Asklemmy

Rely on recipes that don't have a "to taste" option. I expect a lot of what you'll cook will need to be simple.

Okay, so it looks like nobody read your text. Sorry about that.

Edit: I suppose I should actually answer. The main thing is that you're going to have to communicate with people who can taste. They're going to notice things you don't, and that can even be safety things if there's an ingredient that has spoiled.

You just cook. Thats litterly it

Experiment. Apply scientific pro endure for cooking. Just see what people like and what they don't so you adjust the recipe.

Learn what you need to do to follow recipes, and then you'll learn the rest over time. Cook things you like to eat.

Don't get a bunch of junk for your kitchen. You only need basic things and can buy them as you go.

• Knives - you only need a chef's knife (8" or 10") for most kitchen tasks and a paring knife for small things. Optional: bread knife (i just use a chef's knife), filet knife, boning knife, cleaver.

• Pots and Pans - get all stainless steel and/or cast iron/enameled cast iron. Don't buy aluminum or nonstick. Frying pan. Saucepan. Big pot and/or Dutch oven (can use as a soup pot on the stove or in the oven for other things, enameled recommended). Baking sheet (and a silicone matt for nonstick).

• Other: peeler, box grater, garlic press (way easier than mincing garlic), citrus juicer, steamer insert for a pot, measuring cups and spoons, cutting board (plastic is OK - bamboo is another good budget option, one for meat and one for plants recommended)

• Know what it means to steam, boil, simmer, sautee, bake.

• Keep your knives sharp. Learn the basic cuts (dice = .5 - 2cm cubes, mince = very tiny little pieces, julienne/batonnet/chiffonade - strips of stuff of various sizes).

Since you have difficulty tasting:

• Don't over-salt. You can always add more, but you can't remove it.

• Acidity and fat are important to make food taste good. Vinegar is often a hack to make food taste better.

• Adding MSG to your food is also a great way to make it taste better.

• Learn what herbs and spices belong in different kinds of food. Some can go in a lot of different cuisines and dishes - like salt, pepper, garlic, onion, parsley, and chives. But others have more niche uses, and some combinations are very typical of specific cuisines. Buy individual spices, not spice mixes. Dry spices are stronger than fresh spices, so if substituting dried for fresh, you will use less than you would use if they were fresh.

The head chef of Alethea (3 star michelin restaurant) totally lost his sense of taste for years and still ran one of the best restaurants in the world.

Find some simple recipes, and follow them to the letter. If it says to add something "to taste", just add a small amount of it and assume it's fine. As long as you aren't trying to invent your own dishes, or improvise somehow, you should be fine.

I've found that when you cook with lots of fresh veggies, you can mostly just dump them in and it tastes good. Again, you do want a bit of salt, but as everyone else said, you can hand out a salt shaker.

Everyone is saying undersalt things, but I'm assuming, that you don't even have a clue whether a teaspoon of salt would be undersalting or oversalting. You should get someone to show you what a "normal" amount of salt is per person. It won't be perfect but at least edible.

I learned cooking by strictly following the recepy. If you do that, for example Pasta Napoli, you will be fine. It's a simple recepy, but most people like it. And everyone can add salt, parmesan or whatever they like afterwards.

To a certain point, cooking has more to do with seeing what's happening (when is water boiling, when are onions fried enough etc.) than tasting it. So you should be fine.

Also with Pasta, you just have to feel if it's soft enough and since you are used to texture you should be even more fine tuned to it ;)

Since you can't really taste or smell, your best bet will be to follow recipes and hope for the best. Approach cooking like a science. Measure at all points during the process. Measure out all the ingredients and prepare then ahead of cooking them. When cooking meats, use a thermometer to measure the temperature of the meat to make sure they are cooked.

Its always better to undersalt things than over salt. You can always add more salt but can't remove it. You can pre salt things and hour before and this will help even out the saltiness of most things.

Well, in a post covid world, you aren't the first person to have this problem. People that could taste and smell fully temporarily or permanently lost some degree of one or both senses.

And recipes are the answer. The handful of people I know that have dealt with it have managed to still make good food that way. And there's professional cooks that have allergies but still cook things like shellfish that way, and do just fine. The reason it works is that a well crafted recipe doesn't need tasting or smelling. Not all recipes are well crafted, but most of the ones you find at places like America's test kitchen, serious eats, or other sources that actively test and adjust their recipes are. Those two resources are going to get to what you need long enough to find other sources that you can trust to have tested things.

Now, there are still going to be problems. Some cooking directions rely on smell. The biggest one is garlic. Almost every single pan cooked recipe is going to tell you to add it and stir "until fragrant". But, again, there's a simple solution. Counting. Garlic will become at least mildly fragrant in a pan at a five count. After a ten count, it's mostly gone and the garlic starts becoming bitter. So, as long as you don't count absurdly slow, keep it between 5 and 8, and then add the next ingredients in the instructions of the recipe (it'll usually be a liquid or a larger amount of meats and/or veggies).

Now, that only really applies to pan cooking. Garlic in other techniques doesn't need that much attention.

