I love cooking, but because my mom is too much of a bimbo and my dad too much of a “manly man” to ever step into the kitchen, I never had the chance to learn from them. I grew up on delivery, takeout, eating out, and the incredible food made by the amazing woman who cooks for our family. I became deeply interested in cooking at the start of my teenage years and taught myself through the internet, books, that same woman, and other relatives.
For me, it was about gear. I impulse bought a grill that can detect the width of meat, and can pretty reliably grill whatever I put there, assuming I choose the correct program. That made me buy a lot more steaks, since they were super easy to prepare.
Another one was getting an instant pot, and just randomly choosing recipes on the internet, mostly focusing on one-pot recipes. It’s so much easier when you don’t have to deal with standing there and guarding the stove, which I always found super boring and that was keeping me from cooking.
By not having exactly the correct ingredients, I’ve eventually discovered that most of cooking is just “stock, veggies, meat and seassoning”, maybe cream, and i can just do whatever (within reason, but you can usually guess what works together) and it probably works and tastes good.
On disadvantage my mostly random approach has is that I can make an amazingly good meal, but have no idea how I actually did that, only to never be able to make the same food again. I have a memory of a goldfish on ketamine and hate planning stuff, so my cooking is mostly random. Most of the time it tastes good, but I was never able to exactly repeat the same process twice, hah.