I hate cooking. I need to love it.

This question has so many angles that I'm not sure where to begin but I will say that if you're looking for people to sell you on the idea of cooking for yourself and/or eating at home, you're setting yourself up for a problem. There are a few related "selling points' and depending on what motivates you, the best solution will be different. I both love to cook and do not love to cook depending on what my environment is like. Here are a few stabs. 1. cooking at home with raw ingredients saves money, a shitload of money over eating out, a good amount of money over preprocessed food. An appropriate angle to take here is to start by stocking a pantry which will be one solid shopping trip. Include spices and herbs. After that, go search out askme questions on how to stock a pantry and get a few good cookbooks like How to Cook Everything or The Kitchen Detectives and muddle through some of the receipes until you get what you like out of them. 2. cooking at home is healthier, or can be. If you're in love with gravy, I don't know what to tell you because then this bullet point is not for you. You haveindicated in the past that you have been struggling with healthy eating and I have to say that cooking most of your own food is THE BEST way to get healthy eating habits that last, as opposed to ones that lock you into a particular brand of foods or a specific diet. maybe you wan tot turn into a nutrition geek. If so you can look at a site like fitday and start doing the math on what you're eating, whatever you're eating and then start cooking at home and wtch the helath value of your meals become more and more under your control. 3. cooking at home is a great way to entertain and be social. It's sort of an easy invite to say "hey I'm making some soup would you like to come over" and if you're me, this motivates you to actually work on some soup recipes. This is all wrapped in with other issues like being a good host and other etiquette, but it's a good set of rules to understand even if you don't live them. And, it's a nice way to get people over, particularly if you do something potluck so, as you're learning, all the burden isn't on you to do all the food magic. 4. cooking at home is a good way to eat exactly what you want to eat. If you're picky about food, as I am, you may find that you like eating but you can be finicky about it. While I'm trying to expand my palate with some reasonable success, sometimes I want things just the way I want them and cooking at home lets me do that. This point can be combined with other points. Unless you're really picky, you can cook food just the way you want it AND share it with other people. That's cool. 5. cooking at home is a good way to get out of multitasking land and into a good food groove. I generally turn off the computer when I'm really cooking, or sometimes just turn off the notification sounds and play music in the kitchen. I like being in my kitchen and it makes me happy but sometimes I feel that there's too much else to do. So, I carve out time for cooking, shut down all the other things I'm supposed to be doing, figure that MetaFilter can get along without me for a few hours and Just Do Food. I think it's good for your head to do this, it's good for mine anyhow. So, no computer, no phone, no TV, just you and your food and maybe some nice music and even a glass of wine. Put another way, if you like you and want you to be a happy healthy person, giving a shit about the building blocks that you put into making you is an important part of that. If you don't, for whatever reason, it's going to be hard to movtivate you at that basic level. Developing a palate if you haven't really had one takes some time and effort and the biggest question to ask yourself is what's going to make you make that effort? While you're figuring that out, you can also set up guidelines for youself that may make cooking at home a more appealing Genuine Option for you like - delivered food once a week/month MAX - have someone over to eat once a week/month MIN - microwave preprocessed meals [not leftovers] once a week MAX - go to supermarket once a week, always buy fruit/veg - one big meal cooked at home per week - try one new food taste per week - ask friends for recipe suggestions - keep a food blog about what you like/don't like the less you order out, the more you will try to learn to make things for yourself that are also savory and delicious. The less you buy microwaveable foods the more you will notice you have money to spend on other things. The more you make meals out of all ingredients you picked yourself the more you will be able to eat healthier and the way you want to. Good luck.

