5 expert cooking tips for your broke ass

Approx. 8 minute read
Heads up: picture of fake cooking injury towards end of article, avoid if sensitive to blood


Your broke ass needs to learn how to cook.

I started cooking in the summer of 2012. I was living on my own for the first time, working two jobs, supporting myself. I had two goals I hoped to meet by doing this: I wanted to save money by eating mostly food I cooked from scratch, and I wanted to lose weight. I wasn't overweight or anything, I was just on the threshold of where I wanted to be in terms of fitness. I succeeded at both.

The picture above is of a bowl of homemade congee I made for myself. It tasted better than a Chipotle burrito and cost me about $0.35 in ingredients just for that bowl.

You too can harness such power!

Cooking is intimidating, I get that. So is getting into shape, getting your driver's license, learning how to swim, and lots of other things that are worth having. Like all those things, it's just a matter of starting small, and training yourself to do a few easy things regularly, until you can handle taking it to the next level.

1. Pick a few easy recipes to start, then go from there

I really cannot stress enough how important it is to start small. Even those of us who have been cooking for years probably started by helping their mom make cookies.

Pick three easy things you know you won't get sick of in a week. Keep making them from scratch until you've mastered them - don't be afraid to add or remove things from the recipe if you think they'll improve the dish. Experiment until you get it right. Once you're comfortable cooking these three things (even if one of them is a nice salad), think of something else you like eating and would like to be able to make for yourself any time you want, learn how to make it, and start again at square one. In less than a year, you'll know how to cook because you'll have a bunch of recipes you know how to do.

One of the recipes I started with is angel hair aglio e olio. The hardest thing about it was stirring things in a pan while they sauteed until they tasted good. Even that took practice; my first attempt was good, my second was a burnt mess. But you know what? At the end of the night I had a huge bowl of garlic pasta all to myself. If you're wondering what true happiness is, it's a huge bowl of pasta after a long, hard day of manual labor that you don't have to share.

2. Never walk away from a lit flame because that's how you ruin pancakes, you idiot

Look, I know it's not the most exciting thing in the world, but walking away from a lit flame is a fucking stupid thing to do. Worst case scenario, you burn your house down and accidentally kill your dog. Best case, you can't keep track of how everything is cooking, and you either burn what you're cooking or neglect to realize the range didn't light, and now your kitchen is full of highly flammable gas.

Cooking is 90% timing. You can prepare a steak perfectly...perfect amount of seasoning, perfect oven or broiler or grill temp...but leave it on too long, you haven't just wasted a very expensive piece of an animal who died for your culinary satisfaction, you've committed an unforgiveable sin: you overcooked steak.

Eggs are the same way - most of the nutrients get cooked out if you leave them on too long. If you must step away from the range, at least set a very loud timer.

3. Learn how to cook rice from scratch, which includes washing it first, you goddamn savage

This is actually a huge pet peeve of mine, but it's also important because if you know how to cook rice, you can cook tons of things that are good for you, tasty, easy to digest, and cheaper than Steven Seagall's aftershave.

Like the beautiful paella you see below you? How about a nice helping of chicken fried rice? Maybe some stir-fry?

No. You must earn this. 

You earn it by washing. YOUR. DAMN. RICE.

Not enough people know this - you're supposed to soak your rice in a bowl of cold water, swish it around a bunch, then pour it under a running faucet until the water runs clear. Try it, you'll see - the water gets really cloudy when rice gets submerged in it. That's because starch, of which raw rice has a very high content, gets pulled off this way. Starch sucks on rice. It gives it a gummy texture, and it's harder to digest, so it gunks up your digestive system.

You could, of course, circumvent this and just use instant rice - but that's packed with artificial ingredients that are way worse for you than rice starch. They're not going to necessarily give you colon cancer, but they're the type of ingredients you should eat as few of as possible, because over time they build up and cause problems.

Seriously, stop embarrassing yourself. Wash your damn rice.

4. Experiment with different flavor combinations and spices but don't act like you're some hot Gordon Ramsey shit all of a sudden

Spices are your friend in the kitchen. The above meal is kofta, a kind of Mediterranean spicy meatloaf turd that tastes better than 95% of the menu at Subway. You're supposed to eat them on sticks and grill them outside, but if you live in Chicago and being outside sucks in March, a broiler works too.

Still, don't get cocky. Just because you put allspice and cloves in a bowl with some meat and herbs, that doesn't mean you're God's gift to human taste buds. 

I feel like people who get really good at cooking, especially professionals, get really up their own asses about cooking. Seriously, watch Rachel Ray talk about food for five minutes. She's like Kanye talking about his music, yet more off-putting. 

Don't be that person. Don't be like Rachel Ray.

5. Invest in a decent Chef's knife so you don't cut your dumbass self while you're cooking drunk and you start bleeding everywhere but you're like, "eh, fuck it, I've got band-aids and Neosporin, I'll be fine" and then you bleed like half a liter and once it's bandaged and the bleeding seems to have stopped you keep drinking because you're an idiot who thinks they're immortal

...yeah don't do, any of that.

Except the part about getting a good knife. That's good advice.