Food Make a Habit of Cooking

snowy · Mar 4, 2014

from:
How to Turn Cooking at Home Into a Habit or How to Build a Cooking Habit | Summer Tomato

How to Build a Cooking Habit
by Darya Rose | Jan 8, 2014

Photo by Ben K Adams
David Spinks is the CEO of Feast, the home of the Feast Bootcamp: a 30-day online program that helps you build a habit of cooking while taking you through the fundamentals of practical, healthy home cooking. He also writes about life improvement, health, habit building and happiness on the Feast Blog.
I’m not personally affiliated with Feast in any way, I just happen to think it’s a fantastic tool to help build an unstoppable healthstyle.
How to Build a Cooking Habit

by David Spinks
Have you ever said “I should really learn how to cook” but still can’t bring yourself to do it?
You’re not alone.
Millions of people consistently struggle with the same problem.
If you’ve been a regular here at Summer Tomato and you’ve read Darya’s book, you already know cooking is good for you. And if you don’t already cook regularly, you probably want to learn.
Maybe you’ve tried to follow recipes or have even gone to a cooking class or two, but you just can’t seem to get the hang of it.
This is the problem we set out to solve over a year ago at Feast, and after working with thousands of people to figure out why they can’t learn to cook, we’ve discovered a lot about the real problem.
We now have an excellent idea of why you consistently fail to achieve your goal of cooking and what you can do to finally make the change in your life.

But first let’s talk about what “learning how to cook” actually means. It’s different for everyone. Take a second and think about the answer to this question:
At what point will you have officially reached your goal of learning how to cook?
Is it when you can cook for large groups?
Is it when you become a chef?
Do you need to open your own bakery?
Do you need to be able to cook something really fancy?
For most of you the answer to all of these questions is probably “no.”
No… you don’t need to be a chef, to replicate what you see on the Food Network or start a business in order to consider yourself a cook.
Most of our students discover that what they want is much simpler. They want to:

Feed themselves regularly without stressing out

Open up their fridge, see random ingredients and be able to whip up a healthy meal

Eat out and order in less

Simply be comfortable in their own kitchen

Which means what they’re looking for is less about “learning how to cook” and more about…
Building a habit of cooking

In order to be a cook, you just have to do it regularly. That’s it! Simple right?
What’s that? Not so easy? True. Cooking every day is no easier than building any other habit, no matter how good it is for you.
But there’s a very simple reason that you’ve failed at creating the habit.
No, it’s not because you’re too lazy to go grocery shopping, you hate washing dishes, you don’t have the time or because you’re just not a “natural.” Those are all excuses that are disguising the true cause.
It’s the same cause that makes it so hard to get into a routine of working out, flossing, reading, waking up earlier and pretty much any other habit you’ve wanted to take on:
You’re doing too much.
Whenever we want to adopt a new lifestyle it’s very tempting to try to jump in with both feet. We try to run 5 miles every day, we try to floss all our teeth every morning, we want to read 3 chapters, or write a full blog post. And for cooking, we try to cook the perfect recipe every time.
Think about every time you’ve tried to cook in the past. Did you just whip up whatever you had laying around or did you spend 20 minutes searching for a recipe, 40 minutes shopping for ingredients, an hour cooking it and another 15 minutes cleaning up afterward? It’s no wonder you gave up so quickly.
What if instead of running 5 miles, you start by just put your running shoes on every day. That’s it, you wake up, put your shoes on and you’re done.
What if you just flossed one tooth in the morning instead of your whole grill. Pretty doable right?
Maybe you could just read one page or write for 5 minutes before going to bed.
For cooking, in the Feast Bootcamp we tell our students to put a pan on the stove when they walk in the door. That’s it, you don’t have to cook, or put anything in the pan yet. Just take it out and place it on the stove every day.
This is what’s known as a “tiny habit“, a phrase that was coined by BJ Fogg, one of today’s most respected psychologists focused on behavior change.
The idea is as simple as its practice. By starting incredibly small and doing that tiny habit every day, you can build the foundation for a habit.
You’ll start to cook after the habit starts forming not because you’ve forced yourself to cook, but because you’ll feel so eager to finally do something with that damn pan instead of just putting it on the stove. The activity will start pulling you into it instead of you having to push your way in.
The Habit Building Process

