How do I become good at cooking?

A lot of it is practise and trial and error. You need to feel confident in your own judgement, rather than following recipes to the letter. My DH follows recipes exactly, and they are often bland, whereas I use recipes as templates. Fry the chicken for 7 mins on a medium heat? No! Cook it until it’s browned at a heat that means the outside gets browned but the inside remains tender. 2 cloves of garlic? No! Smell the garlic and work out if they are mild or strong cloves and add more or less depending on that.

But you will only work these things out through trial and error. Cook consistently like this for a few months and you will make better food.

I agree with others that it is worth getting a couple of really good cook books which have recipes for things you like and know what they should taste like. But then use that as a template and work things out according to your own taste and ingredients.

Lots of practice. I am by no means a great cook but I have improved by just giving a recipe a go if I have tasted a new dish someone has made or I have eaten in a restaurant. Eventually you will have the confidence to add a little bit of this and that to spice up a dish. Use up your store cupboard ingredients by googling that random item you have lurking. Confidence is the key.

Lots of great tips here but as an aside consider watching Julie and Julia (or - better - reading the book of the same name by Julia Powell).

My granddaughter looks up recipes of food she likes on the internet and produces great stuff

I would say to talk about food with people. If you are at a friend’s house, and you like the meal, ask about the ingredients. Ask other people what’s their favourite recipe, what they put in their spaghetti bol ( I m always surprised by the variations ) Ask people what’s their favourite curry and how do they make it.
I’ve found it helps to cook onions really slowly, and to fry spices at the start of cooking. Add more than you think you shoukd( except chilli, obviously) and not more than a small tsp of ginger to avoid bitterness. Otherwise, trial and error. Try the same recipe several times, making notes of what you put in, and how much. Keep tasting and tweaking. Remember dried herbs go in at the start of cooking, and fresh herbs ( in bigger quantities) towards the end. But mainly, taste and tweak continuously.

Get a good cook book and follow the recipe to the letter.

Read SALT, FAT, ACID, HEAT. It teaches you WHY things are done during cooking like adding salt to pasta water or caramelising onions first - the scientific reasoning behind flavour can make you a better cook.

Agree about Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Bible - made the grape chutney tonight. But, recently, have been making loads from the Mowgli cookbook. Easy to follow and all have been tasty. Dishoom's biryani is foolproof as well and tastes fabulous.

good fresh ingredients! i have been cooking for myself since i left home at 16, i now cook daily for a family of 7 and honestly i don’t really bother with herbs and spices much, just let the food speak for itself, i like my roast potatoes to taste like potatoes not garlic/ rosemary etc but thats just my preference, but i do add some bits here n there for example when i make a cheese sauce for cauliflower cheese i will add half a teaspoon of mustard or a dab of tomato purée in a cottage pie just to elevate it a bit but otherwise just simple good fresh ingredients xx

I just search youtube for recipes every time I have to make a big meal or bring a dish to a potluck. You can't go wrong with youtube!

My husband was not a cook. All fell to me. When I was incapacitated for a bit I ordered Hello Fresh/Gousto so the kids didn’t have spaghetti bolognese every night. It really transformed his attitude to cooking and gave him confidence. You wouldn’t want it long term but it’s an easy foolproof way to start. He now cooks almost everything (except roast dinner) in our house.

My husband is Indian (I’m not) and basically the Good Food and other British recipe places under-measure the spices. I also find the origin of the spices make a difference. The spices I buy from Asian stores or brands (from Amazon) tend to have more of an omph that the ones from Tesco. Other than that agree with everything everyone has said, trial and error and ingredients and then a bit of alchemy - so learning tricks like a dash of sugar to your tinned tomatoes for Italian dishes, lemon and oregano a plenty for Greek and bolognese is raised by a dash of balsamic vinegar, chili con carne by a square of dark chocolate. What I struggle with still is keeping to the cooking times for meat and fish and my largest fault is therefore overcooking. I’m working on that.

If you google the curry secret pdf it should be the first result a book by Kris Dhillon

It won't let me link it as when you click its a pdf but honestly the curry base sauce is amazing

@Hobnobswantshernameback
Not what was mentioned in the thread but i make a nice vege curry. I don't use a recipe and I use a lot of different spices, and go easy on ones I'm not keen on (I find cloves and cumin overpowering). Recipes usually only use a few spices.

The onions need to be cooked slowly, then I add the spices, which I've ground, then garlic, ginger and chilli, then mushrooms, then tomatoes. I sometimes cheat and add curry sauce too, because I usually make a huge batch.
The veg was boiled separately, and the drained veg are added last and mixed in and cooked gently for a bit.

