These are the essential dishes beginner cooks should learn to make to build a repertoire of basic recipes that cover every meal, from breakfast to lunch and dinner. They include recipes for perfect boiled eggs, French toast and rice porridge, a great salad and classic vinaigrette, poached chicken, homemade hummus, a soup, pasta, meatballs, a chilli, braised chicken and a vegetable side.
After we shared Terence’s guide to ten dishes to master to become a better home cook, a new reader, who said she was just starting to learn to cook, asked if we could share the essential dishes beginner cooks should learn to make for basic dishes that cover every kind of meal.
She wanted simple recipes she could learn to cook for herself for breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as easy dishes that she could make for guests, from casual meals for a dear friend who regularly drops over to dishes that are a bit more special for a gathering of loved-ones, and recipes for dishes that can feed a crowd.
I assumed our new reader was young and had just moved out of her parent’s home. Until she revealed that she’d just separated from her chef husband of a decade and had never had to cook. They dined out all the time, and as her ex owned a daytime café, he’d cook dinner when they ate at home.
It’s never too late to learn to cook, no matter what your age. During my time in Australia caring for my mum this year I’ve shopped at Aldi daily, just as we’d shop at home in Siem Reap. Barely a day goes by when a fellow shopper doesn’t ask me for advice, and they’re not always young.
Yesterday, a late middle-aged couple asked me what to do with fresh asparagus – they said they mainly ate the canned stuff – and what they should eat it with. I shared tips to cooking the asparagus and our easy recipe for braised chicken. They said they were excited to make dinner that night.
If you’re new to cooking, I hope this list of essential dishes beginner cooks should learn inspires you. When you’ve worked through these recipes, move on to Terence’s list of dishes to master to become a better home cook.
And if you find this helpful, also see Terence’s posts on 10 things I’ve learnt working in restaurant kitchens that are useful in home kitchens and pro chef lessons for home cooks, precision in the kitchen and why size matters.
Looking for more cooking inspiration? We have many hundreds of recipes you can browse in our archives, and you can click on the heart on the right of every post to save your favourite recipes and stories in your private account.
Dishes Beginner Cooks Should Learn from a Good Soup to a Great Salad
These are the dishes beginner cooks should learn to begin to build a repertoire of essential recipes for every meal, from breakfast through lunch to dinner.
Perfect Boiled Eggs
Topping my list of dishes beginner cooks should learn are eggs, starting with boiled eggs, as there’s just so much you can do with boiled eggs aside from dunking toast soldiers into runny eggs. Apart from the obvious breakfast eggs, you can make from Malaysian-Singaporean kopitiam eggs and marbled Chinese tea eggs, top noodles, rice dishes and salads with boiled eggs, and make everything from Thai son-in-law eggs to boiled egg curries. See our best boiled eggs recipes here.
Beginner cooks often see boiling eggs as a bit of a lottery. Those who like soft-boiled eggs often end up with a runny mess and uncooked whites, while those who like hard-boiled eggs end up with an unattractive green ring around dry yolks. How to boil eggs perfectly and specifically how long to boil eggs for soft-boiled eggs, jammy eggs and hard-boiled eggs are some of the most often-asked questions from begin home cooks.
So after Terence re-booted his 15-year-old Weekend Eggs recipes series on breakfast eggs dishes from around the world a few years ago, he created this guide to how to boil eggs perfectly every time – whether you want soft boiled eggs or hard-boiled eggs, we have the answers.
French Toast
Sticking with eggs, French toast is next on my list of dishes beginner cooks should learn. Because aside from being so easy to prepare once you know how, French toast is fantastic if you want to whip up a special breakfast for a special someone with only a few ingredients. It’s quick and easy yet impresses.
As a child, I always made breakfast in bed featuring French toast for mum on mother’s day and for dad on father’s day, helped along by one parent of course. It was a lovely tradition, as it taught cooking skills alongside the gift of giving and hospitality.
I’ve got recipes for the Russian French toast that my grandmother and mother made me and taught me to make as a child, an easy French toast topped with mixed berries, and a savoury French toast to show you how easy it is to create a proper meal out of a classic French toast. While cherry tomatoes and feta are wonderful, bacon and wild mushrooms are also delicious.
Rice Porridge
Forget about learning how to cook rice on a stovetop and do what Asians do and buy a rice cooker for perfect steamed rice every single time and no messy pot to scrub clean. Next on my list of dishes beginner cooks should learn to make is rice porridge or congee.
In Southeast Asia, rice porridge is eaten for breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper, and when people are sick. Start with this simple Cambodian chicken rice porridge or rice soup with pork meatballs, a popular breakfast here in Siem Reap, or this easy Thai rice soup with soft-boiled eggs and poached chicken (recipe below).
