A New Way To Cook At Home

RecipesCooking

Apr 23

For those who want to cook at home but need it to be simpler, let these ideas be a new way forward.

It must be said that the sheer volume of recipes available today is overwhelming. With so many options, we’re constantly starting from scratch, but learning very little about how to cook. No one can absorb hundreds of recipes deeply enough to become independent in the kitchen; fluency doesn’t work that way.

Recipes can be useful, but more often than not, they’re precisely what keep us out of the kitchen. They require ingredients we don’t have, or don’t know how to use beyond that one dish. They lead to waste and guilt when the extras go unused. And in their precision, they leave little room for instinct: no flexibility, no substitutions, no sense of what else could work instead.

Most recipes come to me by way of reels on Instagram. There, we’re expected to internalize an entire process in 30 seconds — where a potato becomes gratin, or a tomato becomes vodka sauce — seemingly instantly. It’s not intuitive. And it’s not how people have learned to cook historically, or how we have to cook now.

What I’ve come to realize, as someone who cooks regularly but without professional training, is that mastering one recipe often means we’ve already learned the foundation for several others. Many recipes follow the same general structure, and it’s only a small change in method or ingredients that sets them apart. The overlap is more significant than we tend to think, and the distinctions are subtler than we’re led to believe.

For example..

If you can make a stir-fry, you can also make fajitas, fried rice, noodle bowls, or a breakfast hash. The formula is a hot pan, a mix of vegetables and protein, seasoning, and a starch that brings it all together.
If you can make soup, you can also make curry, stew, or chili. These dishes rely on aromatics, a base liquid, and a mashup of vegetables and protein which are simmered for maximum flavor.
If you can scramble eggs, you can also make porridge or polenta. Each begins with a soft, yielding base gently stirred over heat, seasoned creatively, and watched closely to mind the texture and moisture.

Recipe developers often work within existing frameworks, adding subtle tweaks or substitutions to make a dish feel new. But this approach is not exclusive to professionals. With a basic understanding of how ingredients function, anyone can cook with the same sense of flexibility.

Think of shallots, onions, leeks, and scallions. In most cases, they serve the same purpose which is to build aromatic depth at the start of a dish. The same logic applies to yogurt, sour cream, and labneh. Spinach, kale, and chard. Chickpeas, white beans, and lentils. They‘re not identical ingredients, but the roles they play are often exactly the same.

Sometimes a single ingredient is all it takes to turn one meal into another. A tomato-based stew becomes a curry by adding coconut milk and spices. A salad becomes a grain bowl with a simple change in base and dressing. Once we start seeing ingredients as interchangeable, our options multiply without needing to learn something new.

A personal sidenote..

I’m often tempted to cook something elaborate in the middle of the week—usually inspired by a dish I tried or saved over the weekend. But almost always, the timing doesn’t hold. My work day stretches, or priorities shift, and by the time I return to the idea, the ingredients have wilted or expired. I’ve learned that cooking doesn’t need to be ambitious all the time. Handmade dumplings are better left for an idle weekend—or better yet, a great restaurant. Most days, I just try to cook the way I live: with meals I can pull off on a Tuesday, using the knowledge and tools I already have.

The new way to think about cooking at home is to recognize that it doesn’t require mastery of hundreds of dishes—just fluency with a few, and the willingness to treat them as flexible, living templates. Cooking is a language built on patterns, repetition, and accumulated familiarity—and too much instruction can get in the way.

So for anyone wanting to try again: begin with two or three meals you genuinely love, and let those be your foundation. Learn to make them more interesting, more technically sound—because that’s what builds confidence in the kitchen, and confidence is what makes cooking less of a hassle.

Start really simple. Pay attention, and the rest will genuinely come.