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By Elle Hunt<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I used to survive on tinned lentils, microwaved eggs and the kindness of more gifted cooks. Then I learned to pull my weight in the kitchen \u2013 and if I can do it, so can anyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For most of my life, I have been a terrible cook. Some people say they are terrible cooks then whip up a perfectly palatable meal for four. I have given myself food poisoning, twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My regular diet used to include microwaved scrambled eggs, children\u2019s lunchbox cheeses, tinned lentils mixed with tinned tomatoes, bowls of garden peas, and the \u201ccomplete food\u201d powder Huel. I alternated between the same two dinners for nearly a year, and the same sad desk lunch for two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In short, I scavenged like a raccoon. I wrote cooking off as \u201cnot my thing\u201d alongside, say, basketball. And I am not alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to a 2014 YouGov survey of 10,000 Britons, one of the largest ever conducted about food, 10% of us cannot cook a thing \u2013 equating to 5 million people. A smaller survey in 2018 found that 25% of respondents could only make three dishes (including boiled egg and soldiers, and porridge).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had accepted my limitations in the kitchen \u2013 then, in 2021, something changed. Now, after just a few mental shifts, I would go so far as to say that I am pretty good at cooking. No one is more surprised than me, except maybe friends who I have cooked for. For most people, the below will be obvious. For the raccoons: read on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Investigate your resistance<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, writes that behaviour change starts with identity change. To create new habits, \u201cyou need to start believing new things about yourself\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n See if you can identify the source of your belief that you are someone who can\u2019t cook. You might uncover a false assumption \u2013 for example, that you don\u2019t deserve to enjoy food, that any time not spent working is wasted, or that cooking is anti-intellectual or even women\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With attitudes to food shaped in childhood, these retrograde ideas can be insidious. The novelist Hanya Yanagihara recently said that she \u201cdeliberately never learned\u201d to cook as a teenager for fear of being trapped in the domestic sphere; I suspect my own historical resistance was similar. But it is exhilarating to realise that your identity is not fixed. Start by deciding that you can cook, \u201cthen prove it to yourself with small wins\u201d, writes Clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think we always underestimate our capacity for change,\u201d says Signe Johansen, author of Solo: The Joy of Cooking for One. \u201cBut it is life-affirming to think: \u2018I\u2019m capable of adapting and evolving.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Raise the stakes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Part of the reason I have been able to go so long without knowing how to cook is that for several years I lived with a friend who enjoyed taking charge in the kitchen. He made dinner; I did the dishes \u2013 everyone was happy. But it also made me complacent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When my flatmate went away, I lived on leftovers, knowing he would soon be back. And when I did cook, once every week or two, I did not dare deviate from the basics for fear of presenting him with an inedible dinner. (This happened anyway \u2013 \u201conly three or four times\u201d, he says.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Practising my cooking felt a bit like practising my French with a native speaker who is also fluent in English: insisting on imposing my incompetence on others, at the expense of everyone\u2019s enjoyment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But muddling through one meal every couple of weeks is simply not enough to build momentum. So if someone else handles the cooking in your household, ask them to take a week or two off, for the sake of your self-development. If the worst comes to the worst, you can buy them a takeaway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Identify your pantry essentials<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Unsurprisingly, my breakthrough with cooking came when I moved out to live by myself. In setting up my own pantry, I quickly discovered that my flatmate\u2019s essentials \u2013 pickled things, salty fish, hard cheeses, hot sauces \u2013 were completely different from mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After four months of living alone, I have learned that I cannot be without Greek yoghurt, kale, cannellini beans, peanut butter, sour cream, chilli flakes, spinach and frozen chapati breads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seeing my staples, when I look in the fridge or cupboard, means I feel more capable and inspired \u2013 and I would not have known what they were had I not been forced to find out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is the same for tools and equipment: I can\u2019t be without a blender; I don\u2019t think my flatmate ever used one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Neutralise your \u201ctripping point\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Self-help guru and entrepreneur Tim Ferriss surveyed more than 100,000 of his (mostly male) Facebook fans to discover what turned them off cooking and found an array of reasons: too many ingredients or tools, intimidating skills, different dishes finishing at different times, standing at the stove, food waste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By addressing the one that is most off-putting to you, your wins will come easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For me, it\u2019s my tendency to get distracted, especially if I am reading a recipe on my phone. I will flick to another browser tab and forget to stir, or put a pan on a high heat then wander off. The result is a dish that tastes like burnt pan bottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then I got a smart speaker. The ease with which I can set timers, convert units and add to my shopping list has been a gamechanger for keeping me on track. Combined with a few cookbooks, I can now put my phone in another room as I cook, and meals hardly ever get burned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Create a virtuous cycle<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Whenever I tried to motivate myself to cook, I\u2019d find a recipe that excited me, then mess it up and be discouraged from trying again. Starting out, small wins are vital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ferriss writes in The 4-Hour Chef, on his own transformation from human raccoon, of the importance of working within a \u201cmargin of safety\u201d by picking recipes with plenty of room for error. The test, he says, should be: \u201cHow badly can you mangle the recipe and still get something incredible?