Okay maybe this isnt the best demographics here but like I mean as in if you know someone who’s Gen Z, do they have a “idk how to cook” issue?
(Please don’t be like “omg its easy, how could you not know” in the comments, be nice in the comments okay 🙈)
@WongKaKui
Nothing is better than practicing. On the fly is fine, repetitions help. Others have said as much. :))If the Taiwan flag in your avatar is an indicator for location, go ask grandma for tips, or go to any night market for cheap, varied food. Cheap and convenient. If that fails, there’s a 7/11 near you I’m sure.
Don’t fall into the trap “which kitchen appliance to buy”. Buying isn’t the first thing to learn here.
I am a litteral self taught cook. Cooking all from scratch and can tell you how to exactly cut appart and use every part of a bird
Yes, it’s universal. There isn’t a single millennial or gen Z person that knows how to cook in the entire world. This will finally put an end to our species.
On our tombstone it’ll say “here lies humanity, fallen victim to shitty parents who didn’t think to teach their children how to cook.”
Reject Cooking. Return to eating tree bark.
Return to raw berrys
So cinnamon rolls without the roll.
Disagree on the shitty parents part. For some, yes, but for others they are probably shitty cooks too. If my culinary education is any indication of that, there are ~20 family recipies that I have notes of or have done myself and my folks keep a small box of note cards written by their grandparents in the “we will run into a burning building to get this” box. They are instructions, not study material, and thats how I learned a patchwork of skills, but nothing formal.
I was never taught the science of “how the fuck to make bread” or “what alchemy mayo is”, that is something ive had to actually study myself (thanks anerican schools). I feel the defect is education on why we cook things the way we do, the basic building blocks are not taught by default to a level where people are confident in building something on their own.
I had a friend who was completely incapable of doing pretty much anything for themselves because their parents always insisted on doing everything for them, and berated them when they tried for themselves. They’re now in their 30s and have a breakdown any time they have to do anything, and frequent depressive episodes because they lack agency and self-worth. So there definitely are parents out there who completely fail their kids.
My mother was a terrible parent in the other direction. The expectation was on me to do everything as soon as possible. I was cooking full meals on my own by six, and when we moved countryside I was the firekeeper, in charge of the entire supply line of stacking, chopping, and transporting wood, to cleaning and ensuring the fire was kept in our boiler by eight.
I don’t think parents need to teach about gluten formation, how it traps gases and makes the bread rise, or emulsions. Just foundational knowledge so that they’re able to explore that and take a keener interest should it strike them.
Idk if it’s Gen z. I’m millennial and I didn’t really know how to cook when I was younger. I eventually learned from YouTube and recipe websites.
The first few zoomers I think of cook just fine. Although, there’s one that undercooks everything, because she’s impatient. A couple are actual foodies who will put serious effort in.
What exact age group are you thinking of? Teenagers haven’t really had much time to learn.
Anecdotally, one of the best cooks I know is gen Z. In general though, I think this is part of the predictable result of not teaching anything like home ec anymore for decades.
I don’t meal prep because the meals are rarely as good after 5 days lol. I try to cook simple foods for breakfast (oatmeal, or bagel and cream cheese), and make sandwiches to take to work for lunch. Dinner is something like pasta with sausages and a side of veggies (99% of the time for me, that’s garlic and kale fried together in a skillet).
So like I know how to cook. But I don’t have the energy for it anymore. The world around me has pushed soo many task off to me in order to maximize profit I just have a ton more to do than I did 20 years ago. And the frustration of doing even simple stuff due to corporate cuts saps more energy per hour than anything used to.
I think my secret is to do simple meals in batches. That way you only really cook once or twice a week.
For instance, my favorite meal is a tomato pasta thing, don’t know what it is called.
Dice up as much garlic as you want, fry this in oil, add 4 cans of crushed tomatoes, as much black pepper as you want, bay leaves and then cook until boiling. Remove bay leaves and add to pasta. Boom! your done. Can feed me for a week and for about $5-$6 of ingredients. I also add nutritional yeast for extra pep to it, but you can just do cheese if you roll that way.
Home cooking doesn’t have to be complex but it does take motivation to get started.
Still takes more energy than I have left in a day.
That is a shame, I hope your situation improves.
Thanks. It will be a race. When I get to retirement will older age rob me of as much energy as I currently burn on all the BS in life. Or will the extra free time dilute the BS enough to have some surplus energy again. I’m closer to retirement than I am to the day I started working. So there may be a light at the end of the tunnel.
I’m a single, Gen-x male and I despise cooking. Twenty minutes to prepare something, five minutes to eat it, and then another 20 minutes to clean up afterwards is, IMO, the most insanely inefficient use it my time.
Frankly I have better things to do. when a pill comes out that I can just pop in my mouth a couple of times a day I will be the first person in line.
For now, sadly, the best I can do it keep things as simple and as easy as possible prep wise (or order in… which gets to financially prohibitive sometimes)
I really wish cheap public cafeterias were more of a thing. We don’t spin our own clothes, or weave our own baskets anymore…
Huel and similar is as close as you get to your pill now but you can skip cooking entirely
They sell huel black at Costco now. Chocolate flavored vegan soylent 🤤
I mean, I’m Gen Z and I’ve pretty confidently cooked my entire adult life. I realized pretty young that dad wasn’t gonna cook for me forever and started helping with dinner sometimes to learn how. One of the best decisions I ever made.
