The Terrible Trouble of Incompetent in the Kitchen

Dear Tamar:

I am a well-educated individual who can figure out most things in life. But cooking has me stumped. I wish I knew how to improvise a meal based on what I have in my refrigerator or pantry, but I am completely clueless. Even when I follow recipes the results are often meh. As a result, I am convinced I just can’t cook. The thought of preparing a meal at the end of a long day exhausts me, and the process of cooking sometimes stresses me out. I wish I could approach meal preparation as an enjoyable and maybe even a relaxing activity. But first I probably need to let go of the story that I am not a good cook. Can you help?

Thanks,
Incompetent in the Kitchen

Dear Cook in the Kitchen: (I won’t call you Incompetent),

When I was thirteen, my grandfather paid for me to take tennis lessons. I spent hours trudging in Dr. Martens to the baseline, half-heartedly swinging, and watching the ball sail over the fence. Other than spending one Varsity lacrosse game in goal—without blocking a single ball—that was the sum of my ball-sports experience, until last summer, when I woke up one day wanting to “play tennis.”

I put “play tennis” in quotes because I didn’t know what it meant. At first, it felt like a great accomplishment every time I got the ball over the net. But when I played with my husband, I would get angry when he hit a ball out of my reach. I refused to play for points—I would lose!—or serve—ha! I was in a ruffled state—part in-love, part truculently resistant to the very thing I loved.

Trying to let go of the story that you’re not a good cook is a beginning. Since last summer, I’ve mostly let go of my version—I’m a bad athlete—and I’ve found myself still up against something monstrous. I’m good many things. But I’m not good at this, and I struggle to tolerate the version of myself whose presence is required in order for me to learn.

I wonder if your monster is similar. If when you’re reading a recipe and have to make a decision—whether pasta is “al dente” and “well seasoned,” or onions “golden,” or sauce “cooked down”—you worry that by digging into your senses and trying hard to decide, you’re becoming too wobbly, too unlike a person who can figure out most things in life. (Left to trudge around in your Dr. Martens, watching the ball go over the fence.)

It feels unsafe to the ego to try, and fail, with enough un-self-conscious volition to learn. But once, we all learned to walk, talk, ride bikes, etc. And when we did, we tried and failed and tried and failed without perseverating over why it wasn’t more fun, or putting ourselves on pedestals, or admonishing ourselves for not already knowing.

You do not know yet. And I think it’s not the fantasy of whistling Ode to Joy while you make Boeuf Bourguignon that you’re after, but the path toward knowing—a path which requires releasing the idea of yourself as capable, switching your Dr. Martens for tennis shoes, and watching the racket face like a hawk when it hits the ball.

It means, when you cook, applying your mind—not to self-judgement but to what you see and smell and taste and hear. If you like science, and your boiled broccoli is uneven, consider mass—Were the broccoli pieces different sizes? If your roasted broccoli is steamy rather than caramelized, think about evaporation—Were the vegetables so close together that their liquid couldn’t evaporate quickly enough? If you’re a painter, note the gradation of color on what you’ve cooked and consider what might cause it. Apply your mind when you’re not in the kitchen, too. When you taste something you like, make a mark in your memory. You don’t need to know how to make it. But know what you like, and you’ll trust yourself more when you have to make decisions while you cook.

The next time you cook pasta, focus on how much salt you add to its water—then taste the water and taste the pasta after it’s cooked for five minutes or so, and again, and again, until it’s done. This seems silly and elementary. But it’s trying. When you next cook onions to golden, cook just them, curious about “goldenness,” tasting them often as they cook so you can correlate their color with their flavor and texture and how long it took them to achieve it. You are still the person who figured out all those other things, doing something now you that haven’t figured out yet.

The funny thing about this path—digging into observation—is that it’s absorbing. When you’re seeing and tasting and smelling—rather than assessing your competence—you are fully occupied. And that is how we all relax—by doing something that absorbs us fully—that makes us present, puts us in flow.

Dear cook, I think there’s a good chance that once you allow your wobbly self to engage in the individual acts of cooking, pleasure, or at least peace, will come along for the ride. Rather than trying to cook better, or trying to enjoy cooking, try trying in the most childlike way you can: a combination of an open mind, the rigor of close observation, and making choices you’re not sure of. And then, try doing it again.