Learning to Cook: Learning from Family Members

Learning how to cook from relatives is a great way to begin your introduction to cooking; not only do you get personal tutoring and honest commentary, but you will also get a lot of information about which recipes your family makes and likes and who makes it well: “yah know your grandmother's side of the family loves making stewed pork chops, I believe they use a tomato base and lots of peppers”. However, you most likely encounter a comical level of imprecision when it comes to timing, measuring, temperatures, and perhaps even ingredients: “hey ma, how much salt goes in this?” “I don’t know” “what do you mean you don’t know?” “yah know… some salt” “how much is some?” “(snicker) some is some” “fine then, how much thyme did you just put in the pot” “Oh.. a bit” “Geese ma!” “Hey I cook with love not units of measurement”. Now don’t fault your relatives for this habit, it comes from cooking for years and becoming so familiar with recipes and possibly so good at the winging-it factor that it would slow them down and make the food less fun to make.
Even though they may be annoyed by a certain level of questioning while they are cooking, you need to get your information out of them, because if you don’t they will make the meal on autopilot and not really teach you anything.

Your main objectives from learning from cooking relatives for specific recipes are:
• what are the main ingredients of the recipe?
• what ingredients have they often substituted when they were missing an ingredient?
• is there a shorter or longer (time of cooking) version to this recipe?
• why they are cooking the meal the way that they are? (time, cooking method, pot/pan size and type)
• is this a family/culture specific-recipe?

Some good questions to ask cooking relatives in general are:
• do they add any ingredients in particular very carefully to dishes due to price or strength of flavor?
• what is their favorite ingredients? why?
• what is their favorite cooking method? (baking, broiling, frying, wok-ing, grilling, etc.) why?
• what is their dish to make? why?
• what are the family’s favorite dishes to eat?
• what would they cook for themselves if they had all day and any ingredients that they needed?
• what would they make if they had half an hour and no unusual ingredients?
• what would they cook if guests came over?

Lastly, your relatives are family members and can help you begin to associate your cooking with your family’s culture. It’s good to have a knowledge of your culture’s cuisine; not only will it tell you more about your culture and family and make you feel good for knowing it, but you will also have something to share with others when you inevitably exchange cooking tips sometime in your life.