nothing to do with our cooking skills. and we've all messed up, like burning food before. I've burned more then my fair share in the past. and sometimes still do.

 

some of these have step by step learning to cook, in pictures to show you how.
http://www.cookstepbystep.com/

http://www.learninghowtocook.com/photo_pictorial.php?flip_book_id=22&search_cat=3

 

Get on YouTube and see what you want to learn. Some of the cooking videos on there are mediocre, but some are excellent. Here's a guy I love to watch and the stuff he makes is great... lots of "down-home" cooking as well as some fancy stuff:
Dave Can Cook

Cookbooks are great, too. I have several that see regular use.

I pull recipes and ideas from television, articles in magazines, things I see in restaurants, whatever. I make a mean version of Outback's Alice Springs Chicken (my wife's favorite dish there) that I figured out myself. I've also come up with some original concoctions that have proven to be pretty good (Cabbage Dump, Spam n Taters [not what you think], some casseroles, etc.).

Start with simpler fare until you have a solid handle on seasoning levels, cooking times, cooking techniques, stuff like that. One of the hardest things (for me) is timing everything to finish cooking at about the same time so it can be served together as I hate for a dish to sit while other things cook.