When the pandemic happened, there were people who didn’t know how to make the easiest meals. I was shocked. So, my rule on recipes is that nothing is too basic.

It’s usually just to take a small amount of delicious oil or fat — whatever you have on hand — and saute diced onions with diced bell pepper (or local equivalent) until the onions are slightly transparent. Keep going if you want the onions start being brown and have a sweet flavor. That brown is just the natural sugars coming out of the onion and is what “caramelizes” means. Caramel is sugar. And then add garlic and/or ginger and whatever spices you like.

If you want to, add meat. If you don’t, do not. (Often, that very oil step is done from browning meat and not wasting the fat.)

If you want soup, add a lot of liquid and whatever and cook it slowly. If you want paella, jambalaya, jollof, biryani, or equivalent — every culture has a rice dish — use the rice recipe on the bag as if it were water. (Use stock if you have any but water works fine.)

There are dishes that are different. Like fried rice and French Toast use old rice and toast respectively. Baking is a science. But anyone can make a pot of delicious with a few ingredients and it’s a 10 minute, one pot meal.

There's a book that you should pickup..

Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat

It really covers everything you'll need to be able to cook anything. They even made a 4 part series about it on Netflix.

I started watching Babish & Weissman’s channels on YouTube during the pandemic. Both of them put out easy to follow videos, but they also include links to recipes in the video description, so you don’t have to write it all down.

The Basics with Babish videos are great because they show multiple dishes with a given protein.

A good example is The Curry Guy. Dan somebody?

Make a huge batch of base curry sauce, and then with a few more ingredients you can make dozens of Indian and Bangladeshi dishes

He's got loads of recipes on his site, but his book is really useful in a kitchen