Hmm. Sushi is an odd choice for a place to start - it's so dependent on your suppliers, and it's traditionally eaten as a set of tiny varied dishes that are a terrible idea if you're cooking for 1.

(Also if you're looking to get into sushi and £80 is a problem I have some more bad news for you)

>but it is so hard to start alone

With 100s of good YouTube channels on exactly that, it's easier than ever. And you can always ask a friend/relative to show you.

Except if by "good food" you mean "expensive high-end dishes" -- why would you start learning to cook with a "sushi workshop"?

The disadvantage of starting alone: picking up the intangibles (seasoning, knowing the basic food prep techniques that are commonly stated without explanation, recognizing what tools/ingredients you need that recipes often omit, etc.), and scaling the ingredients/cooking down. (Better: just cook for 2-4 and have leftovers.)

The advantage of starting alone: you don't have to cater to anybody else's tastes! Pick the most ridiculously delicious thing you can think of that fits your time/skill/price budgets, and cook that.

HN is not precisely known for its culinary excellence, but if you're looking to get started with some particular dish or kind of dish, geeks who cook would probably be happy to give you some more specific pointers!

I might also recommend something like Blue Apron if you want to just have a bunch of food pushed your way with recipes and start just trying stuff out! Not sure what they have in the UK along those lines though.

I haven't read "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" as recommended in the article, but I swear by:

Julia Child, "the way to cook"

Jeff Potter, "Cooking for geeks"

Kenji lopez-alt's "the food lab"

The author does compare to most of these, so the recommendation seems solid.

I was underwhelmed by "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat". Good information, great presentation, but not up there with the very best books, IMO.

I like Ruhlman's "Twenty", maybe followed by "Ratio".

"How to Cook without a Book" by Anderson is great, although you probably needwhole rooms in your house for food storage if you took her "what you should have in your pantry" serious.

My most used cookbook is the one my mother gave me and all my relatives when we were living alone for the first time. It's the book she uses at school. It's for special-needs children, so extremely basic and easy, with many, many quirky illustrations.

But it has everything important. Bechamel? Sure. Choux pastry? Yes. But also how to cook potatoes or eggs.

The only infuriating thing in this book is that the index is worse than useless. I know the important recipes' page numbers by heart.

I also recommend Samin Nosrat’s Longform interview:

https://longform.org/posts/longform-podcast-243-samin-nosrat

What's the name of that last cookbook?

It's a German one, "Nahrungszubereitung Schritt für Schritt".

I might pick up that last one. When looking up something I haven't cooked before, I always check seriouseats (or epicurious and a few others), and especially Kenji, as he's never steered me wrong before. Haven't read the book though.

I have actually lost count of the number of times I've made something new and my wife says "this is good, where did you find it?" and I'll say "Oh, I saw it on serious eats and thought that it looked fun".

In point of fact, this exact thing happened last night after I made chicken piccata for the first time.

I learned to cook from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by Julia Child et al. I still think it's the best instructive cook book I've ever seen (with the exception of some bread books, of which there are numerous incredible examples).