People like to cook at home because nothing is really better than a home-cooked meal. Sure there are restaurants that could bang out a dish that tastes better than anything you could make at home, but this usually isn’t the case unless it is a very tricky dish to get right.
Otherwise, you can replicate most dishes you’ll find in a restaurant at home with a delicious, nutritious, and tailored result for each individual household. In addition, the huge amount of money you have to pay for a fancy or expensive restaurant dish is going to put a little bit of a sour taste into the food you buy.
In the back of your mind, you will be thinking about how you could totally have made the food you just bought at home for much cheaper than you just spent on the dine-in. Yet that bill you got isn’t just for the food.
When you pay for a restaurant, you are paying for all the staff that works in the restaurant along with the experience of eating in that restaurant. That means you have to pay for the chefs, cleaners, waiters, managers, and business owners along with the food you just bought.
And this leads us to one of the reasons many people don’t cook at home. It is a lot of work to make a nice dish! Especially if you have to do all the cleaning and cooking by yourself.
This also can become compounded on the weekdays when you come home from a tiring day at your work wanting nothing more than to eat something easy and crawl into bed as a gambling addict slithers from casino to online casino to get his fix.
You Aren’t a Chef
This is not meant to be an insult, it is just most likely a fact. The average person does not work in the restaurant industry and probably doesn’t have all the skills and tools necessary to cook as a chef would.
However, this is not an issue. You don’t have to be a chef to make a delicious home cook, and I personally don’t think you should try to be. You aren’t cooking to impress anyone, so all you need is food that tastes good, and not that looks pretty.
Obviously, it is a nice bonus if your food looks nice, but usually, this will come with the food being good tasting. So, don’t worry so much about aesthetics. Good food will usually look good to us because we know it tastes good!
I mean, think about it! How “pretty” is a charred piece of animal flesh objectively? Yet grilled steak looks good to most people. This is because we know it tastes good, and it is what we as humans eat normally.
Another part of you not being a chef is that you shouldn’t worry about fancy or super expensive ingredients. They are completely unnecessary in most cases, and you can make tasty food with cheaper and more accessible ingredients very easily.
An example of an ingredient you don’t need is real vanilla beans. Sure, they taste better than vanilla extract, especially fake vanilla extract, but they are not necessary. To the average person, vanilla extract will be plenty “vanilla-y” enough to satisfy them.
If you have the money for it and you want to try an expensive ingredient for fun, then go for it! Cooking is about having fun and feeding people good food. But just know that it is not necessary, and most dishes can get by without them.
Clean Up
Another big deal breaker for many people wanting to cook at home is the thought of having to do all the cleanup. Cooking can make many dirty dishes, and as the dishes pile up, so do the realization that you will have to scrub all of them yourself or run them through the dishwasher.
However, there are some things you can do in order to alleviate the number of dishes you have to clean when you cook. Remember, as I said before, you are not a chef! You aren’t here to impress anyone, just make a delicious meal.
So, first of all, ditch the idea of measuring out all of your ingredients into little bowls before you start cooking. Sure, this looks really nice and is convenient, but it is unnecessary except in some circumstances and just dirties a whole bunch of dishes.
There is an exception with dishes that are very time-constrained. For instance in baking, measuring out your ingredients before you start can save a lot of time and effort if you have to go measuring the ingredient out while you are doing other things.
One thing I will say you should keep about that is getting all of your ingredients ready before you start cooking. Even if you don’t pre-measure them for something that doesn’t need them to be pre-measured, it allows you to make sure you have all the ingredients you need before you start cooking.
I’m a little embarrassed about how many times I’ve started a recipe and realized I didn’t have enough eggs or something and had to stop halfway through until I could get the ingredient. It wasn’t terribly many times, but the fact that it has happened more than once shows the necessity of making sure you have everything beforehand.
Another thing that will aid in cleanup is washing the dishes as they are dirtied. Don’t leave them over or they will pile up into a huge amount of work. The more stuff you have in your sink, the harder it will be to clean anything at all.
Finally, there is an order you should clean your dishes in to make your life a lot easier. This will allow you to clean more efficiently and safely when it comes time to wash the dishes.
I call the method of washing dishes that works for me the “Triple D” method. This stands for “Disruptive, Dangerous, and Delicate.” This tells you the order you should tackle dishes in the sink in order to make your life easier.
You start by moving anything disruptive to cleaning to the side. So big bowls and pots should be set aside and cleaned later. I know this kind of breaks the whole order thing, but if you can remember that you set disruptive things aside and not clean them first you should be golden.
Next, we have the second “D” which stands for Dangerous. This means you should prioritize cleaning anything that could be dangerous to you while you are cleaning dishes. So, clean knives, peelers, and anything else with a sharp blade or something else that’s dangerous now.
Finally, you get to the last “D” which is Delicate. This means you should now clean anything that is delicate and could break if not moved out of the way before you clean other things. So, wine glasses and other delicate china should be cleaned now.
All that’s left is to clean anything else left in your sink and finish off with those big disruptive items you set aside. Follow this simple order and it will make cleaning dishes a whole lot easier for you.