What is cooking and why do we do it?

Cooking is the transformation of edible products into a more palatable form. Or more simply – it’s what makes food taste good.

Cooking is the treatment of individual ingredients with a combination of heat, flavour and time that humans have been perfecting over our entire history. And yet, the basics of cooking aren’t always passed on.

If you’re here, then I’m guessing that these skills weren’t passed on to you naturally, but that you want to learn them. Great! I’ve been cooking since I could reach the counter, and thanks to a steady diet of cooking blogs and food television, I know a lot about being a home cook. But what I’ve noticed over the years is that a lot of these other “food authorities” don’t explain what they are doing or how it affects the cooking process. It’s like building a prefab chair. You can insert piece A into slot B, but that doesn’t make you a carpenter if you know nothing about woodworking.

However, I believe that anyone can cook and become good at it with knowledge and practice. All you need is a kitchen to make it happen.

Thus BYOK was born. Here you will find no recipes with hard-to-source ingredients or meals that can only be made with gadgets that cost a fortune. What you will find is information on kitchen tools, techniques, terminology, and timing that come second nature to a home cook, as well as comfort food recipes that (I’ve been told) are delicious. You’ll learn how to hack flavour profiles to impress your friends and family, and eventually learn to improvise your own recipes.

To get started check out the How Do I…? and Equipment pages.