Okay maybe this isnt the best demographics here but like I mean as in if you know someone who’s Gen Z, do they have a “idk how to cook” issue?
(Please don’t be like “omg its easy, how could you not know” in the comments, be nice in the comments okay 🙈)
Gen Z has a basic competence issue apparently because everyone complains about their ability to do everything. Weaponized incompetence or whatever they are calling it. The good news when it comes to being able to cook is that anyone can figure it out for themselves. If you can make instant ramen noodles then you can cook.
I highly recommend anyone who wants to learn to cook get a hold of the Fannie Farmers CookbookFannie Farmer Cookbook find a used copy somewhere because $50 for a book first published in 1869 is friggin ridiculous.
This book is basically a reference book as well as a recipe book. It explains just about everything from measuring to prepping to storing things in your pantry. It is stuffed with recipes for basic things and then a bunch of recipes that build on those basics.
My mom was a lifelong food lover and taught herself to cook because her mom couldn’t. She had a library full of cookbooks from all over the world and through the ages. The only cookbook she gave me when I moved out was the Fannie Farmer Cookbook which is a tome to be sure. She told me it was the only one I would ever really need. Everything else is just recipes.
Gen Z, millennial, Gen X it doesn’t matter who you are it is flat out cheaper to cook your own food. If you are single then soups and casseroles are your buddy. If you make a different one every other day and freeze the rest you will have a constant supply of a variety of meals you can reheat at will so you don’t get burnt out. If you are a couple just about every meal feeds four which is dinner plus leftover lunch for the both of you.
I live in Houston, TX which is one of the most diverse food scenes anywhere with some of best restaurants for every kind of food and I can’t find a steakhouse that consistently makes a better steak than me. The closest I’ve come was from a guy selling steaks at a bar I used to go to 15 years ago. No one makes better pancakes than I do. I’ve never been hesitant to order pancakes when I’m out but I’m always disappointed and feeling ripped off. The difference is staggering. Pancakes are cheeeap and making them better costs next to nothing. The only restaurant food I buy is food I don’t make yet.
Stop giving your money to people who really don’t deserve it. Learn to cook. One thing at a time. Every success leads to more success. The knowledge you gain is for life. You pass some of it on and one day far in the future every human will be a master chef because what else is there to do?
I’m personally a kind of mid-to-younger millennial (and a pretty damn good cook if I can toot my own horn)
I have a few friends who are a bit younger than me who are older zoomers. Those friends are all at least competent cooks, not necessarily amazing chefs, but capable enough to follow a recipe and feed themselves.
But the catch that should probably be mentioned is that most of those friends are guys I was in scouts with. They were the younger kids in my troop as I was aging out.
So, I (or one of my millennial peers) are at least partially the ones who taught them how to cook
And learning to cook in scouts is sort of a trial by literal fire- if you can make breakfast over a campfire, bake a cake in a Dutch oven on hot coals, etc. cooking with a regular stove or oven is kind of easy in comparison.
But anecdotally, my gen z coworkers do seem to be pretty clueless about cooking. But then again, I’m a poor judge of that because I do cook at a pretty high level and a lot of people seem kind of clueless to me in general, so I’m probably not the best judge.
Gen Z is 14-29 year olds. Most of these probably still live with family so yeah, how often do you expect them to cook?
It’s not necessarily something to be ashamed of. In some societies, people rarely cook for themselves at all. It’s all done by professionals and the restaurants are cheap and plentiful enough to support that. The problem is that this is definitely not the case in the places you are probably referring to
I’m a millennial and I know how to cook, but I absolutely hate it, and food is so expensive. I live alone, so either I eat the same meal for a week straight or seem to waste half the ingredients for a meal. I started using a restaurant that does a meal prep service and I can buy 10 dinners for ~$75. They’re all healthy-ish, give me dinners for 2 weeks, and all I have to do is take them from the freezer and heat them up in the microwave. In contrast, last time I went to the grocery store I bought 2 limes, 5 lemons, a loaf of bread, a cup of soup, and a bag of pretzels and it cost over $30.
I’d also recommend Too Good to Go if money ever gets tight. Same service, but the restaurant offers meals that they would’ve had to dump at the end of the day.
YMMV. In my toogoodtogo experience, many stores use it as a way to get you in the door.
The Zoomers i know are either amazing cooks or can cook 1 meal but eat out 90% of the time. But for every one that can cook there are 3 that dont cook. I dont know a single millennial or gen xer who cant cook or couldnt cook at 16. I dont think the problem is universal to gen z. Its just an issue in wealthy urban populations.
Im not good with meal prep so I just heat up a frying pan throw some meat in, throw some veggies in and season it. Its quick, tasty and cheap. I rotate the meat and veggies so im always eating something different. I buy the veggies frozen and presliced so no prep or wastage.
