Start with soup. Soup is easy to get good at, and teaches you techniques that are critical for other dishes.

Then do sauces (which are just soups in a top-hat), inc making a roux.

With classical cooking techniquesyou turn boring steamed veg and grilled chicken into grilled veg and steamed chicken with a mushroom sauce.

I remember making a broccoli and cheese casserole. It was simple enough but I done gone and fucked it up.

The broccoli was chopped proper, the cheese was dense (more of a brick/ball than a sauce when I tossed it in the oven) and then I saw a cup of milk in my mise en place still sitting there. no wonder the cheese was... Bricklike?

I was very new to cooking. So I just opened up the oven in a panic and splashed the milk on top of the casserole. It was bad. The broccoli almost cooked, the milk heated up and evaporated a little, and there was this sense clump of cheese and exerting what goes in roux but milk.

It was poverty days, but I had to throw it out it was so bad. I made a bowl of cereal (dry, since the last of my milk was now broccoli) and went to bed. It's important to know when you're beaten.

Anyways, if there is a food you like a lot, it's worth learning to cook. I almost have my gyro recipe finished (the secret ingredient is bacon)

It really is and has been over the years

I've been cooking good food for a long long time, I mostly shared this because one of my friends is quite early in his journey of learning to cook lol