food

I've really enjoyed reading about your cooking journey as you've posted about it. Cooking is a fucking awesome skill to have and can be done fairly cheaply and without access to much as long as you have a kitchen. More people should learn to cook it's honestly not hard. Being a chef is hard, but cooking for yourself or a small group in a kitchen really does not have to be.

Great stuff! Keep up the good work! There's no pressure. If you fall off the wagon just dust yourself off and hop right back on there, partner.

Hell yeah, i wish I could do in person cooking lessons with everyone here cause it's so hard to teach through text. I can give some advice for sauteed mushrooms to get en really really good. Get the pan really hot first, add whatever oil and let that get hot and then add mushrooms, toss em around a lot and keep the heat high, when they look tasty take em off the heat source but leave em in the hot pan, residual heat handles the rest. That'll give you a nice snappy texture. Hot and fast is a good general rule for veggies, getting the outside cooked while keeping the inside still crisp and flavorful. Add garlic about 2/3 through so it doesnt burn.

The biggest thing to upping your game is knife skills/a good knife. If cutting stuff up takes you next to no time then suddenly a lot of meals seem easier to tackle. A good sharp chef's knife and some YouTube videos on different cutting techniques will get you far. I can dice 50lbs of onioms in like 15 minutes, enough to cook a meal feels like nothing. Ill sometimes pre cut my veggies for the next couple days while waiting for things to cook or water to boil etc. I guess thats another good tip, walk away from the kitchen while cooking. If youre hovering over the pan youre gonna over stir, you gain an internal clock for this stuff, im used to doing several dishes at once. I dont watch my food cook, I just know when to come back to it cause ive developed a sense for it, you will too

There is a rhyming platitude in professional kitchens, which i generally hate but this one is true: if you're looking, youre not cooking. Dont baby each step, you gotta let the food and heat do its thing

If you have spoon issues, you gotta get a rice cooker with a steam basket. They were around 20 bucks, not sure now. But you can cook a full meal and it'll just stay warm for you till you get to it. That plus a good slicer and cubed chopper. We got the latter for my partner who is a bit more disabled then me, but realized it's such a spoon saver! The garlic press too is very good. The later things we all got at Ross for pretty cheap. Though I'm going to look into some better cubers now cause it couldn't handle some very tough parsnips once. The garlic press and slicer is still going strong though.

But anyway, I always recommend the rice cooker to people cause its just been such a life savor.