How to Cook After Moving Out on Your Own

One of the perks of living at home is having most of your meals prepared for you. Even moving away to college doesn't always give you the chance to learn to cook because of meal halls and meal plans. Someday though, you'll have to learn to feed yourself because you don't want to eat macaroni and cheese or get take-out for the rest of your life.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Cookbook
• Cooking utensils
• Stove/oven
• Microwave
• Food supplies

1. Buy a cookbook or several cookbooks. Choose ones that seem to have recipes that are both simple and have meals that sound good to you. Alternatively, you may search online for recipes that appear simple. Explore a bit before you settle on something so that you have a good idea of what's out there.

2. Start small. Keep your meals simple at first until you practice and get better at cooking. Follow recipes and experiment sparingly until you get better. You can move on to more complicated recipes as you improve.

3. Enlist a friend to help cook with you. Sometimes it's a nice idea to set aside one night a week to get together and prepare a meal. That way you both learn how to cook, learn from each others' mistakes and have fun doing it.

4. Try a variety of recipes so that you gain a wide variety of skills and aren't eating the same food everyday.

5. Cut recipes in half if you need to. If you're only cooking for yourself and don't want to have a large amount of leftovers, you probably don't need to make a full recipe. Just check to see how many servings your recipe says that it makes.

Tips & Warnings

• Keep basic spices and recipe ingredients around your house/apartment.
• Don't be afraid to experiment with your recipes and try altering recipes, but do it on your own! Don't try it when you're cooking for other people unless you've done it before and know that something actually tastes good.
• You probably won't be a master chef for awhile, so don't be too hard on yourself and keep realistic cooking expectations.