What are good sources for someone who wants to learn how to cook? What are easy things to make?
I’m cooking skills are near 0, though I want to learn some new things by the end of this year.
I’m saving these reddit links as references
https://www.reddit.com/r/cookingforbeginners/
https://www.reddit.com/r/EatCheapAndHealthy/
Search you tube . Lots of tutorials on every kind of cooking.
Pick up a basic book like “How to cook everything” from Bittman which will give you good, simple recipes to get a better understanding of basic cooking skills and how certain cooking work stream are best run, Once you feel more comfortable in the kitchen there are many other great books to expand the cooking horizon in any direction you want
This isn’t a source but a single recipe. Marcella Hazan’s carbonara. I use bacon cause thats what I have on hand all the time.
I swear you’ll love it.
The original, David Rosengarten, dean and Deluca cookbook
In addition to what everyone has said, if chopping stuff is new to you (for me, chopping is such a chore), I’d watch some videos on that, too. Here are some:
For recipes, I think Jacques Pepin recent PBS cook-from-home series looks good (haven’t tried any recipes myself). They seem very unfussy and don’t use exotic ingredients.
I also think some of the meal delivery kits can be useful (where they mail you ingredients + cooking instructions).
Disclaimer: I’m not a good cook and generally dislike it (mainly b/c I hate the clean up).
Not gonna lie…I started with simple stuff like 30 minute meals with Rachel Ray.
Jacques Pepin’s Fast Food My Way is also solid.
At some point, I added on Ina Garten and things from America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Country.
Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Food Lab as is his YouTube series is great. And his viewpoint is do what works for you because “if it tastes good, it doesn’t matter.”
While I find Josh Wiesman a little annoying, his videos on simplified cooking are pretty good.
There’s a wealth of information if you want to go the international route, too.
The world is your oyster.
In that vein, Donna Hay has some fantastic books with easy and delicious food
I’ve heard of this but never looked at it. Just told partner (who likes cooking) about it.
Maybe I’ll check out the Rachel Ray and Donna Hays for myself…
As a kid my family used to compare where we’d send Rachel Ray if “$40 a Day” came to town
I’ve never watched Rachel Ray (at least nothing approaching a full episode w/ her), so I hadto look this up (esp since I assume there had to be “rules”):
So what kind of places did your family come up w/? 
I don’t think carbonara is a good choice for a rank beginner. I’ve been making it for 30+ years and still fuck it up sometimes.
Another vote for Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. It’s a great resource for how to prepare different cuts of meat, vegetables, etc.
Marcella Hazan books are good. They are written at a very basic level.
If you’re interested in Chinese, Fucshia Dunlop is the equivalent.
Hazan’s first two books, The Classic Italian Cook Book and its sequel, More Classic Italian Cooking, assume you know nothing about Italian cooking, but they do assume you know some basic techniques, so I’d start with something else. They’re great cookbooks and available cheap used.
They were later combined into the single-volume Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, but I don’t recommend that. Some of my favorite recipes from the originals are missing and amounts of butter and oil in some recipes were clearly reduced without testing so the results are not right.
Have you made the recipe I linked to? What happened that you considered a failure. It’s so straightforward. And you can do it in three parts — meat, eggs and pasta —so timing isn’t important. (I just made it a few nights ago.)
The ratios of the recipes aren’t great and lead to a disappointing carbonara (and, yes I have made this recipe before) and the order how it’s done isn’t the best, e.g. pancetta last when everything is mixed etc. Hazan has good recipe, that isn’t one of them
I have to say, this is very bad advice to give to a beginner.
You and I might be able to, but cooking newbies are not going to be able to sniff out a poorly written (and/or engineered) recipe from a great one.
The internet is filled with people who speak confidently as they proceed to mess things up. Look at Jamie Oliver’s egg fried rice…and Uncle Roger’s takedown of said video: https://youtu.be/t_KdbASIkB8?si=BxI6rB_DQE4RaIGJ
The reason is that there is a huge pile of dogshit recipes out there which can leave a newbie thinking they’ve failed, when in fact the recipe/video itself is imprecisely/confusingly written and/or not well tested.
Cooks’ Illustrated/America’s Test Kitchen hits that sweet spot between precisely written and well engineered/tested recipes which are intended for beginner to intermediate cooks. One of the first recipes of theirs that I ever made was their coq au Vin. This was back in 2006 where I had very little cooking experience. This recipe was better than anything I had ever made before and it led me on a culinary path of making almost everything myself.
Note that they’re recipes from Cooks Country and Cookbook collection recipes tend to be of lower quality. I’d stick with recipes published in Cooks’ Illustrated beginning in the mid 2000s which is when they really dailed in the quality.
You are embarking on the same journey I’m on. After working in many of the finest restaurants in LA, I became disabled and am basically housebound (in a wheelchair). The thing is, I was strictly front of the house and although I could deconstruct the ingredients executed by the chef, my cooking ability was subpar., As an example, I had worked with Nancy Silverton but didn’t know a damn thing about baking. So, instead of being depressed about my physical condition, I hit all of my signed, unopened cookbooks with a vengeance. I began by learning how to prepare the dishes that I like. Sweetbreads come to mind. Afterwards, I educated myself on how to prepare basic French sauces. This new journey has been exhilarating.
Wow! Good for you. Thanks.