so if you had to teach someone to cook, from the basics up...

[NormalityBites]

....how would you go about it?

I am embarking on such a project. A friend of mine, who is very sweet but clueless in the kitchen, has asked me to teach her how to cook. Her first 'lesson' is tomorrow.

She is very good at reheating things but that is about the extent of it. Really not much feel for actual ingredients, and little knowledge of basic principles, balancing meals, food groups. Doesn't recognise many of the things in my fridge (and there's nothing fancy in there!) I'm a confident and instinctive cook, and enjoy it, but I haven't a clue where to start.

Spaghetti bolognese.

A proper meal, that involves chopping, sauteeing, browning meat, making stock, herbs, spices and seasonings. But SOOOOOO easy and foolproof. You don't need a recipe, you only need one pot. Oh, and you get to cook pasta, too, which is another essential basic skill.

Ask her what she wants to cook - her favourite thing to eat, and start from there.

Apart from that, I would say start with soup, or pasta sauce - then you've got the basics of frying onions and garlic - and that's the basis for loads of things. Then a casserole. Once again - once you can do one, you can do lots of different ones. How to cook vegetables so that they are nice and not a mush. Mashed potato (harder than people think). A basic cake. An omlette. You can eat very well with that lot!

I would teach her a meal at a time. Depends how much time you have but what about a menu dinner and pud? and cover everything from how to cook veg, chop veg and what goes with what etc

A basic white sauce....... gravy...... the simplest things can then build.

Something like a casserole. You have to soften onions, fry the veg, brown the meat and then cook it slowly until tender - thereby learning about different cuts and how they cook. Then thickening the sauce, the different ways to do that. (Also the value of bunging a few tatties in, saving a step later on.)

I would get her JO's Ministry of Food book and help her work her way through it

Frying onions & mince then adding tomatoes - the basis for bolognese, chilli con carne, cottage pie etc. Show her how she can start with a simple idea then vary it to make several different dishes to accompany pasta/rice/potatoes etc.

Maybe some home made biscuits or flapjacks - nice and easy.

Fruit crumble?

Casseroles a good idea too - long slow cooking so difficult to go wrong.

All in one white sauce too - can be used as a basis for all sorts of things and so easy!

Maybe stir fries as a contrast to the slow cooking ideas.

Well done for helping your friend!

yy white sauce - maybe not the first lesson, but it's such a useful thing to know and the basis of so many easy meals (macaroni cheese, lasagna, fish pie etc etc).

Basics of baking: scones, Victoria sponge.

How to follow a recipe: difference between a tsp/tbsp/dessert spoon, the importance of not mixing grams and oz, reading the recipe to the end first so you don't realise you should have turned the oven on before you started and should have had the butter at room temp...

agree re spag bol; then a casserole; then a white/cheese sauce; a basic chicken/veggie curry. and drum into her that none of these things require recipes; that you can substitute mushrooms for peppers etc; that chilli is just spag bol with spices and beans; that she can experiment. I'd also do a basic cake - again 4-4-4-2 - no need for a recipe. ditto the icing - no need to weigh.

Give her a recipe book away with her and get her to choose a couple of things she really fancies making - skill no object, and work towards them maybe?

I agree that it's really important to know you can experiment and have the confidence (and basic skills) to do it, but it's also, imo, really empowering to know you can have a go at anything you fancy, and there's no such thing as not knowing how if you have a decent recipe and can follow instructions.

I'd actually start with cooking individual ingredients rather than spag bol etc.

How to cook pasta; rice; potatoes.
How to cook a lamb chop; chicken thigh; roast a joint.
How to cook most normal veg (boil/fry/roast).
How to boil an egg of course!

Then I'd do a few basic meals. Omelette, basic tomato sauce for pasta, cream or cheese sauce for pasta, baked potato plus fillings, fry up, risotto. Spag bol and casserole would probably come next.

I wouldn't get to baking or to white sauce for a long time (but then I hate white sauce and I'm not a big cake fan...)

i wish you were my friend!!

i still can't cook beyond pasta dishes.

and even then i burn

When I taught my uni housemates to cook, I started with toad in the hole.

The next meal we covered was a roast dinner. A lot of people who can't cook think a roast is really hard but its all down to when to shove things in the oven. It is also a good template for basic meat:veg:carb ratios.

Then onto risotto (using the chicken carcass from the roast the day before) which starts needing more skills and a bit more know how about using herbs.

You could do a chicken casserole at this point rather than a risotto but risottos aren't really that hard, just a bit of stirring.

I found that once my housemates realised that cooking wasn't that hard, they started doing a bit of experimenting, coming back to me when they wanted to ask about specific things - sometimes things their mums cooked and sometimes things that they'd seen me do.

Hey hatwoman, I could have done with your advice 6 years ago when I started cooking! :)

this book is brill. it tells you about veg,pasta, rice, all the basics in fact, how to prepare it,how to cook it, portiom size per person etc..

its still my favorite reference book if i need a reminder on something.

i second the jamie ministry of food...lovely book, nice and easy, good pictures etc..

NormalityBites - if you email [email protected] with your address - the ideal book to help will be on it's way to you.

That's a bit cryptic Fifichef Could I have a little more information before sending you my address?

Thank you for all the suggestions, i am making a schedule. I taught her how to make a batter and about different cuts of meat/different veg (she didn't know what a leek was ) and we're doing it again next week, where I'm thinking about soup.

I'd also take her out to a market so she could see some ingredients and learn what to look for, and how to identify things. Another idea might be for her to do a one day Basic Food Hygiene course so she doesn't end up killing herself, and I'd also consider menu planning and budgeting.

Jamie Oliver wrote Ministry of Food for exactly that purpose IIRC???

I would begin with eggs, then she can always eat something.

Roasting meat and cooking vegetables.

Cooking fish in tin foil.

Mince type dishes with pasta.

White sauce, so she can then make lasagne etc.

If she is really ignorant praps take her shopping maybe a farmer's market and help her to buy the ingredients for a basic soup.

I would start with a mince dish tbh. Then she has the first "bit" for chilli/shepherds pie/spag bol.

You can take it one step at a time and just add pasta sauce for spag bol then add some chopped peppers next time etc etc.

Normality bites I am offering to send you my book free of charge - the email address is my publishing company as I obviously don't wish to advertise my private one. The book is laid out simply with step by step recipes - ideal for a learner with lots of helpful advice for somebody starting out. It is listed on Mumsnet and is titled - Favourite Family Food - Home Cooking. If I sent it tomorrow you would have it by early next week.

I would start by showing her how to measure out ingredients properly and make sure she has a scale, spoon measures and a liquid measure. Also decent saucepans, a wok, a casserole and a lasagne dish. Then get a good cookbook and help her with following the recipes, what all the different directions mean.

It's great to be able to cook from your head, spag bol etc but there's nothing like being able to follow a recipe--then you can cook ANYTHING.