Not that into cooking at the moment and only visually impaired but I feel that assistive technology for cooking seems to be underexposed (maybe because people get panic attacks seeing blind people handle hot stuff). But there are lots of little things like talking thermometers, talking scales, talking measuring cups and liquid level indicators etc. that can help and aren't that expensive. Installing and using an induction stove would probably also make it considerably more difficult to actually burn yourself. I think you can also strategically go for dishes like soups, casseroles, stews/slow cooking, wraps, pastas, pizzas, baking etc. where you don't really need to look when things are ready if you just keep to some ballpark cooking times or taste the food. I think pan frying stuff like a steak or a pancake would be the most challenging thing but not completely impossible. Lastly being very organized and having your housemates be too is probably key. I'd make a conscious effort to always lay out everything you need before starting.

You should check out your local commission for the blind! The ones around me have vision rehabilitation therapists that can get you the equipment you need and teach you different ways to work around the kitchen! I am one!

Use a wooden cooking spoon as a mini-cane in the kitchen! We have those thin, long wooden cooking aids to stirr sauces and stuff. You can use it to find the handle of the pan without having to touch the pan first.


Buy a talking scale. It will help you measuring stuff.


For measuring liquids: Use the finger-hook technique (hook your index into your measuring cup to get a sense of how much it is). For oil this will not work (for some reason you can't reliably feel oil). Two options for oil: Bend a measuring cup, keep the oil in a glass jar with a big opening, so you can easily spoon out the oil. Or you take a new and empty soap dispenser (where you can push the top down and liquid will be pumped out) and fill it with oil. Then you can eaily measure small amounts of oil for your pan or salat sauce.


Get one or two plastic boxes without a lid as well as small containers or bowls. Keep all the tools (for example your cutting knife) in a plastic box when you're not actively using it and leave the box at the same place. Put all the cut ingredients in different containers. This will help you be organized for your mise-en-place and also mostly prevent you from accidentally grabbing the knife.

Grab a pen friend: https://cecitech.com/en/?product=penfriend-audio-labeller

It will help when trying to find spices. Also, use tongs instead of a spatula to flip things. Only things I can think of that haven't already been mentioned.

Aside from that, it's the ole practive makes perfect thing. I was the cook of the house, and I remember when I first went blind, it was a 50/50 chance whether the food was going to end up on the plate or the wall.

Cooking blind can be frustrating at first, but just keep going, and you'll get there. I love cooking and have no problem spending a good 90 mins in the kitchen cooking up a declicious dinner.

I am partially sighted, but I may have some helpful tips. I have found much of my cooking is now done by sound and smell. I can smell when things are cooked more than I can see they are cooked. I listen for the right sound of the pan to make sure I have a high or low enough heat on the pan. I'm at the point now where I am using kitchen knives again, and started with a large diced potato dish to get comfortable not seeing the potato and not slicing off my fingers. Mainly it's awareness and small steps which get you back into feeling comfortable in the kitchen again. Good luck!

Hi. Best piece of equipment you'll ever buy is a set of oven gloves that go up past your wrist, and are not joined in the middle. Partner bought them for me after I kept burning myself and getting more and more anti-cooking, and I've never looked back. Who ever invented them deserves a couple rounds at the local. Also, amusing side note, I misread the topic title and thought you wanted to cook blind people. Just as salt!

I really recommend getting some official training. You cam try out stuff on your own, but I was too scared of burning my house down so I got professional help. Talk to your local commission for the blind or vocational rehabilitation agency.

I'm sighted, so chuck this out if it's bad advice, but I can't help but wonder if you'd get a lot of milage out of an instant pot. Assuming the flat buttons like a microwave has could be made more accessible, it would be good. (I only use like 3 of the buttons personally)

You can also set it to sauté which just means the coil under the pot will get hot. Then you're cooking without a lid in a way you can't touch the heat source. if you don't splash around in hot things it should be perfectly safe.

It's also just really good for quickly cooking things with the pressure cooker setting. (with the lid on) It also beeps when it's done.


Downside is the sate feature only stays on for a certain amount of time, but you can just start it again. I did a hot pot with this repetition. I don't remember if it beeps when sauté times out, but if you learn it's 30 minutes you could set a timer to remind yourself.

