What are the basic skills that aspiring cooks should learn?

Also, pick a few basic recipes, things that are easy (and easy to remember, so you can skip following a recipe eventually), and get those mastered.

Things like baking a basic white loaf, making an herbed omelet, making an all-purpose red sauce, stovetop macaroni-and-cheese, meatloaf, chili, roasting a chicken. None of those are hard, but they're all really satisfying.
 
CraigC said:
Beside reguiar basic knife skills, some ingredients require special knife skills. Fish as an example, learning to filet and skin and knowing the correct way based on a particular species are very important.
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Filleting is a special skill, I'm guessing you have it, I'm ok but leave too much flesh on the bones.
Sharp Flexi knife is your friend.

Russ
 
rascal said:
Filleting is a special skill, I'm guessing you have it, I'm ok but leave too much flesh on the bones.
Sharp Flexi knife is your friend.

Russ
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With all the fish we've shot, it was a necessity. I'm self taught, so I know about leaving too much flesh on the bones. It was a learning curve. Sharp knives are a must!
 
Shermie said:
They should get to know the basic fundamentals of working in the kitchen & start off making simple things.
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I agree with you, but this made me laugh as it reminded me of when I first started keeping emerald tree boas. Folks on forums kept telling me to start with another species of tree boa for practice. I kept telling them that I wasn't interested in another species. I had kept many species of snakes previously in my late teens and early twenties, including venomous, both native and non-native. Most of these folks changed their minds after seeing how successful we were at keeping and breeding the emeralds.
 
I guess i got basic cooking skills from my mother. But then I wanted to make yeast bread, which she never did. I wanted to make cream puffs, so I made pate a choux. I wanted to make Baked Alaska, so i did. I wanted to make a Dobosh torte, so I did. Etc., you get the point. This was all WAY before there were cooking shows, You Tube, etc., so all I had was cookbooks. If you aren't interested in something, you aren't going to be invested in making it.
 
CraigC said:
I agree with you, but this made me laugh as it reminded me of when I first started keeping emerald tree boas. Folks on forums kept telling me to start with another species of tree boa for practice. I kept telling them that I wasn't interested in another species. I had kept many species of snakes previously in my late teens and early twenties, including venomous, both native and non-native. Most of these folks changed their minds after seeing how successful we were at keeping and breeding the emeralds.
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Is it poss to start off topic on those snakes, I know I can giggle but I prefer personal knowledge. I know absolutely zero , well I know they are cold blooded, that's all, we don't have any here, only the ones in parliament,lol.
 
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