Delicious and simple recipes with photos for beginners. Cooking lessons Basics of cooking for beginners lessons
“I don’t know how to cook at all” – these words are uttered more and more often by modern girls. Yes, not everyone can boast of culinary talents and skills in preparing delicious home-cooked food.
But sometimes the fate of a relationship depends on the ability to cook food. The best way out is to learn the art of cooking. This article will tell you how to do this yourself.
- Getting Started
- Basics of cooking
- Kitchen helpers
- Learning to cook: simple recipes for beginners
- Reviews and comments
When deciding how to learn to cook from scratch, you need to understand:
- Anyone can learn how to cook quickly and tasty. The main thing is to have desire, attitude and patience;
- Cooking is creativity. And in creativity there are no trifles. Therefore, follow the recipes, but also be creative;
- try to learn as much as possible about the properties of products and their combination;
- start the learning process from simple dishes to complex ones;
- learn to use kitchen appliances and appliances;
- Believe - everything will work out for you, and soon you will become an excellent cook.
Basics of cooking
When starting to prepare dishes, remember that it is difficult to prepare tasty food from low-quality and stale products. Choose only fresh and natural ones.
There are many ways to prepare food, it can be:
- fry;
- cook;
- stew;
- bake;
- marinate;
- and so on.
Once you have decided how you will process your food, prepare the appropriate utensils. For pilaf - a cauldron, for borscht - a saucepan or cast iron, a special frying pan for pancakes.
Start learning to cook with simple dishes whose recipes you remember yourself.
Then make the task more difficult. Use cookbooks and the Internet. Good helpers are step-by-step recipes with photographs and videos.
Use salt and seasonings carefully at first. Add them little by little. Over time, you will get used to it and know when to stop. Do not leave the stove or oven on. Do not go into another room if you are cooking or frying something. It will definitely run away or get burned.
Pay attention not only to the taste of the dish, but also to its design. It has long been known that the appearance of food improves its taste.
Learn to use kitchen equipment and appliances. First, master simple utensils: spatulas, skimmers, hand graters, knives for cutting various foods, and so on. There are a great many such devices, easy to use and very useful in the kitchen. All of them are your faithful kitchen assistants.
Having mastered simple devices, proceed to complex ones. Multicooker, mixer, food processor - all this needs to be mastered.
Kitchen helpers
- Multicooker. A good assistant in learning how to cook deliciously, a wide variety of foods. Particularly good for preparing porridges, dishes made from peas, beans, and vegetables;
- Blender or food processor. Allows you to quickly knead dough, beat, cut, grate a wide variety of products.
You can use it to make a milkshake and squeeze juice out of fruits;
- Double boiler. A very necessary thing for preparing healthy and tasty dishes. In it you can learn how to cook delicious manti, cutlets, steamed vegetables and much more at home.
These are the most important helpers.
And there are also: pots, pans, knives, molds, mortars.
The list of kitchen tools and gadgets is endless. First, master the most necessary ones, those that you will use when preparing your first dishes.
Learning to cook: simple recipes for beginners
As mentioned above, if you want to learn how to cook food quickly and tasty, start with the simplest dishes. Very often they are the most delicious!
So, let's learn how to cook delicious food from scratch. Without practical cooking skills, you can surprise your family with a full three-course meal and dessert. To do this, use the beginner recipes below:
- 1. Main course – breaded pork chop. Tasty and tender chops are loved by both adults and children. Men are especially partial to them.
You will need:
- pork chops;
- breadcrumbs;
- semolina;
- eggs;
- vegetable oil for frying;
- salt, ground pepper, sesame seeds;
- mashed potatoes or stewed cabbage as a side dish;
- cucumber and tomato for decoration.
Cooking sequence:
- purchased chops should be washed and dried, placing them on a paper or cloth towel;
- beat the meat with a special hammer.
When beating, sprinkle with semolina;
- Sprinkle each piece with pepper and salt. Here you need to be careful - not to overdo it;
- Set the prepared chops aside, and in the meantime start preparing the breading. To do this, mix breadcrumbs and sesame seeds;
- In a convenient bowl, beat 2 eggs with a whisk;
- heat a frying pan with vegetable oil;
- Dip each chop in eggs and roll it in breading, fry for 2-3 minutes in a frying pan;
- Serve the finished chops with a side dish of mashed potatoes or stewed cabbage, garnishing the dish with thinly sliced cucumber and tomato.
- Soup. Make a quick sausage soup. Children love him very much. And adults will love this light and very tasty soup.
Ingredients:
- 6-8 pieces of thin sausages;
- 3 potatoes;
- 1 carrot;
- 1 onion;
- a handful of millet;
- parsley and dill.
