Teaching a Boy to Cook

The other day over brunch Chris and I had a pretty good discussion about cooking.

Chris said he likes to cook, but at times feels like its too much of a hassle to gather ingredients, follow a recipe and make something. He would much rather just throw something together quick and be done. (His cooking philosophy is pretty much explained in THIS.) Now, I am no expert on cooking, but I gave him a few pointers on how to cook something which would be easy and also could be used as leftovers for the next few days, minimizing his time spent in the kitchen (and the waste of ingredients!)

So, here are a few tips for those guys out there who WANT to cook, but don’t really know where to start. (Are there guys reading this?)

Buy Essential Ingredients

Most recipes call for the basics: butter, salt, pepper, olive oil, spices. Make sure you have these on hand! Even get things like onions, garlic, and a few fresh vegetables if you know the recipes you want will call for them. I also like to have other things on hand at all times like brown rice, cans of chickpeas and black beans, and pizza dough.

Plan Your Meals Ahead

Think about what you want to eat during the week. Do you want pasta one night and mac and cheese the other? If you plan your meals out ahead of time, you can stock up on ingredients at the grocery store once and that way you won’t have to keep going back!

Recipe: Vegetarian Chili

Search For Easy Recipes

My favorite way to search for recipes is going to Google and typing in “EASY ______”. One morning, Chris and I wanted to make home fries, but didn’t want a super complex recipe with a billion steps and ingredients. By typing in “easy home fry recipe”, I found a great one! Doing this with help narrow your recipe results to recipes that are really easy to follow. Check out some of my recipes. They are all relatively easy to follow, since I usually don’t like anything too complex or time consuming, either!

Make A Lot of Your Dish

If you make 4-5 servings of one thing, you will have it for the whole upcoming week. I like making a big batch of something so I can bring it to lunch during the week. It makes it easier on myself since I don’t have to plan out what I’m going to make for lunch! You can also freeze your leftovers, which will keep them good for a while!

Chris was craving mac and cheese one day, so after our discussion, he picked up his ingredients and made some. He texted me later that day saying “You were right, cooking IS easy!”