BLOG POST-31 You Don't Need to Be Perfect—Just Cook

 

                                      You Don't Need to Be Perfect—Just Cook

Stop ordering out. Learn to cook. Not perfectly—just well enough to feed yourself with food that's edible and comforting. Start today with an easy recipe. Burn it if you must. Try again tomorrow.

Knowing how to prepare a meal that is edible and comforting is a blessing. Learning to cook isn't about becoming a chef but learning a life skill. Cooking goes beyond genders. Anyone who eats should know how to cook.

You don't need to master a 7-course meal. Start with something simple, even if it feels overwhelming at first.

Make tea. Crack eggs into a pan and scramble them while they're still wet, with a little salt and pepper. Toast bread and spread butter on it. Cook some dal and rice. Learn to make a simple sabzi. If you're feeling ambitious, try making rotis. They may come out shaped like maps instead of circles at first, and that's perfectly normal. Every home cook has made oddly shaped rotis before learning to roll them round. These are the meals that form the backbone of countless Indian homes, and knowing how to prepare them means you can always feed yourself something wholesome.

Boil healthy noodles and toss them with sauce and some sliced vegetables. None of these meals are complicated. They satisfy your hunger and, more importantly, prove to yourself that you can follow simple instructions and cook for yourself.

Rome was not built in a day, and the art of cooking is mastered one recipe at a time. Each recipe is a task in itself.

Chopping an onion alone can be done in 8-10 different styles—dicing (fine to large), slicing, mincing, rings, julienne. Each has its own purpose, its own taste required for different dishes. You'll learn this slowly, not all at once.

Adding salt can be tricky. It can make or break a perfectly cooked dish. Over salting is a rite of passage, a shared experience that connects you to everyone who has ever cooked. You will laugh about it later. You will do it again in a month or two. It's fine.

You will also burn things.

                                                                    

There will be times when you burn yourself—absentmindedly touching a hot pan, reaching in to stir and grabbing the hot steel ladle left in the simmering pot. In time you will learn to keep the steel one aside in a bowl or just use a wooden one. Sometimes you'll splatter oil while frying pooris or tempering your dal.

Each kitchen disaster teaches you something that no cookbook or YouTube video can. You can wear your burn marks as badges of honor, like a soldier returned from the battlefield.

Confidence does not come at once. It accumulates over small victories.

The day you open the fridge, see random vegetables and ingredients, and say to yourself, "I can make something out of this"—that will be the day to celebrate. You will have chosen to cook instead of ordering from a restaurant. You are now a cook.

Celebrate small wins. Cooked without burning? Victory. Did you successfully flip an omelet or a cheela without scrambling it? Triumph. Did you make rice that wasn't crunchy or mushy? Were you able to roll out a round chapatti and puff it up without burning? You deserve a medal.

The small wins matter because they represent you showing up, trying, and learning. Cooking is one of the few skills where you can literally consume the fruits of your hard labor, and every meal is worth celebrating.

The beauty of cooking is that there is no finish line. You might sometimes fail and sometimes succeed, but at the end of the day, you will be someone who cooks. Not perfectly but well enough.

And that's all you really need.

What was your first kitchen disaster, and what did it teach you? Or what's stopping you from trying to cook something new today?

 

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