How do I become a better cook?

I guess u have to go to school take a class or something. The way ive gotten a little better is just by trying random shit and then throwing it away when it sucks. Its an investment lol

>>8375088

Yeah that's kinda where I'm at. It's working a little bit but then I see how professionals can just take a cupboard full of random shit and make a 5 star meal, can't help but feel like learning my way up there by trial and error would take ages.

>>8375091
They been doing it for ages too

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>>8375084

Learn the fundamentals nigger.

Mise en Place, Mirepoix, now learn about foundation flavour bases.

Get a good chefs knife and stop being a pussy.

>>8375084
he's going to cut his hand holding a knife like that

>>8375117

I've already learned those things, I'm looking for broader knowledge

I also worked in a meat department for 2 years so I've got a set of great chef knives and oddball items too

>>8375084
>>8375117
>Learn the fundamentals nigger.
Exactly fucker.Maybe start with this http://boards.4chan.org/ck/thread/8365125#top

No.8365125
I need help from experienced cooks

>>8375137

There are billions of people on the planet.

You can't ever learn all the various techniques used.

>>8375084
alton brown's good eats
learn the science then apply what you need

I envy chefs. Their studies are much more easier than accounting and law, and they get more free time and $180,000 wendy's salary. I hear bartending is pretty nice as well

>>8378499
>Their studies are much more easier

>>8375084

reflect on what you do... like ask yourself after cooking something "what can I do better, if I were to make this tomorrow?" and then work on changing one thing at a time with your cooking.

>>8375084
>How do I become a better cook
Same thing you're doing - practice and study. Other people's recipes can teach you a lot. Other people themselves can teach you more, but good luck getting a chef on his/her day off.

>Spices
This mostly comes from tuning your tastebuds, and a lot of trial and error. For the most part, you can tell what a spice will give you by sampling a small bit of the raw product, or making a "tea" or tincture. Cooking time will probably mellow it... certain things will toast well, others won't, that's where trial and error comes in. It isn't impossible, just let your tongue and imagination fill in the gaps until you've got your own mental codex.

>adopt some regional cuisine
Depends on how intensely you want to study. A lot of flavours and techniques are transferable, and a lot of cuisines/styles lend themselves very well to improvisation and fusion.

>tl;dr
a lot of it is "Stop thinking about it, and just do it," and most of the rest is "Well, I fucked that up. Can I fix it, and how?"

I originally learned from cooking shows, and a little bit from my parents. They'd let me make/fuck up dinner about once a week when I hit ten - if it was inedible, we'd order pizza.

When I dropped out of university, I started working in restaurants, and gleaning whatever info I could. While I did take a lot of tidbits away from it, most of what I learned is that a lot of restaurants might as well be fast-paced factories. No soul, no inventiveness, just plating and dogged repetition.

There are cooking lessons available, whether on a serious, post secondary education level, or just something happening at a local recreation centre or up-scale grocery store. I teach one about once a month to pay for my alcoholism.

>>8378534
>most of what I learned is that a lot of restaurants might as well be fast-paced factories. No soul, no inventiveness, just plating and dogged repetition.

So much this. I can't ask anyone at work to show me how to cook because the food they make tastes like completely overseasoned or bland shit. To them, faster is better than quality. Why make scrambled eggs on the moment when you can pre make it and simply reheat it on the grill when you need it? So many fucking shortcuts.

Nobody is willing to even begin to teach and can't take criticism. Then again, I'm getting mad at people that are still working a minimum wage job in the 30-50 year range.

And all the good people left years ago. The head chef is also a huge cunt.

>>8378534
what this guy said.

but if you want fundamentals, brush up on your mother sauces. each culture has a few of their own in one form or another. that will teach you about balance of spices.

try making Indian if you wanna go really spice crazy, and if you have a decent Asian market around, go into thai. Thai cuisine and Chinese has a lot of interesting spices and flavors associated with it. Galangal root, lime leaves, thai chilis, fish sauce, tons of lime.

French cooking can teach you a lot about the basics, but you can only really learn by trying to make a bunch of stuff and always changing what you make. not to say you shouldn't cook your favorites ever, but if you want to continue learned you have to keep an open mind about what you want for dinner.

>>8375084
cookbooks, videos on youtube, practice, experimentation. theres no book on how to go from a beginner to a pro, you just need to start out and have a wide spread of experiences

On Food and Cooking is the classic "actual reasons for shit" book. You can find it online if you google a bit.

For processes and general skills, youtube has a ton of culinary lesson videos.

I don't know anywhere with a reliable list of pairings, because it's such a subjective thing, but there are some papers about shared compounds as a way to match ingredients, like http://www.nature.com/articles/srep00196

There's the phrase "if it grows together it goes together", which is probably mostly true just because traditional recipes were cooked with what was in season, but it does tend to work. Otherwise, for pairing things you mostly have to build your own knowledge of how different things taste.

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Basically you need to understand the physics of cooking i.e. how different foods change as they're mixed together and cooked and how the physical properties of the cooking methods effect this. It's science, but most cooks approach it as art. I personally think you can save a lot of time in the beginning by approaching it as science.

Second, and I'm surprised no one has said this already but you need to taste a variety of good food for yourself once you have a basic grasp of the cooking process. The availability of cooking videos online is great these days I wish my dad who really wanted to be a good cook had lived long enough to benefit from them instead of just having to use recipes without clearly grasping all the prep instruction but modern cooks have come around thanks to all these videos and often have the technique down without really understanding flavor. Nobody follows recipes anymore like at all and as a result most things I taste prepared by newish amateur chefs is either very bland or one-dimensional often excessively to the point of being bad.

So yeah, get out there and sample good food made by professionals! Analyze the flavor profiles and the subtle textures that are invisible in cooking videos! Live!