Cooking basics: from prep to a finished dish
This course is for someone who can boil water and operate a microwave but has never really cooked: recipes read like they assume you already know things — how to hold the knife, when the pan is "hot", how much salt "to taste" means — and the one time you tried, something burned while you were still chopping. The fix is not more recipes. It is a small set of mechanics — prep before heat, an even cut, readable heat cues, measured salt, and honest doneness checks — that every stovetop dish reuses.
The course ends with one real dish: a tomato and egg stir-fry, cooked start to finish in your own kitchen, with quantities and success criteria you can check at every step. Everything before it exists so that this dish works on the first try.
By the end you'll be able to (course objectives):
- Read a recipe end to end and set up a complete mise en place — everything washed, cut, measured, and within reach — before turning on any heat.
- Hold a chef's knife with a pinch grip, protect the other hand with the claw grip, and cut pieces even enough to cook at one rate.
- Judge when a pan and its oil are ready by sight, and connect browning to the Maillard reaction instead of guesswork.
- Start from a measured salt baseline, taste as you cook, and correct an over- or under-seasoned dish by mechanism, not myth.
- Decide doneness with temperatures and reliable cues instead of color alone, and keep food out of the bacterial danger zone.
- Cook a tomato and egg stir-fry from prep to plate and explain why its steps run in the order they do.
Prerequisites: None. You do not need any cooking experience, special equipment, or ingredient knowledge. If you can follow a written checklist, you can start.
Practice environment: Your own kitchen: one stove burner (gas or electric), one frying pan or wok, one chef's knife and cutting board, plus pantry basics (cooking oil, salt, sugar, eggs, tomatoes). A food thermometer is recommended for Lesson 05 but every exercise has a no-thermometer fallback. There is no embedded sandbox; the pan is the sandbox.
Lessons
Sources listed in sources.md.