Hate cooking! How can I get

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Everyday I'm never prepared. So it's either a takeaway, ready meal stuff from frozen.

I hate cooking. My mum hates it too and never taught me how to cook so I've just learnt bits myself.

I have like a mental block. I don't even know what to cook so just keep going over the same old handful of recipes which quite frankly are boring me.

I know I need to plan ahead but the mental block ruins it.

For those of you who love cooking, why? How?

I need some help!

What about a meal service like Hello Fresh or Gusto? You could choose a few meals a week from them and it will help you decide on a meal beforehand and walk you through each recipe.

With access to YouTube there are millions of cooking videos out there, step by step so my advice would be to start with a search like chicken tray bake or one pot meals or slow cooker meals.

I think it helps to write a list of things you like so ingredients like chicken, fish, beef, then any veg you would eat, peppers, broccoli etc, pasta, rice, potatoes and then meals like chilli. stir fry or tuna pasta bake. I started with a one week meal plan and then moved onto a 2 week then 3 week meal plan rota with some meals coming in as swap so they were eaten every 6 weeks.

Neither my Mum or Dad taught me to cook, Mum because she didn't cook, didn't even enjoy food, Dad was the cook but he hated anyone being in the kitchen. I learned from recipe books and now YouTube is fantastic.

I am a bit like you. I had a small amount of things that I could cook but often fell back on ready meals and takeaway and did not enjoy cooking at all, but someone recently gave me a code for Gousto and I have had 4 boxes. I now have a little pile of recipes that I can make and have actually started enjoying cooking. I write a shopping list from the recipes before I go which has made shopping a whole lot easier and I actually enjoy making these meals.
It’s not a cheap way of doing things but has given me a start.

Hello fresh. (Other meal delivery companies are available)

It isn’t cheap, but you can do it for a few months. It will teach to to cook, and you will build up a bank of go—to meals. You can then cancel once you have enough confidence to go and buy ingredients and cook the meals yourself.

Again a vote for hello fresh. I haven’t used them myself, but my Dd did when she first lived with her boyfriend.

She hates cooking too, never interested to learn from me (I don’t enjoy it much either) they got Hello Fresh. Although it is more expensive, it’s cheaper than takeaways.

It helped them learn to cook all sorts of things, made it easier to plan meals as they both had full time jobs, so didn’t need to think about it and introduced a whole new range of recipes.

They don’t use it anymore as it’s helped them expand their skills and knowledge of recipes. She also said it was good as hello fresh only included ‘enough’ food so you couldn’t overeat like with takeaways.

I got in to Hello Fresh as they do discounts for the first few boxes and I wanted more variety in our meals. I've continued it, though it hasn't really made me enjoy cooking more.
But the ingredients are all there, portioned out (though this means a lot of packaging). I haven't had a dud meal, though of course like some more than others snd it has taken two months to see a repeat meal - there's large variety including plenty of vegetarian choices.
We get three meals a week on a Friday, so I know the weekend is catered for. I generally order the 'rapid' meals, as some require quite a lot of cooking, if you get my meaning, which rather defeats the purpose for me.

What sort of food do you enjoy eating?

Personally, I'd still with Gousto over HF - but I think it depends on the type of food you enjoy no just found their quality better and meal choices more suited to our tastes.

But they're the right way to go. Wouldn't be with out the weekly delivery now!!

Either the delivery boxes suggested, I haven’t tried them so can’t recommend a brand. Or try a simple way to replace the takeaways. What do you usually order? If it’s Mexican/Thai/Indian etc get a spice mix and some prepped veg, frozen is a good option.

So, fe, fajitas- fry pre-prepared peppers and onion with spices, add finely sliced chicken or meat. Same with stir-fry using a Chine five spice blend.

Ditto for other meals, you can get spice/herb mixes from all supermarkets.