This one is more of an emotional skill than technique.
You're going to fuck up sometimes. Even if you know your way around a knife, your ingredients are fresh, your kitchen is perfectly ergonomic, and your timing is perfect. Sometimes you just make a stinker, even with a decade+ of cooking experience.
To paraphrase one of my favorite movies, you can't go to pieces when you pierce the toast.
Oh gosh yes. I'm a beginner. Relearning all the basics at 42 after not bothering to cook for myself for years. I have days I do alright and days it feels like I can't boil water. It helps to know people who know what they're doing have the odd fail too.
I just want to piggyback on this a bit: ask for feedback from whomever you’re feeding and don’t take it personally.
Too greasy, too salty, too bland, the ingredients don’t play together well?
Take notes and learn for the next time.
I have a friend who was a head chef at Chez Pannise in Berkeley and has written several cook books. One of them has in the dedication a thanks to his friends for sitting through al his failures while trying new recipes
Meal planning. I think a sign of a really good cook is being able to deal with the inevitable "ok I need to use up 2 limp carrots and this mystery sauce in my fridge." Going from that to a functioning meal is a very important skill
When I learned to develop my own recipes on the fly (and have it turn out well!) is when I finally considered myself a good cook. That goes double when you’re working with limited and suboptimal ingredients, like whatever’s dying in the fridge.
Summer Beef Stew, literally last night.
Had potatoes that needed used like yesterday, carrots too. Frozen peas and corn on hand. Ohhh what’s that in the corner of the freezer, a chuck roast that’s been in there for two months you say!?!
Had some bacon fat reserved and some thyme in the garden. Seared that bastard up and into the Dutch oven with the potatoes and carrots. Removed them when it was tender and made a bangin gravy in the Dutch oven, added some cream and a touch of Cabernet. Chunked the meat and threw the potatoes and carrots back in and added the corn and peas and thyme and herbs de Provence, heavy on the cracked black pepper. Simmered for an hour.
Hands down the best stew I’ve ever made.
Heat control, and learning what oil looks like in different pans as it heats to temperature.
Cooking to temperature not time, or cooking to doneness not time.
Recognising that a recipe is likely to be wrong just from reading it, or recognising that a recipe is going wrong and needs correcting as you're cooking it, and knowing that it's the recipe (and making a note somewhee) and not you.
Mis en place, but usefully. YouTube chefs put everything in tiny bowls, and I often think "pre-mix those together in a bigger bowl before you add them to the enormous bowl of flour."
Recognizing that a recipe is wrong is so helpful! I can't tell you how many recipes I have skipped making because the instructions missed a critical step or omitted a listed ingredient.
For me, it has also been figuring out how to fix a recipe on the fly - the sauce doesn't come together, or the flavors are bland, or whatever.
For me, it’s more technical. I think what separates a recipe follower from a decent cook is what I call “ingredient acumen.”
Understanding things like:
-Lemon goes with seafood
-Red meats should be stewed with dark braising liquids (red wine, beef broth, etc.)
-Butter will burn unless at a lower heat or combined with another cooking oil
-Rosemary and thyme go well with steak, dill goes well with salmon
-Yogurt and cream are good for finishing sauces
-Cilantro is perfect for Indian and East Asian garnishes
-Parsley is a good garnish for Italian and Mediterranean dishes
The list goes on and on.
Butter still burns at high heat when mixed with another oil. The oil doesn't magically stop the milk solids from reaching a higher temperature. Mixing butter and oil should be done for flavor, or (rarely) for final consistency if it's coming back down to room temp or below
I love braised meat but I personally prefer white wine over red, red has a very strong over powering taste. ...And prefer chicken stock. Store bought beef tock had an off tast
For me it has been learning timing so that everything gets done at relatively the same time and everything can be served warm. Also knowing little tricks like I can take meat out and let it rest a few minutes (which is actually better than cutting right into it anyway), and that gives me extra time to finish up something else.
