I can't cook, can you help please?

I found Delia went too advanced to quickly (ramekins? forget it!). I am teaching myself to cook starting with student cookbooks which are designed for those with minimal skills or knowledge of ingredients.

Keep in mind that cooking times in ANY recipe are an estimate as your particular appliance will have it's own character. A bit light aiming artillery - first time you overshoot, adjust too far the second time and undershoot, then get it right third time. You may have to try a few times to get it right

It also helps if you have the best equipment you can afford. Heavy-based pans with plenty of room/multiple uses and a couple of really sharp knives are a good start.

Hi Miss Scarlett,

There are more suggestions on this recent thread that may help:

Cant cook! Help!

Cooking, like everything else gets better with practice. We've all made mistakes (well I certainly have) and hopefully learned by them. After a while your confidence increases and you get better at it.

Perhaps if you were to think of something that you'd like to cook you could post into this thread and I'm sure you'll get lots of help.

Pink

When I was at school. Many moons ago, when home economics was still esential to the school curriculum. So much so, I had two lessons a week of it (which, I hasten to add was not my favourite lessons) A teacher I had in these lessons once told me she pitied my furture husband, if, I should be so lucky to get one :-)

My MIL before I got married said I ought to have cookery lessons with my future sister in law as she was a cook. I said I was perfectly able to burn a tin of bean quite adequately on my own without being shown how !!! Which was very true.

The first meal I cooked my brand new husband was steak and chips. His brother looked at him anxiously and said "Was it ok"? (Which it was. I was very proud of myself :-) )

Anyway. Thankfully I had a brillient mother who could cook, and I was for ever asking "how to". After feeling a bit knotted up to start with, once I began to relax I realised I really enjoyed cooking, and things that were total disasters at school became glorious pieces of cookery art :-) My cakes began to rise and were eatable (after a lot of trial and error) and so on.

So I agree with what has already been said. Just relax. Don't worry if you mess up" just keep trying and soon you will wonder why you thought you could never cook :-)

PS As to encourage that even seasoned cooks can do daft things. Yesterday I thought I'd save some money and buy some basic choc from Somerfields to make some choclate crispies for the children. The choc came to 78p in comparison to 96p if I'd bought the proper cooking chocolate. I felt very chiffed with myself and went home and proceeded to make them. What I didn't realise was that I'd left a bit of silver wrap on one of the pieces of chocolate. I put the bowl of choc in the mirowave, after a few minutes I smelt this horrible smell. Took the bowl out and there was smoke coming from my chocolate. When I move it around a bit I saw the tin foil (sigh) The chocolate was uneatable, so 78p went in the bin. Also I thought I'd lost my bowl as the foil had welded on it. Hubby was able to fix that :-) Thankfully the microwave was ok (phew!)