- Peel the potatoes, cut them into even cubes, put them in a pan of water and let them cook;
- Soak millet in cold water for 10 minutes;
- Peel the onions and carrots. Finely chop the onion. Grate the carrots on a coarse grater. Place onions and carrots in a saucepan;
- Drain the water from the millet and add it to the pan;
- cut the sausages into pieces and add to the soup;
- Finely chop the greens and add to the dish 1 minute before they are ready.
- Cabbage salad with pear and apple. A very healthy and tasty dish, rich in vitamins. You can prepare it in a matter of minutes.
- a quarter fork of cabbage;
- large apple;
- large pear;
- natural yogurt or sour cream for dressing.
Preparation:
- wash all ingredients;
- finely chop the cabbage and mash it with your hands so that it releases the juice;
- Finely chop the apple and pear;
- mix everything and season with sour cream or yogurt.
- Pineapple dessert. A very tasty and simple dish. Prepared without baking.
For dessert you need to take:
- fresh pineapple;
- coconut flakes;
- berries for decoration.
- Wash, peel and cut the pineapple into slices;
- fry coconut flakes in a dry frying pan until golden brown;
- roll pineapple slices in coconut flakes;
- decorate as desired.
Make your first meal using these recipes and you'll see that learning to cook at home isn't that difficult. The main thing is to show a little patience and diligence. Bon appetit!
Initially, this project was conceived as an online cooking school. Even before the first entry appeared on the site, the course was completely planned "How to learn to cook". The idea was that a person unfamiliar with cooking could, in ten lessons, learn how to prepare a dish that would be quite difficult for a beginner - French pie. And finally, the first video cooking lesson is ready. This is a lesson for those who don't know how to cook. Today you will learn how to cook delicious, very tender, juicy and not very high-calorie chicken in cream under a cheese crust.
Lesson 1. “How to learn to cook.” Chicken in cream
Training level: 0
Cooking time: 10 minutes
Ready waiting time: 1 hour
For the lesson, purchase the following products:
- chicken breast fillet – 4 pieces
- cream sachet 20% 200 ml
- cheese – 150 grams
- garlic
- lemon
First, watch the video cooking lesson. And then read the description. The process is laid out down to the smallest detail. However, some may find the description too detailed.
But for those learning to cook and trying to make baked chicken for the first time, even such details may seem insufficient. If something remains unclear, do not hesitate to ask questions.
Cooking lesson description:
1. Take a bowl.
2. Open the packet of cream and pour it into a bowl.
3. Cut the lemon in half with a knife. Take a tablespoon.
4. Using a tablespoon, squeeze the juice out of the lemon. We need about one and a half tablespoons of juice.
5. Stir lemon juice and cream. You will see that the mixture has become with small lumps. This is what we need.
6. Separate two cloves of garlic. Use a knife to score the hard side of the clove and then peel off the skin with your hands.
7. Grate the garlic on a fine grater.
8. Place in a bowl and stir.
9. Grate the cheese on a fine grater.
10. Place in a bowl and stir.
11. Wash the chicken breast and place it on the bottom of the pan (I have a fireproof frying pan without a handle).
12. Place sauce on top.
13. Place a rack in the oven on the bottom rack. Place the pan with the chicken on the grill.
Set the temperature to 180 degrees. Cooking time is about 40 minutes. Until the cheese is browned.
All those who will complete the first cooking lesson as part of the “How to Learn to Cook” course, please report back in the comments! If something doesn't work out for you, ask questions. Together we will figure out what could have gone wrong.
Serving (video explanation)
In the video, the chicken is laid out on a lettuce leaf and served with boiled rice and chopped tomato. Shows how to make a neat hemisphere out of rice. I sprinkle oregano all over.
Basics of Modern Cooking for Beginners
What is modern cooking?
The art of preparing delicious, varied signature dishes from ordinary ingredients is accessible to everyone if you know the rules. Methods of stewing, frying, baking, choosing combinations of spices and flavors have been perfected for centuries, and the most experienced chefs on the World Wide Web willingly share their secrets with beginners. Do you want to become a real master?
There are hundreds of thousands of culinary recipes, and studying individual dishes will take a lot of time.
Do you want to master the kitchen quickly and cook like the best chefs? Let's find out the secrets.
Cooking (from the Latin culina - kitchen) as an art has huge traditions and many national characteristics. Cooking food that is tasty, aromatic, gives energy, strength, health and youth has always been considered the main thing, fundamental to life. The best chefs were lured away, the secrets of the “signature” dishes were kept in the strictest confidence and passed on from generation to generation. What did families keep behind “seven locks”? Of course, cooking technologies and knowledge of how to choose products and microadditives - spices.
