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0:00 Wikipedia defines cooking as the science and craft of using heat to make food more palatable, digestible, nutritious, or safe. Crispy on the outside, heart attack in the middle. But personally, I don't think there's any one definition of cooking cuz there's just so much variety in how people do things. We'll start off with olive oil. Olive oil. Olive oil. Olive. Extra virgin olive oil. Olive. Olive. Olive oil in. Splash of olive oil. And a little touch of olive oil. Teaspoon of olive oil.
0:45 Olive oil in. Olive oil in. Olive oil in. Olive. Olive oil. Olive oil. Generous for the olive oil. Rich, silky olive oil. Luckily, it's actually pretty easy to learn how to cook, especially when you have low expectations. But if you're just starting, the biggest problem is figuring out how you should be starting. Many people recommend cooking classes, cookbooks, or culinary school. And I completely agree that these are all wonderful and effective ways to go into debt. But if you want to learn for free, I recommend one, watch other people cook. Ideally, people who explain why they're doing what they're doing. And two, make food while keeping in mind the stuff you learned. Neither of these is optional. If you just watch other people, but don't try to make anything yourself, you'll always be that one friend that tells everyone, "Yeah, I
1:31 can cook anything as long as someone gives me the recipe." Which at that level of experience is kind of like saying you can make tomato soup as long as someone gives you the can. On the other hand, if you learn to cook just by freestyling it at home with no plan, you'll miss out on some of the crucial safety tips that you learn from watching other people, like sharpening your knife so you don't have to press down with 75 lb of force to cut an onion, or opening metal cans carefully so you don't get cut by the lid, or using the claw method to safely chop vegetables. If you don't watch other people, you'll also miss out on some crucial techniques like salting and tasting as you go, adjusting heat to avoid burning your food, not using a metal spatula on a non-stick pan, not marinating your chicken in Algra syrup, not making a hot dog with unseasoned
2:18 chickpeas straight out of the can, and not dumping a cylinder of beans, also straight out of the can, into a cold tortilla and rolling it up like a burrito. It's very easy to assume that something is okay in the kitchen. But watching other people cook is how you actually learn what is acceptable and what's not. You're not allowed to serve burnt food, but it is acceptable to serve charred food. Also acceptable to serve burnt food as long as you tell people it's charred. Sometimes a meal only becomes acceptable once you add in that last finishing touch that adds in that missing texture or flavor. And other times like for grilled cheese, it gets less and less acceptable the more effort you put into it. Beautiful fireplace over there. You fire cooking in why cooking in fireplace for what? You got stove behind
3:05 you. Why? And that's why I recommend you watch other people cook. And unless you have someone at home who you can shadow like an apprentice. You probably need to go down the YouTube cooking rabbit hole. And honestly, it's not just one rabbit hole. It's multiple. You have simple recipe tutorials, YouTube shorts recipe tutorials, highquality recipe tutorials, higher quality recipe tutorials, fun recipe tutorials, individual technique tutorials, gimmro recipe tutorials, primal recipe tutorials, ASMR cooking videos, POV cooking videos, videos that make you question if you're actually watching a cooking video, videos that make you question what even counts as a cooking video. Chinese recipe tutorials where the title is clearly from Google Translate, thumbnail is just a still
3:50 image from the video, but the recipe is perfect, lighting is perfect, editing is perfect, no fluff, no clickbait, no mess, no waste, no subtitles, and if there are subtitles, you turn them off just to immerse yourself in the culture. Videos where you watch people attempt and mess up a recipe so that you can learn what not to do. Oh, I love it. All right, I'm going to make the same sounds. What the hell? I guess the oil from the butter got separated and it's starting to look like the combination of number one and number two videos you click on to learn one specific thing, but you actually come out of it unlocking 10 new things. Why recipes are holding you back from learning how to cook. Why water can actually help you caramelize onions faster. Why I always have pickled onions in my fridge. Why I always have a can of
4:37 chickpeas. Why I stopped boiling my pasta water. Why I season my cutting board not my steak. Why season my mouth, not my food? While cleaning the dirt from your fridge is holding you back from making good kimchi, this is the type of video that I recommend you watch the most of. It's pretty hard to learn how to make caramelized onions by individually learning all the bits and pieces and trying to combine them into a full recipe. Instead, you watch someone make caramelized onions and explain what they're doing. And from there, you can easily deconstruct it into all the little bits and pieces pretty quickly. When you actually get into the kitchen, you'll need a lot of things, but the one thing you cannot forget to buy are containers. You need a container for everything. Even your containers must be contained. I mean, when you think about it, your kitchen itself is just one big
