To find cooking really complicated and stressful?

[Abbinob]

When people are taking about simple recipes and they say things like 'then just chuck in some spices'
Wait what spices? How much? How do people know what spices people are talking about? Am I thick and this is some instinctive knowledge people have?
Whenever I look at a recipe for something it seems to have a million ingredients and I get a bit panicky and I give up
I'm sure when my mum made a curry it was just simple like tomatoes, chicken, yoghurt curry powder. But when I try to find a curry recipe it's all coconut milk and a thousand spices I've never heard of.
I want to cook nice fod for DS but all I can cook is bolognaise, pasta bake and shepherds pie

Barbara I think that level of precision can actually be really helpful when you are finding your feet. You need to know if it's big chunks of onion or tiny little cubes. She tells you how stuff should smell when it's nearly ready to add the next stuff, or what the onions will look like when cooked.

My DH can cook up to a point, but if following a recipe, it needs to be spelled out to him until he's made it a few times.

Tip for curries is that it all starts with garlic and ginger. I can't be bothered with doing all the spices as I don't make that much curry so I know I'd buy loads of stuff that would then not be used in the end (asian supermarkets are great when you are going to be using stuff in quantity but that's probably not the case here). I use the jars of paste which you then add to the garlic/ginger mix, and they have pretty simple instructions on the back. The only other thing I do is crack an egg into it near the end and mix it all in, which I find gives it a bit more 'body' to the sauce. I don't like the jars of curry sauce though.

You might find something like Hello Fresh useful while you build up your skills?

I was the same until I started cooking for my son. Get a cook book for toddlers and go from there! Rachel Allen is quite good too, easy meals is a good start

Check out the Good Housekeeping's series of books called Easy to Make. Ranges from soups/stews, pasta, one-pot meals etc.

I put Schwartz Chicken spice (paprika, parsley and onion) in my chicken dishes, with half teaspoon of madras masala spice and a teaspoon of salt.

www.schwartz.co.uk/products/seasonings-and-blends/perfect-shake/special-blends-for-meat-fish-and-poultry/chicken?gclid=Cj0KEQiArJe1BRDe_uz1uu-QjvYBEiQACUj6onyml8H6Qg6Ozu94KcbcM5_JnhNGUauPOCgQUNJ-dWMaAnY68P8HAQ

I make the world's fastest and simplest curry. Brown chicken pieces in a little oil. Then for the actual curry sauce just mix one tin of mushroom soup with a large tin of condensed milk, add a large teaspoon of curry powder, and a small tea spoon of cumin and a teaspoon of lazee garlic.

Put chicken in an oven proof dish, cover with the sauce and bake for 25 mins. So easy and takes about 5 mins to prepare.

Get a copy of Nigel Slater's 30 Minute Meals. They're all quick, use very few ingredients and are mostly straightforward.

Get started with something like that, learn to understand how flavours go together and build up from there.

Don't be scared of it, just keep things simple and move on one step at a time :)

For the love of god, don't make curry with condensed milk and mushroom soup! I've never heard of anything so disgusting. Try Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food to learn the basics.

I assumed condensed milk was a mistake. But even evaporated milk and mushroom soup would be a little strange. Wonders if Hellz is in the US.

Every time I see a recipe on a US site, the ingredients list is a whole load of weird and wonderful packet ingredients.

I buy frozen pureed garlic and ginger. Costs about a pound for absolutely loads and just defrost it in the microwave. Much easier than chopping up fresh.

Strike condensed milk, insert coconut cream.

Curry is indeed easy, but don't use cream of mushroom soup. Or condensed milk.

I grew up in the US and my mother cooked everything with cream of mushroom soup! It does make an excellent tuna noodle casserole.

Like anything - you need to start with basic recipes that use simple processes and not too many ingredients. And you need to practice! Then, after a while you will develop knowledge and confidence and a but of a palate, and then you can go 'off recipe' and just 'chuck in some spices' (because eventually you will know what spices go with what).

It's just what you are used to. If it asks for a lot of spices, it's just using a spoon and sprinkling them over the food. Nothing complicated.

And coconut cream. I assume it's for a south east asian curry? It's standard ingredient for a thai and malaysia curry. Simply open a tin and pour it in.

I add coconut cream to balance out how fatty/unfatty the meat is (e.g. I always add it to chicken breast, not always lamb) and always if I've made too hot (or yogurt).

I'm also a unconfident cook so this is interesting. I'm going to look for the Delia books.

I thought Sandy's post was interesting regarding adapting bolognese sauces.

My ds taught himself to cook himself at college by watching it on utube. He literally had the laptop open on the worktop and filled the steps.

Agree with Delia. I also like the Claire Macdonald cookbook. Avoid anything in the Guardian, theirs are always stupidly over complex with at least 1 obscure ingredient you'll never use again. Sometimes just googling what you have in the fridge can reveal a recipe you like. I find recipes are usually extremely specific.

Jamie's 15 minute meals are great and it really helps watching him cook them.

Gordon Ramsey did a show recently - i think it was 100 recipes to bet your life on. He went through really basic stuff like how to chop an onion, how to put stuff on a psn. So I would watch that for instruction, but get a couple of books pp have named.

My tip for curry: read the recipe through. Go back to the ingredients list and put a big {} around the things that go in at the same time.

Plus years ago i read an interview with anthea turner, asking what was the most useful thing she learned as a blue peter presenter. She said getting everything ready in bowls before you start makes it much less stressful. This is v true, esp when making curry.

You can often substitute ingredients without ruining the recipe, which can avoid the need to buy something obsure that you'll never use again.

I learnt on here that ginger can be used instead of galangal for example - google is your friend. Various dairy ingredients (yogurt, cream, creme fraiche) can sometimes also be used interchangably.

Or if you have green beans, but not peas, use them instead. Nigel Slater is good for the 'use this or that, and leave this out if you don't have any' type recipe.

I must admit that I was a bit about the current trend for 30 second video recipes, but I can see that they can be quite useful in seeing how things are supposed to look.

The BBC websites are really good. There are some really simple, tasty recipes on there, and once you're confident with the basics, it's much easier to adapt recipes on a whim and switch out various ingredients to suit your family's tastes/budget.

OP - there's a thread over here with some simple recipes that can be frozen. If cooking is stressful, reduce the amount of times you need to cook by batch cooking large loads and freezing.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/food_and_recipes/2548237-Freezable-family-food

Another vote for Nigel Slater's recipes - they're not as precise as Delia but I think he's better at "foreign" foods. Delia was good for me to get some basics, but Nigel Slater was better for encouraging me to experiment. His Appetite book is really good as well as the others recommended above

As others have said it's practice.

And tbh Shepherd's pie IS a faff, I prefer one stage meals in general