Every little detail was important:
- a stove that maintains the desired temperature and keeps the flame open or closed;
— kitchen utensils (pans, pots, cauldrons, ceramic pots);
- tools (knives, cutting boards, devices for mixing, beating and chopping - whisks, mortars, skimmers and rolling pins).
Materials for manufacturing were specially selected: metal, wood, stone.
The latest technologies have combined the unique experience of chefs and modern electronic devices and materials and raised the culinary art to a new stage of development. Ample opportunities for creativity have been created:
— automation maintains the set temperature in the furnace with an accuracy of one degree;
— the microcomputer stores the basic modes in memory (you can select any of those offered in the instructions for the oven, multicooker or oven);
— timers accurately measure cooking time;
— special coatings on dishes protect against burning;
— hermetic lids, films and bags preserve taste and valuable vitamins.
A beginner needs to know very little for his first culinary experiences in the kitchen:
- rules for combining products - traditional for national cuisine and often familiar from childhood (you can choose exotic ones);
- cooking time - baking, stewing, frying or boiling for various types of meat, poultry and fish, vegetables and fruits;
- spices and herbs that can turn the simplest dish into a masterpiece.
The basics of cooking are easy to master.
We invite you on a fascinating journey through the delicious world of modern and traditional cooking.
The question of how to learn to cook deliciously from scratch is asked by many people.
It’s good if interest in kitchen matters comes in childhood or adolescence.
However, it also happens that a person, once in the kitchen, has no idea how to prepare even the simplest dish.
The problem is especially acute for young wives. As in the joke: “I got married. Help! He asks for some kind of borscht!”
To prevent such funny situations from arising, we will tell you how to learn how to cook deliciously from scratch using simple recipes and visual guides.
Choosing a way to learn cooking
To successfully master the culinary arts, you need to decide on the method of training.
There are many options: books, videos, courses, mom (this one is closest to me than the others). The last method, although humorous, is effective.
If you are determined to learn the basics on your own, many books have been written on how to learn how to cook deliciously from scratch.
Here is my personal TOP 5.
A book about tasty and healthy food
This monumental work on cooking was very popular in Soviet times. Dig into the family library: your grandmother probably had such a book.
Its advantages of the book are an orderly presentation of information with justification for each recommendation, simple recipes for tasty and satisfying dishes.
The downside is that some of the information in the book is outdated (for example, instead of manually pureeing or chopping foods).
Entertaining cooking
This is a real culinary encyclopedia - a godsend for a novice cook. The author of the work is William Vasilyevich Pokhlebkin.
“Entertaining Cooking” may be especially useful for men: they will certainly appreciate the scrupulous presentation of information and the fact that attention is primarily paid to the basic principles of cooking.
Once you have mastered them, you can cook without difficulty, simply by applying the right rules at the right time.
How to learn to cook. Traditional recipes for every day
The book not only tells you how to learn how to cook delicious food from scratch, but also contains QR codes with links to videos for each recipe.
The Lazy Woman's Cookbook
Daria Dontsova not only writes an endless number of detective stories, but is also an excellent cook, and also shares the science of how to learn how to cook deliciously from scratch.
Did you know that Salvador Dali once wrote a cookbook? Today you can buy it at auction for about 400 euros Don't worry: it's not as scary as it seems.
Cooking is a perfect synthesis of the creative process with mathematical precision - and the latter is manifested in the fact that there are clear algorithms for combining products and spices.
You've probably heard about the principles, combination of products, mandatory« First, second and compote» Soviet times...
All these views, ancient and more or less modern, tell how and why you need to eat, using different approaches.
Choose the one that is closest to you and is best perceived by the body than others.
I'll tell you about rules for combining foods in salads, which I studied myself.
This system uses the division of products into the following categories:
- Starchy- buckwheat, avocado, pumpkin, durum wheat pasta, corn
- Dairy- cheeses, milk and cream sauces, sour cream, Greek yogurt
- Fresh and cooked vegetables
- Sweet and sour citrus fruits
- Nuts and dried fruits
Cooking is sure to keep you busy! Fresh vegetable salads are best complemented with cheese, nuts, and dried fruits. Choose only one of the starchy ingredients, do not combine them with each other, or with fruits.
In addition, you should not supplement salads based on starchy ingredients with croutons.
If there is cheese in the salad, do not use other dairy ingredients (sour cream, cream, Greek yogurt, etc.), or sweet fruit sauces as a dressing.
Do not combine dairy products with fruits: they mutually slow down the digestion of each other.
In general, it is better to eat fruits separately from other components, supplementing as much as possible with nuts.