Yes, that’s called “growing up.” You have to teach yourself. It’s a frustrating process, because you don’t understand how to select recipes that suit your needs. 1/2 the recipes I found online usually resulted in a fail, because I couldn’t tell the difference between a good recipe and a bad one. I love the first cookbook I bought now, but at the time, what was I going to do with buckwheat blinis or tea-poached pears in chocolate sauce? I needed a basic pancake and chocolate cookies recipe. That book was basically useless for the first 5 years I owned it.
If I could go back, I would start with:
“I can cook vegan” by Isa Chandler
Chef John on youtube https://www.youtube.com/@foodwishes
Cooking is a skill. You learn it one meal at a time. What you want to start with is building a repertoire of simple, 15 minute meals that you love and that you can crank out with your eyes closed. Once you have like 3-5 of those, then you have a separation between “I need to eat” and “I want to learn to cook.” That separation is what lets you not feel frustrated and focus on your skills.
Haha. Yes, it’s important to get some basics down. Get a small amount of stuff from the store and be able to do many things with it.
The fancy recipes are great and all, but you end up with some items in the pantry you may never use again.
In my 20s I perfected my chili… It took a long time to get right, and I ate a lot of bad chili (but really, even the worst chili is still pretty good). I found the perfect ‘secret ingredients’ and techniques and then I got married to a wonderful woman, who is allergic to tomatoes and peppers, and doesn’t like beans. It’s been years since I’ve made chili.
Anyway, my point is just that you’re absolutely right… you learn to cook by doing it.
Another great YouTube channel for learning to cook and bake is “Glen and Friends cooking”. He has years of videos and always aims his content toward those that are new to kitchens.
He does a Sunday morning old cookbook recipe every week as well that goes into food history. He also releases a regular recipe most weeks but his schedule is changing a bit. It is worth going back through his older videos because he does a lot of “what was on sale at the grocery store” recipes that are great for making cheap meals for your family.
Plus one to Chef John. That’s how I learned how to cook, one recipe at a time.
I would recommend this one as a starting point because it’s easy, you learn a method that you use all the time (making a roux) and it’s delicious. I still make it all the time.
Chicken with Chipotle & Green Onion Gravy
Also a quick tip: you can roast most veggies (e.g. green beans, brussel sprouts, asparagus) with some olive oil and salt at 375° for a bit and they will come out tasty.
Cooking is a skill, you learn it one meal at a time.
Wow, well put.
I’d also recommend America’s Test Kitchen (the older ones with Chris, because they focused on basics), and their cookbook (which is like $20) because it explains the “why” for a lot of recipes.
And Good Eats, because he was all about how things work from a food chemistry perspective.
Yes, it really is just having a few basic recipes that are adaptable.
Unfortunately, nobody generalizes their recipes, so you have to look up a lot of recipes before you see the pattern sometimes, and that makes it feel more challenging…
Someone needs to make a cookbook full of recipes like:
- Add oil to a pan.
- Add your aromatics [select from the following list.]
- Add your [vegetables]
- Add you [meats]
Cook on medium heat for 20-40 minutes, until everything is beginning to brown or something.
Insted, you get a 300 page cook book with all the possible combinations of spices and ingredients and it’s overwhelming.
I like this site for a “generalized recipe”
Ha, that’s like much every Lutheran hotdish recipe. Basically need a meat, spices, veg, and cream of mushroom soup. It’s pretty wild what some people come up with, but the tater tot and the green bean variants were staples when I was a kid.
https://www.ocweekly.com/five-great-minnesota-versions-of-hotdish-aka-casserole-6612337/
It’s awesome comfort food in the depths of winter, uses the leftovers, and is cheap to make. I don’t go to church anymore, but still love a good hotdish!
It’s kind of my dream to make a series of videos about taking care of your home (apt or house) and cooking for yourself. It’s kind of an ask your parents and grandparents kind of thing. There has to be something already out there, right?
Yeah, it’s called HowToBasic.
How To Cook Without A Book by Pam Anderson describes the basics really well and each chapter goes over the general principles of a kind of dish (like seared meat or steamed veggies) with a general master recipie and then describes variations (like different pan sauces for the different seared meats).
I found a PDF of what looks like the whole book: https://cdn.bookey.app/files/pdf/book/en/how-to-cook-without-a-book.pdf
This is actually a problem at my work, that gen z do not know how to cook at much higher levels than others.
I work in residential mental health, so we have some cooking to do. The overwhelming majority of gen z co workers seriously struggle with anything more than heating up. It affects how we divy up job duties and caused issues when we tried to save money by doing more cooking in house.
I don’t think it’s generational in a way that GenZ is any different. This is an age thing.
