For some people, the kitchen is their sanctuary. Their apartment is always filled with the smells of an Asian fusion roasted chicken or vodka gnocchi searing on the stove. Whether the recipe came from ChatGPT or a mother’s cookbook, the end result is always exquisite.
It must be nice to have the green thumb of cooking. Grocery shopping becomes more enjoyable when you know you can bring the ingredients to life.
Then there are the people who can’t decide if aluminum foil can go into the air fryer. Gourmet meals look more like soup dumplings from Trader Joe’s because the box is so well-dressed. The lives of minimalists in the kitchen, who just want to fill their stomachs, are fascinating.
Talk About Creativity
If you think the people who can make homemade spinach meatballs or stuffed peppers are creative, consider the ones who can throw avocado on just about anything. A bad cook would have a cookbook titled “Cooking for Dummies,” and every recipe would be some variation of chicken and rice.
You can’t go wrong with a 90-second bag of Ben’s rice and refrigerated Perdue chicken. Like a house, it’s all about the structure and the bones. Chicken and rice is the bones of a meal — made better with the right sriracha or Bethenny Frankel salad dressing. Add a frozen bag of fajita veggies and you’ve hit every food group.
The craziest a bad cook will get is a burger bowl. Intimidating, right? TikTok and Instagram Reels have glamorized cottage cheese, sweet potatoes and avocados. Anything pre-cooked or packaged passes the meal check, but once ground beef needs to be cooked, it gets rocky.
Another staple for a bad cook is avocado toast. The simple steps — scrambling eggs, toasting bread and spreading avocado — seem impossible to mess up until the eggs are burnt and the avocado isn’t ripe. This is the definition of the life of a bad cook: anything can be undercooked, burnt or flavorless.
The Kitchen Spaz
The bad cook is a hot mess with an oven mitt on. To steer clear of total kitchen disasters, a frozen meal is often the best bet. Something like a Lean Cuisine with a side of chips for lunch will do the trick.
The same way men were once expected to fix clogged toilets, women were expected to be master chefs. Traditions are fading, and while that is no longer the standard, it would still be useful to be good at one or the other. Sometimes you just have to pick your battles and forfeit the kitchen.
College students try to beat consumerism by avoiding takeout for every meal. But that $13 Chipotle bowl and $6 Starbucks coffee add up, and suddenly you’re selling football tickets to afford basic living. That’s a whole other challenge when you can’t cook and can’t afford to eat out.
The best advice, besides learning to cook like a normal human, is to stick to the basics: frozen meals, chicken and rice and avocado on everything.
Post your most creative meal as a bad cook and tag @VALLEYmag on X.
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