A simple rice porridge topped with those perfectly boiled eggs is a great place to start before moving onto a more luxuriant Chinese congee with crab or lobster meat and XO Sauce, or topped with char siu pork that makes an impressive starter or main.
Our recipes for rice porridges are some of our best breakfast rice recipes and include everything from rice porridge topped with soft jammy eggs to my hearty bacon and eggs breakfast congee recipe, which makes a comforting East-West savoury rice porridge inspired partly by the classic Australian breakfast of bacon and eggs with sautéed mushrooms.
A Great Salad and Classic Vinaigrette
A great salad, starting with a super simple garden salad or farmers salad, also called a village salad is another of the dishes beginner cooks should learn. Try this Cypriot salad then move onto this Greek salad. And a great salad starts with a great vinaigrette or salad dressing.
Learning to make these simple salads, which are made right around the world, teaches you to appreciate quality produce, essential cooking skills, such as knife skills, and the importance of seasoning – you’ll appreciate how salt changes the flavour of tomatoes and the reason why salt and pepper shakers have long been set down on the dining table.
Like boiled eggs and French toast, once you learn the makings of a great salad and a great vinaigrette to enliven that salad, you’ll never have to look at those recipes again. You can change the herbs used to make your salad match different cuisines (this this Thai-style fragrant herb salad, which is like a European garden salad with a Thai dressing), then get creative. This radish cucumber salad with feta, rucola and fresh herbs is one of my favourite creations.
Homemade Hummus
An easy authentic hummus is next on my list of dishes beginner cooks should learn to make. For starters, homemade hummus is so much more delicious than store-bought and much healthier, containing none of the preservatives and additives that commercial hummus has.
Hummus is also super-versatile. You can snack on a traditional hummus with pita chips or sourdough crackers. Serve it with a couple of other homemade dips or Mediterranean mezze for a casual gathering, or as one of an array of starters to a Middle Eastern feast. It’s a terrific companion to Middle Eastern dishes such as shish tawook and beef kofta kebabs.
After perfecting a classic hummus recipe, you can move on to other hummus based Middle Eastern dishes, such as hummus Beiruti (topped with chickpeas), hummus balila (hummus with salad), balila salad (salad atop hummus), and hummus bil lahme (with spiced minced beef). Or just use hummus as a base for vegetable sides by spreading it onto a plate and piling on roasted cauliflower or smoky eggplant and pomegranate. More of our best hummus recipes here.
Poached Chicken Breasts
While chicken thighs are better for stir-frying, drumsticks are fantastic for fried chicken, and chicken legs are brilliant for braising, chicken breasts are perfect for poaching, and poaching chicken breasts aren’t challenging at all for beginners to learn to make, it’s just about timing.
Poached chicken breasts are also healthy and versatile, and poaching them in aromatics such as fresh ginger, lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves add lovely subtle flavours. You can also use the water that the chicken is poached in to make a light stock.
Poached chicken can be torn into pieces to add to Southeast Asian chicken rice soups and rice porridges (see above) and chicken noodle soups, and can be used to make shredded chicken salads, such as this Vietnamese shredded chicken salad.
We also use shredded poached chicken breasts in our recipes for Mexican chicken tinga tacos, shredded chicken and avocado tacos, and our chicken breakfast burritos. You’ll find our best poached chicken breast recipes here including instructions for poaching chicken breasts.
A Good Soup
A good soup is another of the dishes beginner cooks should learn to make and a good soup starts with a good soup stock. You could make a proper slow-cooked stock with bones and vegetables, but I recommend beginner cooks start with a nice, clean, light ‘stock’ using the water from poaching chicken breasts.
We use a poached chicken stock as a base for this easy comforting chicken and potato soup recipe, which makes a warming winter soup, and this traditional Cambodian kuy teav noodle soup recipe, which makes one of Cambodia’s most popular breakfast noodle soups with shredded poached chicken. See the recipe above.
A Quick and Easy Pasta
Teaching yourself to make a quick and easy pasta recipe should be a priority if you’re just starting to learn to cook. Having a few speedy pasta recipes in your repertoire means you can whip up a casual meal for friends who drop by who you invite to stay for dinner.
Sure, you could teach yourself to make an authentic traditional ragu alla Bolognese from Northern Italy (Terence’s recipe is the real deal), but I know that some beginner cooks can find that slow-cooked pasta sauce intimidating when they’re just starting to learn to cook.