Here’s the basic process you can apply to building any habit into your daily life.
1. Identify a Trigger
The trigger could be something like closing the door. Remember in the movies when a character gets hypnotized and the sound of a bell makes them think they’re a dog? That’s essentially what you’re doing here, but in a more practical fashion. When you close that door it will trigger the routine and the part of your brain responsible for habits will take over.
2. Change the Routine
Put the pan on the stove. Every day. That’s it. Eventually your routine will be to put the pan on the stove, add some oil, dice up veggies and start sautéing like a boss. But for now, just stick to the pan.
3. Reinforce with a Reward
In order to reinforce the habit, your brain needs to think that whatever you’re doing is good. You can do that by rewarding yourself. In his book The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg recommends experimenting with different rewards to figure out what’s actually driving your existing habits. If you’re eating out it could be because you enjoy the social interaction, so your reward for putting the pan on the stove could be to call a friend. Maybe you just like spending money, so go online and order some groceries. Maybe you tend to get good desserts when you eat out, so have a yummy snack as a reward. If you can’t find the perfect reward, even something as simple as doing a dance or yelling “WOO HOO!” out loud will do the trick.
Keep at your simple habit for about a week and then start to add the next steps to your routine.
Once successfully creating the habit, cooking will no longer take a great deal of willpower, it will just happen naturally. Your mind will be trained to make cooking the response to your hunger. The stress will fade away and you’ll be well on your way to living the healthy, happy life of a cook.
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Obviously, I love cooking. Even so, there are times I don't want to do it. But having a habit of cooking saves me then--every time. I have some recipes in my back pocket that don't require more than 5 minutes of prep and maybe 10 minutes of cooking to bring together on a weeknight, and to me, those are the recipes that keep that habit going.
How did I develop a habit of cooking? Well, developing my skills helped a LOT. Cooking is much less of a chore to me because I have developed my skill set. My knife skills could be better (they could almost always be better, unless you're a pro chef) but I'm pretty fast and I can get makings for fajitas in the pan in no time. That accuracy and speed comes with practice, and it cuts down considerably on prep time. I also know which cooking methods go well with particular foods. I can saute, braise, fry, stir fry, broil, bake, poach, etc. How did I learn all that? Believe it or not, I actually sat down and read The Joy of Cooking, in addition to other cookbooks, like Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. I started with Joy because it provides a good overview of technique in many cases, and also read Bittman's How to Cook Everything: The Basics because it specifically focuses on method. I also watched a LOT of Molto Mario back in the day (I miss that show). Now there are YouTube tutorials for everything. Gordon Ramsay has some good ones (especially scrambled eggs:
View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUP7U5vTMM0
possibly my favorite YouTube video ever).
I get a lot of compliments on my cooking, and all of that comes about from practice. I'm also pretty adventurous in what I'm willing to try. For example, last week I decided to make pita. No reason. I had time. It's something that might intimidate people, so they don't try it, but it's like anything else--you can't fail if you never try, and cooking can be very forgiving (baking less so, but everyone screws up at baking sometime). On Saturday, I baked up a batch of bread using a straight dough recipe I developed using baker's percentages. That bread represents a journey. I started baking bread using the recipe from The Joy of Cooking for white bread. I have progressed now to doing my own calculations and using a scale. I also generally don't bake bread in a loaf pan any more, preferring to free form it into boules, batards, or baguettes. There's still another place to go in that recipe, though. The next level is experimenting with a preferment like a poolish or a biga. I'll get there with practice. Thinking of it as practice keeps me going.
Do you have a habit of cooking? How do you develop your habit, if you have one? How do you practice your cooking skill? What intimidates you about cooking? What do you enjoy about cooking?

genuinemommy · Jan 14, 2014

What a great thread! Yes. We have a habit of cooking in our family. It helps that both hubby and I love to cook - and we enjoy cooking as a family even more! We've gotten to the point where we only ever eat out for the experience - getting our daughter comfortable with a restaurant environment, to explore new places, and to eat new foods.

When we can whip up something of our own to eat that is more delicious in a quarter the time, why would we ever wait in line for fast-food?
I'd like to return to this thread when I have a little more time on my hands. This was recently a topic of discussion with my child care provider.

hamsterball · Jan 14, 2014

My wife and I both like to cook. I've been doing it since I was a teenager living at home with my parents.

It must be my Italian heritage, but I get a great deal of pleasure from making meals for friends and family.

Baraka_Guru · Jan 14, 2014

I'm currently building a habit, as I've committed to a 6-week health & fitness program at the martial arts school.

The dietary aspect is about keeping well-fuelled with healthful food choices. It includes three meals plus two snacks. It's basically lots of vegetables, a couple of fruit servings, and five protein servings a day. No grains, no high-GI starches, no added sugar, etc. (It also includes additional nutritional shakes for workouts/recovery.)

