Ask Lemmy

I'm an elder millenial and my parents cooking consisted of 1) BBQ a piece of meat until it's real dry and 2) microwave a can of veggies.

I moved out early and in a pretty unsupported way, so I had to pretty much immediately figure out how to feed myself. I don't remember who pointed me to Budget Bytes but I'm pretty certain Beth pretty much taught me how to cook.

This is not paid, I just really love Budget Bytes. The recipes are generally pretty simple and approachable. They are obviously budget friendly. But most of all every single recipe has step by step pictures. if I don't know what a fine dice vs a mince is -- it's in the pictures. If I don't understand what spoon coating thick is -- also in the pictures. Last benefit: Beth would regularly make suggestions for additions or substitutions. Other commenters would say their favorite changes. There's a few contributors these days, but they all seem similarly good.

35 here: my cooking before I could afford to eat out every meal was boiled chicken and rice. The prep time for meals that I enjoy are multi hour affairs, and I’d rather work an extra hour for a meal prepared by a professional whose food I enjoy.

im ahhh. not proud but kinda a sterotypical guy in the kitchen and I live large on the largess of my wifes skill. When I was single pizza was a very common meal for dinner and fast food for breakfast and lunch. Freezer filled with microwaveable options and plenty of cereal on hand at all times along with bread, peanut butter, jelly, lunch meat and cheese.

When I was younger I didn't know how to plan out meals or grocery shop to do so. As well not a lot of time or money so fast meals such as soups, microwave meals, and simple meals. Though I believe there hasn't been a lot of recipe reading passed down to younger folks of recent.

Just for context, a hell of a lot of Boomer men (and those men before them) could barely warm up a can of soup because cooking was women's'work, despite most "great" chef's being men at that time. Gen X men were a little better, but not by a lot. I'm Gen X for context.

It really only became widely desirable / fashionable for men to cook with the Millennials came along. Before then, the ladies were expected to learn how to cook from other ladies, but of course only some of them had role models to teach them.

tl;dr everyone cooking is a relatively recent phenomenon, and as all the commenters here say, it's a skill one needs to learn. Thanks for coming to my mini-TED talk.

Is this really a thing? My kids regularly help with the coooing, they know meal prep, we have them sometimes cook entire meals for the family. I did the same as a kid, although it was largely due to having a single parent who often worked nights.

I can’t really imagine a human growing up without at least some culinary skills. Enough to feed themselves and have basic nutrition literacy anyway.

My son is 22 now, when he was 14 I started giving him “serious” cooking lessons, as in not just helping mom in the kitchen but making whole meals with only guidance from me. When he was ~19 in college all the boys on the floor of his dorm decided they wanted to do a 4th of July cookout. My son was the only boy on the whole floor who knew how to cook. They winged it on the grill and that was fine but even like potato salad was too much for anyone else to make. He called me to tell me how proud he was of himself for essentially running the whole thing because it would have just been meat and chips without his cooking lessons. Obviously this is just one kid in a dorm for a mathematics/computer science college so big grain of salt of course but both my kids (20 and 22) are the only ones in their friend groups who can cook

At that stage of my life, my cooking was rudimentary. While my parents made sure we could cook, it was limited to grilling and baking

To counter your anecdote with my own, not that I've seen. My Gen Z sister and her cohort of Z friends have a "chosen family" dinner every weekend where they come over and cook. One person takes lead, the rest help as needed, and almost every single one finds recipes and learns techniques from Instagram or TikTok.

They've come up with some crazy good dishes that I wouldn't have stumbled across via traditional cookbooks and more millennial + oriented websites. My sister also has much better and more varied techniques than I ever got the old way, learning from mother and other relatives.

Every Human needs to learn to cook. Not a gourmet 12 course meal. Just cook simply to feed yourself. This is a basic skill.

I don't know if they are worse or not. Every gen has people who get to adulthood completely unprepared. Don't know what their parents were thinking. I'm early Gen X, and remember first year living in a student house and only about half of us knew how to shop and cook. Thankful for the weekly cleaning service for the common areas because cleaning and laundry were also things that many had no clue about. Quite a few arguments about cleanliness in the common kitchen.