5:24 container that contains containers that contains sometimes food, but many times it's more containers. So, um, let's go over how to you are a container. So, um, let's go over what to buy for a kitchen. knife and cutting board. Your knife doesn't have to be that expensive, but it does need to be kept sharp. A sharp knife is a safe knife. There are a bunch of gadgets to sharpen your knife, but if you need it sharpened this very minute, there are some ways you can do that. The cutting board should be big, heavy, and wooden so that you can start eating eggs and avocado off of it in your late 20s once you realize that plates are optional if you're only cooking for yourself. Then there's a bunch of other stuff that you'll need eventually. It's just the usuals. Box grater, kitchen towel, peeler, whisk, spatula, tongs, ladle, strainer, mixing
6:10 bowl, can opener, pressure washer, stainless steel pan, a pot, and maybe a walk and some kind of blender. On to ingredients. I have no business telling you what to keep in your fridge cuz that's your own decision. I got um popsicles, popsicles, popsicles. Then I got um that I got more popsicles. But if you're a hot pocket enjoyer trying to convert to real food, here are some of my suggestions. Butter, frozen vegetables, some non-frozen vegetables, some kind of protein, some kind of sauces or spreads, and then some dairy. And besides that, there's a lot of foods that don't need to go in the fridge, like bread, apples, oil, potatoes,
6:56 onions, garlic, seasonings, rice, uncooked pasta, and anything in a can. From then on, there's no point listening to somebody tell you what you should have because it depends on what you eat. If you eat a lot of rice, buy a rice cooker. If you're vegan, you can leave out the butter. If you're American, you can leave out the seasoning. If you're French, you can just eat the butter. If you're Gordon Ramsay, you can just eat the olive oil. And lastly, if you're British, I'll just let the Google search suggestions speak for themselves. All right. Now, let's assume you have everything. How do you follow a recipe? The first thing you should do is read everything from start to finish, cuz you never know what important stuff could be in there. So, let's say you've read the entire recipe. Now, go back and look at the ingredients. Not every ingredient is
7:42 required always, and after a while, you could kind of tell what's optional and what you actually need. This is the stuff you actually need. This is the stuff you have to actually measure out for everything to cook the right way. And this stuff is for flavor and texture. So, it's kind of optional. In case you don't have any measuring tools, this is about what a teaspoon is. And this is a tablespoon. Now, technically, they say that one tablespoon equals 3 teaspoon. But to be completely honest, you can kind of just eyeball it. This is a cup. This one you usually don't want to eyeball. Moving on. If you want to add more stuff, then you can add it. Don't let the recipe hold you back, especially when it comes to seasoning. Here are some good places to find recipes. Personally, I get mine from YouTube shorts, but you're probably a
8:28 bit more sophisticated than that. And once you start doing these two steps, you're pretty much on the path to getting good at cooking. But the last ingredient you need is patience. One sign that you're not patient enough is that you're always putting the stove on maximum heat so that the food cooks faster. This does actually work, but just keep in mind it will add a little bit of color to the food. And in certain cases, it may add a little bit of color to your house. Anytime you're not looking at your stove, you should just assume that the worst possible scenario is happening. Okay, it says add the pasta as soon as the water starts boiling. I mean, it's been 10 minutes. It should be boiling by now, right? Any second? Now? No, not yet. What about now? Nope.
9:15 Maybe now still nothing. Oh, someone at the door. One more thing that no one ever talks about in cooking is conserving energy. Cuz when you actually start cooking for the first time, Monday you'll make some rice and beans and you'll think, "Okay, now that I can cook, I should make something impressive." And then on Tuesday, it's salmon bennington spinach crepe and smoked salmon with chisna cream mushroom juice feeling with caper and dub caviar bon and rainbow carrots. Wednesday mac and cheese. Thursday instant oatmeal. Friday instant oatmeal. Saturday mac and cheese and instant oatmeal. Sunday cinnamon toast crunch. And then by Monday you'll have recovered enough to make rice and beans again. If you don't have the energy to cook every day, there are alternatives. You can
10:01 meal prep. You can make a lot of food at once and refrigerate it. You could buy instant microwavable food. Worst case scenario, Honey Nut Cheerios with milk is a complete meal. And if someone asks you what you're having for dinner tonight, cereal is a complete sentence. So that's what I think is the easiest way to learn how to cook. If that helped, I'm collecting donations in the form of subscribes to fund the next video. [Music]
