Sohla El-Waylly wants to make you a culinary "expert in your own home"

Sohla El-Waylly  wants you to make mistakes. She wants you go ahead and mess up. "Anyone who's really good at anything was terrible once," she reassured during a recent "Salon Talks" conversation about her debut cookbook "Start Here: Instructions for Becoming a Better Cook." And that wisdom comes straight from experience.

The prolific food writer and personality has built a diverse following thanks to shows like "Ancient Recipes with Sohla" and HBO Max's "The Big Brunch," but you might not have pegged her as a future culinary star from her early days. "Everything was hard. I was terrible," she recalls. In one her first tryouts, "I was really scared, and I did such a bad job that they pulled me aside and they said, "I don't think you should be in food." What she learned from those trials by fire is that the flubs are all part of learning — and that's the same for all of us, professionals and home cooks alike. "It's just about practice, and the more mistakes you make, the more confident you'll become. 

You can watch my full "Salon Talks" interview with El-Waylly here, or read the transcript of our conversation below to find out what's changed in the industry from her days of being   "the only girl" in the kitchen, how her new baby has affected her cooking technique (I've gotten really good at making things with one hand) and why when in doubt, "An egg is always good."

Who did you want to write this book for? It almost sounds like it's a book for beginners, but then it's not at all.

I was thinking about little Sohla when I started cooking. I really wanted the book that I wish I had. There's a lot of amazing cookbooks with great recipes, but I really was always someone who wanted to know more. This book focuses on giving you deep dives on techniques, lots of science and history, and everything you want to know. I was a difficult child, and I would not do anything someone told me to do. I needed to know why. So this book goes into all the whys. It's for anyone who really wants to know more, get really in-depth and really fully understand techniques. By the time you're done with this book, I want you to be able to make your own recipes because you know exactly what searing is and braising is and poaching is, and when to use it and how to do it.

What are some of the obstacles that you find people really coming up against a lot in their cooking? 

The great thing about being online is I can hear feedback directly from folks about recipes. A recipe can only give you so much information. I'll tell you that this will take around this much time, but I don't know your burner or your pan or your oven. I want to give you the knowledge to troubleshoot on your own. So, if something takes a long time, maybe you can think about it and be like, "Oh, it's because I used Dutch oven instead of a stainless steel pan, so the heat didn't conduct as quickly." Or if you bake a cake and the top burned, I want you to be able to figure out, like, "Maybe it's because it was on the top rack, and not in the middle." I want to give everyone that information so they can troubleshoot, because no recipe is going to be perfect, so you need to get in there and use your intuition. I want to hone your intuition, so you can be an expert in your own home.

You say in the book, “You're going to mess it up, and it's going to be okay.” That is one of the biggest obstacles for a lot of us, the fear of messing up. Plus, food is expensive. Groceries are expensive. I don't want to mess up dinner, and then I've got to redo dinner for my family or for my guests.

Just eat a bad dinner one day. It's okay.

What are some ways that are lower stakes, so that you can get comfortable with making your mistakes, and you can get comfortable with repetition?

I think it's important to remember that anyone who's really good at anything was terrible once. Remembering that makes it easier on you when you're starting anything new. You are totally going to mess up, and I think you learn the most from those mistakes. If you are really nervous, the recipes go in order of difficulty. Before you try and sear a scallop, you can learn about temperature by frying an egg, and that's much lower stakes. It's an egg. And honestly, an egg is always good. If you mess up an egg, is it really messing it up? It's just a different egg.

I want people to feel comfortable with these skills, with simple things like starting off by steaming rice before you make tahdig, and then you can work your way up. But also know that if you do mess up, for more difficult recipes, there's a “What the Hell Happened?” section. You can analyze it and figure out on your own what happened, and try and make it again, and do better because I really want people to make stuff more than once.

When I was growing up, I didn't have a lot of resources. We didn't have internet. We didn't have Food Network. We definitely didn't have social media, so I was limited to the recipes. I had two books. If a recipe didn't work out, I just had to make it over and over again. I think a lot of times you make a recipe, it doesn't work, and then you just move on to another recipe. It's like, no, just keep trying. You're going to get there, and you're going to learn a lot more when you make the same recipe multiple times.

When you were starting out, what were some of the things that were harder for you? 

Everything was hard. I was terrible. Not just when I was a kid cooking in my mom's kitchen, but one of my first trails — a trail is kind of like an audition for a restaurant job, and you work for a day for free, and they get just to assess your skills — one of my first trails was at one of the top restaurants in the world. I was really scared, and I did such a bad job that they pulled me aside and they said, "I don't think you should be in food." I was terrible, just a disaster. Walking around, knocking over bins of sugar. But it's just about practice, and the more mistakes you make, the more confident you'll become. 

