How do I become good at cooking?

[Aspiringcook]

I can cook basic stuff but I always find that flavour is a bit meh. Never cook anything mind blowingly tasty. Is there any hope for me or do some people just “have it” and are naturally more skilled?
Any recipe booka to recommend? I particularly like vegetarian recipes although I do occasionally eat meat and fish.
I find that this (as well as living in a small home) sometimes stops me from wanting to host people as I get quite stressed if I have to cook for many.
Would love to improve as I genuinely enjoy food and pottering around the kitchen

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.

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

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.

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

Practice is the only thing that will help.

Season in layers
Learn which flavours add umami, things like aminos, parmesan, olives, nduja, miso, Worcester sauce
Season throughout the process eg when you saute raw ingredients not just the end
Find a chef that you like.
I start off by working out what I like to eat and looking up a few recipes from different chefs to see what is the most authentic
In general when I cook food that isn't British I try and follow recipes written by someone from that country rather than the British version of...

I find this site good for simple recipes with lots of flavour https://www.recipetineats.com/

I think Delia Smith is your friend here .I literally learnt to cook with her books in the 80s. She can be a bit twee at times ,but as she says we are not chefs we are cooks! She takes you through the recipes step by step in a kind of Big Sister vibe . I think anyway to host people casually as well .No one expects Haute Cuisine. and a nice big pot of Chilli or Spag Bol . plenty of wine/Crusty bread and off you go!

I would definitely recommend Hello Fresh or Gusto. Recipes are easy to follow, give you inspiration and also introduce you to different techniques you might not usually use.

Work you way through the Hello Fresh and Gusto introductory deals to build some confidence and variety with ease then either use cook books or BBC recipes/ GoodFood.

I find Hello Fresh and Gousto come up short on spices so unless you add your own the food is quite bland.

I get my hands on Delias complete cookery course and Nigellas How to Cook. Both cover the basic well, and Nigella follows the natural links to process, so if you can make a custard you can make an ice cream type thing. Once you have the basics mastered you can experiment with different ingredients. It’s really a case of practice while building a good basic knowledge of how food works, ie what balances too much salt, what things are prone to curdling, how can you stop that etc, the difference browning meat makes, how long it takes to sweat onions and the difference that makes to flavour.

My dad was a chef, growing up I spent hours in the kitchen with him learning the basics almost by osmosis. Get a good foundation and go from there.

I am really bad at cooking, I am not a natural cook like friends or my mum/sister. But what helps me is following recipes online, either the visual ones (which help more) or any to be honest. I dont deviate from the recipe, sometimes my mum will say "oh you dont need that" or add this etc but because I am not a natural I cant improvise so I have to follow it to a T even if its a recipe I have done before.
My dishes never look like the great ones online, look a bit messier but its gone quite well really.

Honestly, it's just practice.

I grew up in a home with a very disinterested cook. My mum cooked to keep us alive, nothing more. Nothing really had any flavour. We didn't own any seasonings. There was salt because mum liked to put a bit on her chips when we had them, both nothing else.
I remember being utterly thrilled with the food when I moved into a fully catered hall in university! To everyone else it was very bland, but to me it was fantastic!

I taught myself to cook just by being interested. I found a few recipes on the BBC good food website that looked nice and pretty easy, and just went from there. Some were misses, but some were hits that are still in regular rotation 20 years on.

I think I am a pretty good home cook. I did not learn this growing up. Here is what I think have helped me to become a good home cook

1 Watching cooking shows. Honestly, it's so helpful as you can see what they're doing and there's a lot of useful and interesting chat. eg, when you're cooking curries, you want to be toasting off the spices at least slightly. this is hugely important to the final flavour. Even things like curry pastes - I was watching something once where they talked about cooking the paste and "almost taking it over" and I realised that they were literally cooking the paste with a bit of coconut milk and sort of frying it almost for mch longer. And suddenly one of my recipes made a lot more sense!

2 Do not be stingy with oil/butter/fat and seasonings. Again, when you watch on tv, you can see the way they're putting these things in. A lot of homecooks are so terrified of fat or seasonings that they don't use enough. this reduces flavour and often impacts the cooking process. I was amused to read a recipe last week for Chicken Chasseur - the (traditional french) chef writing the recipe bangs on and on about butter but is hilariously blase about the wine and brandy - basically the butter cannot be skipped, but the alcohol can!

3 Learn about the benefits of different heats. A lot of cooks cook everything at the same heat. DH, for example, has never mastered cooking anything on the stove at anything less than full whack. His steak is great, his scrambled eggs less so.

I would als try some hello fresh or similar meals - it's great for inspiratino and to see how it all comes together.

