There’s a new book out called “How I Learned to Cook” featuring stories from storied chefs such as Rick Bayless, Mario Batali, Marcella Hazen, Anthony Bourdain and many more. What a brilliant idea for a book.
Of course, you don’t have to be famous to tell that story. I’ll get the party started… my grandmother was always in the kitchen and I remember hanging out with her. I learned by watching, and practicing as often as I could. I made my first family dinner when I was 9.
Still, I later learned what I had been doing wrong when I took a course at the Culinary Institute of Amercia in Napa Valley. Oh, so you start stock with cold water. And you don’t throw everything into the wok at once. And it’s really not that hard to make your own corn tortillas. I would still rather wing it than follow a recipe, though.
What about you? Did someone teach you to cook? Did you learn by reading or watching cooks on TV?
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Responses to “How did you learn to cook?”
October 18th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
I’m sure you guys are tired of hearing about my mom but that’s where my love of food and my extended waist line started. Mom never worked outside the home so she was always cooking dinner when I’d come home from school. It just seemed natural to help. Mom did the basics. To her spaghetti, pizza and tacos were gourmet food. Her chicken and dressing, country fried steak, and fried chicken were the best ever. Then of course, she baked. I don’t have the patience for that. I hate recipes and can’t stand to measure.
My sister is nine years older. When she took home ec she and I started experimenting. We laugh to this day about the time mom and dad were gone so we baked SPAM topped with mushrooms, tomato PASTE, and mozzarella. It was a terrible lesson in the difference between tomato paste and tomato sauce.
I’ve always been able to do the basics but it’s only been in recent years…well, since our trip to Paris and the evolution of Food Network that I’ve branched out.
Tonight I’ve slow cooked a roast with potatoes and rosemary. I’ve cooked purple hull peas with ham hock and I’ve baked pears and acorn sqaush. I’ll shred the roast and serve it over the squash, potatoes and pears mashed together with the peas on the side in a scooped out cornbread muffin.
A little old…A little new.
October 18th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
I don’t recall when I started cooking, really. I was always with my mom and my grandmother in the kitchen and I know by the time I was 10, I could fry chicken or make spaghetti. I remember as a punishment for something, I was forced to plan and make meals for the family for two weeks when I was 13.When I got older, my father retired from his job at Du Pont for medical reasons. He took up cooking, and he branched out into more ethnic cuisine than we’d previously had in my family.
However, it’s only within the past few years I’ve gotten into haute cuisine.
I still stick to my roots, though. Tonight’s chicken pot pie for dinner is proof that I’m not entirely a food snob 
October 19th, 2006 at 5:50 am
When I was growing up my mom did most of the cooking and since she put everything on “B” for burn my culinary lessons from her were not ones I wanted to share with others! Fortunately we ate out all the time so I was able to experience different foods at a young age! I think testing and tasting different foods made me culinarily curious so when it was time for me to test the cooking waters I was not afraid to jump in and rattle those pots and pans so to speak! I love the whole cooking process - from purchase to prep to partaking and I am not afraid to fail when it comes to cooking. I do watch cooking shows, read cookbooks and cooking mags and love to try recipes or just get in there and whip something up on the fly with whatever is in the kitchen. Sometimes good. Sometimes not so good! I am no Rachel Ray but I can whip up a decent plate of grub!
October 19th, 2006 at 8:54 am
I learned the “basics,” such as they are, from my mother, my grandmother on my father’s side, and my grandfather on my mother’s side (my maternal grandmother died when I was about six, and was incapable of cooking for the last few years of her life–I think my grandfather picked up cooking out of necessity–although southern Americans with French heritage have a cooking tradition). I got interested in more interesting food when I got involved in theatre and was introduced to gourmand and bon vivant Eugene Walter, through whom I learned a number of fundamental secrets over countless dinner parties and trips to the Chinese restaurant.
Still, I wouldn’t say I know how to cook more than a couple of things. My bread-baking skills are pathetic, anything involving flour tends to explode in the kitchen, and anything that can stick and burn will.
