How old were you when you began to cook? What was your first dish?
 

How Old Were You When You Began to Cook? What Was Your Starter Dish? Was it a success?? :winky:


I was probably 12 when I concocted a spaghetti sauce recipe and began preparing spaghetti with meatballs and sausage for my family and the neighbors family ~ it was pretty darn good!! Homemade garlic bread too!!

PS--By cooking I exclude preparing processed, prepackaged foods (Kraft Mac, Campbell's Soup, canned biscuits, etc.)

I was 18. My Mom didnt teach me how to cook she worked in the evening and I ate alot of processed foods. I would go to my grandmas for Sunday dinners though and watch her cook so Ive incorporated some of the things she cooked into some of my dinners. I think the first thing I cooked was a pasta dish.

I taught both of my kids how to cook, although my DS was/ is a more eager learner (he is food motivated :D:D)

First thing I taught DS was his favorite eggs over easy. Then I taught him homemade salsa and tacos (no seasoning packet) and along the way things like eggrolls and the buffalo chicken dip and chicken and rice casserole :ladywinks

I think my DD can make ramen noodles pretty well :D She bakes better than I do though! :thumbup:

:D I think I was 11 when I first learnt to cook - that's the age over here when we go to Secondary School - or Grammar School if you're clever...ahem!!! ;) :p :D

Back then, we either HAD to do Cookery (it was called Home Economics) or Woodwork!!! :)

Our first dish we had to make was a Sausage Plait.....hmmm....reminds me of another thread! :eek: :D

OMG Bwahahahaha :sidesplt: :eyetearss: :hide2: :teethysmi

We had to take home economics too. I believe that was in 6th grade, so I would have been around 11. Love how the math all comes together in the end :)

I think I was around 12, I had watched my mom cook before but never done anything on my own.
I wanted to surprise everyone and have dinner ready when mom and dad got in from work. I made fried chicken with gravy and mashed potatoes. It was pretty good for my first attempt at cooking...though the mashed potatoes and the gravy were hard to tell apart:D

I spit my iced tea out on that one :sidesplt: :sidesplt:

Pretty ambitious first meal :thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

I forgot I took home economics in school too we didnt cook anything major though One thing I remeber cooking was a biscuit with a piece of 3musketters bar in the middle

Home Ec was the first (and only) place I made BAKED ALASKA

I had the best H.E. teacher in the world. We went on learning dinner trips once a month to try different cuisines. I accredit Mrs Daggett :rip: for my love of food and cooking and different cuisines today!!

We went to local restaurants in the evening (on her own time) to sample:

Greek
Italian
Japanese
Indian
Mexican
Ethiopian
Thai
German

And probably more that I am forgetting. I took her class for 4 years straight both semesters per year.

:D I think the teacher makes the world of difference - in any subject....:)

By the end of our first year, we were making beef casserole, jalousie, all different types of bread - the list was endless. She was amazing, her name was Miss Carrot....:eek: :D

I remember a few friends and I bunking off down to town at lunchtime - we spotted her in the Indian restaurant. We were all about to run off when she saw us and beckoned us in....:eek: Yep, she ended up buying for us all, and she never did 'tell' on us....Happy Days! :D

I don't think we ever made anything worth talking about in Home Economics. I remember my grandmother standing me up on a chair when I was about 7 or 8yrs. old and teaching me how to make just a plain pound cake. First cake with no icing or anything. lol!! It was pretty good though.

I was 11 when I began cooking. I started with a typical Southern breakfast fryed eggs,bacon,biscuits and grits. Dinner firsts were spagetti sauce and lazagna. My mom was expecting my younger brother and she didtnt feel very well.

That's awesome!! Indian restaurants here are still, sadly, not "the norm" :eek:

If you have a room full of 100 people and ask those who LIKE curry to raise their hands I am guessing about 30 would say they like it. Ask again how many have tried Indian food to raise their hands I am betting 15 would raise their paws.

Most here think a curry is a curry is a curry....maybe a new food topic :thinking: :dreaming: :D

A curry thread would be awesome!

I was 17 and had moved in with my boyfriend. I decided to cook fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy for my mom and dad and boyfriend. The chicken and potatoes were good. The gravy, not so much. I used the entire stockpot of grease I had cooked the chicken in!!! I never watched my mom only use part of the grease to make her gravy lol. That stuff kept growing and growing and growing.....

A curry thread?

Or a Curri thread??

We didn't have Home Ec at our school. Sucks bc when I watched TV there was always a Home Ec episode. I esp remember the Married with Children one. Crowned rack of lamb LOL. But when I was about 11 or 12, my parents were going through a separation, and my aunts on my dad's side thought they needed to teach me and my bro how to cook bc we needed to fend for ourselves now. :rolleyes: so they taught us how to cook spaghetti, Mac and cheese, mashed potatoes from a box, crap like that. Recipes you get off the back of Campbell's cans. LOL They wanted us kids to make Thanksgiving dinner one year, told us to get the ham in the can, put it in the oven with pineapple again from the can, OMG can you see where this is going? Needless to say, me and my bro grew up on frozen dinners, ramen noodles, frozen dumplings (that was actual real food though) and eggs.

