Cooking Styles: What Kind of Cook Are You?

Maybe the question should be, what kind of cook do you have to or want to be? We tend to hear diametrically opposed ideas about cooking, either “oh, I never cook” or “I love to cook.” In our household everyone cooks and appears to enjoy it, both for pleasure but also for budget necessity. To be fair, all three of our sons saw both their father and me cook daily for the family. The task wasn’t just endured, it was usually eagerly anticipated, strategically shopped for and executed with genuine enthusiasm. Both parents loved to eat good food at home daily. As an extended family, the grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins have always enjoyed cooking and eating together. It’s hard to avoid that if you come from an Italian family where it’s one of the main activities. Dinner is prosecuted at breakfast!

Still, in my career as a food director and editor in the kitchens of a major media company, many cooks found their way into our employ from different roots. There were career changers, lawyers and accountants who always wanted to cook professionally but their families wouldn’t hear of it. Or that self-taught daughter or son of parents who worked long hours, so the responsibility of getting food on the table fell to them. I had one woman who was an only child, very affluent, yet her parents were absentee. Since no one ever taught her to cook or cooked with her, she found her missing emotional piece when she started working in the kitchen. Many candidates came straight from culinary school or restaurant kitchens, both high and low brow.

I like to encourage people to start anywhere and not be afraid to just be the cook you want to be. Perhaps you have a full-time demanding job outside of the home yet still want to contribute something home-cooked to your family or friends. I call this having a cooking “superpower.” You might not know how to make dinner, but you make the best Sunday morning pancakes—a skill you learn and hone until people ask you to make your famous pancakes. Maybe you’re the one folks turn to for the perfect grilled steak.

I’m just a “rustic home cook,” as one son called me after he started apprenticing at a world-class New York City Michelin-starred restaurant. Years later he apologized for the comment and admitted that the “rustic home cooking” is the food he now loves to eat. At the time my feelings weren’t hurt, but I did pause to self-reflect. Should I be “deglazing” or “mounting” or “rouxing” more? Who had time, I concluded, responsible as I was to feed five people on a budget three square meals a day for decades. Even though my day job was to oversee the most sophisticated foods (both recipes and restaurants) for broadcast and publication, it’s comfort food that I’m drawn to. This doesn’t mean warm, gooey wintery dishes. I’m referencing simple recipes created from basic, carefully chosen ingredients that hail from the homes of cultures around the world.

Our oldest is a very practical cook, aka an enthusiastic eater who knows what he loves. He’s learned how to cook solid dishes, and this is important…quickly, with flavor and all the accoutrements one might want: ketchup, hot sauce, butter, whatever might make the eating more enjoyable. He’s even more rustic than me. You’ll never see him reducing a sauce or boning a fish. But the food will come to the table quickly, taste delicious and everyone will enjoy it.

Our third son came to professional chef-ing later in his young career, after a decade in the fashion business. He was the first civilian I knew who taught himself sourdough bread, before the Covid downtime when the modern sourdough craze took hold of so many heretofore non-bakers. When he decided to leave the fashion world, he confessed to me that his greatest desire was to become a chef. In what may be one of my worst mothering moments, I reacted swiftly. “No!” I said. “Get another lateral job in fashion and stockpile money for a year, and meanwhile educate yourself on the subject while still earning good money.” He boldly ignored me, and within a year of following his passion, he was a full-fledged cook (chef?) in quick ascent, performing his dream job while proving his ability to earn the money needed to support himself.

As for the education, he did take one bit of advice and read every pertinent book he could get his hands on, watched YouTube videos of professional chefs he admired, and practiced the art of cooking. In our family he’s the fish-butcher, sauce-maker, asado-smoker. There doesn’t appear to be a task that daunts him. Most importantly, he surrounds himself with skilled cooks (including his brothers) to supplement his own skills. This attribute of his I ascribe to a long career as a soccer athlete and captain.

All this to say, as the kids used to term it, “Do you.” Home cooking has gone from a task mothers were expected to magically perform every day for their family (generations back) to present-day niche influencers who “show” cooking, with all the various cook-chefs in between. It can also be both ways. You may not know how to cook yet, but cook a few things well and be a master of that one superpower. You can dabble-cook in your spare time for pleasure or set out to be the best home cook you can be. These days, there are so many ways to make a living in the food world.

The only thing I take issue with is anyone who tells me they don’t care about cooking. I’ll fight you on that and never give up trying to teach you at least one skill to take into the kitchen. There’s too much goodness to be had in the simple act of preparing a meal for yourself, loved ones or customers. Mental, psychological and emotional wellness is right there under your nose. Just stand up and chop the onions, stir the batter, bake the bread and you’ll discover a prism through which to understand the world. All this goodness is within reach, all while performing the most basic task of nourishing yourself. Here at Mad Hungry our mission is to teach you how to be the cook you want to be, learning a few techniques and/or recipes using the fundamental tools that get the job done.