*everything can be served warm*
I grilled the most amazing BBQ pork chops to absolute perfection one day and they got done before the rest of the meal was complete so I set them on the counter and continued cooking.
My mom comes in and throws them in a 300F oven “to keep them warm” and dried them out 🤬
My mother microwaves everything. It’s like a nervous tic. She will take food you just plated off of the stove and nuke it. She’s really fun at restaurants too.
Oh no! We used to have a warming drawer(was already in the house when we moved in) It only got used on Thanksgiving. They are so expensive, we didn't bother replacing it when it died.
* Prepping and mise en place
* Taste and season as you go to understand flavor will develop over time
* Temperature importance and control
* Watch and listen to understand how ingredients react when cooking, after a while you start to cook purely by sight and feeling
Curiosity, people often label things and put them in ridged boxes. Cinnamon goes well in many savory dishes. Good olive oil can be enjoyed on ice cream. Fruits accompany savory dishes extremely well.
Broadening your pallet, the more flavors you know the more things you can theory craft in your mind and test out in the kitchen.
Cinnamon is so good on fried chicken, which we learned on accident when my roommate knocked an open bottle of cinnamon out of the spice cabinet into the breading mix and we were too poor to not eat it, haha.
Cinnamon is my secret ingredient for my “gourmet sloppy joes”
Add a pinch to your manwich sauce and a little chili flake while you’re cooking up the ground beef then simmer for awhile and reduce until it all thickens up a bit.
Serve open faced on a toasted English muffin, top with grated Romano.
This is my personal opinion and experience: in my opinion,the best skill is learning from your mistakes. No one is born to be an expert in the kitchen,it’s always 1% talent and 99% hardworking. So it’s important to try and learn from your mistakes. And don’t let the mistakes bring you down.
Definitely the most important. You learn more from your mistakes than you do from doing something good enough. If you are afraid of doing something wrong you probably aren't going to be daring enough to push yourself to get better. You gotta cross lines to know where the line is. If you are afraid of something being over salted or undone you'll never get the comfort of knowing what just right is.
*recognizing that a recipe is going to be wrong*
My novice cook co-worker found *the* dill pickle soup from our favorite authentic Polish lunch spot on food network, I think. She was pretty confident because it even named the restaurant.
One day she tells me that she made the soup and it tasted great, but ended up like dill pickle mashed potatoes instead of a nice hearty brothy soup and couldn’t understand why because she followed the recipe to a tee. (She’s a smart girl and doesn’t take long to get proficient in new ventures).
I looked up the recipe and immediately spotted it. The roux called for an entire cup of flour.
So I explained to her the flour/fat/liquid ratio for roux and gravies and sauces, of which she was unaware.
I’d like to think the cup of flour was a typo, but I still wonder if the restaurant sabotaged the recipe 🤔
Giving yourself grace, it's okay if not everything is homemade from scratch. Frozen veggies are perfectly acceptable to cook with case in point, Walmart has a onion pepper mix that if you add that with some mild or spicy Italian bulk sausage and cook it all together put it in a hoagie roll it's a wonderful sandwich. That being said somethings are better homemade like Hamburger Helper mix it's cheaper and easy to customize and shelf stable for 6 months to a year. Rachel Ray 39 minutes meal fo NOT take 30 minutes to make like closer to an hour to 90 minutes. If you have a Ninja or a food processor you got a way to chopp a lot of veggies in a hurry and if your having a sore hand day it's a really good thing. You can cut the sugar in half in most dessert recipes. If you have a cat and open a can of tuna or sardines, they will come and they will beg, and you will give in.
Learning how to apply the concept of 5 tastes and the aromatic scale gave me a massive boost in skill and creativity. Instead of learning that ingredient a fits b, you instead understand what tastes and Aromas play together well and can apply this to all kinds of ingredients.
substituting. when you're out of something or can't use it, knowing what else will work. it saves you trips to the store and helps you make do with what you have, and also it helps you understand what each ingredient does or adds.
