Can you give me your basic cooking tips?

[Cloud44]

Early 40s and I’m embarrassed about how rubbish I am in the kitchen to be honest. This year I really want to eat healthier and cook meals from scratch more.
Can you tell me your favourite most basic recipes to help me get started? Meals that take less than 30 minutes after a day at work?

Oh - to add - you can select various diet types, keto, paleo, vegan, pescatarian etc etc.

Buy the best knife you can afford and practice chopping as small as you can go.
If stuff is cooked small it will soften more quickly and that’s what will add the flavour. If you can’t chop, and you have one, use a food processor to blitz stuff instead

I learnt to cook in the pandemic having been previously quite rubbish.

I would therefore recommend the fast diet books, really good healthy recipes.

hairy bikers, and Mary Berry do great books

3 suggestions:

• roasting tin type approaches as others have said
• hello fresh or similar then copy with own ingredients using the recipes and look for others available on the website. Hello fresh baked cheesy tomato risotto and creamy mushroom pasta are quick and easy and the former requires no chopping if you follow my final tip…
• if you’re not an experienced cook you may be slow at prep so try using easy (but not full of added rubbish) things like garlic paste, frozen chopped onions, frozen stir fry veg, frozen mash (aunt Bessie!). Even flavoured microwave rice you can add stuff to. This can make lots of meals really quick at least in terms of the time you have to interact with it (stir fry veg and added protein of choice with quick homemade sauce and noodles / rice; lentil shepherds pie with tinned lentils and topped with frozen mash; spag bol; above risotto etc)

@Cloud44 actually, thinking about it, what do you like to eat? If you can suggest a few preferred meals or ideas , the combined wisdom here can most likely help ( in the morning now😉)

lemon and chilli king prawn linguine

put the linguine in a big pan of boiling water at the very start

in a separate pan, gently heat some olive oil. Add some puréed garlic and ginger (Tesco are good for these, much cheaper to buy like this and they last ages). Go heavier than you’d expect. Then add a bag of drained, cooked king prawns. Heat through. Add a massive squeeze of lemon juice (if you want, you can buy this in the baking aisle, as it will be cheaper and last longer than a fresh lemon). Then at the end add some chilli flakes, salt and pepper. This will all take the same amount of time as it takes the linguine to cook, which is about ten minutes. Add more of whatever you think it needs.

drain the linguine, portion it out and add the sauce to the individual portions.

ta da!

as a variation, you can substitute the king prawns for crab, and add creme fraiche. You could also add halved cherry tomatoes.

that is two meals, each in about ten minutes.

Agree with this one. Really easy to do, taste really nice, not much washing up and ingredients that are easy to buy.

We love this BBC Good Food chilli
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/chilli-con-carne-recipe

Also this is my kids absolute favourite- bit longer than 30min but the prep is quick

Where's your badge? Thread police 👮

Jamie Oliver ministry of food
When you've done a bit with that, this site is good and you can adjust the slider to how many you want it to feed. I've never had one of his recipes go wrong

www.dontgobaconmyheart.co.uk

I find simply cook little kits keep me out of a rut. They are all quick and healthy. The spices are the bits supplied but minimal other ingredients usually. You can get a small selection at Tesco or follow my link smply.in/PW18VE .... not sure if I'm allowed to do that but I think it gives both of us a free box. The curries are especially good. I'm not keen on an Indian type takeaway but I've never chosen a curry from the kits that wasn't delicious.

Lots of the Hello Fresh recipes can be accessed on line without subscription

Simply cook got me back into cooking. 20-30 min meals cooked on stove rather than oven and only need d buy basic ingredients

And good knives are essential but if you're not experienced be careful with them! The ninja knives are great but lethal!

What food do you like?

I'm quite a good cook, but I don't want to bore you with stuff you'd maybe not like.

Delia. She’s the answer to everything- I’d recommend her How To Cook series.

60% off Gousto at the moment too. Nigel Sister's book was Toast not Taste as mentioned upthread

Two basics:

Garlic, onion (chilli)- always soften in some oil before adding tomatoes/tomato purée for a sauce base. You can then add browned meat/prawns/veg/herbs/spices, whatever takes your fancy. Serve with rice or pasta.