Yeah, this is right, but I am your husband in this scenario because I don't know how to judge "ready" (or anything else). Whereas DP happily goes off-piste, uses the recipes as vague guidelines, and produces much more delicious food.

I don't really have an answer to the OP's question, it continues to elude me tbh. I suspect that like everything else is to practice, practice, practice, but it's hard to do that when you're conscious of the potential waste and hunger if it's inedible.

In lieu of that I'd suggest taking a step back and working out which aspects of cooking you struggle with specifically. For me, it's anything that requires dexterity (a surprising amount of cooking!) or using my own judgment. That means I know what my limited wheelhouse is and can throw together simple things within it (traybakes and soups and, um, that's it).

Agree with PPs.
Flavour comes from proper browning, sweating, balance, sauce reduction and of-course seasoning. And good ingredients.
Being a good cook comes from having a good palette but also, practice & experience.
Also, if you are following recipes, a good WELL TESTED recipe.
Be wary of recipes found online and even in some modern good books and recipes. Proper recipe testing and development takes skill and patience and dedication and unfortunately not all food writers and sources have the integrity required.
Simon Hopkinson, Diana Henry, Claudia Roden & Ottolenghi are my core trusted food writers. You can also usually trust Good Food. They have a test kitchen and testing their recipes before publishing them is part of their ethos.

Lots of practice.

Restaurant cooking often involves heavy salting or MSG for flavour enhancement.

I'd say buy a couple cookbooks and cook your way through them. I'd start with Start Here by Sohla El-Waylly and Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat.

Learn the different cooking techniques. Braising, saute, roast, and so on.

Learn about flavour profiles from different cuisines and try them out. For example, make a basic lentil soup with a classic French flavour, then with Middle Eastern spices, then Ethiopian.

Learn basic knife skills. There's good YouTube tutorials

The more you cook the more chef’s ‘intuition’ you will develop and you’ll get to know when there is too much liquid called for, or not enough garlic/onion etc. Or when something needs another 15 mins reducing.

Curries are best eaten the next day, when the flavours have had time to marinate

Fresh garlic, ginger fresh, fresh chili ( or in jar or tube or paste) are your friend

Plus other herbs & spices

I cook chinese/Thai stir fry with similar ingredients; but eat same day but add soy or chili sauce

As others have mentioned, find someone whose cookbooks you like and it will make a huge difference.

I'm no real fan of Jamie Oliver as a person on TV etc, but his food almost seems to be specifically geared towards my own tastes so I absolutely love his books. I started with Ministry of Food as I wasn't a great cook and it's designed to show you how to make things tasty easily. I also lived Jamie's Dinners - his pasta peperonata is now one of my favourite meals (although I sacrilegiously add chorizo to it....)

I think that recipes are often missing a bit of "oomph". Try adding miso or Marmite or also turmeric for a bit if earthiness. Always add some salt and black pepper.

I always use double the amount of garlic for recipes. If using cheese in a dish you could also add some nutritional yeast.

I think my cooking is now pretty good. First thing is practice practice practice and do not be put off when it does not quite work first time. IME it is often very minor things that really impact the taste. I have found some recipe books really good. Full disclosure I am ethnically Indian but really love Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Bible which I have learned so much from. Older women also have a lot to teach us as well and are usually so happy to pass skills on. I spent a day with DH Aunt learning how to make a proper trifle which we had great fun doing. Also I have done a couple of cooking school days which people got me as presents. Though these were really nice.

Lots of practice and plenty of tasting the food during the cooking process. After a while you start to get a sense of what it's lacking and an inituation for what to add.

Generally I find when my food is a bit meh its because it needs salt, umami or else is too watery and needs reducing.

Recipes on the BBC Good Food website are generally straighforward and reliable and have ratings so you can see if other people think they are good.

Fresh herbs are a great way to perk up most dishes.

It’s just practice really. It’s important to taste your food as you go along and with experience you’ll start to know what needs adding to make a recipe sing. Until then just follow recipes from reliable sources - if I see a recipe on bbc food I always read the comments and you can pick up tips from there.

I don’t really bother with cook books anymore as there’s so much choice online.

Try getting Hello Fresh or Gousto boxes for a few months. The recipes have all the seasoning included so will make you use more than you might tend to.

The first Prashad cookbook took my curries to the next level. It's vegetarian and superb. I have a spice tin as you need decent spices. I add a stock cube to anything I think needs a flavour boost and homegrown herbs help too.

BBC good food is useful for various veggie recipes. Reading the comments is a must before making a dish. Also I substitute veg mince meatballs etc in non veggie recipes. It works.