Yes, that's called "growing up." You have to teach yourself. It's a frustrating process, because you don't understand how to select recipes that suit your needs. 1/2 the recipes I found online usually resulted in a fail, because I couldn't tell the difference between a good recipe and a bad one. I love the first cookbook I bought now, but at the time, what was I going to do with buckwheat blinis or tea-poached pears in chocolate sauce? I needed a basic pancake and chocolate cookies recipe. That book was basically useless for the first 5 years I owned it.

If I could go back, I would start with:

budgetbytes.com

noracooks.com

"I can cook vegan" by Isa Chandler

Chef John on youtube https://www.youtube.com/@foodwishes

Cooking is a skill. You learn it one meal at a time. What you want to start with is building a repertoire of simple, 15 minute meals that you love and that you can crank out with your eyes closed. Once you have like 3-5 of those, then you have a separation between "I need to eat" and "I want to learn to cook." That separation is what lets you not feel frustrated and focus on your skills.

My niece and nephew are young but can both cook. if you don't know you learn the same way you learn any other skill. When I was figuring it out I looked up simple recipes and mastered those and then moved on to more complicated ones. If I didn't know how to do something I watched someone on Youtube do it first. Even when I was starting out it was rare that I ended up with a meal that was inedible. There's nothing to be afraid of.

Multiple times as a child I had the sudden urge to cook something for fun, got up to prepare, and realized I don't know where my parents put which ingredients.

I did learn a decent amount when I lived away from parents for a while and could actually experiment daily now I knew where everything's stored.

But the gen Z housing crisis has hit me too and now I only know how to cook very basic stuff off the top of my head again.

Fun fact - Throughout much of recorded human history, there is evidence that much of the human population has relied on centralized food services and kitchens.

Not knowing how to cook is not as uncommon as people seem to think.

My problem is that I can cook but never have the willpower to after work, so I usually don't eat or eat some junk

I don’t think it’s generational in a way that GenZ is any different. This is an age thing.

Most people never need to cook before they’re 18. They just got fed at home. When people first start to move out, things start to shift. Some people get into relationships where the other person cooks. They’re still being provided for.

Others learn a bare minimum of things to cook and do it badly. They do feed themselves but self describe as “can’t cook”.

And some step up and learn the things you need to know to cook that isn’t taught in school.

Time goes by, and more people find themselves in situations where they now need to cook. The population of cooks grows and the non-cooks shrinks.

Whether it’s because of changing interests, financial pressure, divorce, whatever, people need some pressure to develop the skill, and over time they do.

Both my kids are Gen Z and at least from my experiences talking to them and their friends, one of the big factors is no one taught them when they were young. I'm not talking anything formal, just helping out in the kitchen, chopping veg, grating cheese, whatever. Either their parents don't cook or they didn't let them be active participants in meal prep.

My kids however do know how to cook, as they've helped out since they were little. Learned from my own experience as a picky eater - get your kids involved in making stuff and you won't have to worry about them only eating chicken nuggets or whatever. Once they were teenagers, they got assigned meal prep once a week - they'd pick a recipe, help with the shopping, and make dinner (with help if they asked for it). And now they're both adults who can make their own food. It's shocking to me though how many in their generation just were never given the chance to learn the basics when they were young.

It's not that hard and can be a mindfulness exercise with the washing, cutting and other prep, and then cook it and smells delicious and enjoy the food when it's ready. It can be as healthy as you want. Ina Garten videos/books explain well and she's like a kind and helpful aunt! Mr. Money Mustache also has some good advice on food and nutrition and cutting costs too.

Stay under 25 g added sugars a day, have them after/with fiber, good fats and proteins to slow the sugar hit to the brain and liver. Check fasting insulin and C-reactive protein along with the usual checks to look for metabolic and inflammatory issues earlier. Homa-ir and TG/HDL are useful to check your health for your gender and age, before you need treatment for something. You can eat great, spend less and be healthier!

or is that just a minority?

I mean, where? Things like this depend entirely on your local culture and policies.

Maybe more broadly, consider that it's not always simply "kids these days" but often just the stage of life one is in. Don't worry, they'll come around to seeing most things your way - just that you'll again have moved on to a yet later stage and not notice that they're now in agreement with your former self