Last night, I stood in front of a refrigerator case in the supermarket and felt a shiver of fear run down my spine. The big sign said “Refrigerated Hispanic Food”. In tiny whispers, the sign told me, “You have no idea how to pronounce this food, let alone cook it. You should give up in case you accidentally poison Alex with your incompetent Mexican cooking.”
I lack confidence in big time when it comes to Mexican and Tex-Mex cooking. You see, I grew up in New Zealand where Mexican food is an uncommon, high-end cuisine in Auckland. You go to a sit-down restaurant to order a $34 burrito or a $23 quesadilla. I tried one enchilada in my whole life before I came to the U.S.
When I moved to LA for university, I had several embarrassing moments when trying to order Mexican food with my roommates or debate teammates. From pronouncing the “J” in “Baja Fresh” (until someone took pity on me and explained it’s “bah-ha fresh”) to having humiliating flatulence problems in the 6-hour minivan ride to our debate tournaments (omg, the beans!), I now associate terror with Mexican food.
Over the years, I learned to eat and even enjoy Mexican food with mild trepidation (still never eaten at Taco Bell). But I’m too scared to cook Mexican food. It feels difficult, foreign, scary. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to buy the ingredients. I worry about reading food labels. It’s one of the few cooking areas that I won’t venture into.
How does this relate to your life?
Maybe you’re scared of cooking for your new boyfriend/girlfriend for the first time. Or staring down a 10-person Thanksgiving dinner having never roasted a turkey before. Maybe you’re moving into a new house, and you’ve got a functional kitchen for the first-time. Time to start cooking from scratch, right? Or maybe you’re trying to lose weight and know you’ve got to start preparing your meals to make real progress but you’ve relied on frozen meals for so long. Or maybe the pandemic is forcing you to cook because your usual takeout haunts are closed.
Many of us know the benefits of cooking at home: slimmer waist, fatter wallet, kindness towards the environment. But putting pan to burner is a different matter.
What if you could build your confidence in the kitchen? What if you could change your life by learning to cook most of your meals at home?
How can you be confident in cooking?
When you read the Internet’s advice on how to become more confident in the kitchen, you’ll find dozens of tips. Here is a brief summary of the most common advice I’ve read on websites and food blogs, plus several tips I’ve dished out over the years.
Tips for Kitchen Confidence
1. Learn cooking techniques: Learn how to steam, stir fry, poach, braise, etc.
2. Start simple: Don’t try advanced techniques like braising when beginning. Start with simple things like cup of noodles and recipes that require 10 ingredients or less.
3. Memorize your favorite 5 recipes: Make them until you know them by heart so you can always succeed with these 5 recipes.
4. Learn flavor profiles (and develop your own): Italian food uses olive oil, tomatoes, basil, and Parmigiano-Reggiano whereas Cantonese cooking using garlic, green onions, and ginger.
5. Layer flavors: Add herbs, spices, sauces, or seasonings one at a time to avoid messing up.
6. Have a well-stocked kitchen pantry: Having high-quality ingredients makes everything taste better.
7. Have the right tools: Use the right appliances and tools to get the job done.
8. Try a new recipe once a month: Build confidence by trying new things.
9. Develop knife skills: Learn to cut with confidence so you can prep faster and overcome your fear of cutting yourself.
10. Mise en place: Organize and measure out your ingredients so you aren’t missing any items. Prepped ingredients reduces the chance of burning your food as you’re not chopping while cooking.
Meal plan: Know what you’ll eat and what to buy at the store ahead of meal times.
11. Read the recipe: Know your steps so you can abort if the recipe is badly written or beyond your skills.
12. No time limits: Don’t put yourself in a time pressure cooker where you feel rushed and anxious.
13. Or give yourself time limits: Don’t allow yourself to cook a recipe that says 30 minutes for more than 90 minutes because you’ll feel too exhausted and scared to cook the next day.
14. Google/YouTube it (research it): Pretty much any cooking technique, dish, or recipe has a video or blog post teaching you how to make it.
15. Substitute foods: This tip puzzles me because you can’t substitute unless you feel confident in the kitchen. Substitutions require advanced knowledge of techniques, flavor profiles, and ingredients.
16. Take a cooking class: Expert instruction can help you feel confident, especially about cuisines beyond your comfort zone.
17. Cook with an experienced friend or family member: Like the benefits of a cooking class, you get to learn from an experienced cook.
18. Have experienced cooks you can call or text at any time: My in-laws, mum, and Kari serve this role for me. It makes a big difference knowing you have cooking support.
19. Taste as you go: You can feel optimistic when you taste the food and realize it’s edible and flavorful.
20. Clean up as you go: This helps people who are overwhelmed by the process of cooking.
21. Shop regularly: It’s normal to lack confidence in the kitchen if you don’t have any ingredients to cook. Picasso needed to have oil paints to make a masterpiece.
22. Practice: There’s no way to get good at cooking except to do it. Even watching hours of cooking shows can’t teach you how to cook without practice.
This list of advice summarizes the skills you need to cook at home. No wonder you’re feeling intimidated!
You need to understand how to grocery shop, clean vegetables, measure ingredients, pair flavors, and use pointy and sharp tools! You could spend a lifetime devoted to cooking (and professional chefs do) and still have plenty of new concepts to master and skills to refine.
Plus, several tips are contradictory. Are you supposed to have no time limits or set a time limit?
My biggest problem with this well-meaning advice is that the tips are rational answers that don’t address the underlying emotional problem.
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