At home, my mom did all the cooking. She’s a great cook and although she probably would have loved to teach me to cook, I never showed any interest in cooking while I was growing up. Besides picking up on what she was doing in the kitchen some days, I wasn’t actually taught to cook by her.
I first learned to cook from taking a cooking class in college right before getting married. At that point in my life, my cooking skills were about to be needed, so I had to learn. Since I was required to cook several meals with my assigned group in cooking class, I started to enjoy the process of making a delicious meal.
I remember just the meal that made me excited to be cooking. My group cooked for a guest teacher, and the 3 of us chose the menu together. We cooked a Spinach Quiche and a Cheddar Cheese soup. What a rich meal, but oh it was so good – and colorful, too!
But aside from my cooking class, I learned even more about cooking from watching cooking shows, mostly The Food Network. I loved the simplicity and honesty that came from Rachael Ray’s 30 Minute Meals. Not only have I learned skills from watching Rachael Ray cut up onions and celery and practicing those skills in my own kitchen, but I’ve also come to realize how artistic cooking and serving food dishes can be.
And Giada De Laurentiis’ Everyday Italian show showed me how exciting food could be, even just the sound a food makes when put in a pan.
And I’m still learning to cook. my favorite cooking show lately has become TLC’s Take Home Chef. To me it’s interesting to watch Curtis and his supermarket shopper-of-choice go home and be real in a real kitchen. From this show I’ve learned a lot, but what sticks out in my mind that I’ve learned are the new dishes that Curtis makes me want to cook. He doesn’t usually make more than a main dish, a side or appetizer and a dessert; the fact that he doesn’t cook more dishes encourages me that a great meal doesn’t have to be elaborate.
There are many different ways to learn to cook: watching someone else, taking a cooking class, reading a self-help book, or watching cooking shows on TV. But if you’re like me at all, you probably learned or will learn to cook when you’re really interested or especially needed in the kitchen.
How did you learn to cook?