Collaborative post
It’s nice to eat at restaurants from time to time or to order takeout food. Alas, unless you’ve got millions in the bank, those aren’t things that you can do every night. You’ll need to spend time in the kitchen whether you like it or not.
And everything’s much easier when we do like it. If you always find cooking to be a chore, then it’s time to improve your relationship with cooking. Take our tips, and it won’t be long before you actually look forward to spending time in the kitchen! And who knows, you might enjoy it so much that you discover that cooking becomes a lifelong passion.
Upgrade Your Kitchen
Who wants to spend time in a kitchen that’s well past its best? Even the most passionate of cooks would be reaching for the takeout menu if their kitchen was cluttered, dirty, and depressing. The key to improving your relationship with cooking is to create a kitchen that you genuinely enjoy spending time in. A kitchen remodel will take time, effort, and money, but it’ll pay off. For one thing, it’ll reduce how much money you spend eating out, and it’ll also improve your home’s value.
Minimise Annoying Issues
You might love the actual cooking part but dislike all the parts around the cooking. It can be a little frustrating to spend ten minutes chopping up vegetables, or even longer washing all the dishes. The solution? Minimise those frustrating elements. If your dishwasher isn’t working as well as it once did, then get replacement parts for your dishwasher here; it’ll free up a considerable amount of time, and you won’t need to wash the dishes by hand, removing the domestic chore that everyone dislikes the most. For cutting vegetables, take a look at those handy devices that chop them on your behalf. They’re a game changer.
Find Some Easy Recipes
Speak to people who don’t enjoy cooking, and they’ll often tell you of the time when they tried to make a meal only for it to end in disaster. What happened there was that they bit off more than they could chew. You have to build up to those complex dishes. When you’re just getting used to being in the kitchen, focus on easy recipes that you can make in thirty minutes or so. Once you’ve perfected those dishes, you can move on to the more challenging ones.
A good place to start is finding simple dishes that still feel rewarding — something like a healthy apple turnover recipe can strike that perfect balance between beginner-friendly and genuinely exciting to make, which helps build confidence without feeling overwhelming.
Appreciate Eating
People often complain that they spent an hour making a dish, and about 10 minutes actually eating it. And when they were eating, they were looking at their phones. To improve your relationship with cooking, improve your relationship with eating. Leave your phone to one side, and genuinely taste your creation. You’ll figure out ways to improve the dish next time.
You’ll also maximise the value of your time in the kitchen by making more portions than are needed. It’s highly satisfying to know that you have delicious leftovers to take to work the next day — at that point, your time in the kitchen is worth its weight in gold.