If you ask me, there’s two essentials to start out with: developing good knife skills, and good mis-en-place. It’s amazing how much smoother cooking goes if you’re well organised. The third most important thing for me is understanding sequencing, if you know why things happen in a particular order Banks life much easier by reducing the number of times. You need to look back at your recipe, and as you start understanding how flightless work together you’ll find it much easier to either improve on or come up with your own recipes to boot. Edit typos
Pan sauce. Not only is it tasty but frugal, you are not letting any of the fat and juices escape. That's what ties the meal together when you plate the starch and veg and lay your protein over the top.
yes, yes a thousand times yes. there's nothing like going to a thanksgiving dinner at someones house and the only thing even close to warm or cold is the last thing they made before serving.
I always have everything ready and warm, but my mother sometimes won't sit down to eat for over twenty minutes. I'll time everything, give sufficient warning (30 min til dinner), have the table set and drinks out.
Then she'll literally go in the shower, blow her hair, go to the bathroom, mow the lawn.. come in and complain that food is cold/soggy. It drives me nuts.
in my house. dinner starts when food is ready. whether you are or not. also everyone is allowed to eat and soon as their food is plated. there is no waiting till everyone's food is cold to start. it's always been that way in my family.
I've started just plating myself up and eating! Half the time it's alone but I'm not waiting around. I do a lot of the cooking in my home and I'm not gonna wait til I have to microwave it to eat.
The ability to combine flavours. And the sweet, salt,, bitter, sour and umami ratio , and being aware of the texture of the dish so it feels good to eat aswell.
If you wanna get a little "fancy", I think it's good to know how to make a few things from scratch by heart.
Like, being able to make egg noodles from scratch quickly is definitely a good skill since egg noodles go in lots of recipes. It might be easier to get store-bought, but y'know it makes me feel more like a competent cook.
How to use the cook time and power level to reheat food in the microwave.
I nearly slapped a shrimp and rice dish out of my daughter’s hand because she was going to just nuke it on high for two minutes. I asked her if she liked to eat pencil erasers.
Ya gonna do shrimp for two minutes, set it at power 3 and check it half way through.
Timing multiple dishes so the dinner is served hot. Sounds simple but if you’ve got four or more elements going it can take some thought to make it all sync up
You need all the required techniques and skills to be able to cook well. And most of them are cuisine specific. But one thing you should have that you’re not taught is self control and a way to meditate. This is a very demanding job. You either learn to handle the stress through exercise, eating well, meditation, outfit hobbies or you will become an angry and irritable drunk. There are not too many middle of the road chefs I’ve known.
So if you are getting into it seriously, make sure other parts of your life are figured out and you have a control over your life.
Organization and timeline are seen as the most common issues in home cooks. Every movie of a struggling cook shows them cutting an onion while a pot of sauce is already bubbling in the background.
If you do all your prep up front, and understand the recipes are completely full of crap when it comes to time.
Mise. If you feel like cooking, but can’t be bothered to do it, at least there’s mise. That way, just throw everything together once your hungover ass wakes up hungry.
Heat management and becoming familiar with your oven and stove top.
When I’m using a stove new to me I will pan fry some toast so I know how hot the burners get, and I will buy an oven thermometer so I can heat map my stove.
So many people I know cook by setting something on high and praying for the best, but that’s not the best way to do it or you get sausages that are burnt on the outside and frozen in the center.
Learn to manage your heat and understand how heat will give you differing results
Safety- Knives, exhaust/air quality with gas appliances, burn response, fire extinguishing based on type of fuel, food-borne illness, safe food handling and temperatures, etc.
