very new/beginner cook - come and inspire me!

[cherryblossominspring]

I've had lots of upheaval in the last year and have finally just moved into my own place. I've longed to have my own kitchen for ages and finally have one but I'm ashamed to say I've existed mainly on ready meals and takeaways for almost my whole life.

My culinary knowledge is almost non existent. I'd really like this to be a brand new beginning but I'm at a loss as to where to start.

I'd really like to use this thread to inspire and help me and keep track of how I'm going.

Please could I have your help and advice? I'd like to try and see this as a way to start trying to get 70-80% of my diet from home cooked meals and to make it healthy and balanced.

I move in later this week and I don't even really know where to begin about what I should cook for my first meal let alone what I should get in my first shop.

If you have some recommended recipes for a beginner I'd be very grateful. I'm not very good but I have lots of enthusiasm and motivation.

thank you!

You don’t need a set of knives. One cook’s knife and a serrated knife will do most things.

Harissa paste is good for Moroccan themed dishes.

Last week I chopped up and roasted peppers, onions, garlic cloves, butternut squash, cherry tomatoes and mushrooms. Diced a mango and cooked some cous cous (follow cooking instructions on the packet), put that all together and stirred in a couple of teaspoons of harissa paste. Had that with griddled tuna steak. Had lots left so the next day I added a tin of tuna to it and had it for lunch two days running.

I find roasted veg is great. Tonight I had roasted tomato, mushrooms and cubed new potatoes with paprika belly pork slices. All done in the oven, so very easy.

Leftover chicken I make curry or stir fry, or risotto (I'm a big fan of risotto for being easy to make and using stuff up). I also boil the bones with old bits of veg to make stock, you need a freezer though. Using your own stock makes the best risotto so it's all a virtuous cycle!

Even one good knife is a great start. Ok I don't tend to cook meat that needs carving or debone fish etc etc but I have a drawer full of knives. How many do I use? 3 a bread knife, a small one and a slightly bigger one
Other stuff I use a lot - a peeler, a decent tin opener, and a mini chopper (it's a set so you can chop stuff but it also has a whisk attachment)
A couple of Pyrex dishes, some saucepans, a really good frying pan, some baking tins/loaf tin, Tupperware, and a cast iron dish that can go on the hob then in the oven for stews

Honestly I wouldn’t bother with really good pans if you are learning how to cook. Cheaper ones won’t matter if you burn things in them and they will be lighter to drain. Same with Le Creuset. That stuff is bloody heavy and if you need to keep checking and getting things out if the oven or off the hob quickly you run the rusk of dropping it all the time. Ask for them as Christmas presents when you know what you want.

Goats cheese salad is dead easy. Just stick a piece of smoked bacon on one side of a baking tray and the goats cheese ( cut into thick slices if it’s a log version) on the other. Shove in a pre heated oven (200/Zoe a bit hotter) and 10 minutes later you have crispy bacon and golden cheese. Plonk on some bagged salad leaves, cut a tomato and cucumber into chunks and there you go. Sometimes put balsamic on it, sometimes oil but mostly I just scoff it.

Mary Berry complete cookery covers all the basics from roasts to yeast baking. They all work and are idiot proof.

You could invest in a slow cooker Argos do basic ones for £10 or less

Chop veg add meat and stock and leave to cook.

Some packets about 50p each add herbs and flavour labelled for slow cookers.

You can’t go wrong.

Try beef chicken or lamb

You can also cook curry, pulled pork, rice pudding, stew, beef and ale, or tomato based beef dishes, loads on FB slow cooker pages or look them up.

Would really recommend especially if you work and want a decent meal when you get home.

Supermarket cast iron is as good as Le Creuset and a fraction of the price. You can use them as a slow cooker in the oven. I wouldn’t waste money on an electric slow cooker as they are a bit Marmite (I think they produce hideous food fit only for the bin). As others have said, the Jamie Ministry of Food book is good, as are any Delia or Mary Berry. Your local library may have them online for free.

As for websites, I rate BBC Good Food, Olive, Serious Eats (American but the science beside cooking) and Budget Bytes.

A warning about the Ministry of Food book. Some of the stew/meat in sauce type recipes use far too much water (eg fill one or two tins once you've emptied the tomatoes out, I'd say you need maybe half a tin at most, and it's a lot easier to add water as you go along, rather than try to boil it down, which is a pain and you have to be careful not to burn your food or let it boil over while you're doing it.

If you want roast chicken, you don't have to do a whole chicken, you can roast one or two chicken pieces - something like thigh with the skin and bone still on/in work best, but choose a cut you like. A whole chicken, even a small one is likely to feed you all week, which you may or may not want to do, although if you make pie or curry it can be frozen.

I like the Roasting Tin books by Rukmini Iyer where you put everything in a roasting tin and shove it in the oven. There's recipes and then just ideas, where you can mix and match your own ingredients

www.amazon.co.uk/s?rnid=1642204031&ref=sr_nr_n_12&rh=n%3A266239&k=roasting+tin&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&qid=1586848953&dc

Also Mob Kitchen, the recipes are on the website, or you can buy the book. Aimed at students taking it in turns to cook for a group of 4, assumes no store cupboard and accessible ingredients. You can obviously half the recipe or batch cook and freeze - this is a great timesaver - when I'm in the office, I nearly always take dinner leftovers for lunch.

www.mobkitchen.co.uk/

Finally, a nice book if you're only cooking for yourself is Solo by Signe Johanson which is nice but quick and easy recipes for one, plus some more involved ones.

www.amazon.co.uk/Solo-Joy-Cooking-Signe-Johansen/dp/1509860592/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&s=books&keywords=solo&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&qid=1586849257&sr=1-3

The first time cooking recipes when I lived alone I found it easier to follow them exactly, normally for 4 people, eat one portion and freeze the rest. That way there was no having to calculate half or quarter of ingredients and risk messing up. I also had a great stock of home made ready meals in the freezer!

Tip for freezing- use a sealable freezer bag and lay it down flat. they stack better! Write date and contents in permanent market to avoid defrosting a surprise!

I would also suggest a student cookbook. There are plenty on Amazon that you can get delivered, as someone else said they will start from the basics and not assume any prior knowledge. I am still cooking recipes from mine that I got 20 years ago, and DH learnt to cook from it when he moved in with me after uni with no cooking ability. They will also probably be recipes for only 1 or 2 people, where other cookbooks tend to have recipes for 4 and not everything is freezable. I also have a cookbook called How to Boil an Egg, which also covers absolute basics like boiling eggs, other ways to cook eggs, how to chop and cook a variety of veg, what to do with different kinds of meat, basic pasta dishes and progresses to cooking a Sunday dinner, most of the recipes except Sunday dinner are for 1 person.

@cherryblossominspring Use the stock in risotto (another easy dish but feels good as you stand there stirring it!) or in home-made soup. Lots of stews etc call for stock, so it's handy to have some (I always use stock cubes, but have good intentions of saving scraps and making my own stock one day!)

I snip spring onions with scissors

I wouldn’t waste money on an electric slow cooker as they are a bit Marmite (I think they produce hideous food fit only for the bin).

Agreed, mainly. They seem to make a bland variety of meat in slop and are not much use for vegetarians. And the timings never work for being out at work all day either.

I have two recipes that work in the slow cooker, though I do them at a weekend when it can be on for four hours - chili, and tomato pilaf.