How do I become good at cooking?

Practice is the only thing that will help.

Check as you go along - sometimes just a little extra salt & pepper

Follow recipes carefully to start and learn what you notice - I rarely sear meat unless cooking for guests as I really don’t mind the difference. I always add more garlic . often add a teaspoon sugar into tinned tomatoes. Cheese in anything

Patterns can help

like something with texture to balance something smooth like a crispy roast potatoe with a turnip and carrot mash - cheese and crackers then adding grapes give another texture

something hot with something cold - hot crumble cold ice cream , side salad is cool and crisp with a hot creamy lasagne

something sweet with something sour with something spicy with something cooling with something salty - salt, sugar, oil, vinegar , spices - where will each element come from ? Salt can be salt or soy or cheese for example, sugar can be honey, or natural in the veg edit to add or fruit in a curry or Middle Eastern dish - acidity from vinegar or lemon juice

and learn your favourite spice combos - a grating of nutmeg and cayenne , a handful of dried oregano , garlic in anything , smoked paprika … find your go to to jazz up an element of a meal

Learn the basics. Anything with spices is tricky IMO, because they tend to overpower the dish.
Agree with the Delia/Mary Berry/Nigella recipes being reliable.

Watch Ina Garten on YouTube! It’s how I learned in Univeristy. I still watch her to this day.

There was an amazing thread on mumsnet a while ago about making a great curry - https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/food_and_recipes/4884208-tell-me-the-secret-of-a-great-curry

My takeaways were to add more onions and cook for much longer than the recipe says, really low and slow until they’re beautifully caramelised, use more spices, and add enough ghee/butter and salt to kill someone - it makes a big difference.

Otherwise, as others have said, trial and error really helps. I’m a pretty good cook and yesterday made a recipe that was just so blah - happens to everyone!

I also find reading the comments on online recipes is useful as people often share tweaks which worked for them. A recipe blog I like very much is Smitten Kitchen (I have all three of her books too), and you can filter comments by ‘I made this’ which is brilliant.

My best tip is to learn how to judge "ready" without the cookbooks.

Recipes are good for flavour combinations and a general gist of the order of things, but really good cooks know when to deviate, when to add a bit more pepper, and when the cake needs to come out NOW even though the recipe says five more minutes.

My husband slavishly follows the recipe and ends up in a flap because our equipment needs a couple of minutes more or less/he misjudges what "high temp" means etc.

Can someone tell me more about curry secret mentioned above

Buy a cookery course in book or video form, or look at one of the free ones on youtube. Try things out and see what helps?

I came on to say Meera Sodha too, or a Mildred’s book. Your local library will have a range of cook books so you don’t have to buy them until you know you like their recipes! To begin with, follow it to the letter and then as you get more confident you can tweak. I’m a really confident cook but hate following an internet recipe - DH would never voluntarily use a recipe book though, so it’s personal taste.

Allow twice as long as a recipe says when you first start, because things always take longer and if you rush to finish then you’ll lose some of the flavour.

Tasting during cooking is important I think. Also just don't be frightened of messing it up, everyone makes cooking mistakes from time to time.

Download the curry secret- game changer

The website that will change your life is -Recipe Tin Eats - there are videos and great descriptions you won’t look back :)

Trial and error

Taste throughout cooking, so you get a better idea of what each ingredient does. I read that something acidic brings out the flavours, so I now often add white wine vinegar and can notice the difference. Ready made stock pots help too, particularly when I'm too frazzled to concentrate on the cooking.

If you listen to cooks, they always say it is down to ingredients.

I have a theory that you either have to have

1. excellent ingredients, cooked minimally. or
2. not-so-good ingredients, cooked forever so that flavours develop.

An example of the first is tenderloin, cooked rare. An example of the second is bolognaise sauce or pulled pork.

Also, grow some fresh herbs. They are a million times better than dried ones.

For vegetarian cook books, I love Meera Sodha. I have East and Dinner, both are excellent and very flavourful. I also find bbc good food has plenty of good recipes.

What are you cooking that has a ‘meh’ flavour? I think you can just try experimenting with different things, e.g. if you’re doing a pasta sauce with tinned tomatoes, try the posh ones as I think it makes a big difference. If you usually use one garlic clove, try using 2 or 3. If you’re cooking with spices like cumin seeds, toast them beforehand. But it’s likely different for different dishes/ingredients. I think experimenting and keeping a log of what you tried and how it came out is a good idea.

