I’ve always been a bit mystified (ok fine, intimidated) by cooking. How do you know when meat is done but not over-done? How much salt is enough salt? How the heck do you know what kind of spices to put into a dish? So it’s probably not a surprise that my cooking prowess for most of my childhood/young adulthood was limited to pancakes, and I was very proud when I learned how to make them from scratch.
After my first child was born, I was determined to learn how to cook, and started to expand my repertoire. I always stuck to the recipes and deviated as little as I possibly could. My mom taught me a few dishes, but anything more involved than 2-3 ingredients had me searching for a recipe. I stayed in this state for many years, despite many attempts by people in my family to help me develop some fundamentals that might enable me to explore more. The only thing that stuck was the concept of “mise-en-place”, but only because it made the process of following a recipe slightly less stressful.
A few months ago, I came down with a nasty bug that had me camped out on the couch for several days. I consumed a LOT of Youtube in that time, and somehow stumbled into the cooking area of the internet. It started with Bon Appetit videos that featured chefs using the same ingredient or concept to create vastly different dishes. And then I fell down the Struggle Meals rabbit hole.
Struggle Meals features a delightfully chaotic host who creates a variety of dishes with a budget-conscious mind. It really drove home to me just how much cheaper it is to cook, and he talks through his thought process and substitutions in real-time, which really opened up my thinking. The exact recipe amounts don’t show up anywhere on screen, which I think actually helps me focus on the ideas and not so much the execution.
For the first time, my brother-in-law’s “taste as you go” mantra actually clicked. I even ended up adding some lemon extract into a dish that was tasting very heavy, and WOW what a difference it made! Honestly never thought I’d have the ability or confidence to understand what was missing from a dish - that seemed like a skill reserved for people with culinary training.
My favorite part of the show is the Struggle Challenge segment, where he’s presented with an ingredient, or set of ingredients, and a prompt. Sometimes it’s leftover ingredients (or even straight up leftovers) which he somehow reconstitutes into a different meal. Or an abundance of one ingredient (like marshmallows) and finding creative, non-obvious ways, to use them up. After he’s done, he rates the dish based on presentation and flavor. They aren’t always wins, but he talks through where there’s room for improvement too. Seeing that even a professional chef doesn’t always get it right, is so helpful to take some of that fear of failure out of cooking.
After binge-watching many (many) hours of the show, I’m empowered to experiment more, look at leftovers in a different light. We have a bunch of leftover burger patties, grilled onions, mushrooms, and sliced tomatoes from our 4th of July celebration. In the past, I would have felt resigned to eating burgers until we give up and throw the leftovers out. But post-Struggle Meals-me is looking at the marinara sauce from takeout and a jar of pizza sauce and thinking I could magic it all into a pasta sauce. Will it work? Who knows? All I know is I feel a little like a wizard.
P.S. In the spirit of the Struggle Challenge, here’s my rating: Presentation: Doesn’t look like my fridge tripped and fell into the pan, so #winning? Flavor: It was decent, but the kids ended up going for the plain butter & cheese pasta as soon as it was available. However, they did decide the burger meat was delicious and asked for that separately. I’ll take that!