How Learning to Cook Will Enhance Your Life

Get less hangry and make more friends

Despite the preponderance and popularity of cooking shows in the last decade, the prospect of spending an hour chopping and frying and standing next to a stove is enough to put many people off cooking entirely. Many of us found ourselves having to learn how to boil an egg after leaving home for the first time or finally tiring of staring into a fridge with nothing but leftover take-out.

I learnt to cook when I left for college and have fortunately found it to be a deeply satisfying, relatively easy way to turn around a bland or unproductive day. Even if you don’t enjoy the process, this is an especially good time to learn how to make good food relatively easily, given the variety of resources that are available online. Even if you’d rather not use your YouTube time to watch cooking videos, it’s more than likely you have a friend in your circle who would be happy to teach you the fundamentals of some delicious meals.

Moreover, the art of working with food brings with it some wonderful gifts that make it well worth the effort.

Comfort

It’s no secret that many of us turn to food when we need comfort. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing at all. The components of our food literally end up constituting our cells, so it’s no wonder that we often feel a visceral and emotional need for sweetness or saltiness or spice.

When you learn to prepare food that’s wholesome and soothing, you have something lovely to look forward to at the end of the day. Returning to dishes you ate during your childhood can bring with it a wonderfully warm sense of familiarity. If your favourite treat isn’t appropriate for everyday consumption, there are countless blogs which will teach you how to make a healthier version of it.

Creativity

Adding an imaginative touch to an existing recipe or even coming up with something relatively new is a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. It can also make food more exciting and appetising. If you grew up surrounded by multiple cultures and cuisines, combining them in unexpected ways can bring sometimes bring about surprisingly delicious results.

You don’t have to be an expert to make something unusual — you might be the only person who ends up liking what you come up with and that’s enough! Go back to your childhood, treat the kitchen as your canvas and your fridge as a palette and make something you can really call your own.

Community

Calling people over for a home-cooked meal is a great way to make lasting friends. People bond over leisurely meals in a way that’s hard to replicate in other settings. In a time where families are getting smaller and people feel increasingly isolated, eating in good company is becoming something of a rare treat.

Taking the initiative to learn how to make a delicious meal from scratch and then inviting friends over to enjoy it may take some effort, but it’s an amazing way to feed both your body and your soul.

Cure

I grew with up with plenty of Indian food, alongside a mix of other cuisines. Like most people, I assumed that all those spices were being paired together solely to enhance the flavour of a dish. Of course, there’s much more to it. With the right knowledge, food really can act as medicine. We often neglect that it’s not just the content of our meals but the timing, atmosphere and mood in which we ate them that makes a whole lot of difference to our health.

Given that we’re going to be eating for the rest of our lives, experimenting with and learning to appreciate the joys of cooking is a deeply worthwhile pursuit.

What other hobby produces something that’s good enough to eat?

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