However, you can even bypass the "until fragrant" via bypassing the pan cook entirely. Roast your garlic ahead of time. There's instructions on how to do it online, and it's very forgiving. So you just add roasted garlic in with any seasonings, and you'll get a nice result. Won't be exactly the same, but it's foolproof because it eliminates what can go wrong in the pan.

Another big one is the "to taste" instruction. That's almost always going to be with salt and pepper. When it's something else, you really end up needing a taster to help because it's unusual, and there's not much info out there on how at adapt each and every herb or spice.

But, people have worked out a kind of baseline https://www.thespruceeats.com/cooking-with-salt-1807478. You shouldn't skip those kinds of salt additions, ever. That's because they contribute more than taste. They contribute to the cooking process. The best example of that is when cooking meat or large pieces of vegetables via roasting. See, the Maillard reaction happens better and more evenly when the ingredients are salted before cooking.

So you can always add the rough amounts from that page and the handy little illustration it has until you memorize or write them down.

When you do that, you don't need to add anything "to taste" because the pain eating can do that better than you to begin with. Most of the time, the instruction "salt to taste" is towards the end, so all you're getting is flavor enhancement.

If you want to add some then, or the instruction is earlier in the recipe, you can usually add a half teaspoon to any recipe that doesn't already have salt or a heavily salty ingredient like soy sauce. Some folks will be fine if you add an entire teaspoon, as long as the recipe feeds at least 4 people.

Pepper though, that's a bit tougher. It's an ingredient that benefits a dish at any point in the cooking process, doesn't change that process, but does change the flavor depending on when it's added. So you definitely want to add some at the point in the process the recipe says. Generally, a half teaspoon is going to be enough that eaters can adjust at the table and it won't be too much for anyone not chemically sensitive to piperazine. If you know the people well enough, you can adjust to their preferences when a "pepper to taste" is included.

Most people, in a dish serving 4 are going to tolerate a full teaspoon, but it likely will dominate the dish more than is ideal overall. Tolerating isn't the same as liking, after all. So, as long as you don't dump more than that in, it's not going to ruin anything.

Another little trick for pepper, if you have control of your kitchen, is to keep two containers. One, you set aside for a year, the other you replace regularly. The old one is going to be milder, so it can work well for giving some pepper taste, without overwhelming things. Now, I don't prefer that method since it's easy enough to just reduce amounts. But one of the people I know that lost part of their taste to covid swears that is e reliable.

His explanation is that it gives enough pepper taste that he can make mistakes, and not have the end result be hot. A lot of the piperazine fades when you have preground pepper to begin with. The longer it sits, the closer it gets to the bare minimum it'll ever have.

Like I said, I don't advocate for that, because adjusting is easier, but that's me.

Just follow the recipe and you should be fine. Like the other person in the comment said, undersalt the food and add the salt shaker on the table should they need it. I for one, have never put salt in my spaghetti since I find it too salty.

When you start, you follow recipes. Pick a type of cuisine you like. At some point as you explore recipes you will start to understand the “flavor bouquet” of that cuisine. This understanding will help you with what spices go together in a pleasant way, and in what amounts. Like Thai food. Or Italian food.

That said, bread can be a gateway recipe. It’s simple: yeast, flour, water + a sugar to activate the yeast. Not all bread is sandwich bread. Starting with flatbread (for hummus, gyro, etc) or pizza crust also works. No bread machines, that would defeat the purpose of your original question, but a stand mixer with a dough hook is ok. For sandwich bread, King Arthur Flour has solid recipes (ignore ingredient branding).

If you like vids, Kenji Lopez-Alt is excellent. He also has a book called The Food Lab which is useful but not necessary, depending on how you learn. Serious Eats also has useful guides.

Look up Good Eats with Alton Brown. Good show. I found his show to almost be more science. He explained why things did what they did and why you want things done this way or that. Probably a good way to start. I learned most my cooking from his show growing up.

Everyone here saying "undersalt, undersalt" like salt is the only additive that can go wrong in excess. Pretty much any spice is, too, so don't go crazy on any of them especially pepper, chili, anything "hot".

In addition to what others have said, I'd recommend two things:

1. Deliberately understalt food. You can always add more salt on the table, you can't take salt away.

2. Prep compound butter beforehand with someone helping you taste. Grab roasted garlic (2-3 heads), red wine vinegar (a couple drops), 400g of good quality butter with no added ingredients (eg avoid garlic butter bars), handful of fresh chopped thyme and rosemary, and bit of pepper and salt (same thing as before, underseason). This will give you an already prepped flavour bomb to add to savoury foods. I usually add a couple bones' worth of marrow as well, and the resulting butter goes well with any meat (non-fish), vegetables, bread, even plain rice.

When I use a recipe from a web search, I double any spices. It comes out much better.

I think the best bet would be following recipes. That means finding recipes that minimize 'to taste' instructions. A lot can be done by look and texture, so you can be decent enough for anyone who's not a snob. Also, err on the side of too little salt and put some on the table.