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1. Get a decent chefs knife and a cheap sharpening stone. When you have a sharp knife, cutting anything (especially finer cuts) is a lot easier.

2. Get all of your ingredients together and prepared before you start cooking.

3. Learn to cook on lower heat. A lot of people just toss everything on high or med/high heat, when almost everything you cook should be done on medium heat.

4. Start easy. Don’t go looking up beef Wellington recipes right off the bat. Make some simple dishes like mashed potatoes, grilled chicken, roasted veggies, etc. once you have those down you can expand.

5. Salt and butter are your friends. Even if the recipe doesn’t call for it, don’t be afraid to use a tad. But start with very small amounts. Once it’s in the dish you can’t remove it so be cautious.

6. Do your dishes as you go along the recipe. A lot of times I end up making less satisfying meals just because I’m lazy and don’t want to do a pile of dishes. Recently I started doing the dishes as I go along and it’s much less of a chore.

Honestly, an instant pot is the best investment I made. I can make a weeks worth of meals in about an hour or two. Pot roast, pasta, tacos... All easy with that device.

I know a lot of people have posted about purchasing stuff, but I will add a list as well: 1. A cast iron pan with sides. You can make thousands of different recipes with a cast iron pan. It's rugged and nearly indestructible, and also pretty cheap. 2. Some kind of chefs knife. Doesnt need to be expensive. Make sure you have a way to keep it sharp. A dull knife is very inefficient, and I would say more dangerous than a sharp one 3. A pot with a lid. Doesn't need to be amazing. Don't get one with that non-stick crap. Just a metal pot. 4. A baking sheet. And some foil to line it. 5. Salt, pepper, and olive oil makes literally any meal better. 6. Optional, but an oil bottle dispenser is very helpful for drizzling oil on veggies/meats

Look up one pan dinners. They are fairly simple to make, and don't require a ton of equipment.

Learn to pair meat, veggies, and starches together. Pan fried chicken with roasted broccoli and roasted potatoes. Pan fried salmon with roasted carrots and rice. Anything like that with salt, pepper, and olive oil is guaranteed to be delicious.

Lastly, you will make mistakes. We all do. Best way to learn is to fail. Have fun with it

Try out one of those food box delivery services, like hello fresh. They send you recipies, all the ingredients you need and the food is great. I tried one for a few months, got some amazing recepies, cancelled it and went on continue making the recipies but did my own grocery shopping. I learnt how to cook a bunch of different side dishes and lots of new ingredient combos. You'll probably end up saving some cash in the long run too, best of luck :)

Start by cooking stuff in bulk where you can do,e out a portion and heat it up quickly. Some easy options include turkey burgers, spaghetti and meatballs, meatloaf, chicken breasts and fresh veggie with hummus.

Honestly the easiest meals I’ve ever made have been chicken rice and broccoli. It’s best to buy in bulk. Keep in mind you can make good food without needing to spend an hour on it

Start by cooking what you really really love. That way you'll stick to it and like the end result over time

One way to motivate your self, since that was a part of your question - is to start slow. Say okay this week I am going to cook two times. Then do it. Pick something not too complicated for the first few times. Do this for a couple of weeks. Evaluate how you feel about the whole experience. Do you feel better after eating home cooked food? Do you have more time to relax? Are there other benefits? If the clean up it making the whole thing less appealing figure out how to use less cookware/dishes. Then bump it up to 3 or 4 days a week.

I wouldn’t invest in a whole lot of cooking utensils/gadgets, etc. til you work out that you like cooking and what/how you like to cook. Otherwise it becomes like exercise equipment and after a week or a month it doesn’t get used because you are overwhelmed.

Making multiple meals is a good idea. Eating one / freezing one let’s you save the second meal for another time. And it can be really hard to cook for just one or two in terms of portions in the pan.

I also second the Instapot. I got an Instapot Duo and it works as a pressure cooker, it has an Airfryer lid and you can get a slow cooker lid. It is one stop cooking and for one or two people, it can’t be beat. I hardly use my stove or oven anymore. You can sauté in it (no skillet required). And if you think “my mom used a pressure cooker and everything tasted the same” (because mine did) what I figured out after experimenting a few times it that you have to cut back on salt in your recipes because the salt concentrates and makes everything taste the same.

Also one more thing. The first time you make a recipe it will take forever. After you have made it a few times, you get more efficient and it goes much faster. This isn’t always true if it is a complicated recipe but it is often true.

Good luck!

Air fryer and then YT easy air fryer recipes.

Also get a rice cooker.