Most people never need to cook before they’re 18. They just got fed at home. When people first start to move out, things start to shift. Some people get into relationships where the other person cooks. They’re still being provided for.
Others learn a bare minimum of things to cook and do it badly. They do feed themselves but self describe as “can’t cook”.
And some step up and learn the things you need to know to cook that isn’t taught in school.
Time goes by, and more people find themselves in situations where they now need to cook. The population of cooks grows and the non-cooks shrinks.
Whether it’s because of changing interests, financial pressure, divorce, whatever, people need some pressure to develop the skill, and over time they do.
I think this is mostly correct, but there are also more and easier options to have food delivered than there were historically. So more ways to continue to avoid cooking means there is a longer delay before learning to cook.
Although maybe the increasing costs of these convenient options and slow wage growth in most countries means people will start opting out of convenience, so it could switch in the other direction.
I’m a millennial who’s just learning to cook, definitely not gen Z lol. I dated people that cooked but mostly it was out food, microwave food, and extreme basics like spaghetti that’s noodles and jar sauce.
My parents both grew up extremely poor with both parents working. They didn’t really get taught how to cook. And being poor meant, no extra money for anything with flavor. My parents spice cabinet had salt, a 5 year old container of pepper, and a probably older container of Italian seasoning. That’s it.
For most of my life I thought I just didn’t really like food until I moved out. We didn’t have a lot of money either so we didn’t really go out. Having my own job and living with other people meant I had money to go out and holy shit, out food was delicious! Never occurred to me until years later that, this could be made at home much cheaper if I just take the time to learn how.
“Didn’t like food” 😭
I remember thinking that instant raman noodles were delicious cuz mom was terrible at cooking and dad who knows how to make a few decent dishes was busy at work often times, and so the “good food” included
- The Mcdonalds around the corner (kid-me loved it, its basically my impression of “American food” at the time lmfao)
- Roast Duck/Chicken or Cha Siu from a nearby Chinese American restaurant + rice from the rice cooker at home
- Of course the aformentioned instant ramen
- Some weird canned fish thing from Asian Supermarkets, i dont think its very nutritious and its not very good to taste but its just that you eat it with rice and the rice is what fills your stomach
- “Fermented Bean Curd” + Rice
Average childhood in a poor immigrant Chinese family with parents that worked all the time
But um yeah I sure¹ can cook. Um… lets see:
- I can pan-fry eggs and then just cook rice and eat the fried eggs with rice and call it a meal…
(¹No I cant really cook unless you call these pathetic meals “cooking” 😅)
Rice and eggs are the start of a million meals. You can toss veggies (whatever you like) in whatever sauce (soy, hoisin, teriyaki, oyster, etc) and throw it with the rice. You can add broth. You can add crunchy garlic or green onions.
Learn to hard boil eggs and you can marinade de-shelled ones for a few days in soy/onion/chilis and it pairs with it as well.
Our Asian supermarket has very large bags of Bok Choy for cheap, and that can be made in a ton of ways.
Relatable! I’m learning, slowly lol. I picked up a Betty Crocker cook book, this one specifically (not sure why the cover art is missing it’s the red cover with a spoon shape) and that’s been pretty good so far. Lots of things in there about HOW to do things. And The Food Lab which if you like science and really understanding what you’re doing, you’ll love that book.
I’ve also subscribed to [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected] as well as a few alts of similarly named communities.
I think not knowing how to cook is common when toung. Today in my early 40’s I’d say I’m pretty decent, but I was useless in my 20s.
What got me started was necessity due to all of a suddenly having kids. Trial and error.
What clicked was when I learned that being a half-decent cook didn’t mean knowing recipes by heart (although I’m sure many do), but more generalized approaches that work well for various ingredients. If you know them oven temp for various stuff, the rest is mostly just preference when it comes to flavoring, and that’s something you learn to measured with your heart over time.
My boomer mother can burn water, so wtf are you on about the kids for?
Gen Zers that i know all cook way more than i did at their age
☝️
COVID broke people. I know people who cooked their own food all the time, and they’ve shifted to 100% online ordering or going for take-out – even breakfast and lunch – and they’re paying through the nose. But this just seems like the New Normal to them.
I don’t think the problem is unique to Gen Z but it definitely skews toward the younger generations.
I work with a lot of Gen Z and it’s been fun talking to them about cooking! They are learning techniques, recipes, and talking about how they are improving each time they make something.
We share recipes and have fun with it. Ofc everyone eats out, or brings microwave meals. That’s life. But watching them learn and grow as people is pretty awesome. Some boomer probably asked the same about my millennial self.
I suspect it’s a bit worse today because of convenience systems, but yea, I was clueless as a young adult too.
No one taught me as a kid (thanks, Mom) so had to figure it out on my own.
Fortunately for young adults today the resources are extensive.
