Learning to cook and bake from scratch is an essential part of the homesteading journey, and it is a huge step towards self sufficiency. It is simultaneously one of the easiest and most difficult parts as well. Developing a skill set in the kitchen will set you up for easy and stress free meal times (you know, besides the 5pm witching hour when everyone starts getting hungry and you’ve already been refusing snacks for an hour and a half).

It probably won’t feel as convenient in the beginning, your family and friends might ask you why you are wasting your time when there is a store or a restaurant down the street where you can buy the same thing you are making. It might even feel silly to YOU to make it when there is a store down the street, but, having the skills to cook from scratch can truly help you and your family out in a time of need.

That inconvenient feeling will fade and it will often feel more convenient to you to make things from scratch with ingredients you already have in your home or growing in your yard rather than needing to run to the store for just one or two things. You will learn what foods/ingredients to keep on hand in your house so that you can always build a meal in your kitchen. Be patient, keep a notebook in your kitchen, plan menus on a whiteboard for the week so everyone knows what is coming. Having it posted for the whole family will keep disappointments to a minimum and help to hold yourself accountable for not falling back on your old definition of convenience.

Please don’t get me wrong, we still eat out. Now it’s not because I don’t know what to make for dinner, its either because we are already out of the house and coming home to eat would actually be more inconvenient or because we love good and interesting food, so we really try to make an effort to eat out at places that have something that we couldn’t easily make at home or to get inspiration for new flavors or recipes to try.

It was not long ago that ready made bread was gone from the stores, then the flour went, along with the yeast, and let me tell you… thank goodness for the internet, because a lot of people (myself included) learned to make their own sourdough starter. Finding flour required thinking outside the box a bit, but I was able to purchase from both a restaurant supply company as well as a local specialty shop.

I was extremely grateful to be able to prepare the foods that my family needed when they couldn’t be purchased from a grocery store or a restaurant.

Cooking and baking from scratch is not difficult, but there is a learning period. I find that my biggest struggles as an adult come when I am trying to learn/do something new and I get frustrated when I am not immediately good at it. Its okay. Its okay to burn things, to “ruin” a meal, to eat an hour and a half later than you originally planned. It can be hard not to just throw in the towel right away. We have to remind ourselves, that the things we are already good at are not things that we learned to do in a day. Learning new skills takes time.

There is also the monotony that often comes with cooking at home. Those meals out can seem like a change of pace, but if you’re trying to save money and/or time, or really want to make sure you know where all of your ingredients come from, these meals contain both money and health costs.

If you are a family who eats out a lot and you want to make a change, have a conversation with your partner and family about what you are trying to do and why. Then, give yourself grace, and always have a backup plan (this should be something super simple and fast: pasta and sauce, breakfast for dinner, PB&J) in case your failure is an epic one. I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but it definitely could, and let me tell you, having a backup plan will keep you from feeling like you failed completely. I use the word failure loosely, as in, you didn’t really fail, you might not have a beautiful dinner but you will have learned something to keep that same mistake from happening again.

5 Easy Ideas to Learn to Cook from Scratch

1. Phone a Friend

Do you have a friend who is always posting beautiful food on social media? What about a friend who is always sharing delicious cookies with you? Who is the person who always brings the BEST dish to a potluck? Talk to them! What a fantastic compliment to get from a friend. If you love what they made, tell them, and ask them to share the recipe or to help teach you how to make it. If you start the recipe they share and you run into trouble, you’ll know exactly who to call with questions.

2. Use ONE Well Rounded Cookbook or Website for a Couple of Weeks

A great way to get started is to find a blog or cookbook that you find appealing and start making recipes from there. I really feel like there is a benefit to using the same author’s recipes when you are trying to learn and develop new skills. You will find yourself understanding the recipes and techniques a bit more easily since they will always describe things the same way. Building confidence in yourself is part of what you need to keep learning. The great news is that there are a lot of blogs that offer recipes for free.

3. Pick an Appliance to Master

You can also pick one of your appliances that you want to focus on really getting the hang of. When I first got my Instant Pot I had no idea how to use it, and the recipes in the book that came along with it didn’t feel appealing to me. So I went and found an Instant Pot specific website, bought the cookbook they offered, and went to town. We went through a lot of “practice” meals at first, but now I know which foods my family likes instant potted, which ones I should prepare with a different method, AND how to not get a BURN notification when I am using it.

The only additional gadget I’ve purchased for my Instant Pot is a glass lid so that I could donate my crock pot and have less appliances in our small Cape Cod style kitchen. We still store it in the basement as it’s not a “use every day” appliance and it’s pretty easy to carry up and down the stairs.

4. Use a Meal Kit Delivery Service

You definitely do not need to sign up for a meal kit service to get yourself cooking, but if you have a busy schedule and the funds to support it, it is definitely an option.

I will definitely give some credit to Hello Fresh and Blue Apron for a lot of my early successes. I know that might seem ridiculous for someone with a background in Food and Beverage, but putting more interesting meals together, pairing and preparing sauces, as well as pairing grains, fruits, and vegetables with proteins was not in my wheelhouse.

Their easy-to-follow recipes with clear instructions, and not having to shop for all of the needed ingredients took so much of the stress out of “learning to cook” that I actually started to enjoy it. I still have some of the recipes around for inspiration or cook times and temperatures for the meals I make now.

5. Search for Your Favorite Meals Online

I have this one down at “5” because I think it’s a great way to add new meals to your recipe stash, but it more often than not may require some more than basic recipe understanding/cooking skills. A quick google search for some of your favorite restaurant meals can return a huge list of possibilities. Pick your favorite meal and type it in with the restaurant name followed by the word “clone.”

Plenty of bloggers, chefs, and stay-at-home parents have already done the legwork for you in recreating your favorite chain restaurant meals, so take advantage.

How did you learn how to cook?

Everything listed above plays a part in how I learned to cook. I grew up in a home where my mom did cook quite a bit, and I have a handful of recipes that are in my favorites that came from her, but I did not develop my skill set in the kitchen when I was younger, it has been a much more recent development.