What type of stove do you have a gas or electric?

If you can go to a training center (like where you learn O&M) there should be classes for that, mine called it Activities Of Daily Living courses. We were taught how to safely use knives, stovetop, and oven among other things. One thing I remember is they told us to use a wooden spoon line a tiny cane across the stovetop and around the sides of pots and pans so we know where to add ingredients or flip or stir things without going palm down on a hot surface. Oh yeah and keeping the same kitchen organization every single time was key, the first thing we chopped was a potato into French fries and the first actually cooked was an egg a fried egg with a liquid yolk. We also did pancakes at one point and learned how to wash dishes safely and never ever put sharps into the sink water until we were immediately ready to wash them so we wouldn’t grab the blade. It’s easy to get discouraged when you try cracking an egg into a bowl only to hear it splat somewhere so I recommend trying to see the humor in that if you can because things like that can happen a lot especially at first.

This is old but still good: https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/fr/fr04/issue3/f040304.html

My mom is blind and uses little sticker things that she can feel to mark certain buttons on the stove, dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, etc.

mark your stove with tactal markers. get your local rehab agency for the blind or voc rehab program to send someone out to teach you. I have rehab here coming out to teach me. it works well for me. there are other things you can do. like cooking without looking and i think one is cooking in the dark those are some good tip resources. I am debating doing a podcast where i describe what i do honestly as i work on things in my house.

Don’t be afraid of noices. On the contrary, pay attention to the change in volume or sound effects that the skilet, pan, or pot are doing. For example, a spake can sizle loudly, but when the volume changes I know that it's time to flip it. Similar with smells. I learned the right timing for eggs by smelling the food when my mother cooked. When I get the smell I’m waiting for, I take the pan and put the eggs on my plate.

There are mitons that have individual fingers. It'll give you a better sense of what you are holding.

