It's everyone's first time in the kitchen at some point! For the novice chef, the kitchen can be an intimidating place. But no worries! I am here to give all the tips you need to get started!
Take a basic cooking class so you know now to work in the kitchenw without causing lethal damage to yoruself and others. 1/2 an hour with a chef friend walking you through the hazards does count. Food Safety is important and Food Poisoning is bad. As are knife injuries.
Find several 3-5 ingredient recipes that you can make quickly and easily. These are going to be your fallbacks for the "I'm too tired to cook nights." These are your sandwiches and frozen chicken patty dinners. They are just as viable as regular meals when you are unable to do anything. Some nutrition is better than no nutrition.
Talk to your chef friend(s) about good places to find recipes. Cookbooks (Especially ones printed before 2022) are a must. I reccomend the following cookbooks and recipe sites to get you started:
As you cook and continue learning, you'll find you use certain recipes and ingredients more often than others. Budget Bytes has a pantry Staples list that I can reccomend to get you started, or you can check out the list provided at the bottom of the page.
If you're going to buy an 'odd' ingredient like buttermilk or heavy cream that you know you may not use that often, try to plan meals around getting the most out of that ingredient before it goes bad.
Sit down and write out your grocery list before you go to the grocery store. Not only does this prevent forgotten ingredients, but helps prevent 'splurge' purchases.
Stop your stomach from shopping for you. Shopping on an empty stomach is more likely to cause 'splurge' purchases.
There's nothing worse than getting halfway through a recipe and realizing you're out of something. Take a moment to make sure you have enough of everything before you start; You'll save a lot of heartache.
Cooking is an Art, baking is a Science. Baking overall requies much more precision in ingredient ratios than cooking does. You can get away with a little more or a little less of something or a substitution in cooking than you can in baking.
Most recipes don't list the tools, pots/pans, or other cooking implements needed at the top of the recipe. You'll need to read through and hope the author (Or you) aren't making assumptions about what you have in your kitchen.
These are best kept in airtight containers in your pantry or kitchen closet. I tend to use glass containers, but if those are too heavy or too many mini-mogs are running around your kitchen, plastic will work just as well. Base the size of the container you need on the size of the bag/box of ingredient you're buying. Your nice, airtight plastic container should be able to hold the whole bag of flour you're about to buy.
These are the little weird plastic canisters that can take your meal from 'plain' to 'plain amazing.' You don't need to go out and buy an entire organic grocery's worth of these; you need suprisingly few to make some great meals. (but you will eventually have that one recipe that needs white pepper and then you have it forever.) If you live near a grocery that has bulk spices, this is going to be the best and cheapest place to get them.
You're going to need some form of oil for a lot of your recipes, and your mini-mogs will riot if they can't have ketchup with their raptor nuggies. Here's a few basic ones that are good to keep on hand. Some of these may need to be refridgerated after opening.
These are good items to keep in your freezer for a rainy day. Sometimes it's frozen meals, sometimes's it's a pre-made meal you've frozen for a later date, sometimes it's ingredients you use once in a blue moon.
These are common items you probably already have in your fridge, but are handy to have on hand.
Nothing like a nice pile of cans in the pantry to stub your toe on. Still, these are shelf stable and really hand to have in a pinch.