Remember that sour and sweet tastes interrupt each other, so dessert salad is prepared either only from or only from sweet fruits.
Advice: optimal “newbie” salads consist of three, maximum five ingredients, which are selected according to taste compatibility and nutritional value.
There are also common win-win product combinations.
Beginning cooks who remember these rules will receive a huge bonus to their skills from the very start, because they can be used in the preparation of absolutely any dish.
Basil and tomatoes complement each other perfectly in all dish combinations. These are the combinations:
- "The Holy Trinity"tomatoes, garlic and basil. Salads, appetizers, soups - the combination of these aromatic and tasty ingredients will make any dish perfect.
- You can come up with even more options for another trinity: goat cheese with beets and nuts. They can be eaten fresh, prepared in salads and casseroles - nothing can spoil the exquisite taste.
- The ideal pairing is hard cheese and honey. The combination of sweetness and light spiciness of aged cheeses is a recognized classic, accessible even to novice cooks.
- What could be better than aromatic boiled potatoes? Only potatoes with fresh dill. A very old and very Slavic combination that will improve the taste of a simple dish beyond belief. By the way, the taste of any potato dishes will be favorably emphasized by nutmeg.
- Apples with cinnamon are traditionally associated with desserts, but remember this combination when you master sauces, appetizers and main courses - they will all benefit from it.
- Blue cheese goes perfectly with pears. Moreover, the application options are very wide: from simple snacks to hot dishes.
We've sorted out the products. What about spices?
Fragrant grains, colorful powders, spicy herbs - looking at all this splendor, it seems that it belongs exclusively to the world of magic and alchemy, and is inaccessible to mere mortals.
It doesn't hurt to master some basic spice combinations. But do not forget that cooks are real magicians and alchemists, turning a set of ingredients into magical dishes.
A novice cook should remember two basic principles of spices: don’t be afraid of them, but don’t overdo it.
A dish without seasoning can be good, but the right spices can greatly improve and enrich its taste.
When using seasonings, you should choose the main one and two or three additional ones, which will highlight the main combination and add exquisite overtones to the taste.
Advice: if you buy spices not in a store, but at the market, ask the seller what is best to take for a particular dish. An expert in his field will easily list you a dozen options and help you put together suitable sets of spices for these dishes.
For desserts, use cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, mint, saffron, cardamom and star anise.
Fragrant, spicy sweets are made with the addition of sesame, zest, anise, ground and allspice.
Any mixture of spices for sweet baking will be successfully complemented with ground almonds.
5+ Easy Recipes for Beginners
But like any skill, cooking takes practice.
The secret of truly delicious dishes is in their preparation, experiments and original modifications of already familiar recipes.
So let’s roll up our sleeves and head to the kitchen to do our first practical tasks!
I have selected a few simple ones that do not require much skill or time.
Borsch
What's a household without something tasty? It's easier to prepare than it seems.
You will need:
- 300 grams each of cabbage and beets
- One medium onion
- One medium carrot
- 3-4 potatoes
- 4 tablespoons tomato paste
- Fresh herbs and sour cream for serving
Bring two to two and a half liters of water to boil.
Wash and peel, place in boiling water and leave to cook for one and a half to two hours (smaller fruits cook faster).
Heat some oil in a frying pan, fry chopped onion and grated carrots. When the beet is cooked, remove it from the water without removing the pan from the heat, and throw in the diced potatoes.
Let it cook for ten minutes, then add finely shredded cabbage and fried onions and carrots.
Grate the slightly cooled beets on a coarse grater and return them to the pan.
Add tomato paste, salt and pepper.
Don't forget to try: is everything enough? Let the borscht cook for another minute or two and remove from heat.
Tip: the recipe can be further simplified by using ready-made dressing instead of beets, roasting and tomato paste.
The easiest vegetable soup
Ideal for spring and summer: light, quick, fresh and fragrant.
To prepare, prepare:
- Three potatoes
- Three carrots
- Three large tomatoes
- One zucchini
- A couple of bright sweet peppers
- One onion
- Sunflower oil
- Fresh herbs
Simple and delicious vegetable soup Wash, peel and cut all vegetables into cubes.
Boil four liters of salted water and send all the ingredients to cook - for about twenty minutes, no more.
While they are cooking, make the onion-carrot fry and add it to the soup. Garnish the finished dish with parsley or dill leaves.
You can learn to cook this soup deliciously from scratch, and it’s even suitable for children.
Sauteed eggplant
It comes out very filling and flavorful.