This is forcing me to cook, because the food choices on the list aren't found in boxes. They're basically ingredients.

I'm starting to collect recipes that work with the program. I like slow cooker recipes if they don't have too many prep requirements, but I will add other types of cooking as I go along.

I like to keep it simple, at least for now. I haven't prepared meals regularly in a while. I made two recipes today, one this morning and one this evening, for meals for the rest of the week. It took way longer than it should have.

I need to get my chops up again.

They both turned out deliciously though.

Charlatan · Jan 14, 2014

I know how this will sound, but things are different here. We have live in help. She cooks for us. All meals are made from scratch. It's amazing. Neither of us has to race home from work to make food for the family. We get home and it's ready.

I don't have to say, I don't know what I would do without her. When my wife and I were living in Toronto, we cooked but not a lot. We relied heavily on ready-made meals and things like boxed Mac and Cheese. We didn't have time to cook (and didn't want to make time to do it).

Our helper, makes our meals five days a week. All of them very good. On the weekends, I cook. Cooking has become fun (i.e. not a chore). I get to try new things. I get to spend the week thinking about what I am going to make. The best part is that I don't have to do the washing up (although I largely do it anyway).

rogue49 · Jan 15, 2014

I love to cook...but I prefer to do it for others.
I need to figure out how to be inclined to do it for myself consistently.

That or find a lady who just wants to eat and have a man to cook for her...forget about all the other stuff.
Who needs money, sex and love when you have great food?

snowy · Feb 26, 2014

This would be a great way to get in the habit of cooking: Get 4 Weeks of Help for Daily Cooking: Sign Up for The Cooking Cure! The Cooking Cure Spring 2014 | The Kitchn If you haven't participated in one of the Kitchn's Cures before, I can't recommend them highly enough. They're very useful for motivation!

Here's a link to this falls kitchen cure: The Kitchn Cure Assignments The Kitchn Cure Fall 2013 | The Kitchn
The classic Apartment Therapy cure: Apartment Therapy's January Cure | Apartment Therapy

Speed_Gibson · Feb 26, 2014

I am comfortable cooking, but that means not regularly skipping what qualifies as an actual meal or having food in the refrigerator to begin with. Or for that matter being home more than 5 hours any given day.

Stan · Feb 27, 2014

I like to cook and am reasonably good at it; but my wife is making it difficult. She gets home later than I can eat (reflux) and has decided to skip red meat and cut back on pork, while I'm a devoted carnivore. Dinner these days is generally a hunk of meat with something to go along with it. She's on her own to substitute for the meat.

Shahbaj · Mar 2, 2014

I can prepare tea!

spindles · Mar 3, 2014

genuinemommy said: ↑

When we can whip up something of our own to eat that is more delicious in a quarter the time, why would we ever wait in line for fast-food?
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this! Both my wife and I like to cook and having two hungry boys means there are always mouths to feed. My wife, especially, does a lot of bread baking (loaves, rolls etc.), but we also make simple flatbread a lot as it is really easy, the boys both like to eat it and you can make it in the morning before school starts, so it is fresh for sandwiches. What I've noticed is that home made bread doesn't last as long as store bought, purely as there are no preservatives, so you can't bake a loaf and still be eating it 3 days later. It does mean baking a lot.

We also have a thermomix, so this means you can do a lot of one pot meals without too much hassle, as it stirs while it cooks, and has built in scales. It makes making risotto (for example) really easy.

snowy · Mar 3, 2014

spindles said: ↑

this! Both my wife and I like to cook and having two hungry boys means there are always mouths to feed. My wife, especially, does a lot of bread baking (loaves, rolls etc.), but we also make simple flatbread a lot as it is really easy, the boys both like to eat it and you can make it in the morning before school starts, so it is fresh for sandwiches. What I've noticed is that home made bread doesn't last as long as store bought, purely as there are no preservatives, so you can't bake a loaf and still be eating it 3 days later. It does mean baking a lot.

We also have a thermomix, so this means you can do a lot of one pot meals without too much hassle, as it stirs while it cooks, and has built in scales. It makes making risotto (for example) really easy.
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Bread just takes forethought. It's not necessarily a lot of hands-on time. It's really just making sure you can be around during all the steps. Pita is ridiculously easy to make and takes much less time, as it really is more like making a pizza dough with only one bulk rise.

