It’s not clear how this happened. An entire generation suddenly finds itself unable to prepare food for itself. It hasn’t been necessary for many years but inflation has changed everything. The cheap meal out is a thing of the past. Sure, you can get by for a while paying $30 for lunch and $60 for dinner but the credit card debt adds up fast, especially with drinks.
Your cocktail runs $18–25, and a beer can be $10–12, while a glass of wine is $15. Have a couple and you forget about the price. That’s the goal. You see, as high as the prices of food are, that’s not where the profit margins are. They have to sell you alcohol to pay the bills, and hope that your intoxication will smooth the shock when the bill comes. And don’t think you can get away with just ordering a soda. That will cost you $8 and cause the server to lose interest in you fast. Your wallet is only safe with water.
The obvious answer is to cook (and drink) at home. By doing this, you can conceivably save 75 percent or more on your food costs, especially if you buy things such as what we used to call ingredients rather than buy prepared dreg or endless pizzas wrapped in plastic. What I mean is the stuff that fills the outside edges of the store: namely, fruits, vegetables, meat, and fish. This is how you will save money.
And this is how a whole gang of under 30s has recently discovered the grocery store for the first time. But then the problems begin. They have no idea what to do. You can toss those chicken breasts in a pot of boiling water and forget about them but end up with a product more suitable for pickleball than eating.
In terms of pans, you need a saucepan, a skillet (I use iron but that’s another subject), and a casserole pan for the oven. You can make nearly everything in these and these alone. You can add a big pot for potatoes and pasta if you so desire. But otherwise, you can leave every other contraption aside for much later and only on a must-have basis.
So too with recipe books, which turn out to be a distraction more often than not. This is because people who follow recipes invariably end up paying more attention to the book text than the thing they are making. Sad truth but there is simply no way that any recipe can substitute for raw skill, technique, and a solid intuition. These you have to cultivate over time.
Recipes are useless until you figure out what you are doing. This can only happen once you start doing the thing. Otherwise you can find herb/spice combinations and basic stuff with a quick search and done.
If you are working from just ingredients, and you should, start simply. Trying making a hamburger. It takes more skill than you expect. The ground beef should not be too lean or too fatty either. Get a couple of pounds. Shape the burgers not with an eye to the final product but rather for cooking. That means very flat, about 1/3 an inch, with an indention in the middle to accommodate how they swell in the cooking process.
Put the patties in a pan and sprinkle salt, pepper, and something else on there such as paprika or something similar. When you turn them, the spiced side goes on bottom and mixes with the oil already forming. Before they are done, flip them again to get the salty fun on both sides. Remove them and put on your slices of cheese so that they melt naturally.
Then comes the thin slices of room-temperature tomatoes, lettuce, and pickles, along with the buns that should already have your mayonnaise and ketchup or whatever on them. Practice this enough and you will be widely regarded as a master of the kitchen, I promise. Advertise your masterpiece to friends and you can invite a crowd over who will swear it is the best burger they have ever tried.
This is only the beginning but it is a great one. You can use the same technique with chicken breasts provided you have pounded them down flatter than they come in the package (which you can do with the handle of your knife; be careful). From there, you can work on eggs with ham or sausage and so on for a wonderful breakfast. The skillet is truly your best friend in the kitchen.
You can also use the pan for making vegetables with plenty of butter or olive oil. Any veggie goes with any other veggie but onions are highly recommended. You will learn over time the order in which to add things based on how quickly they soften. Spin things around and around to make sure they all cook evenly. Save the salt until the end because otherwise it causes the veggies to lose their shape.
Speaking of which: a tremendous amount of oil is essential in a kitchen and here is where people go wrong. The most popular oils at the store are the worst ones: corn oil, sesame oil, peanut oil, and who knows what other kinds of seeds. All this stuff is truly awful. The basic oils you should be using are olive oil and butter, unless you want to venture into beef tallow, lard, or goose fat, all of which are fantastic but perhaps a bit exotic for beginners.
Now follows the briefest introduction to meat you will ever read. A big piece of beef people almost always get wrong by either overcooking and undercooking. This is because people follow ridiculous recipes. You can cook beef rare to medium at 400 degrees Fahrenheit by finding the center and shoving in the thermometer and letting it hit 120 to 130. Pay attention to the temperature, not the time. Beef must always rest out of the oven for 10–20 minutes to let it “bleed” (but it is not blood; it is water).
The second path is to cook beef into a deeply tender roast like grandma used to do. Salt and herb it all up and stick in the casserole dish with carrots and potatoes with some water or wine and cover it very tightly with foil. Turn the oven to 240 and forget about it for 8 or so hours. The apartment will fill with the greatest smell ever and then you are ready to eat.
Here again, you will immediately become famous for your astonishing skills as a chef. And truly, this dish is magnificent. You can do the same thing with chicken but half the cooking time. And the same thing works for a pork butt, which is extremely economical actually and fantastically fatty in the best way.
Just remember this. There are only two ways to cook these meats: just done (and pork has to hit a higher temperature) or all the way to the point that the whole meat has broken down. That’s it. If you hit somewhere in between, you might as well be eating a football. But truly, this is not difficult. You just have to follow the basic rule.
Let’s talk fish. Terrifying, right? Not really. This is where your casserole pan comes in again. To be sure, a simple tilapia or cod can be cooked right in the skillet with some oil and herbs. Add some white wine. That’s a fine way to do it. But for more complicated fish, the oven is the right place. Oil goes first, then the salmon or whatever, plus some dill and maybe lemon slices. Now, 20–25 minutes in the oven at 350 does the trick.
Why do people find this so hard? It’s a mystery because fish is the easiest thing to prepare. If you are lucky enough to live near a fresh seafood market, you can really go to town with whole fish complete with bones (I know, I know) and head and so on. It’s the way humankind grew up eating and it remains my favorite way. Doing this is a reminder: real food involves more than munching a prepped burger while you drive. You have to be careful of bones. This slows down dinner and that is merciful.
We don’t have time to explore things like pasta and rice, but suffice it to say that you do not need special equipment for these. Rice is two parts salted water with one part rice. Get the water boiling, add the rice, turn the burner to its lowest setting, cover, and forget about it for 30 mins. It’s perfect every time. As for pasta, it is not supposed to be mushy but rather a bit firm. Oh yes, you do need a colander in this case.
We haven’t covered glorious squashes! They are so underrated. There are a zillion kinds but try out the peanut, acorn, or spaghetti squashes. Cut in half, take out the seed stuff, turn upside down in a bit of water, and cook at 350 for 45 minutes to an hour. It’s a wonderful meal in itself especially once you add butter at the end. It’s all so simple.
Special note on white and sweet potatoes: you can cut them, skin on, in the shape of fries and cook them either in the oven or skillet. With oil. You won’t believe how much better they are than the dreck at restaurants.
As for sauces, there’s no real need but eventually you can master the red sauce (canned tomatoes are great), the white sauce (tricky to get the temperatures correct), gravy for meat, and then broth. You will eventually need to learn and master all four but that’s not really asking too much, is it?
This is just a beginner’s manual and there is a whole world to explore. Tell you what: here is a challenge. See if you can eat every single meal at home based on store ingredients alone for a full month. Your bills will plummet, promise, and the health benefits are massive. You will likely lose unwanted pounds and feel vastly better.
Now is the time! With restaurant prices soaring, you can embark on a wonderful journey of becoming a serious kitchen master.
