How do you cook?

"Teach me how to cook!"
I get this question very often and I've never really had a definite answer to it. To me it was simple I guess. Cooking came naturally to me. I started in high school making spaghetti just browning the meat, boiling the water, and heating up the sauce. From then on I continued to sharpen my cooking skills as often as I could (and wanted).

For me it is easy to cook but still stressful. I think it all boils down to the desire to cook. If you don't want to, well you aren't going to get better. Practice makes perfect right?


Cooking is all about failure when you start out. Even when you're a professional things can go wrong! You're going to fail over and over again. You'll overcook steak, undercook chicken and burn the cookies. That's perfectly okay because cooking, like most things in life, is a constant learning experience. You have to practice again and again persistently.

The easiest thing for me that helped me learning is creating "signature dishes" and constantly cooking and experimenting with them. Different spices and flavors, you'll start learning what you like and don't like! Cooking takes practice and following recipes closely; make recipes multiple times to really get familiar with cooking over something you like.

Another thing I like to do to hone my skills is trying entirely new recipes every week. My goal for this year was 52. I'm around 30-ish so far! I've learned about things that I like and not like with ingredients I've never even heard of before!

Many things I make that I like to "show off" on instagram or other social media I am making for the first time. I'm confident in making these meals because I carefully read each recipe before I start cooking and make sure I know what's going to go on during the recipe so I have no surprises.

Like I said before, practice makes perfect! Continue to practice and you'll get it!