I’m new at cooking

I’m new at cooking, where do I begin? At some point in time we’ve all probably asked this question. Cooking and baking can be very overwhelming with all the lingo, techniques, equipment, ingredients, etc. When starting out it’s much better to focus on a just a couple things and grow your skills from there. Most importantly, just have fun! You might make mistakes, you might ruin a recipe, but through all that you will learn and grow. Not every recipe on this website started off the first time as a hit. A lot of them have been adjust and improved upon through mistakes and things I’ve learned.

1- knife skills. Get yourself a sharp knife and practice cutting vegetables. Go slow. There’s no need to go fast as you see people on YouTube or TV. Just go slow and focus on the technique at first. If dicing an onion, cut it in half and then make cuts horizontal to your cutting board and then cuts along the grain. Then you can slowly chop vertical to the cutting board to get yourself a nice dice. As you become more comfortable you can move faster, but just take your time at first. There’s no rush

2- don’t go too fast. I know it can be a desire to get all your items to finish at the same time, but if you are new to cooking, just focus on one thing at a time. Focus on cooking your pasta and then your chicken and then making your alfredo sauce instead of doing all at the same time. Once you get comfortable with a recipe, and in the kitchen, you’ll learn how to time things out, but there’s no need to rush and be stressed. Just take your time and enjoy cooking

3- be creative. It is 100% ok to adjust recipes. It is 100% ok to be creative in cooking. This is where you will learn so much about the cooking process and what works and what doesn’t. What’s the worst that happens? You make a mistake and you try something else next time.