My husband and I were talking the other day about how well-equipped our kitchen is. I believe that it makes it easier and more pleasant to cook at home. Nice tools go a long way. We have some great small appliances that make it easy (no Thermomix, though--they don't sell those here yet ), such as the CrockPot, my Zojirushi rice cooker (OMG love), the Cuisinart food processor, and the Cuisinart immersion blender. I also have a very nice knife (Zwilling JA Henckels 7" santoku) and some reasonably nice pans (a heavy-ass stainless Cuisinart skillet that I got for $20 at TJ Maxx and a Lodge enameled cast iron Dutch oven).

It's also a good idea to have a few 15-minute meals in one's repertoire for those nights when things are a little crazy. We usually do fajitas or burritos on a night like that if I'm cooking, stirfry if my husband is cooking. However, I find it's just as easy to put together a homemade mac and cheese or enchiladas, as those things take about fifteen minutes to put together before they go into the oven. I tend to think of things in hands-on time versus total time, and things like that produce leftovers.

snowy · Mar 4, 2014

This week's theme for the Cooking Cure is breakfast. Here is a piece on basic breakfast skills that I thought covered a good range of recipes:

We had a lively discussion last month about all the things kids should learn to cookbefore they fly the coop. Do you feel like you developed basic kitchen survival skills before you left home? Or did you acquire them through trial and error later in life?
Regardless of whether you're bringing up baby chef in training, or expanding your own repertoire, when talking basic kitchen skills, we like to start with breakfast. After all, how can you accomplish anything without a solid breakfast? Here are ten skills to master that will help you survive and thrive first thing in the morning.

Scones in Irish Culinary Celeb Rachel Allen's Kitchen

1. Cook bacon anywhere, anyhow.

What is a traditional breakfast without a little bacon? Here are three tried and tested ways to cook perfect bacon — in the stove, the oven, and microwave. (Dorm-dwellers, take heart.)

How To Cook Bacon in the Microwave

How To Make Perfect Bacon in the Oven

How to Cook Bacon on the Stovetop

2. Make oatmeal that's yummy no matter when you eat it.

Oatmeal is a morning staple for so many of us — rich in protein, easy to make ahead. What, you say? You don't like warmed-over oatmeal? You may not be making the right kind. Here's how to cook steel-cut oats according to your schedule, and how to make creamy, al dente oats that are just as delicious on day 2.
→ Also? If you're really in a hurry, make a stash of your own homemade instant oats.

How To Make Creamy Steel-Cut Oatmeal (The Make-Ahead Method)

How To Make Steel-Cut Oatmeal in Jars: One Week of Breakfast in 5 Minutes

Frozen Single-Serve Oatmeal with Almonds & Dried Cherries

How to Cook Steel-Cut Oats in 30 Minutes

How To Make Your Own Flavored Instant Oatmeal

3. Brew coffee that is much better than Starbucks.

We appreciate the convenience of the drive-through coffee stand as much as anyone. However, even if you don't do it often, you should know how to make great coffee at home. My pick: the French press. Or coffee concentrate you can dilute and warm up on your way out the door.
→ And oh! Prefer a cappuccino? Let us show you how to make frothy milk without an espresso maker or frother.

How To Make Perfectly Robust French Press Coffee

How To Make the Best Iced Coffee

How To Make Coffee Concentrate to Serve Hot Coffee to a Crowd

How to Make Milk Foam (Without a Frother or a Machine!)

4. Learn how to bake, boil, and scramble an egg.

Eggs = breakfast for many of us. Do you know how to make eggs to your particular liking? If not, you should learn. Maybe you detest hard-boiled eggs; try them soft-boiled! Maybe you've only had rubbery scrambled eggs; learn how to make them velvety and creamy.

How to Bake Eggs en Cocotte

How To Hard-Boil an Egg

How To Soft-Boil an Egg

How To Make Creamy Scrambled Eggs

Blueberry Scones from Lilian's Sunlit Family Kitchen

5. Master the muffin, sweet or savory.

Muffins are the perfect weekday package in their frilly little cups. Learn a muffin recipe or two, and you'll never lack for a grab-and-go breakfast. And you don't even need to like sweets. Try a protein-rich savory muffin instead of that blueberry thing.