Older millennial here, I have been cooking since I was in my early teens. But I also know people my age that would struggle to boil water. It isn’t an age or generation thing, it is something else.
When looking at younger people who don’t know how to cook, it’s not about them being stupid - someone failed them. Yes, to your point, cooking is easy. A rice cooker, a single pan, you can make a great meal…
But no one ever mentioned what temp to cook chicken at. What the hell’s a 4 (out of 10) and how much oil (or how little) should I use? Rice cooker comes with instructions and lines but that just makes plan rice - at least Zatarans has some flavor.
I learned how to cook a grilled cheese as a kid… And I hate cheese.
Then I was working in kitchens for seven years. So, yeah, I’ve got a leg up on people who’ve literally never cooked a meal for one, let alone 1,500 over a lunch period. It’s hard to ‘learn’ to cook entirely by yourself because fucking up your meal means not having anything to eat.
It’s not just Gen Z because no one taught their parents and Gen Z will probably fuck up their kids the same.
fucking up your meal means not having anything to eat.
You gotta fuck up pretty bad to have something literally inedible.
And you’ve never seen someone almost burn down a dorm because they didn’t put water in their instant noodles? People royally fuck up all the time.
Cooking doesn’t scale well until you are cooking for at least 2 people or batch prepping.
Oh yh, you have a point tho
I don’t think it’s a generational issue, just young people. Once you get kids you’ll learn to cook.
Maybe there are more singles and child free people or they take longer to settle down or whatever.
Just for context, a hell of a lot of Boomer men (and those men before them) could barely warm up a can of soup because cooking was women’s’work, despite most “great” chef’s being men at that time. Gen X men were a little better, but not by a lot. I’m Gen X for context.
It really only became widely desirable / fashionable for men to cook with the Millennials came along. Before then, the ladies were expected to learn how to cook from other ladies, but of course only some of them had role models to teach them.
tl;dr everyone cooking is a relatively recent phenomenon, and as all the commenters here say, it’s a skill one needs to learn. Thanks for coming to my mini-TED talk.
As a millennial, I only learned to cook as self-defence; my mother was a shitty cook. On top of that she regularly did some diet stuff while I was underweight. Virtually none of my male peers did much beyond heating stuff up.
My friend’s boomer aged parents got a divorce at like age 75. Nobody really saw it coming. His dad sent us a picture of some stew he tried to make and I didn’t even know you could make stew so bad. I could just tell from the picture. My chef roommate went over and showed him some instructions and tips on how to cook.
Yes, that’s called “growing up.” You have to teach yourself. It’s a frustrating process, because you don’t understand how to select recipes that suit your needs. 1/2 the recipes I found online usually resulted in a fail, because I couldn’t tell the difference between a good recipe and a bad one. I love the first cookbook I bought now, but at the time, what was I going to do with buckwheat blinis or tea-poached pears in chocolate sauce? I needed a basic pancake and chocolate cookies recipe. That book was basically useless for the first 5 years I owned it.
If I could go back, I would start with:
“I can cook vegan” by Isa Chandler
Chef John on youtube https://www.youtube.com/@foodwishes
Cooking is a skill. You learn it one meal at a time. What you want to start with is building a repertoire of simple, 15 minute meals that you love and that you can crank out with your eyes closed. Once you have like 3-5 of those, then you have a separation between “I need to eat” and “I want to learn to cook.” That separation is what lets you not feel frustrated and focus on your skills.
Since I see a few people just posting their favourite websites, I’ve gotten some good vegetarian stuff off Cookie and Kate.
Cooking is a skill, you learn it one meal at a time.
Wow, well put.
I’d also recommend America’s Test Kitchen (the older ones with Chris, because they focused on basics), and their cookbook (which is like $20) because it explains the “why” for a lot of recipes.
And Good Eats, because he was all about how things work from a food chemistry perspective.
I love the “why” and it applies across many recipes. I also recommend the ATK “One-Pot” cookbook for stuff that takes roughly ~45 minutes or less and fewer dishes (“one-pot” can be a little misleading).
Yes, it really is just having a few basic recipes that are adaptable.
Unfortunately, nobody generalizes their recipes, so you have to look up a lot of recipes before you see the pattern sometimes, and that makes it feel more challenging…
Someone needs to make a cookbook full of recipes like:
- Add oil to a pan.
- Add your aromatics [select from the following list.]
- Add your [vegetables]
- Add you [meats]
Cook on medium heat for 20-40 minutes, until everything is beginning to brown or something.
Insted, you get a 300 page cook book with all the possible combinations of spices and ingredients and it’s overwhelming.
You should really have a way to change up the texture, as well. Even if spaghetti, a pizza, lasagna and shakshuka are all starch and tomatoes, they feel different.