Also, a roux: melt a tbs butter, add a couple tbs flour and stir, then mix in milk or stock off the heat, then put back in gentle heat and stir til it thickens. Add salt and pepper. This is white sauce and you can add chicken and mushroom/veg/cheese, then mix with pasta/macaroni or put over rice.

No packets/jars, so cost-friendly.

Repeating what others have said really but
...
Hello fresh: I'm a fairly competent cook so I didn't enjoy this much but I felt these were for people learning how to cook for the first time so perhaps worth a try.
Roasting tin: recommended up thread.. this is my go to book for mid week
Delia: for good ol' basics and general info then it's the brown book.
BBC good food; always a good go to and recipes usually work.

Other: if you can make a roux then you can also make macaroni cheese, lasagne, fish pie, gravy (same principle). If you can make a basic pasta sauce then you can add other ingredients for more exciting pasta, do a lasagne etc.

Get confident with soup making so you always have healthy lunch material.

@Cloud44 Chickpea curry or similar using a tin of chickpeas etc is easy to make- maybe add tomato puree, an onion, and the spices. Add a naan bread and it's quite nice.

Extra healthiness points if you can handle frozen spinach in it.

I know you asked for recipes but, first, get a good knife, one chefs knife is usually suitable for most things (apart from slicing bread etc).
I’ve started off with a cheap knife block when I moved out from home (those £25 for the whole thing kind of knives) and got frustrated so quickly. Then, when I could afford it, bought Victorinux set on offer and they were a massive step up and not even that expensive. I’ve now recently got a couple of good Zwilling ones (went to an Outlet to actually hold them and try them, they also got good offers) - another definite step up, but obviously pricier. It makes a massive difference though when trying to finely cut onions etc.

In terms of recipes, not a British recipe but I do love this mince meat soup with leeks.

Slice 1 leek, cube 1 onion and 1 garlic clove.
fry 500g mince (I use 250g pork / 250g beef) on high heat in a medium or large sauce pan for about five minutes and then add the leek, onion and garlic. Fey for another three minutes and add a bit of salt, pepper and nutmeg.
then add 200ml of single cream and 700ml of veg stock (make this up beforehand with 1.5 stock cubes, dissolved in 700ml of boiling water) and leave to simmer for 10 minutes.
Then add 200g of cream cheese, 1 table spoon of lemon peel and the juice of between 1/2 and 1 lemon (you’ll need to try as obviously depends on size). Then serve!

@Cloud44 I don't like the BBC recipes as I think they complicate it more than necessary, so I always just google 'easy shepherd's pie' for instance, easy+whatever the thing I want to make is.

Start by mastering some basic essentials: most recipes suggest throwing in onions and garlic together, then cooking for 10 mins (ish). Onions should go in before garlic (they cook at very different rates) and take longer than 10 minutes to really taste good.

Once you can make a simple onion taste fabulous, you can throw together dozens of simple dishes.

Set yourself one cooking skill per week - you'll have a toolkit of flexible skills within a couple of months. Then you can look at a tin of tomatoes and know exactly what to do with it.

Hugh FW's book 'Three Good things' is a useful one, too.

Tray bakes are quick and easy. You can mix things up and use different meats, spices, herbs and combinations of veg, etc, to give you different flavours so you don't get bored.

Dice some potato/sweet potato/celeriac. Chop some veg, eg peppers, onion, mushrooms, broccoli (or whatever you like/have).

Add some meat, eg, chicken legs, thighs, pork steaks, fish pieces, if you want.

Put it all onto a deep tray.

Sprinkle some herbs and spices over (dried garlic granules are good to have).
I usually add dried garlic, paprika and parsley, but again, go with what you like.

Spray or drizzle over some oil and bake at 180°C for around 30 mins until golden and cooked through. Serve and enjoy.

lol, I agree, but would also like a good recipe for chicken soup

I’ve googled, but whatever I do, I end up with chicken and vegetable soup, it’s lovely, but I want a fabulous chicken soup, I think I need to find a cream of chicken soup, but would like to make a fabulous American style chicken soup…one day 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