Five dinners you can make without the recipe: a four-week kitchen confidence plan

By the end of four weeks you will have five dinners you can cook from memory and a routine for adding a sixth. If you already cook most nights, the same four weeks take you through a cuisine you have never tried, one technique you have been avoiding, and a three-course dinner for six.

Why this works

Diane Morrisey says she could not cook when she married. She taught herself while feeding a family of eight, and was 58 when her first cookbook came out. Her summary of what she learned, given to AARP, is the basis of this plan: “Cooking is 90 percent confidence and 10 percent being able to read a recipe. You learn by getting in the kitchen.”

Confidence of that kind comes from repetition. The first time you make a dish you are reading. The third time you are cooking. So this plan has you make fewer things, more often, and change one detail at a time.

There is a reason to bother beyond the pleasure of it. A 2017 analysis of 11,396 British adults in the Fenland Study found that people who ate home-cooked main meals more than five times a week ate about 62 g more fruit and 98 g more vegetables a day than those who did so fewer than three times a week. It was a snapshot, so it cannot show that the cooking caused the difference. It does suggest that people who cook tend to eat more plants.

Before you start

Equipment. One sharp knife, a chopping board, a large baking tray (sheet pan), a lidded pot and a frying pan. Nothing else is needed for week 1.
A source of recipes you trust. One cookbook or one website, not six. Recipes from a single source share a style, which makes them easier to learn from.
Scales or cups. British recipes use grams and Celsius; American ones use cups and Fahrenheit. Digital scales cover both. As a guide, 180°C is about 350°F and 200°C about 400°F.
A notebook. One page per dish: what you made, what you changed, what you would do next time.
A shortlist. Write down five dinners you would like to own. Include one tray dinner, one soup or stew, one pasta or rice dish, one thing with eggs and one of your own choosing.
Food safety basics. Wash your hands, keep raw meat and its board apart from everything else, and cook chicken and other poultry all the way through, with no pink meat.
If you have been told to follow a particular diet, check your shortlist with your GP (family doctor) or dietitian first.

The plan

Week	Do this	How often	Notes
1 (new to cooking)	Cook dish 1, a tray dinner, exactly as written. Cook it again later in the week.	2 dinners	Read the whole recipe before you switch anything on. Set out every ingredient first.
1 (already cooking)	Choose a cuisine you have never cooked. Buy its five core ingredients and make one dish, to the letter.	2 dinners	Pick something with a technique that is new to you, not a variation on what you know.
2 (new to cooking)	Cook dish 1 from memory, checking the recipe only if stuck. Add dish 2, a soup or stew, twice.	3 dinners	Change one thing in dish 1: a herb, a vegetable, a spice. Note the result.
2 (already cooking)	Two more dishes from the new cuisine, each made twice. Begin your avoided technique: bread dough, custard, pastry or jointing a chicken.	4 dinners, 1 practice	Expect the first attempt at the technique to be poor. That is what it is for.
3 (new to cooking)	Dishes 1 and 2 once each. Add dish 3 and dish 4, each made once. Finish every dinner with a fresh herb.	4 dinners	Taste before serving and adjust salt, acid (lemon, vinegar) or heat. This is the habit that changes most.
3 (already cooking)	Practise the technique twice more. Write the menu and a minute-by-minute time plan for a three-course dinner for six.	4 dinners, 2 practices	Choose one course that is finished before anyone arrives.
4 (new to cooking)	Add dish 5. Cook dishes 1 to 3 without opening the recipe. Cook one of the five for somebody else.	5 dinners	Cooking for a guest is the test. Choose the dish you have made most.
4 (already cooking)	Cook the dinner for six. Use the new cuisine or the new technique in at least one course.	1 dinner for six, 3 others	Aim to sit down with your guests within 10 minutes of the time you planned.

If it goes wrong

It tastes flat. It usually wants salt or acid. Add a pinch of salt or a squeeze of lemon, stir, and taste again.
It burned. The heat was too high or the pan too small. Write that on the dish’s page and try again within the week, while you remember.
You have run out of time on a weeknight. Do the chopping the evening before, or move the plan’s dinners to the days you have 40 minutes.
Nobody liked it. Ask what they would change, then change one thing. A dish is allowed three attempts before you drop it from the list.
You are bored of your five. Good. That is the sign you are ready to add a sixth.
You cut or burn yourself. Hold a burn under cool running water for 20 minutes, as the NHS (the UK health service) advises. For a burn that is very large or deep, or a cut that will not stop bleeding, call 999 or go to A&E (the emergency room); in the US call 911.

Track it

Measure	Start (week 1)	End (week 4)
Dinners cooked from scratch in the week
Dishes you can make without the recipe
Portions of fruit and vegetables on a typical day
Changes you tried and wrote down
People you have cooked for
Experienced track: new techniques attempted
Experienced track: minutes late sitting down at the dinner for six

What next

Keep the notebook. Add one new dish a month and cook it three times before you decide whether it stays.

If you cook mostly for yourself, cooking for one or two shows how to batch and freeze so that five dinners cover a fortnight. To check the balance of what you are making, read eating well: the complete, no-fad guide.

Then do what Morrisey did with a birthday cake: show someone. Send a photograph to a friend, or invite them round to eat it.

General information, not medical advice. Check with your GP before starting a new exercise programme.