Don't be afraid of herbs and spices. With practice you'll learn that each cuisine has its own core set of seasonings and how to use them.

I think it depends on what you’re comparing the taste of your food to. I read once a chef said “we cook for you like we hate you”, meaning they will use plenty of fat/butter/salt/sugar to the extent you’d never get say Jamie Oliver publishing in his books. So don’t compare to restaurant food.

Things that work for me are cooking chilli/bolognese/casseroles in advance, always taste better a day or so later and I always start with a sofrito, cooking it for around 40 mins. I add a squeeze of honey to many dishes. I prefer to eat a v healthy lunch then for dinner I’ll fry meat in olive oil and butter (not a bad thing though) and load up with roasted veg, again in lots of olive oil and herbs or spices.

I tend to add more of various spices than recipes call for, I also overmeasure garlic, and tend to use stock where recipes say water, and will add in other things if I think the basic recipe seems a bit meh. But I make these tweaks from a starting place of experience and knowing what will work. Ultimately it's just practice and trial and error. Meera Sodha's East is a great book if you like Asian food and lots of strong flavours.

I'm shamelessly posting my Spicery link here as I can't recommend them enough: VICTORIA-262111

Honestly amazing. You can get the subscriptions which give like restaurant quality food (but a lot of effort and I personally find the instructions a bit clunky) or they have Legend books, which are basically pre-mixed spices you add to your fresh ingredients. I prefer these as you normally just need a few staples in like chicken, onions and tomatoes.

You also learn that most curries follow a simple format: make a paste, fry it, dilute it and add your cooked meat into it.

The more you make certain things the more you learn, like curries normally use equal amounts of sugar and salt to balance eachother or if a recipe wants tomatoes and water, you can just use [tinned] chopped tomatoes.

Alternatively, pick a cuisine, like curry and make a few different ones on repeat and then try a new one. Or buy a good cookbook and read it. A lot of them have tips about what stuff actually does and offer up substitutions.

Practice makes perfect! I also make sure I'm putting something in anything I cook to make the base richer and tastier- Worcestershire sauce goes in basically anything, or red wine, or stock cubes. And don't be afraid to season!

For straightforward cooking for crowds I like the roasting tin cookbook series- really easy but a good way to cook for a lot of people, and a way to learn about flavours and what works well. Cooking doesn't have to be complicated or fancy to be delicious.

Gousto

no need to actually use them but the recipes are easy to follow and understand so could be a good starting point

Salt and pepper isn’t the only seasoning so add spices and flavour. Meat that is marinated and browned first takes your meal to another level. Dumping cans/jars of sauces in a pot and throwing veg in isn’t cooking imo.
I marinate all fish and meat.
im making a Tofu curry today. I marinated the tofu with all my spices, fresh ginger and yoghurt. When I fry that off first , it takes the tofu to such a flavourful level.
Don’t be afraid to try out spices.
what cuisine do you like?
Im Indian, so cook everything with tons of flavour and seasoning.
it’s also alot of trial and error as well in the beginning

Practice!

And forget a lot of the modern cookbooks which are chock full of recipes but have little instruction in the way of basic techniques and bases.

My bible is the Readers Digest Cookery Year from 1974. It's a phenomenal book which has, as you might expect, a great run of seasonal recipes but in the main is taken up with huge sections on how to do the basics of everything: sauces, jointing and carving meat, how to select fruit and vegetables, breaking down how different meats are used, how to make all kinds of stocks. It even tells you how to skin rabbits!

You can find second hand versions online for not very much. Cannot recommend it highly enough for anyone who wants a cookbook that will tell you EVERYTHING you need to know.

I miss TV cooking shows. I know we were swamped with them at one point but they did teach me cooking techniques and which flavours go together. I used to read cookery books like they were novels too. I think YouTube cooking channels are food blogs have largely replaced them. After that it was practice, sometimes somethings don't work out but you learn from that and incorporate the new knowledge into your cooking in future.

Maybe choose a cuisine you like and concentrate getting good at that. Cook what you like to eat rather than to impress.