It's very possible to eat quickly and well. This assumes you're good with a pretty traditional American setup (three meals a day, dinner is the biggest and includes starch, meat, and veg., etc.). I enjoy cooking, but this assumes that you're looking to minimize your time in the kitchen, not to develop an interest in cooking. Breakfast: Crack an egg or two in a frying pan sprayed with Pam; stir over medium-low heat until it reaches the consistency you like. Get fancy: try making an omelet, try leaving out some or all yolks. Simpler: make hard-boiled eggs in advance and eat them from the fridge. For complex carbs, microwave some precooked brown rice. I'm in and out of the kitchen in under 5 minutes. Lunch: Pre-pack a sandwich with deli meat, or a salad, or leftovers from yesterday's dinner. A piece of fruit makes a fine side. Takes me 5-10 minutes, and that's mostly packing so it won't get too beat-up in my bag. Snack: Throw into your bag a piece of fruit, or a 100-calorie pack of anything if you don't care where your calories come from, or a small pack of nuts if you need good fats. 30 seconds. If you're at home, have good-for-you (not "death by butter" flavor) popcorn in under 4 minutes. Dinner can get a little more complex, but still far from challenging or time-consuming. Don't worry if the dishes don't all finish at the same time -- it probably saves time to eat one thing while another's cooking, and it'll keep you from getting bored. On Sunday nights, make a starch -- brown rice, whole-wheat or omega-3 pasta, whatever you like. Usually, one box makes eight servings, which will last all week if you keep it in Tupperware in the fridge. The weekly process may take half an hour but requires minimal involvement from you (put water in pot on stove, check back and add pasta, check back and drain pasta). The rest of the week, microwave one serving of pasta (1 minute). Every night, steam, either on the stove or in the microwave in a steamer bag, a pack of frozen vegetables (5-10 minutes, but you just have to put it on and come back). For a main dish, I bake a lot (fish, chicken thighs), but if that bores you, the answer is a George Foreman grill. Crock pots don't require work at night, but for a stew, you have to prep (chop vegetables, etc.) in the morning. I think stews are worthwhile, but you may not, whereas the George requires pretty much no work ever. It's so convenient that I use it 4 or 5 nights a week. The procedure is not terribly complicated: plug grill in while spraying it with nonstick spray, put food (steak, pork chop, chicken breast, salmon filet, pretty much whatever) onto grill, close grill, check back periodically. Maybe 15 minutes. Get fancy: marinades and rubs. Simpler: make a bunch of extra chicken breasts on Sunday night, refrigerate them, and eat them cold (or reheated) all week, either for dinner or on salads for lunch. And get the grill with removable plates so you won't care about scrubbing.

I find cooking really boring and I usually can't manage to take the time to set up something to listen to while I'm cooking. But I manage to make it interesting for myself all the same -- by massively multi-tasking. Generally I'll stick some rice in the rice cooker and chop veg while it's cooking. Then I'll put 6 eggs on to boil (for future breakfasts) on one burner, and use two others for two different stir-frys. (One stir-fry will be meat, rice and veg done in an Asian style using soy sauce and mirin for seasoning; the other will be meat, rice and veg in an Indian style using garlic powder and chili powder for seasoning.) On the fourth burner I'll make a kettle of water for a giant pitcher of tea or iced coffee. With all this going on, I'm not bored for a second, and if I am, there's always something I can clean up. I do this once a week and end up with 6 or 8 meal-sized tupperware containers of food that can be microwaved on all of the other nights. Also, I basically force myself to do this once a week because there isn't any prepared food in the house. If I don't make it, I have to starve.

I just skimmed the comments, but I was surprised that no one seemed to mention cooking with other people. I dated a woman who could cook and she would put me to work. I'd watch, learn, we'd talk, listen to music, and have a great meal. When people really cook, especially people who learned to cook young from parents who cooked, they will talk while cooking and tell you your secrets. Before her, I hated cooking. But then cooking became less associated with the nuisance of finding sustenance and rather the hour or two each night where we'd drink some beer, talk about our day, and unwind, flirt, and, before I knew it, have a great meal. Years later, I had a friendship largely based around cooking. We'd do the same thing, except I did the talking. See if you can find someone around you who likes to cook (and if you're both single, to date), and then offer to buy the ingredients and necessary stuff, if they'll pick out a recipe they like and cook with you once a week. In a month or two, you will begin to know the ways.

I'm going to have to quote director http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO8EiScBEjA here: "Not knowing how to cook is like not knowing how to f*ck. You gotta eat the rest of your life. You might as well know how." P.S. His Puerco Pibil recipe in the video I link to is ok, but not as great as he wants you to believe.

I had this huge thing typed up about how to transition what you're doing now to actually cooking, but basically: - Start by throwing out the original packaging. Take your frozen dinner out of the tray and arrange it on a plate before you eat. The idea is to create the idea that you're not just heating stuff up, you're using the microwave to cook. - Get cheap canned soup, and heat it in a pot on the stove. Do not use the microwave here. Watching stuff boil is the most boring thing in the world, which makes it the perfect time to cut up mushrooms and herbs and chicken bits and everything else that the can promises is in the soup but (in accordance with the laws of food manufacturing) fails to actually deliver. Similarly, if you buy frozen pizza get a block of mozzarella as well to grate on top, if you buy canned spaghetti sauce get some tomatoes and garlic, etc. Get used to the idea that food you have a hand in making is better than food that doesn't.

