Cooking for beginners

    Cooking for beginners 

Nowadays many girls are into studies and career. Their focus is more towards education and job which is good. Every girl should be self sufficient and independent. They should know how to cook for themselves. Here is the guide for beginners. Basically I am writing cooking for newbies.

That’s how I learn cooking. You need to pay heed to these small hacks and tips to learn the basics. If you are not into cooking and you get married this blog will help you a lot. If you’re moving to hostel this blog would be helpful in that case as well. Let’s start with the very basics
We need to learn the basic spices names, color and shape so here is the list:

You need to learn these things and remember these points:

Meat:

1- Boil mutton

2- Fry chicken 

These two things would help you in cooking meat. Always remember first you have to boil mutton then fry it. For chicken you need to fry it 

Lentils:

You boil most of the lentils 

You need to remember the names of the lentils along with the color

Vegetables:

There comes a lot of variations in the cooking process of vegetables. Few vegetables are boiled. We fry few vegetables. In some vegetables we add ginger and garlic and some are made without it with a very simple ingredients. I did mention everything separately like a chart. Presentation plays a very important role. Serving should be colorful in order to make one hungry. Basic step is make a curry or gravy by frying onion, garlic, tomatoes and ginger along with spices let the oil separate then add chicken or vegetable.

Fry:

We need to fry these vegetables

Bitter gourd           - karela ( apply salt then wash) 

Cabbage/ cauliflower.   - gobi
Lady finger                   - Bhindi
Tero root or taro corms - Arbi  ( salt ) 

Boil: 

Spinach          - palak

Turnip            -  shaljam
Moringa oleifera - Suhanjna
Drumstick  tree' 
Horseradish tree' 

Adding ginger garlic

We add ginger and garlic in all types of meats

Chicken

Mutton

Fish 

Vegetables:

Pumpkin          - kadu 

Broad beans     - phaliyan 

Mix vegetables - all vegetables carrots, beans, fenugreek, potato

Lentils.             -   Mash 

Lentils.             - Masar  ( only garlic ) 

No need to add ginger garlic:

Potato fenugreek                 - Allu meethi 

Bitter gourd.                       - karela

Lady finger.                        - Bhindi 

Spinach.                              -  palak

Brinjal.                                -  bengan 

Round gourd/ squash          - Tinday

Ridge gourd/ sponge gourd - Toraiyan 

Radish pods.                        - Allu mungray 

Moringa Drumstick  tree'           -   Arbi
Horseradish tree'

Basic method:

Every family has a different setup and taste. Cooking method also varies family to family. 

There are two methods to start with:

1- Boil onion - making soft (May or may not be in pressure cooker)

2- Fry onion

It’s totally up to you which method you opt for cooking.

Let’s start with making curry or gravy for chicken or vegetables

Suppose you’re cooking for two persons then quantity would be ( you can change according to your taste it’s rough estimation ) 

Curry making :

Step 1:    Add oil and Fry 1 onion medium size 

Step 2:    Add Garlic 

Step 3:    Tomato

Step 4:    Add spices
Step 5:    Add ginger
Step 6:    Add chicken or vegetable 

Half tea spoon             salt

Quarter tea spoon        turmeric powder 

Half tea spoon.            Red chilly powder

Two pinches.               Black pepper
Two small.                   Green chillies

Tips for spices:

If you have added more salt mistakenly you can add kneaded flour and potatoes so that they make it normal 
If you added more spices pour warm water with sugar. It will balance out the spices.

You can add water accordingly and give it a stir throughout. 
When tomatoes and onion becomes a paste totally mesh and it leaves oil curry or gravy is done.

Add vegetable or chicken now
We will know the vegetable or chicken is cooked when the oil separates.

1. Oil is separated in curries mostly after you have cooked spices or gravy for ~10-15 mins. You can tell when "bubbles" appear and the oil would make a thin layer on top of gravy/sauces/curry.
2. It may differ, but normally after 10-15 mins the oil leave the curry
3. Normally after 10-15 mins most of the water dries up which makes the curry a thick sauce to separate from the oil.
4. It's the best way to let the oil separate from our curry because of two reasons:
   
   
   • Extra water dries up
   • All spices and curry get cooked properly
   These are the basic hacks and tips of cooking for beginners I hope you’ll like it. If anything differs nothing to worry every house cooking style is different you can change steps accordingly. 
   

The food tastes much better if spices and the curry is cooked properly.

In case of rice we can add double the water in curry let it boil then add rice ( half of water ) water may differ according to the quality of a rice let the water evaporates and last few minutes cooking should be at low flame.