16 Recipes For Beginners That Will Teach You How to Cook, According to Chefs- Tandoori Kitchen..
Ask a professional chef how to learn cooking and you rarely hear “master your knife cuts” or “memorise the French techniques.” Far more often, you get a dish. Food & Wine put one question to chefs from around the US: what should a beginner cook first? The 16 answers, published in September 2026 and written up by Mrigaa Sethi, read less like a recipe roundup and more like a curriculum. Each dish is a way into a skill. Here’s what that curriculum looks like, organised by what you’d actually learn.
Start With Heat: Five Dishes That Teach You to Read the Pan
Heat is where most beginners struggle, and several chefs picked dishes to fix exactly that.
New Orleans chef Emeril Lagasse chose roast chicken, treating it as a lesson in seasoning and timing, down to rubbing the flavourings in properly and adjusting the cooking time to the bird’s size. Food & Wine’s butter-basted rib eye follows a method from chef Alain Ducasse: season well, let the steak rest at room temperature, then sear it in a hot cast-iron skillet for an even cook and a proper crust. Chip Roman, formerly of Blackfish in Pennsylvania, recommends whole roasted fish, with a handy doneness test: the dorsal fin pulls out easily when it’s ready. He suggests slim fish such as branzino or trout, since they cook faster and more evenly.
Two of the humblest picks may teach the most. Hawaii chef Robert McGee points to the BLT fried egg-and-cheese sandwich as a lesson in temperature control, not scorching butter, caramelisation and egg cookery, and he tells beginners to use plain American cheese on white bread so they’re not wasting good ingredients while they learn. Franklin Becker of New York’s Point Seven makes the case for scrambled eggs, which are simple to cook and hard to get exactly right.
Learn to Build a Sauce: Seven Recipes About Flavour
The second theme is sauce, and the chefs treat it as the backbone of everything else.
Panamanian chef Mario Castrellon calls a classic Bolognese something every cook should have in reserve, and he adds his own touches: a bit of bacon fat and a local habanero for heat. Dana Cowin, the former editor-in-chief of Food & Wine, picks a tomato sauce with onion and butter for its short shopping list, single pan and low skill barrier. Philadelphia chef Tyler Akin favours onion béchamel, one of the French mother sauces, because it’s easy to remember and leads to so many other dishes.
Carbonara earns its place from Michael Tusk of San Francisco’s Quince and Cotogna for the opposite reason. It has few ingredients, but a lot happens in a ten-to-twelve-minute window, so it forces you to think about your choices of pasta, pork and cheese, and he has used it to test cooks trying out in his kitchen. Aaron Barnett of Portland’s St. Jack picks cream-based soups because the real lesson comes at the end: tasting and adjusting salt and acidity until it’s right. Two cold sauces round out the group. The package includes a whole-lemon vinaigrette, an all-purpose dressing that works on salads, tuna or crispy chicken, with a tip to trim the lemon’s ends so it doesn’t turn bitter. Nico Monday of Short & Main in Massachusetts calls the garden salad the thing to learn first, because it depends on a good vinaigrette, and he warns that people tend to overdo it.
Slow Down: Four Dishes That Reward Attention
The last group is about patience and being present.
Miami chef Michelle Bernstein recommends risotto, as long as you keep the stock hot and don’t let it cook past about twenty minutes. Her advice on focus is blunt: “stay off your stupid cell phone.” Joey Campanaro of New York’s Little Owl chose apple pie, arguing that it teaches you to handle fruit, get the crust flaky and follow a recipe, and, crucially, that it still tastes good even when it looks a mess. Matt Jennings, founder of Full Heart Hospitality, recommends starting with dough of any kind, including pizza, and being willing to get your hands covered in flour. Pastry chef Stella Parks rounds out the list with marshmallows, a project she says delivers a big payoff for relatively little effort.
What the List Quietly Tells You
Read side by side, the picks share a few traits, and they’re worth more than any one recipe.
Most of the dishes have short ingredient lists, which means there’s nowhere to hide and you notice every decision. Many are forgiving: apple pie, scrambled eggs and a messy pizza night all survive imperfection. And a surprising number are about tasting and adjusting, not following instructions, whether that’s salting a soup, balancing a vinaigrette or tweaking a sauce. Several chefs also lean on the idea that one dish unlocks many, such as a béchamel that becomes other sauces, a dough that becomes pizza, bread or pasta, or a vinaigrette that dresses almost everything.
If You Want to Start This Week
The chefs didn’t give a sequence, so this is a suggestion, not theirs. Begin with the quick ones that give fast feedback: scrambled eggs and a vinaigrette. Move to a one-pan sauce such as the tomato and onion one, then try a roast or a whole fish when you want to learn timing. Save the more demanding projects, such as risotto, carbonara and pie, for when you have a free afternoon and your full attention. Taste constantly, take notes on what went wrong and cook the same dish more than once, because that is how the lessons stick.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the single best dish for a beginner?
There isn’t a single answer, and that’s the point of the list. The chefs picked dishes that teach different skills, from egg cookery and pan heat to sauce-making and tasting. Choose the skill you most want to build and start there.
Do I need special equipment?
For most of these, no. A good pan, a sharp knife and a roasting dish go a long way. A few need extras, such as a cast-iron skillet for the steak or a stand mixer for marshmallows, so check the recipe before you start.
Are these recipes really suitable for total beginners?
Several are simple, such as scrambled eggs and vinaigrette, while others, like risotto, carbonara and apple pie, take more attention. Chefs argue they’re worth trying early because the mistakes teach you something and the results are still good to eat.
Where can I find the actual recipes?
Each dish links to a full recipe in Food & Wine’s original feature, listed in the sources below.
