Start With Your First Recipes

By Veronica Brandy

Updated Nov 5, 2012

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We all need to learn how to cook food at some point in our lives, but preparing and cooking a single meal can be difficult enough for the cooking beginner. Many people are put off after trying to tackle recipes with too many steps or hard to find and expensive ingredients, and failing.

With the right information cooking doesn’t need to be difficult. With the help of Eatwell101’s team you won’t be a “disapointed home cook” anymore! The following list is an easy approach to get started cooking by your own and it can be useful as a primary resource for you before going deeper into this website:

Getting started cooking

But, why is home cooking so important?

Cooking is satisfying: when you combine quality ingredients with simple techniques, you create something that is way more delicious than microwave frozen meals or even restaurants. But more than that, you can customize the flavors and textures so that you can eat what you like, when you want to.

Cooking saves money: once you invest a little in basic cooking equipment and ingredients for your pantry, you become able to make all sorts of meals for incredibly cheap.

Cooking produces real nutritious food: you know industrial food is always full of sugar, sodium, fats and other weird ingredients. One of the first thing you experiment from cooking is that fresh ingredients really don’t need help to taste very good. When you control what you eat and reduce the amounts of fake stuff, you improve your diet and your health.

Cooking is time well spent: you can make a lot of possible dishes in less than 30 minutes: a big vegetable salad, pasta with homemade tomato sauce, chili with rice, or chicken stir-fry. Honestly, you can cook this about as long as it takes to order a pizza and wait for the delivery or to go to the closest drive-in, or to take your car to the grocery to pick up a frozen meal and thaw it in the microwave once back to home.

Cooking is rewarding: eating your own food, being proud of it and sharing it with people you care about is essential for humans. At a practical level, you are providing nourishment and sustenance to yourself and the people around you. On an emotional level, cooking can become a relaxing and highly pleasurable routine, as you get some rest from a stressful day and give yourself a chance to focus on something basic, elemental and meaningful.

Cooking encourages family meals: it’s a plain hard fact that family meals stimulate conversation, communication… and love.

We all have good reasons to begin learning to cook

Perhaps you have just left your parents home and moved in your first flat? Or you may be off to university? Maybe you just lost your job, while your partner gets a fulltime job, so your roles have inverted, leaving you at home to care and cook for all the family? Or you could have a ended up relationship behind you and your ex used to be the official cook… leaving you now trying to survive on take-away meals and unhealthy snacks?

Because of drive-through, take-out counters, vending machines, microwave meals, and other convenience foods, it became so easy to eat without cooking nowadays. No so-called convenience food can compete with honest food, real ingredients prepared at home, no matter how easily or quickly you do it. Our goal here on Eat Well 101 is to advocate the numerous and wonderful benefits of cooking at home: to make you a better cook.

Are you ready to learn to cook?

Basically, cooking is simple and straightforward. Just like many goal-oriented processes, you have to make your path through a few basic tasks from A to B. In cooking, you’ll encounter various tasks including things like chopping, measuring, heating, or stirring. Instead of maps or manuals, you use recipes. Your basic skills ensure the foundation. As you’ll gain in experience and confidence, you’ll become more creative. Even if you’ve never picked up a pot or pan in your whole life, you can enjoy some time in your kitchen every day. We are here to help novices and experienced cooks as well do just that.

Before reading further, check this page about the best cookbooks to learn to cook.

We encourage you to bookmark this page so you’ll be able to come back at any time and continue your exploration. We hope you find our cooking tips and recipes useful. Have a good read!

Healthy cooking tips

A good health begins with a good eating… So make sure to read these healthy cooking tips for beginners cooks.

Tableware tips

As a cooking beginner, you’ll soon have to entertain your friends or family to show your new skills! So here’s articles on how to handle various kind of culinary events.

Wine and Drink Basics

To complete a meal, a good drink is important. If you’re lost between Sauternes and Champagne, red wine and rosé or between cider and muscat wine… these tips and advices are for you!