One really big obstacle was just confidence because I think a lot of times, you're so scared to fail that you don't even try. Once I failed enough, I got over that, and then I just went for it. One of the things I struggled the most with was pie crust. I have a really detailed pie section, because in the cookbooks I was looking at, there were no photos, and the instructions were a little vague, and they would tell you to cut butter into flour, and if you've never made pie crust or seen someone make it, that makes no sense. What are you cutting it with? They would mention a pastry blender. I was like, "What is a pastry blender?" That was a really tough one, and it took me years of just doing it over and over again. It turns out the secret is just technique. I've tried it with vodka, and I've tried all the different tricks. Nothing matters. It's in your hands, and you got to do it.

You also talk about having a game plan. Talk about what that means and how we can start to develop that when we're thinking about the meals we make.

My mom was an amazing cook, and she worked full time and she still put a multi-course dinner on the table every day and threw elaborate dinner parties every weekend. It was all because she made a lot of game plans. I would do them with her. We'd sit down at the table together. I was little, so she was really doing them and I was just nearby, but I got to see her plan. She would plan out a menu, plan out how many days in advance she can do things, ingredient list, different stores she needs to go to, and even she would break down, "I'm getting this from this aisle, and that from that aisle." That level of organization really made her efficient in the kitchen, which she had to be, as a working mom.

Then when I went into restaurants I took that with me, because I was terrible, as I mentioned. I got better by breaking down my day into 15-minute increments. Having a game plan, it doesn't just make you organized and efficient, but I feel like it relieves stress and anxiety. I'm not worried about everything I have to do that day. I can just focus on what I have to do in these 15 minutes, and try and make it perfect, and then I would think about the next 15 minutes, and it's really made me able to accomplish a lot in the kitchen in a short amount of time.

There are times when you need to multitask, and there are times you can multitask, and then there are times where you really have to keep your eye on the ball. What's the difference? How do we know, and how do we develop those instincts in our moving around, in the dance of making a meal? 

That's one of those things that you figure out with more experience, and that's why I try to give people advice about it in the book. There are times where you can totally multitask. If you look at a recipe and it's simmering for 15 minutes, you can get that going while you prep for the next step. You don't have to do all your prep first, and then work in order.

Then there are times where multitasking is really not smart, like if you're making caramel. It's one of those things where things happen fast. It's really dangerous. You've got to just sit there and stare at the pot. I try and let people know what things can be multitasked, what can't. But also, it's kind of up to you to read through a recipe and really analyze it and think about it, and you'll be able to figure it out. You'll be able to figure it out for any recipe, if you take your time and think about what is active cooking and what's not active cooking.

I love in the book, you say when you're making caramel, you clear the room, warn everybody.

Yeah. Those burns are scary.

When you talk about making mistakes, that's a lesson you might need to learn a few times. I certainly have the scars on my arms.

Yeah. The flesh will just burn right off of you.

I want to talk about equipment, because you go through a lot of the things that you need. Some of them are expected, some of them aren't. What are your ride or die? 

The first thing might seem obvious, but a large cutting board. A large, high-quality cutting board. I prefer wood. It actually has natural antibacterial properties, so it's going to be cleaner, and then also when you get a really thick, high-quality wooden cutting board, it might be an investment, but you can sand it down, and it'll literally last you a lifetime. You can pass that down to your children. I love a big cutting board, and make sure it's big enough that you are able to work on it and prep your stuff and put it in piles. You don't need little bowls. You're not shooting a video. You can just have things organized. You can do all of your work on a big cutting board. I think that's number one.

Then, I cook almost everything in a cast iron. I love my cast iron pan. It's another thing that, when you take care of it, will really last forever. It's very affordable. Anyone can get a cast iron pan, and seasoning it is actually easier than you think. I have a whole breakdown in there. When you season your pan really well, it's basically non-stick, but you can cook at a really high temp, and there isn't anything else that'll give you that. Non-sticks aren't meant to be cooked at really high temperatures. They don't give you a good sear, but a well-seasoned cast iron skillet can do everything.

I felt very validated that you come out as anti-pressure cooker in this book. Please tell me why. 

First of all, I don't think it does things faster. I know a lot of people like to cook rice or grains in there, but the pressure cooker, sure, it cooks something in 15 minutes, but it takes a certain amount of time for it to come up to pressure and then for it to come down from pressure, so it actually takes a pretty long time. For certain things, it'll take just as long.