Begin with my speedy penne Bolognese recipe for a ‘cheat’s Bol’ instead, which takes just 45 minutes instead of three hours. It’s foolproof and so deliciously addictive, you’ll be making that pasta from memory in no time. Then you can master the genuine recipe.
And we have lots more quick and easy pasta recipes on the site, including our canned tuna pasta with scallions, capers and fresh herbs, asparagus, mushrooms and bacon gnocchi, this creamy tomato pasta sauce with gnocchi, my cherry tomato feta pasta recipe, this canned sardine pasta with gremolata and pangrattato, a mac and cheese with crispy bacon and caramelised shallots, and bacon and mushroom pasta.
Meatballs
Meatballs are another of the dishes beginner cooks should learn, as they’re so incredibly versatile. Once you learn how to make one meatball recipe that you can like, you can adapt it endlessly to suit your taste, the dish you’re making, or the type of cuisine.
Use any kind of ground meat – minced pork, ground beef, or a combination of the two, minced lamb, ground chicken. Switch out herbs and spices to match the cuisine you’re cooking. Combine the mince with rice, grated or mashed potatoes, staled bread soaked in milk or Panko.
Meatballs can be made round – small, medium or large – shaped into a football for cutlets, rolled into a sausage shape for kofta, or squashed flat for patties or burgers. Roll them in flour, or egg and flour, or egg, flour and breadcrumbs, or just fry them without.
Or bake the meatballs, grill them, or barbecue them. Or cook the meatballs in a pasta sauce, in a rice congee, in a soup, or a stew. You can serve into meatballs with rice, noodles, pasta, mashed potato, vegetable sides, or salad. You can tuck the meatballs into a bread roll or crunchy baguette or roll them up in rice paper or pita bread.
We have lots of meatballs recipes – from Spanish, Italian, Greek, and Cypriot, Russian and German, Vietnamese, Cambodian and Chinese – and you’ll find a collection of our best meatball recipes here. Start with your favourite meatball recipe, then add more to your repertoire, then get creative.
his easy French-style braised chicken recipe makes the juiciest chicken with crispy skin from just seven ingredients – stock, olive oil, lemon, garlic, a homemade chicken seasoning, and butter. It’s a foolproof dish with little work required other than basting. Whether you cook it on high, go low and slow, or reheat it, the chicken remains succulent. Serve with chicken jus and sides of vegetables
Chilli Con Carne
A great chilli con carne is another one of the dishes beginner cooks should learn to make, as you can stretch the chilli out over a few meals or make a big pot if you’re feeding a crowd. Terence and I began experimenting with chillies soon after we moved in together and we’ve been making chilli con carne on a regular basis ever since.
Terence has been making this chilli con carne recipe for as long as I can remember. It makes a good old bowl of chilli for those who like their chilli hot and smoky, but after you learn this recipe you can really make it your own.
This recipe is not one of those quick chilli recipes. It’s takes a few hours to make – but it definitely doesn’t take a lot of work. For a faster chilli con carne, try my vegetarian chilli or chilli sin carne.
The first night we tuck into big bowls of chilli, and as we’ll always have some leftovers in the fridge, we’ll use them to make quesadillas or my ultimate nachos, with sides of guacamole, red tomato salsa, and sour cream.
Braised Chicken
It’s hard to beat a succulent roast chicken with crispy skin, served with roast vegetables, and an old-fashioned gravy. But I reckon one of the dishes beginner cooks should learn to make first is a far easier French-style braised chicken.
This braised chicken recipe makes one of our best chicken recipes, the juiciest chicken with crispy skin from just seven ingredients – stock, olive oil, lemon, garlic, a homemade chicken seasoning, and butter. It’s a foolproof dish with little work required other than basting.
Whether you cook the chicken on high, go low and slow, or reheat it, the chicken remains succulent. You could serve it simply for a quiet dinner in or also learn how to make a chicken jus and serve it with sides of vegetables on elegant plates for a special dinner in.
If you enjoy that chicken, try your hand at our Spanish style braised chicken with olives and capers or this Italian roast chicken recipe with peppers and leeks.
Vegetable Side Dish
You’ll need vegetable sides to accompany that braised chicken and those meatballs. You can serve simple roast vegetables, pan-fried vegetables or wok-fried vegetables with virtually any kind of protein, pile vegetables onto hummus, or even rice congee.
Start with perfecting a veggie side dish made with your favourite vegetable, then move on from there, and expand your repertoire. We have loads of recipes for easy vegetable side dishes, such as these caramelised Brussels sprouts, blistered green beans and creamy mashed potatoes.
Please do let us know in the Comments section below if you make these essential dishes beginner cooks should learn to cook, as we love to hear from our readers.
