Autism and Cooking

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I love cooking and am a decent cook. I don't mean I can make fancy restaurant meals, just solid, everyday fares. I'm especially good at making soup. Usually I can't multi-task at all but I can handle cooking several things at the same time. I have no trouble making a feast all by myself, as long as someone else clean up. I think I do it so much it became a habit and routine (cooking multiple items) so it's no longer difficult. Routines are awesome for aspies, they make life simpler.

I do think I'll be able to do better if I'm NT. My NT mom and SIL can all work faster and churn out more items for dinners than I can. If I move as fast as they do I'd drop, spill or forget what I'm supposed to do. Plus they can chat to people while cooking. I have to work without distraction.

I love cooking and baking. I make bread 2-3 times a week and all meals are cooked from scratch. I have to cook alone because I rigidly follow recipes while my husband never does and I tend to have meltdowns when he adds X instead if Y.

my cooking level is 99, i have the skillcape

I like cooking and trying new recipes. Sadly my partner and I only can "really" cook once or twice a week. If we both get home early, then we do on Friday as well, but normally we do only Saturday. Sunday we normally have to visit family members. During the week there is not much sense in cooking something, because my partner already gets midday meal in his company-cantina, and I come home really late, so for one person there is not much sense in cooking something that needs much efforts, when I come home at 19:30. So I normally only do something small and fast during week, like a soup, or cutting some vegetables and grilling them in the wok or a salad, ...

My partner and I work well as a team, so he likes being directly at the stove, coordinating that the different dishes get ready at the same time, which causes me a bit of trouble and stresses me. Additional he is responsible for grilling meat, because I have been vegetarian for long time, and simply dont have a good feeling for when a piece of flesh is ready, and how it should be treated best. In the opposite he hates that typical preparation before the direct cooking, so the cutting of vegetables, removing potatoe skins, creating vinegrattes ... which I do like, because of that being very chilling for me. So he prefers the "hot, active" cooking work, while I prefer the "cold, not stressed" cooking work. ^^

I can't cook at all. Usually I just throw some things that don't require cooking together. I use the microwave a lot, occasionally I'll boil some pasta or rice, and rarely I'll "make" something that requires heating in the oven. I've only properly cooked something from a recipe about ten times in my life.

I SO want to learn how to cook, but no one will teach me.

I'm a pretty decent cook when I get the impulse, though usually I'll start out from a recipe and tweak it over time. If I'm in reasonable mental health I'll typically end up cooking about once a week, occasionally more. I've had the habit of making goulash at the weekend, especially since that'll make dinners for much of the following week. (I don't mind eating the same thing days on end if it's a good thing.)

That's kinda the beauty of it; you can pretty much teach yourself these days. That's pretty much what I did. Try watching a couple cooking shows or some tutorials on youtube (lots of good ones there). That's where I learned some of the basics like proper chopping/preparing.

Before I got married, I could make grilled cheese and instant ramen soup; that's about it. Now I'm the chef of the house, and get rather disappointed looks/comments if I'm not gonna be in on a particular night to cook dinner . A slow-cooker or crockpot is a great way to start out. Plenty of recipes that call for minimal prep beforehand, and are pretty much 'throw everything in the crockpot on low for 4-6 hrs'. I like those as they are easy to pull off and, with any prep that is required, you feel like you accomplished something.

It's amazing finding out you can do something, that you never thought you could - pull off a meal that even the fussiest person likes.

I can cook from scratch, but take shortcuts whenever I can.

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this.

i got inspired watching Top Chef endlessly (not to cook gourmet, but just seeing what could be done). i was unemployed and looking for ways to cut corners, and have always loved great food. and i had a boyfriend a long time ago who was a great cook. i'd tried many times and failed following recipes to the letter. and i wanted to eat healthier, cleaner foods without additives.

in my case i got on about.com and started with "basics" and just learned things like knife skills, the different types of cooking (dry, braising, etc.) and when to use which one. For instance, which which cuts of meat, and which kinds of proteins, etc. Then basics of seasoning. Then basics of, say, how to cut up a whole chicken. Oh, the satisfaction of easily parting a chicken for the first time! Then the basics of creating sauces and soups.

