So many people claim they hate cooking or that they can’t cook, often after one failed attempt. Or, they may be intimidated by perfect recipe pictures or daunted by a lengthy process.

However, with a little practice and some realistic expectations, they can learn to love it. Here are some tips and tricks to help you fall in love with cooking.

Your own taste: This should be the primary motivation to get you cooking. Did you ever eat a sandwich and wish there was more cheese in it? A salad you ate but it’s full of pepper that you are sensitive to? The one who is cooking the food is often using the general preferences of ingredients. But those general preferences may not be YOUR preferences. When you cook yourself, you can cut out the olives or reduce the salt. You can make a perfect food for yourself, quickly and easily.

Recipes: Don’t get sucked in by beautiful images shown on the recipe cards. Often, those pictures are professionally perked up with coloring and garnishments. First, make the dish to see if you like it; leave the topping aside on your first experience. Pick up any recipe you like, preferably an easy one whose ingredients you are well familiar with it. Do it step by step as the recipe card says; the proportion of salt, sugar, or spices is important so follow exactly until you learn to modify it to your taste. Feel proud of your finished dish. After tasting it, you may decide it has too much sugar, or not enough red pepper. Make a note on the recipe so next time you will remember what you want to change.

Practice: Nobody is born a chef; it’s the practice that makes them perfect. It doesn’t matter if you totally ruin your first few dishes. It’s a rarity that you will ruin all of them, because cooking is about eating, and we all familiar with many tastes we like before we even start cooking. Let’s suppose that salad you were trying didn’t taste as delicious as you expected. Go back to the recipe card; maybe you left out some ingredient or the quantity wasn’t right. It could be possible too that it is the taste of mayonnaise you love and the recipe card called for less than you like. You can now make your next salad just as you like it.

Variety: The taste of a dish changes with the substitution of even one ingredient. It’s the combination of ingredients that give it a final taste. With practice, you will learn that what combinations work best to enhance flavors. This will lead into creating new combinations every time.

Your own recipes: This is the fun part. Eventually, you learn the types or mixtures that most appeal to your taste buds. You start cooking up things that are quite different from recipe cards but just perfect for your taste. You start playing with ingredients to put in a quantity and combination that you think will work best.

Cooking can be immense fun. It’s an exciting experience once you begin preparing the food for your taste buds and stomach to love.

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