I learned to cook only at the age of 28. I started off with just preparing pre-made salads from the grocery store and overcooked chicken breasts. Today, I’m fairly confident in the kitchen and can cook hundreds of dishes with or without a recipe.

Here is my guide to anyone who wants to learn how to cook better in the kitchen.

The 5 Levels of Cooking

First, here is what I think is a roadmap of cooking experience. Identify where you are, so you’ll know where to focus your attention on next.

  1. Instant. You are able to do 1-2 steps of a dish. Cook Instant noodles. Toast bread and spread jam. Fry pre-packed chicken. Heat a frozen pizza. I believe everyone starts out at this level.

    For the first 28 years of my life, I only knew how to do this because we always had food already prepared at home. So for anyone who is starting out here, do not say, “I cannot cook”. Because it is I believe where everyone really starts.
  2. Apprenticeship. You follow recipes online and follow them to the letter. They say, you do. Cooking multiple dishes and repeating them again and again will build confidence and knowledge in the kitchen. It grows your familiarity of the landscape of what’s possible.

    As I and Mae became bored of the food we were eating, together with the hassle of having to think of what to eat every day, we eventually subscribed to a meal plan service where they would send you 5 recipes per week and it changed every week. This is what greatly expanded my ability to learn ingredients and try different cooking techniques.
  3. Curiosity. This is when you start venturing outside the recipe books. You start substituting ingredients because it’s not available. You change up flavors because you already know you (or someone you’re feeding) doesn’t like that ingredient. It’s 50-50 at this point. Sometimes you mess it up, sometimes it works out well. Overall you mess up less and less, you can fix mistakes better, and you become truly comfortable in the kitchen.

    This is the level I’m currently at. And I don’t know for certain what comes next. But if I were to take a guess it would be:
  4. Focused Experimentation. This is starting to take more meticulous notes of your kitchen experiments. It is still powered but curiosity but tempered with a quest for mastery. You start going back to recipes and your notes so that you can ‘perfect’ the recipe.

    Currently, I have no plans to reach this stage yet. I am still happily just mindlessly playing in the kitchen for now.
  5. Mastery. I don’t even know what chefs at this level can already do. I imagine they have this 3 forces of experience, courage and curiosity that allows them to cook anything they dream of, with what is available to them.

Now at this point, I do hope you enjoy

The 4 Most Important Steps to Become a Better Cook

  1. Find someone to cook for consistently.
    You better in the kitchen the more opportunities you get to be in the kitchen. This step means deciding and choosing when and who you’ll cook for.

    It could start by saying you’ll start to prepare food when you host/visit friends instead of ordering out during weekends. Or you could say you’ll prepare meals for the family 2x a week.

    By simply increasing the opportunities you’re able to cook, you’ll get better out of necessity because it’s not just your meal that’s on the line.
  2. Have a process for finding what to cook.
    Choosing what to cook is a hassle. (Just like choosing what show you want to watch). The best tip I have for this is to let others choose for you.

    This can be done by subscribing to a meal plan (if you’ll be cooking for yourself or your family).

    Alternatively, if you’re hosting friends you can ask them what they want or are craving and then cook that. For instance, whenever I’m hosting friends, I give them 3 options:

    a. Are they craving any dish lately? (If yes, then I’ll just cook or order that).

    b. Pick a ‘main’. They can choose chicken, beef, pork, seafood, veg, rice, pasta, etc. And I’ll search for a dish that I’d like to try cooking in that category.

    c. Pick a ‘cuisine’. They can choose from Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Mexican, Indian, western, Mediterranean, etc. And then based on the cuisine, I’ll just pick the dishes there.

    By asking what others like, this forces me to go out of my comfort zone or my ‘go-to’ dishes and explore new preparations.
  3. Laugh at your kitchen mistakes.
    Mistakes in the kitchen are inevitable. From cooking really bad food. To using an expired ingredient. To breaking plates and cooking glassware (because it was hot from the oven, and you cooled it with water). To burning or cutting yourself. It will all happen eventually.

    Know you’ll lookback on them and appreciate how ‘dumb’ you were, and how far you’ve come.

    Mistakes happen, and the cool thing is the worse and more frequent they are. The more your brain just tells you to stop doing it. So the less mistakes you make naturally, and the more victories and enjoyable moments you have.

    Remember that food is a love language, and the people you’ll be cooking for will appreciate the fact you’re going the extra effort to prepare a home-cooked meal. (IF they don’t why are you inviting them in the first place? LOL).
  4. Savor your victories.
    Literally. There is nothing more satisfying than tasting food you prepared and really liking it. Of course getting compliments are nice too! But at the end of the day you can relish in the fact that you created something that you and others enjoyed.

    And that skill of creating something from a bunch of ingredients is something no one can take away from you ever. Enjoy the food, enjoy the company and make sure to set-up the next time to meet-up again!

I do hope this guide helps you in your journey to enjoying cooking and food more!