Have a good timer and a good instant meat thermometer. Once I stopped estimating and learned the proper cooking times for a juicy steak or succulent chicken my cooking skills skyrocketed
imagination
knowing what things taste like and being able to imagine how they go together is essential. it's the difference between tasting something and thinking it's missing something, and knowing what it's missing
To me, a sign of a good cook is someone who can easily whip up a complete meal from whatever’s on hand. That means not a single, one-pot dish, but cooking several dishes that complement each other and timing them perfectly. Not too many dishes, and sometimes there’s a one-dish-meal, but you know what I mean. This has more to do with experience, though.
Another thing, that is more specific, is playing around with contrasting flavors, so not *everything* in the dish tastes the same. This can lead to really thoughtful and interesting dishes.
Getting skilled at tasting and adjusting the final seasoning of a dish…knowing what to add to give the proper balance regardless of what the recipe says.
This one is more of an emotional skill than technique. You're going to fuck up sometimes. Even if you know your way around a knife, your ingredients are fresh, your kitchen is perfectly ergonomic, and your timing is perfect. Sometimes you just make a stinker, even with a decade+ of cooking experience. To paraphrase one of my favorite movies, you can't go to pieces when you pierce the toast.
Oh gosh yes. I'm a beginner. Relearning all the basics at 42 after not bothering to cook for myself for years. I have days I do alright and days it feels like I can't boil water. It helps to know people who know what they're doing have the odd fail too.
I just want to piggyback on this a bit: ask for feedback from whomever you’re feeding and don’t take it personally. Too greasy, too salty, too bland, the ingredients don’t play together well? Take notes and learn for the next time.
Trust Murphy’s law. Shit will happen. Expect it to happen. Let it happen and go on cooking. You’re doing great
I have a friend who was a head chef at Chez Pannise in Berkeley and has written several cook books. One of them has in the dedication a thanks to his friends for sitting through al his failures while trying new recipes
Haha. I know the feel. I’ve written one myself and can so relate to the trial and error until you hit what you actually want in perfection.
I never realized John Wayne walked like that.
You’re giving him *drugs*!?!? - Relax… it’s just an Aspirin with the “A” and “S” scraped off. ……BRILLIANT!
Meal planning. I think a sign of a really good cook is being able to deal with the inevitable "ok I need to use up 2 limp carrots and this mystery sauce in my fridge." Going from that to a functioning meal is a very important skill
When I learned to develop my own recipes on the fly (and have it turn out well!) is when I finally considered myself a good cook. That goes double when you’re working with limited and suboptimal ingredients, like whatever’s dying in the fridge.
Summer Beef Stew, literally last night. Had potatoes that needed used like yesterday, carrots too. Frozen peas and corn on hand. Ohhh what’s that in the corner of the freezer, a chuck roast that’s been in there for two months you say!?! Had some bacon fat reserved and some thyme in the garden. Seared that bastard up and into the Dutch oven with the potatoes and carrots. Removed them when it was tender and made a bangin gravy in the Dutch oven, added some cream and a touch of Cabernet. Chunked the meat and threw the potatoes and carrots back in and added the corn and peas and thyme and herbs de Provence, heavy on the cracked black pepper. Simmered for an hour. Hands down the best stew I’ve ever made.
Winging it with whatever’s available is art.
Heat control, and learning what oil looks like in different pans as it heats to temperature. Cooking to temperature not time, or cooking to doneness not time. Recognising that a recipe is likely to be wrong just from reading it, or recognising that a recipe is going wrong and needs correcting as you're cooking it, and knowing that it's the recipe (and making a note somewhee) and not you. Mis en place, but usefully. YouTube chefs put everything in tiny bowls, and I often think "pre-mix those together in a bigger bowl before you add them to the enormous bowl of flour."
IMO the best way to learn heat control is to learn how to cook an egg in all its variants - sunny side up -> over easy -> omelette -> French omelette
Recognizing that a recipe is wrong is so helpful! I can't tell you how many recipes I have skipped making because the instructions missed a critical step or omitted a listed ingredient. For me, it has also been figuring out how to fix a recipe on the fly - the sauce doesn't come together, or the flavors are bland, or whatever.
