In the past few months, I’ve come across many competent intelligent people who say that they are afraid to cook. Friends who work for banks, law firms, the government, and other similar jobs that require a modest amount of reasonable intelligence.
Yet none of them feel comfortable in the kitchen. Others outside of my circle say the same and, from what I’ve seen online, there is a general consensus that millenials not only do not know how to cook but are choosing not to because it’s too borderline adulting. With the rise of “being baby,” it seems like our generation will grow old and never learn how to roast a chicken or master the simple art of browning mushrooms. Are we doomed to living off of gourmet ramen and macro bowls well into our 60s?
Arguably, and I’d say almost indisputably, our generation has the most access to food in terms of variety and availability than any other generation in history. There is a wealth of produce available even when its not in season, and endless grains, meats, herbs, spices, and non-dairy milks. Food culture has only exploded over the past ten or so years and it is easier than ever to find recipes and how-to guides online. However, so few seem to be taking advantage of these modern advances: citing cost, time, and general laziness as reasons why they don’t cook. It makes me wonder what everyone will do when the inevitable avocado shortage comes with the rise of global warming . . .
“Four years later we were in a complete catch 22: he resented having to make dinner every night and I didn’t know how to soft boil an egg.”
I will admit that the process of learning how to cook is scary and often times humbling. But there are few things more satisfying than the first time you successfully caramelize onions or properly fry tofu. Hell, even the perfect toasted bread with butter can bring about a special sense of satisfaction that you can’t get in other parts of daily life. The particular sense of pride and accomplishment one feels when you spend the time to make a meal from scratch can change you, making it unthinkable to return to a life of microwave dinners and noodles in a cup. Recently, after too many unsatisfying Seamlessed meals and my normal live-in chef’s decreasing availability (I am referring of course to my house-husband Matt), I decided it was time to start learning how to cook for myself.
I’ve always loved food, preferring to go out to dinner than to a bar, but I’d grown lazy over the years because my boyfriend so often did all of our cooking. When we met, the first dish I ever made him was butter seared scallop pasta with shallots, mushrooms, and pine nuts topped with parsley. For whatever reason, I’ve always had a way with seafood, a sixth sense on when its reached the point of being cooked without being too dry or gelatinous in texture. It was my pièce de résistance and it worked like a charm. It worked a little too well, however, when I stopped having to cook any of my meals because what had started out as a romantic gesture turned into the status quo. Four years later we were in a complete catch 22: he resented having to make dinner every night and I didn’t know how to soft boil an egg. By the time he started working nights, I was so out of practice it felt like I’d never seen the proper end of a pasta fork before.
Over the course of the next few months, I threw myself into learning the basics. How to roast a chicken, how to salt my food to taste (it really makes all the difference), how to sauté vegetables, how to make my own vegetable stock, and even how to bake my own bread. I began experimenting with more ambitious meals like seared pork chops and slow roasted salmon. Get togethers with friends turned into dinner parties where we drank cheap wine and tackled new recipes together. The more I cooked, the more I became comfortable following my intuition and cooking without a recipe. More than anything, I realized that cooking was not some special gift that some possess and others do not. It is something that anyone can learn how to do precisely because everyone is capable of discerning what food tastes good to them.
Learning how to cook is not about where you went to school, who you are wearing, or how many likes your most recent post got. It’s about a simple willingness to try something and accept the fact that it might not turn out great. Many of the meals I made when I began turned out poorly or uninspired but they were still nonetheless edible. Nothing was wasted, food or money, and I learned from my mistakes for the next time. With all that makes millennials anxious, (student loan debt, ICE raids, mental health, and rising sea levels) overdone chicken breast or under-salted rice are a small price to pay for a type of knowledge that no one can take away from you.
Saying you can’t cook is like claiming you don’t know how to ride a bicycle. Almost anyone can learn how to ride a bicycle, the entire phrase it’s like riding a bicycle is predicated on the fact that really truly anyone should be able to do it. Will there potentially be some mistakes or falls? Absolutely, that comes with the territory but the payoff far outweighs the negative. Yet, I’ve heard so many people say that they just don’t, as if you were asking them to go to Staten Island or take the L train after 10 PM.
A particular excuse that irritates me is when people say that cooking is too expensive; as if the $7 oat milk latte, $16 Glossier mascara, and a $30 jade roller were all necessary purchases because they were made in the name of self care. What could be better for yourself than making your own dinner? What is more fundamental than the food you put in your body that literally keeps you alive? I’ve had several delicious dinners that cost me all of $8 to make with leftovers for the next day’s lunch. This is not about superiority or judging what people spend on things that make them happy. I love all of these things and other ridiculous expenses too. All I’m trying to do is make you think about all the excuses you’ve built up that are preventing you from enjoying something that is both completely affordable and absolutely delicious.
“The opportunities for le humble brag are endless and a little less boring than an endless stream of avocado toast. This is a gentle reminder that food is not an aesthetic.”
In the past, I’ve been judged when I’ve talked about my love of going to the farmer’s market. Everyone assumes that I’m lugging around a Loewe woven tote, laying down obscene amounts of money for fresh or even organic produce. I don’t know how the farmer’s markets reputation got so maligned, really someone should do something about this, but people don’t know what they are missing. More often than not, the farmer’s market is far less expensive than the grocery store, whether you are shopping at Whole Foods or the Key Foods in my neighborhood in Bushwick. I would also like to point out that most people, rather than shopping at their neighborhood bodega/market usually get their food from a Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, or the lowest of the low, Amazon Fresh. It completely robs the neighborhood of the few benefits of gentrification all for the sake of often truly subpar fruits and vegetables. If you’re already making the effort to seek produce elsewhere, why not get it fresh from independent farmers instead of chain grocers? In my most recent haul to the market, I bought potatoes, fairy tale eggplant, purple radishes, carrots, shishito peppers, leeks, and six ears of corn all for $22. And this was not precious amounts of produce but cornucopia levels of each item; certainly enough to feed two people over five dinners at least. And if you don’t want to go to the farmer’s market, try your local markets where you can get the bulk of your shopping done for the same price.
I want to be totally transparent with you. As I type this, I am unemployed and nowhere near living off of Daddy’s credit card. The person writing this isn’t getting their rent paid on the sly by someone else or getting just in case money from their wealthy aunt. The other week when I mistakenly ordered Pad Thai from a Japanese restaurant— which I now know to never ever do—I wasted $12 and realized that in the time I spent waiting for my Sad Thai to be delivered, I could have just made it myself.
With the rise of Instagram culture and the unending photos of food sprawled across everyone’s feeds, I would like to submit a radical idea. What if instead of taking photos of food that someone else has made for you, you learn how to cook so you can share photos of food you’ve made yourself? The opportunities for le humble brag are endless and a little less boring than an endless stream of avocado toast. This is a gentle reminder that food is not an aesthetic. There is no equivalency between a person who likes art but cannot draw and someone who loves to eat but cannot cook. To truly appreciate food you have to understand how it is made. In short, can millennials please please just try to learn to cook already?! Think of all the dinner parties we could have.
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