Day 1 of my Culinary Journal.
I’ve spent years eating food without understanding how it’s made.
So I’m starting from zero.
No culinary school.
No chef experience.
Just a notebook, a kitchen, and curiosity.
I’ll be learning everything from South Indian staples like chutney, sambar, and rasam to international dishes like pasta, risotto, and pizza.
I’m documenting every recipe, what went right, what went wrong, and what I learned.
Today’s dishes:
🇮🇳 Tomato Chutney
🇮🇹 Creamy Garlic Chicken Fusilli
My goal isn’t to become a professional chef.
I just want to become someone who can cook good food for myself, my family, and the people I care about.
For those of you who cook regularly:
What’s one piece of advice you wish someone had given you when you first started cooking?
Anything from kitchen habits, knife skills, seasoning, meal planning, mistakes to avoid, or lessons you’ve learned over the years would be appreciated.
Wish me luck. 👨‍🍳📖

Hi everyone,
Lately I've been thinking a lot about how much culture can be lost when people are forced to leave their homes. It honestly makes me sad that so many parts of people's heritage can slowly be forgotten.
So I wanted to start creating a Refugee Recipe Book,a collection of recipes from refugee families along with the stories behind them. Food is a powerful tool for preserving culture, history, and memories, and I think these recipes deserve to be remembered!!
If you or your family came to another country as refugees and would be willing to share, I'd love to hear:
A family recipe

Where your family is originally from

The story behind the dish (if there is one)

Any memories or traditions connected to it

You can stay completely anonymous if you'd prefer. Every recipe, no matter how simple, is a piece of someone's history.
Thank you for reading, and thank you to anyone who decides to share their family's story. ❤️

Hey y’all! I’m not sure if this is the right sub for this, but hopefully someone can help me.

My local co-op makes these “chunks of energy.” I would really like to learn how to make them from scratch for my fiancé, who has an autoimmune disorder that limits his diet, as well as a ton of allergies. He can’t eat the chunks of energy pictured here because he’s allergic to chocolate and stone fruit. The co-op rotates the flavors they have in stock, so once in a while they’ll have some that are safe for him to eat, but this week everything had chocolate and/or tree nuts.

I was thinking dates, raisins, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, oats and honey, but I’m not sure how to go about making it into cubes like this. Do I just chop everything finely, mix, press, and bake it in a pan? Is there an ingredient I’m missing that will help hold everything together?

Thank you in advance!

I made M&Ms from scratch (including making the bean to bar (or bean to ball!) chocolate). The chocolate was made with a Premier wet grinder, and the panning layers were done with a KitchenAid "snackcoater" attachment.

Toast underneath is 2 day old homemade bread, egg and tomatoes are straight from my backyard, avocado purchased from the store

We even grew many of our own foods or salvaged them! No food coloring used. The red is from prickly pear I harvested and turned into jam from last year and the yellow is from tumeric. Blue derived from butterfly pea flower! I stay up late almost every night to prepare food for my kids as it’s an act of love :)

I was bored at home and started putting stuff together that would make a good cheese cake and made this from scratch

Over the past few years I’ve realized making more things from scratch is often cheaper than buying them at the grocery store, and I like knowing exactly what’s in my food. Once you start paying attention to ingredients, it changes how you look at a lot of store bought products.

I made chcken stock with feet and wings, in addtion to celery, onion and carrots.

Sadly, I didn't use any thighs or drumsticks so it tastes like vegetable soup!

roasted chicken, asparagus, and home made focaccia

What are some food items that most people would be surprised to learn can be made from scratch?

Ex: mozzarella cheese, butter, hummus, applesauce, yogurt, kombucha, mayo, ketchup, and so on...

(I know some or all these items may not be surprising to YOU if you are an experienced chef or a talented home cook, etc) (Maybe a different way to look at the question is: what is something a person would be surprised to see is made in house at a restaurant?)

Context: my partner was watching a documentary about the history of bread and they covered the history and connection of yeast, bread, and beer. We got into a conversation about that and went down a rabbit hole, one could say. He (allegedly, of course) is high so I was absolutely blowing his mind. When I mentioned making applesauce I damn near broke his brain. I've covered everything I can think of right now, but I KNOW there is more including some that may surprise me.

***this is all for fun, not about making anyone feel dumb OR inflate any egos***

If there is a better place to post this, I'm happy to redirect! I couldn't find or perhaps could think of the correct search for a more accurate subreddit.

Thanks, y'all!!

I love cooking and baking but I have 3 kids and obviously need some convenience.

I’ve just started a sourdough starter (however my kids prefer white bread lol) I’ve been making rolls for a few weeks which have been a hit and really cheap.

I’d love to make butter but also, why? I’d spend a decent amount more on the cream lol so I won’t do that even though I would like it without additives ect

I would like to eventually get chooks so I don’t need to buy eggs, but what else is there that you can make from scratch that is actually worth it?

Fellow from-scratch people, I've been building a collection of scratch recipes over the past couple years. Bread (sourdough, focaccia, brioche), fresh pasta, stocks and broths, fermentation projects, sauces... it adds up fast.

For a long time I was using browser bookmarks organized in folders, but it got unwieldy. You can't search by ingredient, you can't adjust portions, and half the bookmarks end up as dead links.

I switched to Mijote a few months ago, it imports recipes from any URL and lets you tag them by technique, ingredient, whatever system makes sense. Now I can pull up "all my fermentation recipes" or "everything with sourdough starter" in seconds.

What systems do you use to organize your recipe library? Especially curious how people handle recipes that evolve over time, like when you tweak your sourdough process after each bake.

Hi 👋🏻

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about makung things from scratch. I’m just wondering, what do people make from scratch at home? So far I have - sourdough, bread, bagels, stock, jams, brown sugar. Does anyone else have any ideas?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you 🙏🏻