I'm surprised noone's mentioned the microwave! I can do the other things if I have to, I just prefer the microwave. Because of the way it works, nothing can get hotter than the temperature of boiling water, unless you use a microwave safe metal pan which I'll talk about later, or you do something stupid and put pointy metal things in it. We have a microwave with a dial and a bell that goes ding that's been working since we bought it in 1984, but amazingly you can still find dial microwaves from companies that sell accessible equipment, unless you want to spend the big bucks and get a talking microwave. A few years ago when we thought our old reliable might be going to go out we looked and found one with a dial for around $80. My Daily Living teacher in 1984 put a label around the dial that has raised braille symbols like the old classic braille watches, dots 1 2 3 marking minutes not divisible by 5, a full 6-dot cell marking every 5 minutes. You'd be amazed at what you can cook in the microwave, you can bake potatoes, fish, fries, whole squash, even burgers and hard boiled eggs, though you must make sure the water is at least 1 centimeter over the egg when you're holding it straight so that one end isn't higher than the other. The air bubble will make one end rise a bit when you let go, and it will come up out of the water, but that's ok. It settles as it heats it seems, so it never goes boom. I use a ceramic bowl that can hold 3 eggs and cook them for 10 minutes in enough water to cover them with about a teaspoon of salt mixed in. You'll want gloves, we have gloves that aren't as thick as oven gloves but specifically for taking things out of the microwave. You want some good ceramic bowls with well-fitting lids or a microwave safe plate that will cover them well for some of the bigger projects like my everything but the kitchen sink egg scramble or cooking soup, quinoa or oatmeal. We have a set of bowls that are 70 years old, and I use them all the time in the microwave. I often use a bowl bigger than I need so I have room to mix things without stuff slopping out of the bowl into the microwave or onto the counter. I'm always googling different things to microwave. They say don't put metal in the microwave, but that's to try to make it idiot proof. Actually many tv dinners and hot pockets and such have metal in the containers construction to help brown food because the metal gets hotter than just the usual boiling temperature of internally heating the water in your food. So it conducts heat directly to the outside of the food that's touching it, and classic infrared heat from the pan does the rest while the microwaves cook the food internally as they usually do. We have a round flat metal pan with a rubber coating on the bottom and little rubber feet that's specifically made for cooking things like French fries, fish filets or fish sticks and having them come out like they were baked in the oven. It has a lip around it and the metal is rounded so no sharp edges are there to cause high voltages that could arc around in your microwave and damage it. But you don't want to put just any old metal object in the microwave, if it has pointy corners or edges, even microscopic ones it could destroy your microwave. When you get used to cooking certain things in the microwave you can adapt recipes that don't call for the microwave at all. Yesterday I cooked a garlic spinach quinoa by using what I had already learned about cooking those items. I already know how to saute vegies in a microwave safe bowl, I already know how to nuke quinoa, and I googled how to fry an egg, then I combined those 3 things. Maybe it didn't come out exactly like it would had I just used the stove and followed the recipe as written, but it was good enough for my lunch and using up some fresh spinach as I was getting tired of salad. I'll finish this with what I call everything but the kitchen sink eggs. I found a microwave scrambled eggs with onions and cheese recipe on line and just kept adding stuff to it. Now that I'm going to the local farmer's market I can add broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi and spinach. So I start by coating a large ceramic bowl with margarine with my fingers. Then I start cutting up veggies into bite sized pieces. I always put 6 olives, a bunch of sliced jalapeños from a jar unless I've bought fresh banana peppers, canned mushrooms, and a healthy slice of onion or 1 whole green onion including the bulb. I also pour a dollop of olive juice from the can, one of mushroom water from the can, and 1 of jalapeño juice from the jar into my bowl. I don't measure the stuff. The original recipe didn't call for so much liquid, and only called for water, but as I got used to cooking this I found that more liquid keeps the eggs from hardening and drying out as everything cooks up, especially if I'm using fresh broccoli, kohlrabi and or cauliflower, which is the next thing I fix. BTW you don't need salt, the olive juice has that. Broccoli and cauliflower I just break off the florets where they naturally break, I don't even bother using a knife for those. kohlrabi if I have it, I have to cut into small cube-like entities. So all this stuff is on a plate I'm using for cutting, but you might prefer to use a cutting board or plastic cutting sheet. So now it's time for the eggs. I break 4 eggs into the bowl. The trash is open next to the counter so I can toss the shells. Breaking eggs takes practice so you don't lose any shells in the bowl. Your hands will get messy holding to errant shells. Now I whisk it with a fork, but not as vigorously as a sighted person would. Then I put a small handfull of shredded cheddar cheese and mix that up with the fork. Then I dump all the veggies into the bowl and stir them all up. Now I put the bowl in the microwave and put the lid or plate atop it. I set it for 4 minutes, my microwave is only 600 watts so y m m v. While that's going I take a bit of dish soap and rub it around my fork tines and rinse with hot water, then I take half a small tomato or a fourth of a large one and cut into bite sized pieces. When 4 minutes are up I dump the tomato into the bowl and mix it in with the fork. I set it for another 4 minutes and take some sliced ham and pull it apart into small pieces. And this is my latest addition, I take some soft corn tortillas, usually 3 or 4 small ones, and tear them into pieces over the plate. When the bowl is done I take it out, pour a bit of El Yucateco habanero sauce over my finger into the bowl, wipe the excess off on a piece of tortilla on the plate, shake some dry Italian seasoning from a small bottle in. I put the tortillas and ham in the microwave and turn it on for about 30 secs, then dump it in the bowl. Now I use my fork and spoon to mix all that together and I'm ready to eat.

If you are new to cooking an Instant pot is an easy tool to use and you can cook lots of foods in it.
I went away from cooking with meat because I never could tell if it was done enough and I don't enjoy burned meat.

Try to get measuring cups with lines that you can feel on the inside. My blind grandma likes those

I would highly suggest an air fryer and instant pot (or something similar in that category)!

Their is so many recipes to make foods with those and a lot of it just requires adding in all the ingredients and pushing a button and having the machine do the rest! I’ve made hard boiled eggs in my instant pot and comes out just like it would on the stove top!

Also can you cook using other stuff I love the grill and oven.

Label it. Turn it on and try it first boil and egg or some water. Maybe some noodles something simple.