It's such a good skill for everyone to learn. nothing elaborate but basic meals. I'm not VI but a parent of a VI child. I think the meal kits are great for starting off. All the measuring etc is done, you just following the cooking instructions. And if you go by their times, the flipping should be easier to gauge. My bigger concern is with our hob, it's induction but touch activated, so we can't figure out how she can know what ring is on and what temp it's at, or more importantly what's on to stop herself getting hurt. I feel as style takes over function actual real buttons an knobs will disappear

I am not a cook, however, I have had some practice at home and back in high school alos. I'm about to get an OT to assist too.

I wish I truly learnt to cook in school and my parents let me cook at home.

I’ve learnt the basics but that’s about it.

not getting fingers burnt or fearing fingers getting burnt - important.

I actually learned cooking from my TVI. She made sure to put it in my IEP, so I learned around my freshman/sophomore year of high school. We made sure to cover the basics:

1. Reading recipes and making something from a box, such as pancakes
2. measuring (includes assistive tech, such as braille measuring spoons/cups and leveling)
3. peeling, cutting, chopping, using adaptive devices for cutting (hand chopper-thingy, color coded knives, etc.)
4. Stirring and blending (includes how to use a blender and mentally preparing yourself for the noise)
5. broiling, baking, using assistive tech (talking thermometers, an "oven cane" which was just a long wooden rod that helped me find things inside the oven before sticking my hand in there).
6. boiling, cooking, and frying (including facing your fear of being burned)
7. Organizing in the kitchen
8. Cleaning (includes surfaces and dishes).

We divided our lessons by meal, so that we could cover each topic. For instance, we might do:

1. Breakfast: scrambled eggs and bacon (frying), a fruit salad (peeling and chopping) and biscuits (boxed).
2. Dinner: chicken alfredo (boiling for the pasta, baking for the chicken, cooking, measuring and stirring for the alfredo sauce ), a salad (more peeling and chopping).
3. Same can be applied to lunch and dessert.

We also worked on things like shopping for food and finding substitutes, and always cleaning up and organizing.

I feel like one main difficulty, is over/under cooking food. I don't do fancy stuff, though, just basic cooking.

As Niamh says below it's a big issue that a lot of hobs are touch operated. Gas ones are easier as there tend to be big valves to turn.

Knowing when to flip stuff is really damn hard. You can sort of get an idea from smell and sound but it's a situation where I tend to get help. Theoretically you can get thermometers to stick in but I never trust it. I don't cook risky things on my own. You don't want to undercook a piece of chicken or overcook a burger.

I don't find the measuring out is really that big a deal though. Get some talky weighing scales and go for it. Cake is easy. Just weigh the eggs, put in the same amount of oil, flour and sugar, add some vanilla or something and mix. You can't get it wrong. Those meal kits are great but they are kinda expensive.

Pasta sauces are easy. I do a ground pork one and I don't even weigh out the ingredients, it's just one large red onion chopped up, a decent fistful of ground pork, a bunch of seasonings and top up with tomato passata. Because you're basically letting it cook for a few minutes after you put the tomato in, you can be fairly sure that the meat has been cooked properly.

The only stuff I don't do is fried things. I would shallow fry things like onion rings so they aren't quite so saturated in oil and terrible for you but the risks of just having the oil fly everywhere and get really scalded is a bit scary. Possibly it'd actually be easier if we had a countertop fryer then it'd be more stable than a pan on the gas, but I'm not that keen on eating that much deep fried stuff. Well, I'm keen, you know, but it's kind of a bad idea...

But yeah. Cooking! Cooking is great.

I did learn by watching my parents cook. I think being pragmatic and physically capable also helps. I had an ils person come out and it was very quickly apparent that I didn’t need her. Being kinesthetic is helpful.

I also know a totally blind guy going to school for cooking and baking.,

I love to cook, but I definitely need to work on my knife skills. Not entirely sure where I can go to learn that...