Good knives are CRITICAL and an investment you will never regret.

i also found a GREAT GREAT book i cannot recommend enough called the "food bible" (60-75 bucks!), it's basically a thesaurus for ingredients. So i can look up any ingredient and find out what tastes good with it for seasoning, sides, etc. My sense of taste is not great and i will never be a great chef (poor sense of smell too) but i'm a very good home cook. I can make a bolognese sauce that will knock your socks off. And i can put together a whole meal without a cookbook. It's very empowering!

I, too, learned cooking when I became unemployed. I wanted to contribute around the house and it just sorta happened. I've taken a real liking to asian cuisine and stir-frying. My mother-in-law got me a wok for Christmas one year and I love using it. Super easy after realizing that less is really more when stir-frying veggies. I first tried just tossing all sorts of vegetables in, but everything would get done at different times and some would turn out soggy. I might as well have been cooking a stew. Go with 3 or 4 good choices, with maybe 1 or 2 being dominant for the dish. Like bokchoy and green beans with a few green peppers, or perhaps broccoli and peppers with a few onions and mushrooms. I also love playing 'mad scientist' with the seasonings I use for a sauce. Best I've made so far is just soy sauce, rice vinegar, and water for the liquids and for seasonings it's garlic powder, onion powder, ground ginger, chicken bullion (for whatever volume of liquid I happen to be using), and a bit of sugar.

I can learn the techniques pretty well. Like how to make a proper french omelette. That I can do. Straightforward muscle memory. The tough thing for me is cooking anything with a degree of complexity or multitasking involved. So I only cook a small number of dishes, and all consist of at most five ingredients. Chicken fried rice is one of my staples. Cook rice in rice cooker (easy- rinse and soak rice, add water, turn on). Then in the pan, add oil, add chopped chicken (I buy pre-cooked whole chicken from grocery), then the rice, then some pepper; add soy sauce, stir, add sriracha sauce, stir. and done.

Baking has traditionally been an area of moderate to total disaster outcome for me.

It used to be the same for me, but now I'm much better. Maybe it was the precision required?

I didnt know as well much about cooking. I started with easy stuff and always only ever fresh cooked one new meal. So as example you choose pasta and then you simply buy the noodles from the supermarket and only do only the sauce freshly, so that you dont need to focus on two new things at the same time. Or as example I bought already marinated steaks from the butcher, prepared dumplings that only needed to be given into salted water, and only did the vegetable "kraut"-sidedish myself. Whenever I did anything often enough, that I could do it without recipe and without chaos, then I started adding something else. So as example, first I did potatoes pureé myself, and added to it frozen vegetables and already prepared spiced flesh dumplings from the butcher. When I was fine with the pureé I started to do additional the flesh dumplings myself. And when that was fine too and I had no probs with both of them, I started doing the vegetables myself.

Simply always focus on only one new or yet not that often practiced dish, so that you can fully focus on that. If you try to do two or three new dishes/recipes for the same meal, it sucks. ^^ And dont try something you dont have already practiced, if you are under pressure and dont have time for forgetting things or preparations. ^^

And dont stress yourself if something doesnt instantly works. Normally if I cook something for the first time I do mistakes, and it wont become like in the recipe. So as example a vegetable casserole becomes more of a vegetable pureé because of me using to much heat, then I need to stir it much more, so that it doesnt burn and add some water again ... The second and third time, I learned from that failures, and so it normally gets more like I planned it. ^^ And when you managed to cook it according to the recipe, then you can start with trying a bit to change it, so that it becomes better according to your personal taste. So adding or removing some herbs, making it more or less fluid, combining it with other stuff. Always do it step for step. First try to get into the recipe a few times, and when you are fine with that, you can start to do changes about it.

I'm kinda the same way. I don't particularly mind baking, but it is a definite chore. I don't have a rice cooker, but I learned in my searches online how to make it pretty much perfect every time. Use perhaps 2x as much water as the directions say and let that boil first. Then add the rice, stir a bit, and take heat down to low simmer. Instead of covering completely, have the lid of the pot off just a hair so some steam can escape. Leave it like this for half the time needed for the rice to cook and then drain the water w/o removing the rice (the remaining moisture and heat from the pan will continue to cook the rice). Once drained, tightly cover the pan and remove from heat for last half of cooking time. I've found fried rice is much easier to prepare once the rice has cooled first, but obviously only works if you have a ton of time before the meal. I like mine with a dash of soy sauce, chinese 5-spice, and fish sauce. They are incredibly potent and it's easy to use too much.