Ive used a nice meal kit delivery service that gives you the ingredients and recipe for you to make your own dinner. We have this 4 meals a week and its actually saving us money as we dont visit the store too often. https://www.hellofresh.com/

Get a pressure cooker or electric cooker. It can cook vegetables, rice, beans, etc.

Get a hand blender. Easy to make soups.

Buy frozen vegetables in bulk.

If you have any bursts of motivation, cook a couple of big batches of food that you can heat up later, like a big pot of chili. Then you can have it a bunch of ways (tacos, pasta, on rice etc) when you lack motivation.

Jamie Oliver isn't the best chef in the world, but he does specialise in getting people who can't/ don't cook started. Lots of quick recipes that use normal ingredients.

Also agree with the Hello Fresh suggestion. Again, it's not incredible, but you can keep the recipes that you like and then just make them yourself when you get more confident. It takes the stress away by giving you less to think about.

Also agree with the person who said to start simple. Think of food as nourishment. It doesn't have to be restaurant quality. Focus on your goals to be healthy and feed yourself real food. Setting your sights too high will just put you under stress.

Best of luck, I really hope you can find something that works :)

1. Start small by preparing ingredients instead of meals. Love onions? Chop two up and keep them in a container in the fridge (for up to 7-10 days).

2. Learn how to make rice, it goes with everything.

3. Make salads out of your favorite veggies instead of what “should” be in a salad, you can also add protein you like too.

4. Chicken breasts are freezable, thaw in the fridge for a day and pop in the oven for 30 min, add salt and olive oil! These go in sandwiches, salads, ramen and much more.

5. Start making what you love, not what is healthy, by spending more time preparing your meals you will learn about ingredients and their quality. Learn how to make your favorite burger, or tacos, then improve your dishes by incorporating better nutrients.

Enjoy the journey my friend ✌️

You've mentioned how late you finish work - I'd say along everyone else's cooking tips to make multiple portions when you do cook.

When I lived alone, I would always make two portions of a meal and save the second for lunch or dinner the next day. That's at least one meal you don't have to prep on the day if you're going to be short on time.

My bf often freezes a spare portion then defrosts it ahead of a day he knows he's not going to have time to cook after work and before heading out in the evening. So that another option if you don't want the same thing the day after.

Two things. First eggs! So easy, so many ways to cook, so good. Good starter Then honestly order hello fresh or some other meal plans. They’re not super cost effective but a good way to try new recipes, both from a taste and a preparation perspective.

Go free style. You don't need recipes as such, all you need to know is what you like . I buy random stuff that is on offer and make something with it. Yesterday's dinner was pureed sweet potato with a bit of blue cheese, slow roast onion and tomato salad with tuna, cooked celeriac in a dressing of sour cream and red peppers from a jar. All of the veg were reduced because coming to the end of their shelf life but it was absolutely delicious.

Trust your instinct when it comes to best before dates: yogurt, sour cream, kefir last much longer that the given dates as long as they haven't been opened. With fruit and veg, you can often cut the brown bits off and use the rest etc. Just check your veg drawer and fruit bowl daily, if one item goes off, the bacteria and mould will spread so just chuck the rotten piece and wash the rest thoroughly before eating.

Household staples with a long shelf life such as bulgur, spelt pasta, whole grain pasta, rice , rice cakes, lentils, porridge oats, canned fruit, tea, coffee, beans, canned tomatoes, raw pop corn etc are best naught in bulk (if you have room to store that.

I strongly advise against the DIY cooking kits: they stifle your creativity and have a ridiculous mark up. Much better to look up recipes based on what you have: myfridgefood.com , Tesco have a recipe finder tool, supercook.com offers zero waste recipes.

I occasionally entertain myself by working out what I pay for the ingredients and what a restaurant would charge !

I started with soupe, then eggs then breadbaking. From breadbaking , pizza was super easy.

Grilling and stirring is fast, easy and healthy and was the way to learn to use spices.

Next step was to start having homegrown spices.

Just lookup a YouTube cooking channel that makes simple stuff. Steak, potatoes, etc.

Pan and egg and butter!!! All you need it.

Try combine outdoors with meal prep like a leg of lamb underground oven (long one, though), dutch oven stuff, just whatever tinfoiled on the coals, thousands of massive recipes.

Slowcooker! Throw stuff in, turn on & forget. Whenever you're hungry it's gonna be ready. Delicious and easy meals!

I was in the same position as you just a few years ago, so I really get this post. There are some great advice here already, but I had two book that really helped me in: 1) building up my experience 2) easy to follow and 3) made some batch meals for when I didn't have any time to cook but didn't want to order something either.

