…begins with a single step. I declare this post to be my first step.

Ever since I have graduated college, my relationship with feeding myself has been… unstable. In the first three years adulting, I would almost exclusively eat takeout. Occasionally, I would be inspired to buckle down and be consistent with cooking, but it never stuck. I always started off strong, committing to learning a bunch of recipes to cook my favorite meals. But, after a few weeks, cooking based off of recipes was just not sustainable.

Several things about recipe-following frustrated me. I disliked wasting food after buying it specifically for recipes; heavy cream for a chicken masala is a classic example of this. I would use maybe half the carton, and the inertia involved with researching what recipes I could make with heavy cream was just too strong. And, almost every time without fail, I would trash it. Going off of that point, I detest the research required to find recipes. Not to mention, following a recipe after a long day at work is usually the last thing I want to do. I just want to open my fridge, find some ingredients that I am in the mood for, and improvise a delectable meal.

Most importantly, following recipes never taught me why I was doing each step. In many of life’s pursuits, I am driven to understand why things are the way they are. And the vast majority of recipes, unfortunately, are not good at explaining that.

A few weeks ago, I read the article, The Why of Cooking, in The Atlantic. The article prodded me to understand a truth that I had known subconsciously for years but had not verbalized: if I am going to become a good cook, it will be primarily by understanding the fundamentals of cooking, and not by following recipes. Thus, I became a man with a purpose: over the next few months, I am going to learn the fundamentals of cooking with trial and error, and I am going to document it to hold myself accountable and for others to glean from my successes and failures.

I went and picked up the book referred to by the article: Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat. And, on this blog, I will track how my journey to learn how to cook progresses. I expect many of these blogs to be inspired by Nosrat’s writing, but I also plan to incorporate research about random kitchen topics. For example, what is the chemistry behind the maillard reaction? Is washing a cast iron skillet with soap really as destructive as so many make it out to be?

I have no idea where this journey will take me. I don’t even have an idea how long I will be blogging about my adventures in the kitchen. But, even if I blog consistently for 2 months, I’d say I will still have learned something. So here’s to trying!