And then I don't think it cooks anything particularly well. Yeah, you can cook beans in there, but half of them will explode. You can braise meat in there, but oftentimes the broth tastes better than the meat, and the meat comes out dry. You can't go in there and check and make adjustments. It's like you lock it in there, and then you've just got to hope and pray that everything's perfect. I want to peek, and I want to make sure things are good, and I want to make adjustments as I go. So I don't like them, unless it's broth.

How do we get better at tasting our food when we’re making it? 

The best way to get better at tasting is by eating, which is super fun. Then when it comes to being able to riff with recipes, I am hoping I can get people to think about what a recipe's doing, and think about ingredients in categories. There's this one turmeric potato dish. It's cooking the potatoes really gently, and low and slow and they get starchy. You could make that with any root vegetable. The potatoes are cooking a really long time. What else benefits from that kind of low, slow? Then you can figure out how to swap it in, so it's more like stepping back and trying to analyze what the recipe is doing, so you can riff.

This book is so full of so many beautiful and exciting recipes, was there one that was particularly challenging? 

I had a really hard time with the cake recipe because I wanted to make a really stable cake batter so you can play around with it. It needed to be very well-emulsified so that it didn't get tough, so you could add mix-ins, change extracts. I wanted to give people a really solid, foundational cake recipe that they can play around with and get creative with the flavors. 

One of my first things I ever made was box mix cake, and I loved it, and it was such a fun way to get into baking, and I wanted to give people that same feeling of fun, but you're leveling it up. You're making this cake, and it's going to be even more delicious.

One of my favorite things about the book is you really give equal time to baking and cooking. We live in such a binary world, and you talk about people who   brag,   "I've never baked, I don't bake." Why is it important for you to make a book like this and what can we learn from being interdisciplinary in the way that we approach our food?

When I was in kitchens, I was often the only girl, so a lot of times, they would just have me do pastry because they thought pastry was for girls and savory was for boys. It's really stupid, because we should all do everything. They require totally different skills. Cooking is more improv. You taste as you go. You can fix something at any point, really. Every ingredient's different, so you can't have strict measurements. While with pastry, it's a lot more about precision, technique, timing. Once you put something together, there's no going back. When you make a cake, you can't fix the batter when it's in the oven. You make it and you go, and you  follow directions.

I feel like when you mix those two things together, that's when you can become a really exceptional cook. I think the best professionals can do both because then you've got that discipline and precision from pastry, with that improv of savory. When you put it together, you can make the best food, and also, why don't you want to be able to do it all?

When you talk about being the only girl in the room,   a lot of us discovered you first, Sohla, in the pandemic, on video. Then we discovered you as a person who was speaking out about equity, and speaking out about some of the things that were unfair. You've also talked about your experience in the restaurant world. Now you've been around a couple of years. Do you feel the food industry has changed? Do you feel that things are different now, in terms of opportunities, visibility and the kinds of foods that people want to eat and be exposed to? 

Yeah, definitely. When I look at kitchens now, it's very divided. There's a lot of women in kitchens. I think it's making the restaurants better. First of all, everyone's just better behaved. I was in there at a time where people were very badly behaved. It is harder for things like that to fly with more women in the room, so it's really great to see that. I think more women are speaking up for themselves. For me, it felt like there was no choice. You had to put up with certain things, because, especially when you are the only girl, you start to think, "Am I the problem?" It's really easy to get in your head. So I do think it's great. You're seeing a lot more women and you're seeing a lot more diversity.

When you just go look at menus, people are experimenting with a lot more flavors. I feel like when I started, only French food was fine dining. They're the only ones that got a lot of respect. Eventually, you saw more Japanese. But now there's all culinary influences that are getting that kind of Michelin star respect, which is pretty awesome. You're seeing the same thing with recipe developers. A lot more diversity, a lot more different kinds of foods. Something like a curry isn't looked at as this foreign thing. It's like, yeah, this can be a weeknight meal for everybody. It's changed a lot.

You pull from all over the world in this book. It seems very intentional to me, that you wanted to do a book that pulls from the best flavors and the best cuisines from around the world.

And also what's great is there are no special ingredients anywhere. You can get ingredients to make everything in this book from your local grocery store, which was really intentional because I want to show that you can have a very diverse culinary experience with just a handful of stuff that everyone has access to.

You recently became a mom. That changes everything overnight. Now you're in the kitchen in a different way. You're approaching meal preparation in a different way. Your schedule is different. How are you already seeing your approach to food, the timing, the tasting, all of that, as a mom?

I've gotten really good at making things with one hand. Minimal knife work, because you can't chop with one hand. There are certain pantry staples that I'm really embracing. Our freezer always has bone broth. If you have a solid stock, you can put together a quick meal. Just steam some rice with bone broth and put a bunch of greens on top, and we're done. Dinner's getting faster, more efficient, because you've got to sneak it in whenever you can.