I’m quite a decent cook, but SPICERY is amazing! I use a spice pack each weekend, have done for years, and always get compliments.

Try gousto for a few weeks, recipes straightforward but tasty and you’ll end up feeling like a pro. It’s really good for finding recipes from different cuisines. Here’s a discount 65% off your first box, then 25% off all other boxes in your first two months: RACHE42058946
You can cancel anytime

I would disagree with the pp who says never compare your cooking to a chef. That has to be your start point. Chefs use every trick to make food delicious, mostly a lot of fat and salt which isn't healthy as we all understand. You can if you think about it, and you have time (YOU MAY NOT) but you can always produce healthy non UPF meals for your family, IF you have time. If you don't have time then I think the best option is to buy a slow cooker, put in your protein, an onion chopped, a chopped carrot or two, and a chopped stick of celery or three, may be some garlic and some liquid, ideally a flavoursome liquid but water will do, and turn it on to cook for 8 hours so it is ready when you come home to eat. Taste it then, add salt first, taste again, season again. Thicken the gravy if needed with a cornflower slurry, or a beurre manie (butter mashed into flour to a smooth paste, which doesn't go lumpy).

Seasoning - salt and pepper yes but also spices and aromatics to suit your taste buds

I also agree with time - rushing or not giving enough time to cook out the flavours as well

quality of ingredients - I can still remember meals poor quality chicken has ruined!

decent cookware

figuring out what works for you/your family. Recipes are personal - take lasagna so many different ways to make it

I was about to say this too. Fantastic recipes, fully tested – you can't fail to rustle up a great dinner with Nagi Maehashi / recipetin eats. She has also published a couple of books, if you prefer doing it that way.

Another recommendation is Felicity Cloake's 'how to cook the perfect' series in the Guardian, which you can find online (and also I think in books).

Madhur jaffrey, old school, but brilliant recipes I had a VHS of her series, maybe there's something of hers on you tube, try a Gousto sub for a bit, they are great for introducing you to new ingredients and step by step cooking.

I was given a cookery course for my 50th birthday with Atul Kochar. He has a book of “simple” Indian cooking (30 minute curries) which basically involves you preparing and freezing a number of bases and pastes. When you come to do the recipes you add ice cube blocks of these and they provide an amazing depth and quality of flavour.
It’s something to do on a rainy Sunday when there’s nothing else going on, as that part of the process takes quite a while. If you can be bothered to do this, it’s really worth it as the curries are delicious and not as hit and miss as bbc etc

I did a curry course at one of the UK's top cooking schools, and what I learned that weekend is to cook longer and slower. You start with several onions, not one, You let them go transparent and golden slowly, probably taking 45 minutes to get there. Then you saute the spices you're using over a bit more heat. Then add the tinned tomatoes and raw meat. And then you ignore it for an hour or two, but you push it around to stop it sticking and burning. That's all you need to do. When you want to eat it, you add the live ingredients that freshen it. It's mostly frozen spinach for me, plus fresh coriander leaves and stalks, maybe mint. I do usually finish my curries with a blast of garam masala, and I have two versions, one from the supermarket and one I assemble at home in batches from Madhur Jeffry. Dan Toombs The Curry Guy cookbook is great advice for authentic tasting curry spice mix recipes.

I feel the same, raised a family but never been able to call myself a good cook
The thing would absolutely love most would be to make a good curry sauce .. that I could then adapt to meat veggies or lentils .. not too spicy but flavourful , have tried many recipes and they are just never ever as good as I’ve tasted before .

If you’re going to compare your results to restaurants and takeaways you might end up always feeling that you’re falling short, as at home there’s a lot of steps you’ll be skipping and generally end up with healthier food as well.

If your issue is feeling “meh” about it, maybe focus on expanding your seasoning options?

I would also have a bit of a browse and then pick a channel/ig/etc that actually appeals to you in the sense that you see yourself realistically cooking that way. A lot of content is so elaborate that most of us won’t actually feel like reproducing it in our own kitchens, and sometimes it’s simply not as appetising as it looks.

If you like Italian food, find copies of Marcella Hazan's books. Most of the recipes are straightforward plus it's basically a peasant cuisine so requires relatively few tools and inexpensive ingredients which makes it a good starting point for inexperienced cooks.

I would second several of the food writers mentioned earlier especially Diana Henry and St Delia. The Reader's Digest Cookery Year is a great compendium of useful information and techniques. Nigel Slater is good to read as well as cook, and Niki Segnit's Flavour Thesaurus and Lateral Cooking are both interesting explorations into which flavour combinations succeed, and how techniques can be built into layers. If you have an Oxfam bookshop locally, keep an eye on the cookbook section. I often find something new for me or foodie DS and we take them back if they fail to deliver.