For me, it’s more technical. I think what separates a recipe follower from a decent cook is what I call “ingredient acumen.” Understanding things like: -Lemon goes with seafood -Red meats should be stewed with dark braising liquids (red wine, beef broth, etc.) -Butter will burn unless at a lower heat or combined with another cooking oil -Rosemary and thyme go well with steak, dill goes well with salmon -Yogurt and cream are good for finishing sauces -Cilantro is perfect for Indian and East Asian garnishes -Parsley is a good garnish for Italian and Mediterranean dishes The list goes on and on.
Butter still burns at high heat when mixed with another oil. The oil doesn't magically stop the milk solids from reaching a higher temperature. Mixing butter and oil should be done for flavor, or (rarely) for final consistency if it's coming back down to room temp or below
Good call. I guess I should have said it will burn less quickly if the above conditions are met.
*Southeast Asian for Cilantro, but yeah, I completely agree.
Yes, exactly. Thanks for catching that!
Do you mean Culantro / Sawtooth herb? Because Cilantro/Coriander is not endemic to South East Asia. It'd be more Mediterranean and West Asia
I love braised meat but I personally prefer white wine over red, red has a very strong over powering taste. ...And prefer chicken stock. Store bought beef tock had an off tast
For me it has been learning timing so that everything gets done at relatively the same time and everything can be served warm. Also knowing little tricks like I can take meat out and let it rest a few minutes (which is actually better than cutting right into it anyway), and that gives me extra time to finish up something else.
*everything can be served warm* I grilled the most amazing BBQ pork chops to absolute perfection one day and they got done before the rest of the meal was complete so I set them on the counter and continued cooking. My mom comes in and throws them in a 300F oven “to keep them warm” and dried them out 🤬
My mother microwaves everything. It’s like a nervous tic. She will take food you just plated off of the stove and nuke it. She’s really fun at restaurants too.
Lol and here I'm upset my oven will only go down to 170° for long rests.
Oh no! We used to have a warming drawer(was already in the house when we moved in) It only got used on Thanksgiving. They are so expensive, we didn't bother replacing it when it died.
this is a major one!
* Prepping and mise en place * Taste and season as you go to understand flavor will develop over time * Temperature importance and control * Watch and listen to understand how ingredients react when cooking, after a while you start to cook purely by sight and feeling
Curiosity, people often label things and put them in ridged boxes. Cinnamon goes well in many savory dishes. Good olive oil can be enjoyed on ice cream. Fruits accompany savory dishes extremely well. Broadening your pallet, the more flavors you know the more things you can theory craft in your mind and test out in the kitchen.
Cinnamon is so good on fried chicken, which we learned on accident when my roommate knocked an open bottle of cinnamon out of the spice cabinet into the breading mix and we were too poor to not eat it, haha.
Cinnamon is my secret ingredient for my “gourmet sloppy joes” Add a pinch to your manwich sauce and a little chili flake while you’re cooking up the ground beef then simmer for awhile and reduce until it all thickens up a bit. Serve open faced on a toasted English muffin, top with grated Romano.
This is my personal opinion and experience: in my opinion,the best skill is learning from your mistakes. No one is born to be an expert in the kitchen,it’s always 1% talent and 99% hardworking. So it’s important to try and learn from your mistakes. And don’t let the mistakes bring you down.
Definitely the most important. You learn more from your mistakes than you do from doing something good enough. If you are afraid of doing something wrong you probably aren't going to be daring enough to push yourself to get better. You gotta cross lines to know where the line is. If you are afraid of something being over salted or undone you'll never get the comfort of knowing what just right is.