I'm not sure what the rules are on this site, but I can DM you the titles of said books if you want. Good luck!

Watch Salt Fat Acid Heat. It's a gorgeous documentary full of well presented information that anyone at any non professional level can use.

Master one single basic meal. Then move on to another. I like the Cook Once Eat All Week book, as it has the grocery list already done. If you are cooking for 1, plan on leftovers.

I learned to cook from zero by watching Good Eats. I'm not sure if it's still on anywhere, but it's a great introduction to cooking.

Kenji Lopez-Alt is on Youtube, and he does a bunch of videos of quick home meals. You can also look at his Serious Eats articles for more complex, but really interesting, cooking guides.

You might try starting with kits — you can get stir fry kits with precut veggies and sauce; I usually add onions, garlic and meat.

You can buy pre-cooked meat to throw in to make it quicker.

Stir fry is great over rice or Asian noodles, and the kits are a good way to work on your cooking skills without as much time investment prepping the veggies. If you’re in the US they typically have them near the packaged salads.

I sauté the onion and garlic in oil before throwing in the veggies. Stir often! Some veggies take longer so ideally they get cut thinner, or cook them more if possible. May take a little trial and error to get it to come out the way you want.

I have similar issues. I've found that after you cook something once, it becomes much easier to do it again. ADHD people usually are usually quick to form habits, so once you get over the initial hump, it becomes much easier.

I would also recommend cooking a large portion of something so that it will last you several days.

You only need maybe 2 or 3 go to recipes to get by. Mine are ramen and roasted chicken with veggies. Both are very simple to prepare.

These containers can also be used to store leftovers, make simple pickles of various kinds as side dishes and much, much more. Having most of the ingredients prepared and stored in containers simplifies the cooking process massively! It takes a little bit of upfront prep work but simplifies the tasks later in the week.

These containers can also be used to store leftovers, make simple pickles of various kinds as side-dishes and much, much more.

Of course, since pre-sliced items have a worse shelf-life, make sure to only prepare things you think you'll use for the next few days.

As an ADHDer I dislike recipes and planning

My go-to is to put on a pot of rice/pasta to cook on one side of the range, and on the other, set a large pan on medium heat, oil it, and just start throwing whatever I find on the pan (mostly based on what's about to go bad), and fry it all together, starting with meat (if I have any) to make sure it's well cooked, and then adding veggies like onion, zucchini, carrots, mushrooms, that I often cut straight into the pan to avoid using a cutting board

When it's all fried evenly I add soy sauce or tomato sauce, throw in some seasoning (Salt Pepper Paprika Turmeric are the favs, but other stuff sometimes too), and let it simmer for a few minutes until it's half-dried

It's a full hearty meal done in 15min net that provides 2+ servings so that I have leftovers for the next day that I can just microwave

Sometimes I'd forget to do the rice/pasta and end up doing it after the pan is ready

Sometimes I wouldn't know what ingredients or sauce I'm gonna use until I'm mid-cooking

It's all fine, you're just making what you want for yourself, Gordon Ramsey isn't there to scold your corner cutting

It is an ongoing process of trial and error. Lots of error. Just try and keep innovating (for yourself, innovate your process)

Watch cooking videos, try some recipes

1. Get one good knife. It will change you life. A chef knife is a good start. Spend a little if you can to get a nice one. Keep it sharp. It will last you a long time.
2. Get a 2-3 pots with lids. These can be useful for making rice, noodles, making sides like green beans, broccoli, etc.
3. YouTube your favorite foods and make a shopping list. Do this for 4 to 5 meals.
4. Dinner leftovers are tomorrows lunch. If you make 5 meals you'll have 5 (or more) lunches.
5. It's not as hard as you'd think. Watch a few kitchen safety videos on YouTube and make sure you have a good fire extinguisher in the house/apartment. That's about it.

When I started cooking (for one person on a low budget), I was wasting a lot of time with recipes. It also cost more because it required buying an entire pack of something that I wouldn't need most of.

Learning to make basic meals with whatever stuff (mostly veg from the good nearby market) I'd have readily on hand (sometimes going out to the supermarket to buy some meat or noodles to add to the meal) was easier for everyday dinners.

Examples: stir fry (add noodles and protein to nutrition requirements); steamed veg + a carb (potato, mashed potato etc) + protein (e.g. oven baked chicken or pan fried meat); veg pasta + a bit of pesto.

I have loads of cookbooks, but I learn more easily by watching videos. I watch cooking shows & YouTube videos. It really helps if you're a visual learner.