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOnce you start to see results, that\u2019s when the magic happens, even if it\u2019s something really simple like scrambling eggs,\u201d says Johansen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Find a source you trust<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Not every recipe is reliable. Cookbooks have at least gone through a process of recipe-testing and copy-editing; a top Google search result can just reflect good SEO. \u201cFrankly, there are a lot of bad recipes out there,\u201d Johansen says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Either way, it is important to find a source that resonates with you. Cooks who wrote lyrically of textures and smells, or who saw every meal as a social celebration, actually reaffirmed my view that I wasn\u2019t refined or gregarious enough to enjoy cooking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first cookbook I connected with was Rukmini Iyer\u2019s The Roasting Tin: a deserving bestseller for its ratio of preparation to payoff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iyer tells me that she developed the traybake concept when her own enthusiasm for cooking was at an all-time low, after a bad breakup. \u201cThe effort bar was supposed to be: if you can tear the film off a ready meal, you can probably chop some sweet potato and put it in a tin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even that can be a step towards believing you can cook. \u201cAs long as you haven\u2019t got a really dodgy oven, there\u2019s very little you can mess up here,\u201d says Iyer. \u201cYou\u2019re not relying on standing at the stove, or your sight or [sense of] smell \u2013 all you have to do is take it out of the oven.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look for formulas \u2013 then adapt them<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Once I had nailed Iyer\u2019s broccoli and lemon orzo, I tentatively started experimenting: swapping in whatever greens I had in the fridge, or trying different stocks. Each variation taught me something about improvisation and bolstered my confidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With a few judicious changes, you can extend your mileage from one recipe. Having learned Alison Roman\u2019s internet-famous stew, I swapped chickpeas for butter beans, coconut milk for tinned tomatoes and turmeric for oregano, then followed roughly the same process. The result was highly edible \u2013 and a completely different meal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Learn which corners you can cut<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It is through this freestyling that you start to develop your own instincts, says Guardian writer Felicity Cloake. \u201cMy advice is to concentrate on a handful of dishes you know you like until you can make them well, and gradually adapt them to make them your own.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the recipe calls for 45 minutes in the oven, but it looks done to you after 30 minutes, try it. If you really like garlic, double the suggested cloves and see. \u201cIt\u2019s only through trial and error that you\u2019ll work out how to make a dish perfect for your taste.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, for the beginner, even the easiest recipes are full of subjective or unclear language, such as \u201cdesired consistency\u201d. It was by paying attention that I learned what corners I could and couldn\u2019t cut. For example: it\u2019s important that aubergines are \u201cvery finely\u201d sliced, but you can usually fudge onions \u2013 and always save the pasta water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Resist the leftovers trap<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Relying on leftovers is often a practical necessity if you\u2019re cooking for yourself, but if you didn\u2019t quite pull off the recipe, leftovers taste of failure \u2013 and if you did, you may not want to repeat it once you\u2019ve eaten it three nights in a row.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More important is maintaining a rhythm. Where I used to cook once and eat it night after night, I now freeze the other portions or add an element I\u2019ve made from scratch, so as not to break my cooking streak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iyer, who describes herself as \u201cnot really a leftovers gal\u201d, looks for ways to make them into a different meal \u2013 for instance, by turning odds and ends into a rissole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even the simplest meals can be elevated above a survival mindset: in Solo, Johansen dedicates a chapter to things on toast. \u201cThat is certainly my fallback when I don\u2019t feel like cooking, but it doesn\u2019t mean that it can\u2019t be delicious and nutritious,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pay it forward<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n On the odd occasion that my flatmate and I threw dinner parties, the stress of preparation, timing and the implicit expectation to impress prevented me from fully enjoying the evening. And that was with my flatmate doing nearly all the cooking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since my kitchen awakening, however, I have had friends for dinner once or twice a week. I rarely make anything fancy \u2013 just a bowl of stew or pasta, or daal eaten on our laps on the sofa; delicious and nourishing \u2013 but this is something I would not have thought I\u2019d ever be comfortable doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Part of scaling up in the kitchen, Johansen suggests, is finding \u201clike-minded\u201d people to cook for, who are less concerned about what\u2019s on the menu than enjoying each other\u2019s company. \u201cPeople are generally very grateful to be fed,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I can say with confidence, thinking of the microwaved egg and lentil tomatoes, that this would not have always been true of my food. But it feels good, having lived so long as a racoon: hand to mouth, to be able to give back now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This post <\/em>was <\/em>originally <\/em>published by<\/em> The Guardian<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Elle Hunt I used to survive on tinned lentils, microwaved eggs and the kindness of more gifted cooks. Then I learned to pull my weight in the kitchen \u2013 and if I can do…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[2809,2810,2811],"class_list":["post-8322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-cook","tag-kitchen","tag-meal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n