Basic Recipes for Novice Cook

MrsAtobe

How to make gravy from the roasting juices - one thing I've never been able to master. Onion gravy as well, perhaps? Now that I can make .

Carrieandco

Someone mentioned Yorkshire puds - I'd say a basic batter recipe was an absolute must - for Yorkies and pancakes!

Carrie x

rachbc

I'd say rather than recipes give her tips of what cooking terms mean so she can learn to follow other recipes - eg the recipe above says a knob of butter - but of you really have no idea how to cook you don't know what a knob is, how to cook pasta, rice, how you know onions are done before adding toms or a sauces etc, why and how to brown meat for a stew etc.

Alternatively save yourself lot of work reinventing the wheel and get her a copy of delia smith how to cook!

tryingtoruletheworld

I did this for my sister when she went to uni, and then again when she moved into her own house with different stuff, it is a nice thing to do and was very well used!

It depends on the kind of food she liks to eat, but fish pie, chicken pie, and cottage pie are all reasonably easy to make. You could do a basic mince recipe, and then explain how to turn it into cottage pie/chilli/spag bol etc. A curry is always nice to try and a good way of introducing how to use different spices. I included things like risotto, stir-fry, how to cook rice, spicy potato wedges, tomato pasta sauce, creamy pasta sauce, pesto, pastry, porridge, eggs in all their forms, and how to put together all the elements of a roast dinner.

I included quite a few veggie options too, as it can help with practice if they lack confidence about cooking meat!

pineapple

Imo all she needs is the Readers Digest Complete Guide to Cookery. Out of print but should be available on Amazon. This has all the basics - sauces, cuts of meat, cooking techniques etc. Much better than a standard 'recipe book'. I bought one for a clueless friend then realised I should get one too!

meritaten

I would second doing a 'glossary' of cooking terms! also, what size a knob of butter is - to me its the size of a walnut - to my OH its more like a pea! I had a brilliant cookery teacher in school - learned most of the basics and learned more off my nan (mum isnt interested at all in food and cooking).
But I still found some terms and techniques new when I got married! It took my 'Good Housekeeping' cookery book to explain more to me!
for example I didnt realise Jullienne meant cutting into thin strips! and saute was merely frying!
I have made up cookbooks for my three grownup kids - All their favourites plus easy versions (cheats) and explained every single step and term! It took me weeks, but the kids tell me its the best cookbook on the planet!

sophistica

I have just been thinking about another post where the poster has fussy eaters, few cooking skills and a low weekly food budget. If you wanted to help someone learn to cook, what skills would you want to teach them? Here are some of my ideas:

1. Stews and Soups (chopping veg and meat, sweating onion, browning meat, reducing a stock)
2. Bread Making (knowing a sticky dough, how to kneading and knowing when the bread is sufficiently kneaded.)
3. Short Crust Pastry (using hands or processor to rub fat into flour, knowing how much water to add, how to handle pastry).
4. Cake Making (weighing ingredients, knowing which ingredients to beat and which not to over beat, testing when a cake is done).
5. Eastern Food. How to prepare ingredients for a curry, chop in advance and dry fry spices, stir frying.
6. Simple desserts e.g. rice pudding, bread pudding, cream caramel.
7. Jam Making (stewing fruit and setting point)
8. Preparing vegetables and enhancing flavour with butter and seasonings
9. Using pulses (soups, stews, hummus)
10. How to mash potato!

My cookery skills are really "old school" e.g. Robert Carrier and French cooking. The things that I am really useless/inexperienced at are stir frying and deep fat frying. I am also completely self taught from reading cook books. I now have a collection of 360 (mostly from BookPeople.co.uk and charity shops).

I learned to cook when I got divorced! I remember my eureka moment when I made a Delia Smith chicken chausseur and reduced the stock so the meat was tender and the sauce no longer tasted of the raw ingredients.

What skills do other people regard as being essential and how did you learn to cook?

Pink.

Hi sophistica,

This very recent thread discusses a similar subject:

Basic Recipes for Novice Cook

And this thread will show you how others learned how to cook:

How did you learn to cook?

I'll merge your thread with one of those once you've had more replies.

Pink

MaggieBaking

I'd consider basic skills to be:

* Timing * Knife Skills - to start with, view this tutorial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG7GzPVI4bs

* Finding a good recipe - for me is a skill all by itself! Don't use recipes which don't have enough detail in if you're just learning. Use books that you trust, give up on ones that don't always give you good results. Find good resources, like http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/ and keep going back.

* Understanding quantities - it sounds daft but I've ruined food by following a recipe and putting an ingredient in that I didn't like the smell of, thinking it would add to the dish as the chef said so. No, a tablespoon of spice is TOO much if you don't like it! If a recipe called for 300g of meat - really consider if that's enough for 4 people. Again I've made mistakes thinking "it didn't sound right but it's what the recipe told me".

* Learning about consistencies. Is that cake batter too runny? Are those potatoes too hard? Is that soup too thick or too thin? For me, discovering exactly what the technical terms of "beating butter and sugar" actually should look like, what a roux is supposed to resemble is important. You Tube is also great for this.

*Whipping... Aka seiving sometimes! The skills of getting lump free food is pretty important

*Cooking meat, fish and sausages. When is pork cooked? When does chicken get dry? How do you brown the meat?


They're my absolute very basic all round skills to discover.

And in broader terms, my important "cooking" areas are:
* Baking a sponge cake
* Making a bolognese
* Putting together a tasty salad, however you like it
* Learning to cook potatoes, rice, pasta
* A roast dinner (it's all in the timing)
* Sorting out your "signature dish" the one you can make quickly and perfect everytime. The ultimate fall back option when you don't know what to do and you need to do it quick. It could be something simple like scrambled eggs on toast or something more complicated like a mushroom risotto. For me, it's Rosemary Chicken with lots of vegetables all roasted up in the ovens with glorious seasoning - it's good for winter or summer.

[Deleted User]

Patience,and self belief that you can do anything if you try I exploded boiled eggs once back in 1962 even though I had basic cooking skills from watching my mum I can cook most things apart from rice I just can't get the hang of it.but as I don't eat it often its not a problem I can make a beautiful rice pudding though.
If your a complete beginner then perhaps a childrens cook book is a good start to get you used to the names of the utencils and the cookery terms then move on from there .I am a great believer in the power of a library book I once taught myself totile a tiny loo in our old house whilst my late OH was working abroad.I had a trowel in one hand the book propped up in front of me and I managed it and it looked great .True I probably used a few more tiles than an expert would but it looked well done by the time I finished So a good library book and several kilos of ppatience trial and error.failing that find a local old lady who can could ply her with the jollop of her choice and she will show you how :): Mines gin by the way:):):)