If you are wanting to spend less time dining out and spend more time eating in, here are some tips to help your kitchen work for you.

Cooking is seen as an essential skill by many. However, in 2019, only 20% of Americans were cooking from scratch daily. The rest were getting takeaway and eating out.

While takeaway and meals out may be the easy option for most people, it can be incredibly expensive and unhealthy. Moreover, with the threat of coronavirus still looming over the entirety of America, eating out in restaurants is no longer a safe option for everyone.

If you are thinking about spending more time in your kitchen, here are some tips and useful appliances to help you become a better cook.

Dine-in debt: the cost of eating out

While eating out and ordering takeaways may be easier than cooking for yourself, it has a lot of negatives. Here are some of the issues that can arise if you are dining out a lot:

• Weight gain and health issues: many studies have recorded a correlation between eating out and gaining weight. This is especially worrying when considering the other pandemic currently facing America: obesity. According to the CDC, around 40% of the US population is considered obese. Weight gain and obesity cause 800,000 deaths in the USA every year.

• Very expensive:the average U.S. household spends $3,000 per year eating out, according to BLS statistics reported by Business Insider. This equates to around $57 a week.

Eating out and getting takeaways every once in a while is not a bad thing. However, if you are dining out more regularly, it could be wreaking havoc on your physical health as well as your finances. If you are wanting to cook more, here are some tips for beginners.

Cooking tips for beginners

If you have never cooked anything substantial before, it can be difficult to know exactly where to begin. Here are a few easy tips to get you started:

• Buy the essentials: if you have never cooked in your home before, chances are you don’t have the right equipment to start cooking. Make sure you buy some good quality knives and a variety of decent pots and pans. This might be an investment at first, but will save you a lot of money in the long run as you start eating out less.

• Learn a few basic kitchen skills: learn how to cut an onion properly, which oils work best with different types of cooking, and how to add spice and herbs to your food. These are only small steps, but will make even amateur cooking taste great.

• Buy a beginners cookery book: if you are really struggling for ideas of what to cook, a beginners cookery book can help you choose simple and tasty recipes to learn.

Appliances and products to make cooking easier

If you can afford it, it may be worth investing in some proper kitchen appliances which will make cooking easier, faster and more enjoyable.

As these appliances will cut down the time you spend in the kitchen, they will also reduce the amount of electricity you need to cook, meaning that you can save money on your utility bills. If you are looking for other ways to save money on your bills, check comparison websites for cheap electricity rates.

Here are some of the best kitchen gadgets for beginners:

• Food processor: food processors make chopping and cutting so much speedier, saving you valuable time and energy while cooking.

• Slow cooker: these gadgets make delicious food simple, even for the most amateur cook. All you have to do is place the ingredients in it before you leave for work, and by the time you come home you will have tasty and rich dishes .

• Microwave: these aren’t just good for ready meals, but can save time defrosting food and reheating your leftovers.

Conclusion

If you are a beginner cook, it may seem very daunting to begin cooking. However, it can be incredibly easy to start if you have the right equipment, and lots of fun.