October 19th, 2006 at 8:56 am
For me, it was mostly watching my great-grandmother cook, as well as being assigned “kitchem chores”, like shelling peas, setting a table, and shucking corn by the time I was 4. The first thing I tried cooking was French toast, at about 7yrs, (and it came out just fine!) then I started baking cupcakes. Cassaroles soon followed, and my family realized they had a cook in the making!! I too enjoy making something up on they fly, it’s one way I can feed the creative side of me.
October 19th, 2006 at 9:41 am
I guess I learned from a combination of having a mother who is an excellent cook and trial and error. Most of the time when my mom cooked, I did the prep (chopping, slicing, etc). But, I guess some of her talent rubbed off on me, even though I don’t think I’ll ever cook as well as she does. I guess Food Network has some influence on new things I try out, too. And I love reading cookbooks.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:48 am
My paternal grandmother was one of the greatest cooks of all time & I think I inherited her tendency to be a messy cook as well. She served sourdough biscuits & cornbread muffins at every Sunday dinner, along with home canned vegetables, fried chicken, & everyone’s favorite desserts. She taught my dad to cook & I learned the fine art of country fried steak & gravy from him. As a newlywed, I would call long distance & get my mother to bail me out when it was mad scientist day in the kitchen - particularly potroast. I also learned from cookbooks & TV - I was an avid Julia Child watcher when her show aired on WKNO, & Food TV was a revelation. The most important thing I ever learned about cooking was NEVER to try too many unknown things at one time. I still remember the rolled turkey roast & curried eggs over rice that ended up in the trash after one unfortunate cutting-edge meal incident. I also remember to tightly close my spices after spooning them from the container. That omission caused the diastrous end of a great smelling chicken & dumplings dinner when the shaker top & most of the container of black pepper fell into the pot. The liquid was boiling & the pepper dispersed faster than I could bail it out.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:48 am
The Spawners of No Sluggo both worked and around the time of entering my teenage years, it fell incumbent to me to start the process of dinner on an occasional basis. The Female Spawner was no great shaker in the kitchen, so for the most part, my culinary repertoire has been established in the slow pot method of learning a little here and there, watching at restaurants, trying recipes, the food channel, talking to y’all, dinner at friends, reading blogs, magazines, eating out, cookbooks, and my own experimentation. Bride of No Sluggo has asked if she could gift me classes, but my long history as a recalcitrant student suggests that would not be satisfying for anyone involved. Cooking seems for me to be a brain-streaming result of a broad collection of across-the-board observations.
October 19th, 2006 at 11:28 am
My mom and an Easy Bake oven. I bet my dad waited hours on Saturdays for me to cook his bacon, eggs,and toast with that pesky light bulb. My grandmother let us help prepare more fun foods like fudge and pulling taffy. My mom also taught me that presentation is key and I always enjoy that aspect. No condiment bottles on the table! Read cookbooks like novels and watch the Food Channel. I subscribe to magazines and talk to other foodie folks. Have taken cooking classes from everybody and their brother. Learned to eyeball a lot and experiment rather than measure. Somebody told me one time they didn’t like watching some cooking shows because they didn’t give the exact measurements. I was thinking…but they told you what was in it! All in all, it’s just about having fun.
October 19th, 2006 at 11:57 am
Having graduated from high school at 16 and being the “rebel” I was, I left home at 17. I was never one to help my mom in the kitchen, with the exception of setting the table, not because I didn’t want to learn to cook, but because she never asked if I wanted to learn to cook. Therefore, being on my own at the ripe old age of 17, I learned strictly by trial and error, same as I’ve learned about pretty much everything. I guess it has its rewards, however, because I’m always “throwing something together”, and am notorious for taking recipes and changing them up to see if I can make them better than the original.
October 19th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
My momma was one of those great Southern cooks, you know, when company came, three meats, one was always fried chicken. Six veggies. Three salads, one of which probably involved jello. And wonderful home-made rolls. And cakes. And pies with crusts that when crimped around the edges, stayed that way. I never cooked much at home, but then I went to work in Paris, and was semi-adopted by the mom of a friend who had no sisters. What a revelation! Fish that wasn’t fried! Cheese for dessert! Artichokes! Snails! When I came back and got a job and an appartment, that’s how I wanted to cook, probably, in my youth, mostly to show off, if the truth be known. But it became a passion, and still is!
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