*recognizing that a recipe is going to be wrong* My novice cook co-worker found *the* dill pickle soup from our favorite authentic Polish lunch spot on food network, I think. She was pretty confident because it even named the restaurant. One day she tells me that she made the soup and it tasted great, but ended up like dill pickle mashed potatoes instead of a nice hearty brothy soup and couldn’t understand why because she followed the recipe to a tee. (She’s a smart girl and doesn’t take long to get proficient in new ventures). I looked up the recipe and immediately spotted it. The roux called for an entire cup of flour. So I explained to her the flour/fat/liquid ratio for roux and gravies and sauces, of which she was unaware. I’d like to think the cup of flour was a typo, but I still wonder if the restaurant sabotaged the recipe 🤔
That soup needs a VERY brown roux.
Giving yourself grace, it's okay if not everything is homemade from scratch. Frozen veggies are perfectly acceptable to cook with case in point, Walmart has a onion pepper mix that if you add that with some mild or spicy Italian bulk sausage and cook it all together put it in a hoagie roll it's a wonderful sandwich. That being said somethings are better homemade like Hamburger Helper mix it's cheaper and easy to customize and shelf stable for 6 months to a year. Rachel Ray 39 minutes meal fo NOT take 30 minutes to make like closer to an hour to 90 minutes. If you have a Ninja or a food processor you got a way to chopp a lot of veggies in a hurry and if your having a sore hand day it's a really good thing. You can cut the sugar in half in most dessert recipes. If you have a cat and open a can of tuna or sardines, they will come and they will beg, and you will give in.
Learning how to apply the concept of 5 tastes and the aromatic scale gave me a massive boost in skill and creativity. Instead of learning that ingredient a fits b, you instead understand what tastes and Aromas play together well and can apply this to all kinds of ingredients.
substituting. when you're out of something or can't use it, knowing what else will work. it saves you trips to the store and helps you make do with what you have, and also it helps you understand what each ingredient does or adds.
Learn to make simple soup.
If you ask me, there’s two essentials to start out with: developing good knife skills, and good mis-en-place. It’s amazing how much smoother cooking goes if you’re well organised. The third most important thing for me is understanding sequencing, if you know why things happen in a particular order Banks life much easier by reducing the number of times. You need to look back at your recipe, and as you start understanding how flightless work together you’ll find it much easier to either improve on or come up with your own recipes to boot. Edit typos
At first I thought you were saying honey was essential and was confused. Now I get it.
As annoying as typos like that are sometimes relying on speech to text for my posts does yield some amusing outcomes
Basic butchery and filleting skills open up a whole new world when it comes to your cooking and ingredient selection
Being able to tell when things are par-cooked, cooked, or over-cooked.
Pan sauce. Not only is it tasty but frugal, you are not letting any of the fat and juices escape. That's what ties the meal together when you plate the starch and veg and lay your protein over the top.
Timing.
yes, yes a thousand times yes. there's nothing like going to a thanksgiving dinner at someones house and the only thing even close to warm or cold is the last thing they made before serving.
I always have everything ready and warm, but my mother sometimes won't sit down to eat for over twenty minutes. I'll time everything, give sufficient warning (30 min til dinner), have the table set and drinks out. Then she'll literally go in the shower, blow her hair, go to the bathroom, mow the lawn.. come in and complain that food is cold/soggy. It drives me nuts.
in my house. dinner starts when food is ready. whether you are or not. also everyone is allowed to eat and soon as their food is plated. there is no waiting till everyone's food is cold to start. it's always been that way in my family.
I've started just plating myself up and eating! Half the time it's alone but I'm not waiting around. I do a lot of the cooking in my home and I'm not gonna wait til I have to microwave it to eat.
How to make a roux properly so it doesn’t taste like raw flour. It’s a small step but if it’s done poorly…
Just add more butter? Lol
The ratio is important but so is cooking the flour. Too much butter and it splits and is greasy.
Ability to adapt cook on any cooktop. It's amazing to shut down kitchen in summer and switch to the grill.
The ability to combine flavours. And the sweet, salt,, bitter, sour and umami ratio , and being aware of the texture of the dish so it feels good to eat aswell.
