From Average Cook To Master Chef

For my learning project I am trying to enhance my cooking skills from what I would say is an average understanding of how to make home cooked meals to creating restaurant quality meals at home. I used to watch a lot of cooking shows and I am confident in myself that I can make those mouth watering meals I see on TV in my home for my wife and family. I just have to figure out what the right path for me is to complete this task. I have some great tools already to help me such as an iPad I can pull up cooking videos to see exactly how the professionals conduct themselves in the kitchen, what the correct terminology is that they use to describe the cuts they make, how they prepare it, an if I need to follow a recipe I can just pull it up without having to purchase cookbooks. I really do not know how I am going to concretely do this, I like to go with the flow of things and

First step: (learn the correct terminology for cutting) aka knife skills: This chef

breaks down how improving your knife skills will improve your cooking. I believe him he is very convincing.

Second Step: Find meals that I truly love and think that my wife will love too. My mouth is watering with these ones 🤤. At first glance meal 9 or 15  are the ones I’ll be aiming to recreate.

Third Step: Give grace to myself for the trial and error it will take to perfect the dish I want to prepare. I think I will want to start small with following recipes to make less complex dishes such as premade pillsbury cookies (most simple) to cinnamon buns (more complex), to end off with mastering Steak au Poivre, or filet mignon with béarnaise sauce. I love the way the word mignon comes off the tongue. Here are some tips to not get discouraged with the process. A Quora forum helps me to feel like I am not alone in case I want to quit. https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-escape-the-mindset-of-being-discouraged-easily-while-learning-new-things

Fourth step: This step will all be about executing. Execution will display how well I followed the professionals in learning knife skills, how I listened to their different tips, words of advice and indicators of how to make the perfect dish. It will be about harbouring my previous triumphant victories by successfully making Pillsbury cookies and cinnamon buns to confidently prepare the dishes I want to create. David Goggins is a name that comes to mind regarding being mentally tough when faced with a daunting task. Will his mindset help with cooking, we shall see! Here is David Goggins story:

Fifth Step: Reflect on the whole journey, not necessarily to compare the dish I was trying to create to the dish I made but reflect on the process, the skills I learned, how I executed, ways to improve if I were to do it again. If I did everything I possibly could I believe I could be a master chef or at the least an improved chef from this experience.

If there is anything you want to see me try and cook or you like the idea, let me know feedback is always appreciated!