Wasn't until senior year of HS, my bf at the time whho was in college was really into cooking. Taught me how to make a roux (still not good at it), hollandaise sauce/double boiler stuff, poaching in oil, cooking a steak to a perfect med rare by how much the meat "gives", going to farmers m arkets etc. I had "upscale" food for the first time. Ate at Spago when Wolfgang was still the head chef, and at Matsuhisa which is still a highly rated place in LA (overrated I think), and was watching Food Network back before Emeril had his Live! show and Ming Tsai doing East meets West fusion was a new thing.

Dont' remember what was my official first dish though.

ETA I think my first "everything from scratch" recipe may very well be bc of Lisa. I've never really cooked anything other than easy stuff like omlettes or grilled meats from scratch. BC of her I made pan roast from 100% scratch startng from the stock cooking in the slow cooker and everything! :love: my Lisa :D

LOL both would be pretty interesting!

I venture to say that most on here would love Curri more than curry :tinyheart:heart to:lovewings:yorkiesar :p :o

I remember how great that was too! Have you made it since? I remember you making a fish stock or a crab or lobster stock or something too...MIL kept turning the crockpot off :sidesplt:

Yeah I've made it afew times. I still keep a stock pile of crab and lobster shells in the freezer. It's still not as good as the restaurant version though by I use labne instead of heavy cream and i dont put butter. :D but going back for the real version next month!

I made my first dish in H.E. class. I was probably about 13. The dish was tuna noodle casserole. Many decades later and I will still make this on occasion.

I wonder if I would like tuna noodle casserole if I made a "grown up" version....

Fresh tuna instead of canned, homemade noodles and topped with fresh made croutons....or something similar. Maybe using greek yogurt or labne and some fresh mushrooms......:thinking: :dreaming: :thinking:

Here is a grown up style that looks promising.....


Diannes Dishes: Grown Up Tuna Casserole

Ive never had tuna noodle casserole before.

I took Home Ec, but don't really count that because it wasn't by myself, with teacher's instructions and within a group.

18...trying to impress my now dh and my sister gave me a Mexican cornbread recipe that you made with ground beef in the cornbread. Also attempted a Mulberry pie. It's a wonder dh ever married me after that....neither dish was fit for human consumption:eek: The cornbread was just nasty tasting. The pie filling was okay (I guess) but the crust was so hard, it couldn't be chewed by anyone that wanted to keep their teeth. Dh even tried feeding the "leftovers" to his bird dog....she buried both:eek::eek::eek: You know it's bad when the dog food critic won't even eat it. Dh is grateful I've learned much more and today am a wonderful cook.

I took Home Ec as well...I wont even go there...
My first dish was curried chicken...I was 11. My grandmother just up from Jamaica grabbed me and said 'bout time yu learn fi (to) cook' ..'and you betta no bun it up'!(You had better not burn it!)
Needless to say I was terrified! I knew if I screwed up I was in deep doo doo!
It was to be seasoned the night before, and cooked the following day..Sunday dinner. For the WHOLE family...holy crap! Sooo she watched every move I made, from the seasoning, right down to washing the rice and cooking it just so!
I had put too much water in the rice so it came out kind of mushy, but the chicken was pretty dang good!
Grammy was like 'good...a man don like a woman weh can't cook'...geez gram, you forget I'm 11?! God Bless her, she passed at 94years old, I never forgot those words though!
My youngest son can cook, but the one girl child I have cant boil water...*sigh*....The middle boy is learning though.

Oh goodness I don't remember not cooking or at least helping Mom or Granny cook. As soon as we were big enough to stand on a chair and stir a pot my sister, cousins and I were helping out in the kitchen. We went from stirring as an adult added ingredients to adding the ingredients ourselves as we were told what to do to being turned loose on our own and just being told what we needed to make, up to us to remember how. To this day, most of the meals I make for holidays are dishes that I've never seen a written recipe for, just have made them over and over from the time I was small. And I must say that growing up in the kitchen has really given me a love of cooking. I enjoy finding new recipes and making improvements on old ones. Makes me really sad to see my nieces and my cousins' kids not know how to cook beyond throwing something in the microwave.

The very first thing i ever cooked was the chocolate cake recipe on back of the Hershey cocoa can...I was about twelve at the time and it landed me the official cake baker job every saturday afterwards...still love to cook :)

this is a funny thread... I teach Home Economics! It is now called Family and Consumer Science -but it is Home Ec. I have teugh child development, family dynamics, ran an in school child care center where the students were the teachers for the pre-school children, fashion design and construction, decoration, and of course food production...nutrition..culinary arts. The class I am teaching this year is Culinary Art Careers and Planning (just means they put career onto a food production class)

I hope I am one of the teachers that leads students to the love of cooking and good food choices.... we have about 20 to maybe 24 labs each year. My class if very popular.

I really don't remember when I started cooking. I do remember a cake I made and did not have frosting so colored sugar green. I hid it under the sink to suprise my mom and my older brother found it and said it was something for bugs!! :eek: I was very hurt. I think I was about 10 or 11.. so I made a cake from scratch.

I decided to be a Home Economics teacher when I was in middle school... about 12 or 13. I didn't start teaching until I was in my 30.. and have been teaching for about 26 years now. It is a hard job, but it keeps me on my toes!