For it you will need:
- Kilogram of eggplant
- Two bell peppers
- Pair of tomatoes
- Vegetable oil
- Parsley
Wash the blue ones and remove the skin, cut into slices a little less than a centimeter thick and in vegetable oil.
After placing the prepared eggplants on a separate dish, fry the tomato slices and chopped pepper in the same frying pan.
Place them on the eggplants and sprinkle parsley on top. Ready! A very tasty and elegant dish.
Vegetable steak
These can be served as a separate main course, or can be used to make delicious vegetarian burgers.
You will need:
- 500 grams of fresh green peas
- 500 grams of potatoes
- A glass of rice cereal
- A couple of large carrots
- Celery
- head of garlic
Send the carrots and peas to cook in one pan, potatoes (washed but not peeled) in another, and rice in a third.
Mix the prepared ingredients using a meat grinder or blender, form flat cutlets with wet hands and fry until golden brown, after rolling them in breading - flour or breadcrumbs.
Advice: it’s best to cook it in a slow cooker - then it definitely won’t burn.
Homemade sweets for dessert
What could be better than chocolate and cherry?
You can pamper yourself and your loved ones with them every day or cook them for a holiday - your guests will be pleasantly surprised.
To prepare you need:
- One and a half bars of chocolate (150 grams) per “dough”
- Half a tile for “breading”
- 150 grams chopped nuts
- 150 grams of sugar or powdered sugar
- Fresh or frozen pitted cherries
You can make delicious sweets yourself Take a small saucepan or bowl and melt in it, placing the dishes over low heat and stirring constantly.
Once it becomes liquid, remove the pan from the heat and add the nuts and sugar to the chocolate.
Let the mixture cool slightly and quickly roll out portioned balls a little larger than cherries. Press a berry into each ball and roll in grated chocolate.
Leave it in the refrigerator for a day and enjoy!
As you can see, both a teenager and an adult can learn how to cook deliciously from scratch.
The main thing is lively interest, courage and... Well, we wish you good luck and culinary success!
Text: Alina Lebedeva
The cold is not a reason or excuse for locking yourself at home and lying in bed. But if this happens, you can and should spend your time usefully: you can clear up your work, clean up, or prepare food according to video recipes from great chefs and cooking enthusiasts - we suggest you do the latter.
Gordon Ramsay Channel
The Hell's Kitchen star and one of Britain's most famous chefs cooks "perfectly simple dishes" at incredible speed. Although at first glance it seems that it is almost impossible to prepare profiteroles with Parma ham, having a humanities education, in reality everything turns out to be simple and really tasty (you can trust Ramsay: his restaurant and book empire has collected a total of 12 Michelin stars). In addition to instructions for preparing dishes, the list of ingredients of which often makes you smile, Gordon himself often posts funny videos not related to food.
Rouxbe
The founders of the Rouxbe culinary school believe that video courses can teach many more people how to cook than cookbooks - simply because the latter sometimes do not even open after purchase. The entire site is a library of various lessons and full-fledged courses: professional chefs tell you how to properly fry (anything), sharpen a knife and cook different broths. A subscription to all videos at once costs three hundred dollars, but you can also buy a monthly subscription: it will cost only five.
America's Test Kitchen Cooking School
Another full-fledged online school. As on Rouxbe, the number of possibilities is dizzying: there are simply video recipes, there are lessons that will teach you how to hold a knife correctly, choose meat and keep the kitchen clean (so called, kitchen basics) or introduce you to techniques for making chili, pizza, sauces, etc. other dishes. This school also has a fee ($20 per month), but you can take a free basic cooking course.
Jamie Oliver's Food Tube
Who doesn't know Jamie Oliver? World-famous TV presenter, author of many culinary programs. One of the most successful is the show “The Naked Chef”. “Naked” - because the English chef does not even think of hiding anything from the audience and fully demonstrates his culinary skills. Jamie always explains to people how to cook his favorite and fairly simple dishes in an accessible and understandable way. And the operator manages to turn this process into a beautiful show.
Child Nutrition and Cooking
Stanford University course promoting healthy eating for children. But if you want to feed your kids healthy food and not fast food, what’s stopping you from eating that way yourself? Lessons are periodically interrupted by lectures on healthy eating and clear comments from doctors. Simple homemade dishes are prepared. The course is in English with English subtitles, and cooking lessons in other languages should be available soon. The next session begins on January 13, the course length is five weeks.
Culinary talent is not given at birth; this skill can only be developed. And it is quite possible to receive a master class from real gurus while sitting behind the screen of an electronic device. The educational portal SmotriUchis.ru will provide a selection of videos about the most original and delicious dishes from different countries. You can take online cooking courses for free and learn how to prepare delicious and mouth-watering delicacies online.