Sweet(ish): Spiced Pear Muffins, Blueberry Bran Muffins

Savory: Savory Muffins with Prosciutto & Chives, Cheddar and Leek Muffins

Right in the middle: Quick, Easy and Moist Whole Wheat Muffins

6. Find one thing you can make ahead and eat all week.

Once you've mastered the basics of a Norman Rockwell breakfast — eggs, bacon, coffee — let's move on to even more practical skills. If you, like most of us, have busy mornings, then make-ahead breakfasts are the name of the game. Here are three make-ahead breakfasts you may not have considered yet.

Crepes: How To Make Delicate, Lacy Crêpes - What? Crepes not the first thing that came to mind? Crepes are actually beautiful when reheated. Make a big batch, freeze, then reheat one by one and wrap them around avocado, chopped fruit, or cheese.

Breakfast burritos: How To Make a Breakfast Burrito - Breakfast burritos with omelet or beans — SO easy to make ahead and freeze or refrigerate. See also:How To Wrap a Burrito (So It Doesn't Fall Apart When You Eat It!)

Granola bars: How to Make Homemade Granola Bars — What? No! Granola bars don't just come in wrappers. Make your own and feel accomplished.

7. Develop your own custom granola blend.

Ready to get customized? Time to stop buying granola and start making your own. Pretty soon that dried-peach-almond-honey-and-pistachio amazingness won't just be your breakfast; it will be your signature Christmas present, housewarming gift, and, if you're anything like Megan, your livelihood too.

How To Make Great Granola Every Time

8. DIY one of your breakfast basics.

Once you've covered the basics, there are a few ways to get really in-depth with your breakfast. Why not pick one of your store-bought staples and make it at home instead of buying it? Here are a few suggestions.

How to Make Almond Milk at Home

How to Make Yogurt at Home

How to Make Cinnamon-Raisin Swirl Bread

9. Master French toast, pancakes, or waffles. Pick one.

Moving on to weekend essentials. Everyone should know how to make some kind of indulgent griddled bread — pancakes, French toast, waffles. We don't care which. Just pick one and get really good at it. And serve it with real maple syrup. Essential.

How To Make Great French Toast Every Time

The Best-Ever Pancake Recipe: Lofty Buttermilk Pancakes

Overnight Yeasted Waffles

10. Bake something that will impress your morning guest.

Last but not least on our list of essential breakfast skills, is the impressive brunch dish. There are times when even pancakes or waffles won't do; you need to pull out all the stops. In those cases, it's helpful to know that cinnamon rolls can be frozen (and baked later), that biscuits are actually really quick, and that Dutch babies are basically the most impressive thing to ever come out of the oven.

How To Freeze Cinnamon Rolls and Bake Them Later

How To Make Classic Buttermilk Biscuits

The Apple Pancake

All right. Those are our essentials, should you choose to accept them. Should my house ever be so lucky as to have a young impressionable mind on the premises, I shall endeavor to teach all these (and maybe a couple more).

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genuinemommy · Mar 4, 2014

Wow! That's a treasure trove of breakfast yummies.
Frozen cinnamon rolls may be my next baking adventure with littlegirly.

cynthetiq · Mar 4, 2014

I try to cook something for a whole week. Get tired of it quick but that's because we are finicky like cates since we have so many choices here in NYC.

genuinemommy · Mar 4, 2014

Here are some great tips on making healthy eating automatic by having healthy things prepped and ready to enjoy:
{never} homemaker: Automatic (Healthy) Eating // Tip 5

snowy · Mar 17, 2014

This week, The Kitchn's Cooking Cure focuses on dinners. Previous weeks have focused on breakfasts and lunches: Day 1: Make a List of Everything You Ate for Breakfast Last Week The Cooking Cure Spring 2014 | The Kitchn and Day 6: Make a List of Everything You Ate for Lunch Last Week The Cooking Cure Spring 2014 | The Kitchn

Here is today's assignment: Day 11: Make a List of Everything You Ate for Dinner Last Week The Cooking Cure Spring 2014 | The Kitchn

Today's Assignment (Estimated Time: 10 Minutes)

Get Out a Pen and Paper: Grab your trusty pen and a fresh sheet of paper. As with Breakfast Week and with Lunch Week, we want you to write today's assignment down so that your notes and thoughts are handy for the rest of the assignments during the week.

Make a List of Last Week's Dinners: Now think back over all the dinners you ate last week. If you can, go even further back into the past few weeks to give yourself some more data points. Write down everything you can remember eating, from that spinach side dish with Monday's baked fish to the burger you ate after work on Thursday.

That's It! Tomorrow, we'll dig a little deeper into your dinner habits and what you'd like to change, but for now, you're all done! Stash this list somewhere handy where you'll be able to find it tomorrow.

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