What is Reddit's opinion of The Can't Cook Book: Recipes for the Absolutely Terrified!?

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This is a good one! It teaches you some basics, and walks you through steps while acknowledging that some things might be daunting! My wife isn't much of a cook, and her parents got that book for her when we moved in together. I ended up reading it and learned a lot despite thinking I already knew a fair amount about cooking!

This website is the bomb. She does a lot of restaurant/take out stuff, like sesame chicken, only her recipes are way cheaper and way simpler than the same meals at other sites. Everything is super tasty and usually fairly healthy too. Some general tips, as someone who looooves take out and only recently is starting to eat at home:

• pick a day you don't have much going on, and make that cook day. Pick a recipe, go buy the ingredients, and just make a ton of it (enough to get at least 3-4 meals from throughout the week).

• invest in some decent Tupperware, to store said food in.

• don't overreach. I like to alternate days I eat decent homemade stuff, with days I eat sandwiches, with days I have take out. If your goal is NO MORE TAKE OUT EVER AGAIN, COOK DAILY you'll probably fail. Baby steps. Shoot for cooking once or twice a week to start.

• if you like Chinese food and burgers, learn to make Chinese food and burgers. Cook the food you enjoy!

• My physical cook book rec if you know literally nothing about how to prep and cool food. It had basic recipes that can be used over and over, and it goes over all the basic stuff like the different types of pans, knives and cutting boards, how to prepare/chop garlic or onions, etc. Lots of pictures too.

My mother got me the Can't Cook Book a few years ago. Admittedly, I haven't used it much because, well, it felt like an insult gift (as I was already pretty competent in the kitchen) and the recipes are really basic- but if you are starting from square one it seems a good resource. Like I said, it does have some (very easy) recipes but most of the book is chapters about kitchen tools, meal preparation, basic techniques and definitions of kitchen terms. All stuff you'll want to know.

As far as a next step after that (because, of course, practice makes perfect) I can more enthusiastically recommend Cooking Comically which is full of easy recipes, with step by step picture instructions in a comic book format, with a decent number of explanations of how to do new techniques and why you'll want to do things a certain way. Many of those recipes and some others can be found online here to give you an idea whether or not you should purchase that book.

I'm decent - saving money and eating healthy is huge motivation for learning how to cook! But I don't love it and I am proud to be a LAZY CHEF. Here's a quick list of things that helped me get started (several of my jobs were on the line in kitchens so this is all about efficiency):

The Basics:

1. Set some dietary guidelines and goals for yourself. This helps immensely with narrowing down your shopping list and recipe searches. Do you want to make sure you get 3 cups of veg a day? Eat clean? Always have ice cream in the fridge? Make pasta a few times a week? Master Cuban cuisine? Be a Sandwich Lord?

2. Set up your kitchen. All of these can be easily obtained from kind relatives / friends / goodwill. Ideally, you want your pots and pans to have nice, thick bottoms bc it will be easier to control the heat. If you go nonstick, make sure they don't have any scratches in the teflon:

• Frying pan (esp one that goes from stove to oven)

• Pot big enough for pasta / soup

• A baking / casserole dish - like a pyrex. Esp if you like lasagna.

• A baking sheet (for pizza and cookies)

• A cast iron skillet for frying (fried chicken) / baking (frittata, monkey bread). It can go from stove to oven, and is also easy to care for - no soap, just rinse w water, wipe out, and put it on a burner to bake the grease back into the pan.

• One spatula / turner, one large stirring spoon (I am partial to the standard wooden spoon), a pair of tongs (good for pasta, salad, and grabbing things out of pans), a can opener

• Spices - this really depends on how you cook. I don't find it necessary to get a fully-stocked spice cabinet in the beginning. Instead, buy as you go and figure out what you like. A roast chicken recipe that calls for thyme can easily be switched to roast chicken with oregano, garlic, and orange peel. You can buy loose spices at most co-ops so you don't have to commit to a whole jar of garam masala if you decide you won't cook Indian that often.

THE SECRET TO COOKING

• Manage your heat. That's what it's all about. Most of what you're cooking should be done between low-med and med-high. Adjust your temp as you go (you can bring a soup to a boil, then turn it down to a simmer). Cranking the heat doesn't always cook food through faster, but it does burn things faster.

• If you are new to it, find a good book or blog. There are a lot of great books out there for new cooks.

LAZY CHEF'ING aka How to Maximize Your Time in the Kitchen So Cooking Doesn't Feel Like a Chore

• Set aside one or two nights a week for prep and cooking and cook a few day's worth of food. Then you can just reheat leftovers or use them to throw together a quick meal. If you bake off a whole tray of chicken, you can have it over rice with lemon and olive oil the first night, make chicken salad the next day, chicken fried rice the third day, chicken alfredo the fourth day, etc. Having ready to eat food in the fridge at all times is the first line of defense against Grubhub!

• Get down with simmer cooking and cooking sauces. It's the same idea as Hamburger Helper. Get some jars of sauce you can simmer (e.g. pasta sauce, Indian simmer sauce, Coconut milk and curry paste), cook your aromatics, add your protein, add veg, throw in your sauce, simmer for 20 minutes. Stir occasionally. Enjoy with bland food accompaniment (rice, pasta, bread, potato, veg). There are a ton of sauces at your local Asian market.

• Bake and Roast. This is my favorite way to cook. Take ten minutes to oil and season your protein and throw it in a baking dish. Add oiled and seasoned veg to roast alongside (depending on how long your protein takes to cook, you may have to add veg mid-bake). Or, take ten minutes to assemble a casserole. Set a timer and enjoy 40 minutes of doing WHATEVER YOU WANT TO DO!!!!!

Bonus Round:

• Freezing food is awesome. If you are a meat eater, keep an eye out for good deals on meat. You can freeze them til you are ready to use them. Frozen turkey after Thanksgiving is a great deal - massive birds for $13 total. Frozen veg has saved me from throwing out fresh veg that I didn't cook off in time. If you have leftovers and you're kind of sick of them, freeze them for a later date. If you have a night of making pizza, make a few extra to freeze for later.

• Save more money in the long run by eating whole foods. A decent frozen pizza is about 2.5 meals for $7.99 with some nutritional value. You can buy a pound of steaks for $5.99 on sale and a bag of frozen veg to roast off for $1.50. That's at least 3-4 meals. You'll also save on your health care bill in the future.

• Find the best deals at ethnic grocery stores that actual immigrants go to!!! The produce prices are sick. A fat bunch of cilantro will run you fifty cents vs $1.25 at a regular grocery store. You will also find all sorts of cool veg like japanese eggplant, enoki mushrooms, kobacha squash, baby bok choy, that you can't get at a standard store.

I'll go with this!