“Happy Pear Vegan Cooking for Everyone” is pretty close to what you describe. You get cooking instructions and a list of ingredients divided by their role in a dish (aromatics, core vegetables, beans, liquid, spices etc.) The recipes are great as is, even if you’re not planning on experimenting.
It’s kind of my dream to make a series of videos about taking care of your home (apt or house) and cooking for yourself. It’s kind of an ask your parents and grandparents kind of thing. There has to be something already out there, right?
Yeah, it’s called HowToBasic.
This should be much higher up - the guy’s amazing.
I helped me to see how to teach my son’s certain tasks that were at the time eluding them.
How To Cook Without A Book by Pam Anderson describes the basics really well and each chapter goes over the general principles of a kind of dish (like seared meat or steamed veggies) with a general master recipie and then describes variations (like different pan sauces for the different seared meats).
I found a PDF of what looks like the whole book: https://cdn.bookey.app/files/pdf/book/en/how-to-cook-without-a-book.pdf
I like this site for a “generalized recipe”
Ha, that’s like much every Lutheran hotdish recipe. Basically need a meat, spices, veg, and cream of mushroom soup. It’s pretty wild what some people come up with, but the tater tot and the green bean variants were staples when I was a kid.
https://www.ocweekly.com/five-great-minnesota-versions-of-hotdish-aka-casserole-6612337/
It’s awesome comfort food in the depths of winter, uses the leftovers, and is cheap to make. I don’t go to church anymore, but still love a good hotdish!
Plus one to Chef John. That’s how I learned how to cook, one recipe at a time.
I would recommend this one as a starting point because it’s easy, you learn a method that you use all the time (making a roux) and it’s delicious. I still make it all the time.
Chicken with Chipotle & Green Onion Gravy
Also a quick tip: you can roast most veggies (e.g. green beans, brussel sprouts, asparagus) with some olive oil and salt at 375° for a bit and they will come out tasty.
In my 20s I perfected my chili… It took a long time to get right, and I ate a lot of bad chili (but really, even the worst chili is still pretty good). I found the perfect ‘secret ingredients’ and techniques and then I got married to a wonderful woman, who is allergic to tomatoes and peppers, and doesn’t like beans. It’s been years since I’ve made chili.
Anyway, my point is just that you’re absolutely right… you learn to cook by doing it.
Tragic, maybe make some for yourself?
In an ideal world, I would… but I’m not going to make something that can take a few hours and then eat it by myself.
Any desire to share the recipe?
It’s been 20 years since I last made it, and it wasn’t something I ever wrote down… But from memory:
Dice 1 white onion Dice 1 bell pepper Chop a few cloves of garlic Add a tablespoon of cumin seed Saute the onion, bell pepper cumin and garlic in bourbon until the onion is translucent (I have no idea if the bourbon helps at this point, but it was an excuse to take a shot) Add ground beef (the amount will depend on how much you’re making and if you’re adding beans, I usually did 1 pound) . Chop up a spicy pepper or two (type and amount depends on how spicy you want it, I usually did 2 habineros and a jalapeno) After browning the ground beef add 2 large cans of tomato sauce and a small can of tomato paste. If you want beans, add a can of two of kidney beans. Add in ground cumin, paprika, onion powder, graphic powder, cayenne powder. Drain beef grease Pour in a bottle or can of whatever beer you’re going to drink with it . Simmer until the right consistency, stirring occasionally. Don’t let your hunger rush this step. Serve with sliced peppers, onions and shredded cheese as offered toppings.
Really, I’m sure I’m missing something with this, and I have no idea how much of each spice I added… I’m pretty sure I never actually measured it. Cumin was a game changer when I found that… It adds a great flavor. The whole seeds at the start add some texture, while the ground added later helps punch up the flavor.
Thanks. Ill have to give this a try.
Another great YouTube channel for learning to cook and bake is “Glen and Friends cooking”. He has years of videos and always aims his content toward those that are new to kitchens.
He does a Sunday morning old cookbook recipe every week as well that goes into food history. He also releases a regular recipe most weeks but his schedule is changing a bit. It is worth going back through his older videos because he does a lot of “what was on sale at the grocery store” recipes that are great for making cheap meals for your family.
I’d add that the cooking community here on Lemmy is helpful, too. It’s active enough that you can constantly get ideas.
Haha. Yes, it’s important to get some basics down. Get a small amount of stuff from the store and be able to do many things with it.
The fancy recipes are great and all, but you end up with some items in the pantry you may never use again.
I eat dirt and drink rainwater.
Its been noted in studies that all generations starting from Boomers have had less people who “know how to cook”. With instant meals came less cooking, and less cooking brought less learning how to cook.
I think that isn’t the issue. The problem is that “proper” food costs more than prefabs, and Cost-of-Living keeps growing while worker wages are stagnant. It is harder to afford perishable food that needs to be handcrafted, because that costs time, risks spoilage, and costs more for what it does.
Money is getting tighter, and consequently every loss feels worse.
I think it’s probably a bit of both, skill being lost to parents having less time to cook and everything being more expensive.
The cheapest way I know of one can survive a very long time is rice and beans with any source of fat. I personally like peanut butter, but understand that’s very much a US thing. But prepping beans over night requires having the time and know-how to do it.
