How do people learn to cook for themselves? Some are fortunate to have a mom who passes down recipes or may they got to attend a cooking class in school. I followed a much different route: I taught myself. Now don’t get me wrong, I am in no way saying that I am a good cook. In fact, I would say that about 40% of anything I make is either disgusting, or less than par. But I’m learning. I cooked for myself through most of college until now. Except now I only cook part-time since Rachael is a very good cook and my belly thanks me when I let her control the kitchen. Since I’ve started sharing the kitchen with a woman I’ve learned that I have a very different attitude towards cooking than some. Maybe you can relate…
My cooking experience has several steps:
(1) my stomach tells me I’m hungry
(2)I look in the cupboards and refrigerator to see what we have
(3) pick several ingredients that look like they go together
(4) pick (sometimes at random) a method to apply heat: George Foreman grill, stove top, deep fryer, oven, propane grill, or microwave.
(5) cook food
(6) eat.
This method, as you may have noticed, is lacking any foresight or direction. But It does have the distinct advantage of helping clean out the fridge and cupboards of foods left over from other meals. Like maybe we have a piece of chicken, some onions, and a tomato. If I stir fry those up with some olive oil and butter and put it on spaghetti, I have a great meal! This method doesn’t work so well with some things as I found out. Especially baking cookies. I have found out a couple times that baking requires special attention to quantities of ingredients. Therefore, baking is not for me.
So from my time experimenting in the kitchen, I’ve come up with my top 10 tips for all those aspiring men trying to make some food for themselves:
(1) never try to bake cookies with pancake mix. (2) don’t put oil on the stove on high, and then leave for 20 minutes because that starts fires! (3) in the case you do start an oil fire (which I have NEVER done and certainly NEVER almost burnt my family’s house down with an oil fire), use baking powder to put it out. (4) Use lids on pots to help the water boil faster. (5) Twice frying things makes them crispier. (6) Olive oil should be used in everything. (7) Emeril’s “original essence” seasoning is the best stuff ever and goes on EVERYTHING taking guess work out of which seasoning to use. (8) Girls like guys who can grill. (9) There is such a thing as too much garlic. (10) If something you made tastes bland, throw some hot sauce on it.
If you have your own tips, feel free to comment!
(1) A1 steak sauce makes a sirloin steak or a Philly cheese steak 10 times tastier. (2) If you don’t know how long something takes to grill, it’s not reasonable to expect it to take the same time as everything else. (3) Eating with friends helps establish better dining etiquette.
By: michaeljduncan on September 6, 2008
at 4:48 am