Food

Start with YouTube. Cookbooks are great and can be interesting, but if you don’t have all the prerequisite skills it can be intimidating.

Pick a dish you’re interested in making - doesn’t matter what. Mac and cheese. A salad. Pad Thai. Search YouTube and skip through a few videos. You’ll probably come across a few creators whose video style really appeals to you. Watch their other recipe videos!

One series I really enjoy is the Four Levels videos by Epicurious. They do a single dish and show it being made by a beginning cook, an experienced cook, and a professional chef (the fourth level is a food scientist who analyzes what the cooks did). You get a wonderful sense for cheap and sloppy ways to make something, and then some ideas on how you could improve on it as you get more experience.

You’re at a perfect age to start this. You’re old enough to understand what’s going on, but still young enough to be able to adjust your eating habits before you start packing on the pounds. That becomes important when you start edging towards 30!

The best first time cookbook is probably Better Homes and Gardens, just because it has a lot of relatively simple and varied recipes.

Once you get comfortable with those recipes, try Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat and America's Test Kitchen because they do well at explaining why things work or don't work so you can start experimenting.

100% get The Food Lab by J Kenji Lopez Alt. It gives you great recipes and instructions but also the why and how of it.

I learned some real basic stuff growing up in the home and in home-ec such as making a cake or cookies, hamburger helper or Mac and cheese. These teach real basic cooking skills which are needed for any recipe. Things like learning what a cup or teaspoon is and following directions.

I didn't know much coming out of high school but I learned a lot from watching a lot of food network and just trying recipes that looked good. Take it slow and try relatively easy recipes like maybe a casserole or making an omlette. Watch videos on how do things if they are confusing. No matter how long you've been cooking there will always be more to learn. I recently tried making biscuits instead of buying the ones in a can and that was tough for me to understand but I watched some videos and after a couple tries I got it mostly figured out. Don't be afraid to ask people questions too about anything specific.

Crock pot meals are great to try as well. A crock pot is a good investment but you can probably buy one at a garage sale or a thrift store. Hell, ask someone in the family or a friend if they have one laying around they don't want anymore.

Good Eats is also a wonderful show I enjoyed on food network. That show will show you the ins and outs of many subjects and explain the why. I think you might enjoy it. I think they have the old episodes on their site for free.