Stovetop sauce making. Sauteeing. Searing. Roasting. Deep frying.
Rtfm at first, then mise en place
Cleaning fish. Freshly caught and cleaned fish is always better than store bought
If you wanna get a little "fancy", I think it's good to know how to make a few things from scratch by heart. Like, being able to make egg noodles from scratch quickly is definitely a good skill since egg noodles go in lots of recipes. It might be easier to get store-bought, but y'know it makes me feel more like a competent cook.
Salt to taste. Clear fridge ingredients.
How to use the cook time and power level to reheat food in the microwave. I nearly slapped a shrimp and rice dish out of my daughter’s hand because she was going to just nuke it on high for two minutes. I asked her if she liked to eat pencil erasers. Ya gonna do shrimp for two minutes, set it at power 3 and check it half way through.
#1 is knife skills. And knowing how to hone/sharpen knives
This is a good video to learn the basics https://youtu.be/pagPuiuA9cY?si=-G7MWt53rjpDw5FR
make gravy without a recipe, and without lumps or cooking it forever. Good eats early episode explains how.
Timing multiple dishes so the dinner is served hot. Sounds simple but if you’ve got four or more elements going it can take some thought to make it all sync up
You need all the required techniques and skills to be able to cook well. And most of them are cuisine specific. But one thing you should have that you’re not taught is self control and a way to meditate. This is a very demanding job. You either learn to handle the stress through exercise, eating well, meditation, outfit hobbies or you will become an angry and irritable drunk. There are not too many middle of the road chefs I’ve known. So if you are getting into it seriously, make sure other parts of your life are figured out and you have a control over your life.
Sharpening knives well.
Taste everything as you go.
To know when to use "what", and when to use "which" - indispensable in any kitchen.
Organization and timeline are seen as the most common issues in home cooks. Every movie of a struggling cook shows them cutting an onion while a pot of sauce is already bubbling in the background. If you do all your prep up front, and understand the recipes are completely full of crap when it comes to time.
Heat, a lot of people do not understand the basics of how or when to use high or low heat.
Flipping pancakes by throwing them into the air
Mise. If you feel like cooking, but can’t be bothered to do it, at least there’s mise. That way, just throw everything together once your hungover ass wakes up hungry.
Heat management and becoming familiar with your oven and stove top. When I’m using a stove new to me I will pan fry some toast so I know how hot the burners get, and I will buy an oven thermometer so I can heat map my stove. So many people I know cook by setting something on high and praying for the best, but that’s not the best way to do it or you get sausages that are burnt on the outside and frozen in the center. Learn to manage your heat and understand how heat will give you differing results
Safety- Knives, exhaust/air quality with gas appliances, burn response, fire extinguishing based on type of fuel, food-borne illness, safe food handling and temperatures, etc.
Have a good timer and a good instant meat thermometer. Once I stopped estimating and learned the proper cooking times for a juicy steak or succulent chicken my cooking skills skyrocketed
imagination knowing what things taste like and being able to imagine how they go together is essential. it's the difference between tasting something and thinking it's missing something, and knowing what it's missing
Organization and good timing. Being attentive and observant helps too for safety in the kitchen.
To me, a sign of a good cook is someone who can easily whip up a complete meal from whatever’s on hand. That means not a single, one-pot dish, but cooking several dishes that complement each other and timing them perfectly. Not too many dishes, and sometimes there’s a one-dish-meal, but you know what I mean. This has more to do with experience, though. Another thing, that is more specific, is playing around with contrasting flavors, so not *everything* in the dish tastes the same. This can lead to really thoughtful and interesting dishes.
For a home cook, the most important skill is confidence. And safety. Don't be afraid of the knife, keep it sharp, stay safe and clean.
Getting skilled at tasting and adjusting the final seasoning of a dish…knowing what to add to give the proper balance regardless of what the recipe says.