I have been thinking more about this today and there is another set of things that I think will help with this. Mainly, you need to really enjoy being in your kitchen. For a lot of people the kitchen is the place they dump their bills and outerwear, a place that smells funny and requires maintenance [dishes! clean fridge!] that they don't enjoy. If you have a kitchen you eat in, it may have a table covered with other crap that is on its way somewhere else and it may be hard to clear a place without feeling that there is other stuff to do. The kitchen is most likely to have crappy flourescent lights that make you and your food look awful. So, before you embark on this trip, learn to prettify your kitchen somewhat (double important if you're going to have people over). Take the trash out and give the fridge one good cleaning. Buy containers that you can store leftovers in that you can see into so that you can tell when they have to go. Arrange the fridge somewhat so that you have sections for different types of food so that you can find things. Make ice.. Clear off the eating space and maybe invest in a nice placemat and some dishes that you enjoy. Put a radio or something in there so that you can listen to music while you work. Open the curtains and try to get some natural light in there. Get an area light or two if the flurescents are terrible. Take out the recycling. make sure you have nice places for trash/recycling in the future. Mop the floor or at least give it a good sweep. Invest in some good dish and counter cleaning supplies (whatever your setup is, dish soap and some nice sponges or some good detergent for the dishwasher) and give the place a once over. Some of this goes in line with what other people are saying about having the right tools but part of it is just about making the kitchen a place you'd like to be generally and a place you'd like to work with food in. I took some of my own advice and spent some time cutting flowers and putting them in jars in my kitchen and taking out all the recycling that had been piling up and I feel more upbeat about cooking dinner this evening.

Practical: Echoing jon1270's echo of JujuB's endorsement of getting a couple of really good knives. It's essential to have the proper tools to do a job correctly, and it starts with knives. Obviously, there are other tools, both cookware and utensils, that will augment your ability to be efficient and successful in the kitchen, but realistically all you need is a good knife, a cutting board, a frying pan, a cookie sheet, and a pot in which to make noodles. Basically, you need the tools to do the job. Philosophical: The "so few guys cook" comment above may be true, but it's still crap. So few guys choose to cook, that's the real problem. Maybe that attitude is coming from some perceived notion of what's easy and what's not, maybe it's a leftover sexist stereotype, or maybe it's the fact that the parents of most young people today reared their kids on frozen fish sticks and Kraft dinner. Doesn't matter, these are only excuses. How, then, do you change your mindset? If you want cooking to become a skill, something you can do successfully and efficiently, you need to take cooking on (mentally) as a hobby or project. Here, really, is the leap most men don't want to make. Cooking is an act of construction, and is fundamentally no different than learning how to change your own oil, maintain a two-stroke engine on your lawnmower, or build a set of shelves at your workbench. All these things are learned skills, and you need to invest the time and energy to develop even a rudimentary expertise. Whether changing your oil or learning what the hell to do with chicken breasts, you need the following: 1) To see a problem ("my oil needs changing," or "these Stouffer's dinners are killing me slowly") 2) To know what you need to fix the problem (the tools and ingredients) 3) A basic understanding of what to do with that knowledge (chicken goes in baking dish - now what?) 4) The ability to value being personally satisfied over being slightly inconvenienced Point #4 is the one that's going to take the most time to overcome, in my opinion. You could learn to put edible food on your plate with a minimum of hassle, but how is that reinforcing a sustainable behavioral change? You need to get good at more than just throwing chicken in a frying pan or browning beef for nachos, and that's going to take time and energy before efficiency comes. Last week I turned http://www.flickr.com/photos/10288304@N00/1518055293/ into http://www.flickr.com/photos/10288304@N00/1518892158/ in fifteen minutes on a Tuesday. Eventually, being able to throw yourself curve balls (in this case, wondering how well the soft pretzels from a gas station would work as the bun for a sandwich) without turning dinner into an eight-course two-hour production is what's going to change your behavior. You're just going to have to work out your basics and know what you're doing before you can successfully start "getting cute." Good luck.

The best tip I can give you for at least starting to get into the habit of cooking your own meals is: USE THE CROCKPOT You can make all sorts of things in it with little-to-no preparation. There are plenty of crockpot recipes, though I haven't used any. I've seen crockpot cookbooks, and there are probably crock-pot specific recipes online. All that is required for crockpot cooking is dumping things into the crockpot. The formula is pretty much: protein, liquid, extras. If you want tacos or burritos, put a roast into the crockpot, dump some salsa over it, turn on. By the time you get home, all you'll need to do is shred with two forks and you've got taco meat. If you use bbq sauce instead of salsa, you've got shredded sandwich meat, etc. The other morning, I put some frozen chicken breasts (both boneless and bone-in, I was cleaning out the freezer) into the crockpot (still frozen), covered with wine, couple cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, a can of artichoke hearts and a can of cream of mushroom soup (don't bother stirring, just open and scoop out, it'll get incorporated eventually), set it to high and dinner was ready in the evening. stored extras in the fridge still in the pot part of the crockpot, and stuck it back into the warming part of the crockpot in the morning, set it to low and it was perfect by evening. If you are extra lazy and watching carbs, crockpot cooking cuts down on eating extra carbs because - for me - I'm always too lazy to make rice or something else to go along with the meal. the cachet of it (so few guys cook) I have not found that to be true.