The Importance of Learning How to Cook in the Modern Age

JamesPalmer

Since the dawn of time, the human kind has coped with the never ending question- “what’s for dinner?”

Time has changed. Today, we no longer pick up our spears and go out to hunt in the nearby wilderness, our hunt starts and ends in the local grocery store. These are easier times than the ancient ones. Instead of working your way day by day, unknowing what would tomorrow bring, we can now store food for long periods of time. We don’t need the killing instinct that was so vital for our ancestors, and can focus on building our fruitful, accomplishing lives, without having to worry about hunger and starvation.

No doubt we are leaving in glorious times. We can get into a supermarket and buy a microwave dinner that would be ready in two and a half minutes, we can pick up the phone and order Chinese food without lifting our weight from the couch, we can order pizza on the web without having to talk to the delivery guy, and if we are feeling adventurous, we can put on some pants and go out for a burger in the local diner.

Two things we have lost since those prehistoric days, when hunting our own food was so vital for our survival- the ability to cook for ourselves and our health. If you would look around you, you could see more and more people so occupied with their careers and lives, that they don’t have the time to cook for themselves, and thus never acquired the needed skills for the task. They can build fancy working tables and diagrams, but couldn’t boil an egg if their life were depended on it. This caused many health issues. It is proven that when people are not cooking for themselves they take less care of what they are eating, and tend to leave of unhealthy, high cholesterol or plain junk food, repressing the thought about what they stuff into their bodies to the back of their minds.

See also  Slow Cooker Chicken Noodle Soup

This is where cooking classes come in. In the past decades, more and more courses has opened, in order to fix that longtime neglected area in the modern society. This trend was much supported by popular cooking shows, such as Hell’s Kitchen, MasterChef and Great Chefs of the World, but grew even larger by the never-ending expansion of the blogosphere. It seems that as more cooking and food blogs are opening every day, the interest in home cooking is drawing more and more attention. This has caused an ever-growing interest in online cooking courses, blogs and websites, that will teach you how to cook from square one, even if you are the type of person that could burn a toast.

Today, if you are looking for a dinner idea, you will probably search the web. You could easily find every recipe you have in mind in minutes, followed by a step by step guide on how to cook your dish, without the need to have the slightest cooking experience. If you only set your mind on it and clear a few minutes of your time, you could find easy to make chicken recipes or any dish you would want, and start taking back the control on your life.

But even if you do decide to do so, bear in mind that cooking, like any other skill, is an acquired art, so if you are new to cooking for yourself, don’t jump ahead of yourself and try too complicated recipes. This could only bring you down and make you regret you even tried cooking by yourself. If you really want to make this move and start cooking for yourself, you should start with quick, easy to make recipes, which are suitable for beginners. There are millions of recipes out there on the web, and you could easily find the perfect ones for you as you venture your way along the starting points of home cooking. All you have to do is follow a few basic ground rules:

  • When you search for a new recipe, try adding the word “easy” in the search box. It will make your life much, well, easier.
  • Most of the cooking blogs and websites note the cooking time of the recipes, divided to preparation time and cooking time. As a beginner to the world of cooking, try to choose recipes with a short preparation time.
  • Have a look on the ingredient list. Usually, short list means an easier to handle recipe. If your dish doesn’t look exactly as the one in the recipe, don’t let it bring you down. Try to remember that the dishes you see are usually made by professionals, and the pictures are taken by experienced photographers. In fact, most of the dishes you see out there are not really edible. Most of the food photographers tend to add silicon and other materials, to give their dishes
See also  Why You Should Watch Cooking Videos Online