Poll: You and cooking

[BoredAussieGamer]

I fucking love cooking. I think I started learning how to when I was a single digit age.

I can make a kickass steak salad (all steak, no salad), and an awesome stir fry, and my double choc with nuts and icing brownies have been compared to sex in edible form.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I can't cook. At all.
It's a disgrace, I know.

The microwave gets a lot of use in my house.

Oh, and the toaster too.

YOUR NAME IS BLUE! When'd that happen?

OT: I'm pretty mediocre. Most of my cooking involves the microwave and a frozen dinner.

The only thing that saves me from being a really bad cook is that I can cook a decent steak. Medium rare ftw.

 

[Ieyke]

I said excellent because anything I cook comes out amazing....BUT I have to have a recipe for most things.

 

[80sboy]

I'm out of practice.

 

[kypsilon]

I've been a cook of the line (A&W in Canada) and as well a cook in an actual restaurant where real food was prepared. I'm a master of the frying pan in all its myriad forms from teflon to ceramic. There isn't a recipe I'm afraid to try given the ingredients that are available and I can in a limited way substitute when I'm lacking.

Line up ladies, I've got your breakfast.

 

[kavikova]

I actually really like to cook. You can tailor your food to your own tastes and really wow people with a damn good meal who aren't expecting it. Certainly a change of pace and gets your mind off life's BS.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Good to Excellent.
I'm pretty confident making a variety of dishes, and I've been forcing myself to try making a new dish every week where possible.

 

[axlryder]

Thanks to a brief but extreme addiction to competitive cooking shows, I managed to develop a decent repertoire of recipes that I can execute somewhat effectively. For instance, I make a mean rice risotto. Thankfully, knowledge of how to make those recipes translates over into more general cooking skill that allows me to kind of execute most dishes as long as I have instructions.

So...decent I guess.

 

[Zombie Sodomy]

I can make eggs, and I can make sandwiches. That's about it. Gladly, egg sandwiches are delicious.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I recall there being a cooking thread on the escapist a couple of years ago...it went pretty well if memory serves. This one has a poll though so I suppose it wins.

Anyway, I put myself at mediocre though I could be reasonable I suppose. I can boil water and, use said boiled water to make simple things. I'm also pretty good at assembling various sandwiches from the most simple (peanut butter because I hate jelly) to sandwiches that require just a little bit more effort (left-over meatloaf on a toasted bagel). I can't use a grill however and, while I am able to use an oven I can't really use it effectively enough to bake. Luckily I happened to have found someone who can bake and is indeed certified to do so.

 

[lunavixen]

I'm a pretty good cook, though my specialty is baking, most of my family are either cooks or chefs, though my oldest brother is a kitchen disaster in the wings

 

[Cazza]

What I can cook I cook well. What I don't know I can find out and cook well.

 

[Texas Joker 52]

I'd say I'm reasonable, but only in one specific area of cooking, and funnily enough, it's a method that Texas is well known for: DEEP FRYING.

That's right boys and girls, I'm a fry-cook first and foremost. And I'm proud of the fact that I'm pretty good at it. Oh, I can bake a few things too, but most of it's real simple stuff.

The main secret to good deep frying though, without using a fry-daddy of any kind? Making sure you cook at the proper temperature, and you judge when the food is done on the foods terms, not on some timer. Or at least, that's what I do, and it works out most of the time.

Then again, cooking french fries isn't rocket surgery or brain science.

 

[ShogunGino]

I really enjoy cooking. I cook dinners for my parents on their birthdays and Mother's/Father's Day. I often get into arguments with my mother if we're both trying to cook the dinner as to how we should do something.

That said, nearly everything I try to make comes out at least decent. I like to make pasta sauces, fresh alfredo or various tomato-based, and others. I like make Chinese style dishes, because I like trying to get the veggies out of the pan before they start to lose their crispness. And I like dishes that have interesting uses of spices, mostly Mexican and Italian ones for me.

Most of all, I enjoy finding ways to make all sorts of comfort foods. I make a tasty mac & cheese from scratch, I like frying up chicken and certain fishes with various sorts of batters to see which ones go the best with what. If I can convince my mom to NOT use ground beef in lasagna, I can get a great one of those done.(seriously, I don't like ground beef in lasagna) I like making Southern style bean dishes that go great over rice, I like making fruit-filled pancakes and waffles from scratch, and I never buy my chocolate-dipped strawberries.

I've been wanting to try more dessert recipes and baking lately. Mostly because dessert recipes that I want to try are a bit costly to make at the moment, and the place I'm staying at for college has a broken oven, so I can't bake what I want.

So, yeah, if you want fluffy scrambled eggs with melted butter mixed and cream mixed in while they cook, you come to me.

 

[Angie7F]

I can cook to surive and I can cook to impress but i am not a fancy chef at all.
Plus there are way too many nice restaurants in Tokyo that you can eat for cheaper than cooking for yourself

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

I'm no chef, believe me.

Despite that, I do know how to cook a handful of dishes and I'm great at looking up and following directions in terms of recipes.

 

[bluerocker]

So long as I have a recipe to refer to, I think I cook somewhere between reasonable and Excellent.
I can bake up a storm too, so long as the requirements above are fulfilled as well.

Otherwise, I'm terribly forgetful, and not so great.

 

[TehCookie]

My cooking is inedible to most people. On the bright side I can eat things that would kill a lesser man and feel fine.

 

[Tahaneira]

Any chance we could get some backstory on this ramen incident? It sounds worthy of remembrance.

Heh. I can do that, yeah.

I started off well enough. Measure two cups of water, put it in a pot, set it on the stove to boil. That's when things went downhill.

First of all, I lost track of the water. So it was half-boiled-away before I remembered I was boiling water. Then I decided, "well, I'll just have less of the broth, that's okay I guess, I just want to eat ASAP" so I toss the noodle block in there. Then, not too long after, I smell something burning. My water was gone, and the noodle block was scorching.

...And then I ordered pizza. Happy ending!

Wow. I thought that my friend's story about being incapable of properly making mac and cheese was as bad as I was ever going to hear.

I thought wrong.

Congratulations on your accomplishment (if such words can be attached to your abilities).

Anyways. I'm a decent cook; I can cook things in the oven, though I haven't exactly experimented with recipes beyond sprinkling seasoning on chicken before baking it. Living with a couple of chefs for a few years helped, but mostly, I think I inherited my dad's ability to stand in the kitchen for half an hour while reading a book and checking the stove/oven every minute or so.

 

[game-lover]

I'm reasonable. Pretty good at cooking. Been doing it since I was old enough to learn how.